The 32nd edition of the European architecture students Assembly is held this year in the current World Design Capital 2012, Helsinki under the title Wastelands.
The event, promoted by the network organization of architecture students, EASA (European Architecture Students Assembly), began on Monday July 16 and will last a total of two weeks until July 29. In this time the assembly will organize numerous workshops , lectures, social interaction and experiences related with the architectural monuments of the Finnish capital.
The event is organized every year in a different country gathering some 500 students, both graduate and post-graduate as well as already graduated architects. Among the festival activities, the participants treat arising architectural issues relevant to our present time, both in the host country of the event and throughout the world.
The festival began in 1981 in Liverpool, when some local architecture students invited other European partners to exchange their ideas about architecture. This small event has grown year after year with the aim of providing knowledge and views on the architecture that could not be obtained through a conventional career. The event also has the aim of offering an interesting cultural exchange. The assembly had been organized in Finland already in 1987.
The event Wastelands, according to information provided on its official website, is characterized by its “anti-political” approach and by making the decisions at their meetings in a fully consensual way.
The axis of the Wastelands festival this year focuses on rethinking the use of abandoned urban spaces, which in practice will be studied through activities such as walking tours in addition to the typical workshops, lectures and concerts that characterize this festival. The participants will center in studying the possibilities and problems that arise out of open urban spaces that are not in use as well as the completely abandoned spaces within cities and nearby the cities.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYw0ZfhYwgo[/youtube]
Helsinki is the perfect venue for the festival this year because the Finnish capital is a role model in the field of the new use of old places, such as the old derelict Cable Factory of Helsinki (Kaapelitehdas) which now is staked for cultural use offering working spaces and studios for artists, or the old industrial area Suvilahti being used today as a space for various cultural events, where are even organized large music festivals. In fact the festival Wastelands itself uses the Suvilahti area as the headquarters of this years assembly.
The lectures on the architecture offered in Wastelands assembly, will be taught by world leading thinkers in the field of architecture, urbanism and techniques of branding and trends.
