‘Multi-stories: Estate interventions in London and Paris’

Please note that this seminar will be taking place at UAntwerp Stadscampus, as part of the USI LUNCH SEMINAR & the LIVING CITIES LECTURE SERIES
For more information, please visit the UAntwerp website./

This lunchtime seminar will share and discuss a recent ‘urban pamphleteer’, Multi-stories: Estate interventions in London and Paris, edited by Martine Drozdz, Andrew Harris and Nathaniel Télémaque.

This pamphleteer, produced in both English and French versions, documents and explores experimental interventions in the way the everyday life of multi-storey social housing in London and Paris is represented and understood. Interspersing contributions from across these two cities, the issue foregrounds approaches that develop innovative intersections across visual, ethnographic and historical methods. The pamphleteer brings together writers, photographers, academics, artists and activists and features text, photographs, artworks, postcards, film-stills, oral history and graphics. It is accompanied by two rectangular fold-out posters featuring a selection of images from its contributors.

Martine Drozdz (MFO) and Andrew Harris (University College London), will detail and discuss how and why this publication was developed. They will explore how Multi-stories builds on and extends recent interest in vertical urban life, seeks to help re-imagine the widespread past and present stigmatization of social housing in Paris and London, develops more creatively-orientated approaches to forms of urban comparison and is conceived as part of older traditions of pamphleteering.