Cities’ Identity Through Architecture and Arts (CITAA) – 5th Edition

Every city has its valuable and unique identity that is revealed through its physical and visual form. It is seen through the eyes of its residents and users where the collective memories of their residents and users are being shaped. The robust identity of the city comprises the physical spaces and the images that were shaped through clues of memory, which in turn affect the tourism, education level, cultural level & economic prosperity in addition to other aspects.

Cities’ identities are constructed and developed over the time, from physical, cultural and sociological perspective the identities are incessantly evolving. This conference will discuss how Architecture and Arts are the embodiment of the historical, cultural, and economical characteristics of the city. It presents how cities’ memories play a vital role in protecting the physical and nonphysical heritage of the city. The research presented in this conference will make sense of the transformation of cities and urban cultures, and investigates different new approaches developed in, both, Contemporary Arts and Architecture.

This conference will present how citizens see their cities and how they physically or mentally compare it with the ideal city in their own perceptions. However, a city’s identity presents distinguishing factors that make it unique and unlike any other. It covers a huge variety of topics such as the conservation of the cultures and the identity of the city through the designing and planning processes. It discusses the different ideologies, approaches of a more sustainable city, and investigates the different approaches developed in Architecture and Contemporary art.

In this context, IEREK organizes this conference to discuss several topics regarding different vocabularies. For instance, the sacred architecture, heritage buildings, open spaces, landmarks, the street escapes, etc.; all of them have direct influences at the cities’ form. The cities’ form also receives the indirect impact from the citizens themselves, such as their culture that accordingly depends on the art, which could be seen and embodied through moral, painting, media, digital art, and sculpture. It then discusses the fundamental elements that have the full resilience and responsibility of the identity of the cities.

This conference also welcomes research papers that includes different case studies that present many solutions of activating the concept of the responsibility of architecture and arts on the development of our cities. It is an important initiative, which presents a new approach that depends on the available features of cities and how planners and decision makers use these resources of the cities’ features as the thread tip in solving the urban problems that our cities are facing.