EAAC 2011 at NUS

Sunday, May 29, 2011

East Asian Architectural Culture International Conference (EAAC 2011)
Date: 12-14 May 2011;

Venue: National University of Singapore

Theme: South of East Asia: Re-addressing East Asian Architecture and Urbanism

The Department of Architecture of the National University of Singapore is organizing the East Asian Architectural Culture International Conference to be held in Singapore from 12 to 14 May 2011. The theme of this year’s conference is ‘South of East Asia: Re-addressing East Asian Architecture and Urbanism’.This is the first time that Singapore, a city-state in Southeast Asia, is selected to host this international conference to promote the study of East Asian architecture and urbanism. This is a milestone as it heralds the trend of debating East Asian study beyond geographical boundaries. Moreover, it reveals the close historical ties and the shared cultures between Singapore and the other East Asian countries. The study on Chinese overseas has also presented rich evidence of the cultural diffusion from China to surrounding countries. In turn, the hybridized culture that resulted from the fusion of Chinese civilization and local traditions exercised an intriguing influence on the modern development of China. In a post-modern society that sees an increasing transnational flow of people, a comprehensive understanding of architecture and urbanism in East Asia can only be achieved through interdisciplinary research and in-depth study of cultural exchange in the region. Besides providing the conventional platform for scholars to share and exchange information from their study of architectural culture and urbanism in East Asia, the EAAC 2011 will offer an extraordinary opportunity for these topics to be re-addressed in the context of Southeast Asia with particular focus on cultural exchange in the region. Scholars and professionals from the fields of architecture (theory and practice), architectural and urban history, urban studies and other relevant disciplines are welcome to present papers related to the following four sub-themes and to participate in the poster session.

Attended EAAC 2011 conference at NUS recently, speakers and scholars from different parts of East Asian countries were participating this conference. Various titles under different subthemes were presented during the conference. It was actually a good chance to meet scholars from different parts of East Asian countries, but in my opinion , the main and sole problem for this kind of conference is the language difficulties. As scholars are mostly from korea, Japan, China , and Taiwan, which English is not their main language, attendants found that it is difficult to understand their presenation. It is really a waste, I might prefer that there are translator provided for the conference.