Florence
Curating the City

This book is the third in the book series, cityspeculations. Suzanne Ewing inaugurated the series with Salt City, Field+Work, 2006-2008. Mark Dorrian followed this with Warsawa, The Post-Socialist City, 2007-2009. However, the cityspeculations series belong to a bigger series, on might even suggest a tradition (of something between 15-20 years duration), of research-led teaching studios in architecture at the University of Edinburgh. There are many people who have developed and continue to contribute to the ethos of this highly motivated and creative research and teaching environment, but not least of all the students who have commited themselves to it. It may be specific staff research interests that drive the M Arch programme, especially its distinctive two-year format, of which Florence is the fifth in the series - which began with Adrian Hawker's Valetta, Island Territories, 2004-2006 and was followed by my Shanghai, Borderlands, 2005-2007 - but it is most frequently the creative and energetic productivity of the students that gives the clearest expression and innovative extensions to those research interests. Mark Dorrian has suggested that, what is crucial to the M Arch Programme at Edinburgh is a kind of 'structured openness' that it offers its students, providing them with a powerful framework of enquiry without pre-supposing specific answers. From the outset this permits the city itself to be posed as a question and the studio - thrillingly - to run as a collective endeavour of exploration and research in which students and tutors are active participants. It is indeed thrilling to participate in this openness and the book series provides a means for extending this openness for still further participations.

As well as running the M Arch Florence Programme and being a senior academic in Architectural Design and Design Theory at the University of Edinburgh, Dr. Dorian Wiszniewski is Partner in Wiszniewski Thomson Architects, Edinburgh. Built work and design projects have been published internationally and received many awards, including the Royal Scottish Academy Medal for Architecture in 2006. Articles on politics, philosophy and architecture have been published in China, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Italy, Japan, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, UK and USA.