MEDIA BUILDING
ARCHITECTURE, COMMUNICATIONS
AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
Fleet Street, London c. 1890
David Levy/Wikicommons
David Levy/Wikicommons
MEDIA BUILDING
VIRTUAL CONFERENCE
7 - 9 JULY, 2021
HOSTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF SALFORD AND NORTHUMBRIA UNIVERSITY
FURTHER SUPPORT PROVIDED BY THE LEVERHULME TRUST
#MEDIABUILDING2021
7 - 9 JULY, 2021
HOSTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF SALFORD AND NORTHUMBRIA UNIVERSITY
FURTHER SUPPORT PROVIDED BY THE LEVERHULME TRUST
#MEDIABUILDING2021
PLEASE NOTE ALL TIMES ARE BST
WEDNESDAY 7 JULY
1230 - 1330
PANEL 1: MEDIA SPECTACLE
The CN Tower and the Production of Vertical Spectacles
Ira Wagman
Race, Spectacle, and the Johnson Publishing Headquarters
James West
[Chair: Carole O'Reilly]
Ira Wagman
Race, Spectacle, and the Johnson Publishing Headquarters
James West
[Chair: Carole O'Reilly]
1400 - 1500
PANEL 2: ALTERNATIVE + INSURGENT MEDIA SPACES
Rebuilding Mainstream Media in Turkey. Spatial Dimensions of Two Online Media Venues (Medyascope and T24)
Erkan Saka
The Prison as a Publishing House: Negotiating Carceral Spaces in American Women’s Prison Zines
Olivia Wright
[Chair: Megan Hunt]
Erkan Saka
The Prison as a Publishing House: Negotiating Carceral Spaces in American Women’s Prison Zines
Olivia Wright
[Chair: Megan Hunt]
1530 - 1630
PANEL 3: MEDIA MAPPING + MODERN ACOUSTICS
Moving Offices, Mapping Cantons: Das Werk and the Idea of Switzerland
Linda Stagni
Architectures of the Air: New Broadcasting Buildings and Creative Practices with Sound Recording, 1930-1945
Carolyn Birdsall
[Chair: James West]
Linda Stagni
Architectures of the Air: New Broadcasting Buildings and Creative Practices with Sound Recording, 1930-1945
Carolyn Birdsall
[Chair: James West]
1700 - 1800
KEYNOTE 1: KIMBERLEY PETERS
Rebel Radio, Pirate Programming: Floating Architecture and Intimate Geopolitics at Sea
Chair: James West
Chair: James West
This paper examines the importance of the spaces where offshore, floating rebel radio stations of the 1960s to 1990s produced their pirate programming. It examines how the material form of the ship, in the geophysical zone of the sea, created intimate soundscapes infused with geopolitical capacities. The paper charts how the architecture of the ships, and their location at sea were imbricated in the social conditions for crews of DJs on board, and how those situated crews were then themselves enfolded into the production of intimate, geopolitical soundscapes through the spatial organisation of their offshore workplace. This spatiality, - this architecture and locale - was, in turn, part of the resistant politics of pirate radio. The paper draws from novel theoretical literatures concerned with ‘intimacy' and the 'geopolitical', pushing these in new directions through an investigation of radio – the most intimate of mass communications mediums.
THURSDAY 8 JULY
1300 - 1430
PANEL 4: MEDIA SPACES + ARCHITECTURAL MODERNISM IN ENGLAND
Modernism at Queen Anne’s Gate
Jessica Kelly
Broadcasting House and the Architectural Review
Elizabeth Darling
Architectural Review and the MARS Group Exhibition 1938
Harriet Atkinson
[Chair: Carole O'Reilly]
Jessica Kelly
Broadcasting House and the Architectural Review
Elizabeth Darling
Architectural Review and the MARS Group Exhibition 1938
Harriet Atkinson
[Chair: Carole O'Reilly]
1500 - 1600
PANEL 5: (RE)CONCEPTUALISING MEDIA BUILDINGS
Horizontal systemics: Making Sense of Modern News Architecture via the ‘Organizational Complex’
Scott Rodgers
Media Museums, the City Dump, & the Green City
James Hay
[Chair: Will Mari]
Scott Rodgers
Media Museums, the City Dump, & the Green City
James Hay
[Chair: Will Mari]
1630 - 1830
SCREENING + ROUNDTABLE: The Last Pirates
1630 - 1730: Screening
1730 - 1830: Roundtable
Roundtable Featuring:
Angie Dee - London Wide Radio, Rock 2 Rock,
DJ Camilla - Dread Broadcasting Corporation, London Wide Radio
Lawrie Hallett - Senior Lecturer in Radio, Uni. of Bedfordshire
[Moderator: James West]
1730 - 1830: Roundtable
Roundtable Featuring:
Angie Dee - London Wide Radio, Rock 2 Rock,
DJ Camilla - Dread Broadcasting Corporation, London Wide Radio
Lawrie Hallett - Senior Lecturer in Radio, Uni. of Bedfordshire
[Moderator: James West]
Jaimie D'Cruz's 2017 BBC documentary The Last Pirates: Britain's Rebel DJs presents the story of Britain's second wave of pirate radio DJs during the 1980s. Unlike their seafaring 1960s forerunners, these pirates broadcast from London tower blocks and estates, creating a platform for Black music in an era when it was often ignored by the mainstream music industry. The Last Pirates explores how pirate radio stations, alongside other alternative media spaces, transformed the cultural, physical, and media landscapes of modern Britain.
The documentary is available here for anyone who would prefer to watch it in advance.
For a higher quality version please email James for a link: james.west@northumbria.ac.uk
The documentary is available here for anyone who would prefer to watch it in advance.
For a higher quality version please email James for a link: james.west@northumbria.ac.uk
FRIDAY 9 JULY
1300 - 1400
PANEL 6: DEVOLUTION + REGIONALISM
From ‘Dingy and Incommodious’ to ‘Quite Palatial’? The English Local and Regional Newspaper Offices’ Presence in the Townscape, c. 1850-1980
Andrew Walker
“Grand Designs?”: Investigating the Cultural and Spatial Logics of Channel 4’s Media Hub Workspaces in Leeds and Glasgow
Katherine Champion | David Lee
[Chair: Aaron Ackerley]
Andrew Walker
“Grand Designs?”: Investigating the Cultural and Spatial Logics of Channel 4’s Media Hub Workspaces in Leeds and Glasgow
Katherine Champion | David Lee
[Chair: Aaron Ackerley]
1430 - 1530
PANEL 7: THE MATERIAL NEWSROOM
Air Conditioning News Machines and Their Workers: the Role of AC in Newsroom Computerization
Will Mari
Place, power and the pandemic: the disrupted material settings of television news making during COVID-19 in an Indonesian broadcaster
Endah Saptorini | Xin Zhao | Daniel Jackson
[Chair: James West]
Will Mari
Place, power and the pandemic: the disrupted material settings of television news making during COVID-19 in an Indonesian broadcaster
Endah Saptorini | Xin Zhao | Daniel Jackson
[Chair: James West]
1600 - 1700
KEYNOTE 2: FLORENCE LE CAM
The Media Building: More than a News Factory
[Chair: Carole O'Reilly]
[Chair: Carole O'Reilly]
Media workplaces are a high-stakes environment for both managers and employees. The building is where news is produced through collective work, and where power relations play out between journalists and the hierarchy, between journalists and shop-floor workers, between advertising and marketing, and so on. It is often presented as a place of effervescence where news is produced and often embodied either by iconic representations of large machinery (such as printing presses) or the newsroom (as emblematic of the media's editorial identity). Not surprisingly, it is often within the newsroom that television shows represent journalism and graphic novel characters evolve. Beyond its symbolic significance, the newsroom is also the physical place that materializes the workspace of journalism (Le Cam, 2013).
In this sense, the pragmatic organization of this space - how offices are laid out, the organization of services, the spaces where people circulate, the cafeteria, and so on - represent critical elements that influence journalistic work, individuals' place within the organization and the representations they construct in their relationship to their work. These buildings are also the expression and the tools of management power and serve its goals. This strategic discursive function and appropriation of workspaces by management, journalists, workers, and administrative and commercial staff lend themselves to a study of the materiality of journalism's production spaces. This presentation, based on an analysis of visual representations of media, will analyze the ways workspaces are experienced, thought about, imagined, and used for promotional purposes, the construction of power relationships, the creation of a utopia or simply the carrying out of daily work.
In this sense, the pragmatic organization of this space - how offices are laid out, the organization of services, the spaces where people circulate, the cafeteria, and so on - represent critical elements that influence journalistic work, individuals' place within the organization and the representations they construct in their relationship to their work. These buildings are also the expression and the tools of management power and serve its goals. This strategic discursive function and appropriation of workspaces by management, journalists, workers, and administrative and commercial staff lend themselves to a study of the materiality of journalism's production spaces. This presentation, based on an analysis of visual representations of media, will analyze the ways workspaces are experienced, thought about, imagined, and used for promotional purposes, the construction of power relationships, the creation of a utopia or simply the carrying out of daily work.
