Space as Experiment – Experimenting with Space | UXUC - User Experience and Urban Creativity

Space as Experiment – Experimenting with Space

Space as a Medium for Organizing Collective Realities & Transforming Social Environments

NEW - Webinar, 17 and 18 June 2026
hosted by the Lisbon Faculty of Fine Arts, CIEBA / Thematic line in Exploratory Projects and Society / Systemic City - Interdisciplinary Practices group* in cooperation with the Institute for Urban and Regional Research (Austrian Academy of Sciences)

Join us online:
https://oeaw-ac-at.zoom.us/j/65318217896

Program in PDF

Program with abstracts

(updated 12 of June)

June 17, 2026
Soft start 9:45 CET / 8:45 WET – Welcome and opening remarks 10:00 CET / 9:00 WET
Join us online via Zoom: https://oeaw-ac-at.zoom.us/j/65318217896

Session I: Artistic and Arts-Based Perspectives on Urban Spaces
10:00-12:30 CET / 9:00-11:30 WET

Welcome and Opening Remarks
Philipp Schnell 1, Pedro Soares Neves 2
1 Institute for Urban and Regional Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna
2 Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon, Lisbon

Extended Presentation (35 min)

On Spatial Storytelling and Relational Materialism:
Hacking Salzburg’s History Through a Comic Based Research Methodology
Paul Feigelfeld, Thomas Ballhausen, Renée Maria Kraemer
Institute for Open Arts, Mozarteum University, Salzburg
Keynote Q&A (10 min)

Panel Presentations (20 min each)

Ma(r)king Neighborhoods:
Printmaking as Participatory Method for Urban Place Making
Helena Segarra 1, Miriam Haselbacher 1 and Julien Segarra 2
1 Institute for Urban and Regional Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna
2 Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna

Complex Temporalities, Emotional Intensities, and Socio-Material Conditions:
The Shaping of Young People’s Long-Term Engagement in Their Local Neighborhood
Anne Mette W. Nielsen
Centre of Youth Research, Aalborg University, Copenhagen

Latent Architectures:
The Body as an Interface for the Emergence of Space in the Landscape
Paula Andrea Olmedo Latoja
Doctoral Program in Architecture, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla

Panel Q&A (15 min)

Lunch break 12:30-13:30h CET / 11:30-12:30 WET

Session II: Reshaping Perspectives on Urban Space and Morphology
13:30-15:30 CET / 12:30-14:30 WET

Extended Presentation (35 min)

Seeing the City Through the Machine's Eye:
How AI-Based Image Analysis is Transforming Quantitative Urban Studies
Silvio Heinze
Institute for Urban and Regional Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna

Keynote Q&A (10 min)

Panel Presentations (20 min each)

On the Religiosity of Architecture
Bader AlBader
Department of Architecture, Kuwait University, Kuwait

Mapping Urban Identity:
A Comparative PPGIS Study in Vienna and Budapest
Viktória Éva Lélek
Institute for Urban and Regional Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna

The Zoo as Apparatus:
Speculative Spatial Scenarios for Human and Non-Human Coexistence
Rua Alshaheen
Department of Architecture, Kuwait University, Kuwait

Panel Q&A (15 min)

Afternoon break 15:30-16:00h CET / 14:30h-15:00h WET

Session III: Cartography, Mapping, and Malleable Urban Environments
16:00-18:00 CET / 15:00-17:00 WET

Extended Presentation (30 min)

Counter-Cartographies of Platform-Mediated Everyday Life
Emilia M. Bruck 1, Theresa Schütz 2 and Fabio Hofer 3
1 Institute of Spatial Planning, TU Wien, Vienna
2 Institute of Art and Design, TU Wien, Vienna
3 Independent Artist, Vienna

Keynote Q&A (10 min)

Panel Presentations (2 x 20 min, 1 x 10 min)

Matrix Cartographies:
A Feminist Methodology for Relational-Affective Spatialization in the Urban Environment
Isabel Herrera-González 1, Paula Andrea Olmedo Latoja 2
1 Departamento de Dibujo, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla
2 Doctoral Program in Architecture, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla

Urban Art as Controlled Narrative:
Space, Conflict, and the Line 3 Corridor in Guadalajara
Flores-Echiveste, Francisco Javier
Centro Universitario de Arte, Arquitectura y Diseño (CUAAD), University of Guadalajara, Guadalajara

Vernacular Toponyms Between the Commons and the Platform Economy:
The Potential of OpenStreetMap for Critical Urban Research and Mapping
Maximilian Wonaschütz
Institute for Urban and Regional Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna

Panel Q & A and Closing (20 min)

18:00 CET Drinks with local contributors @Wunderbar, 1010 Vienna

June 18, 2026
Soft start 9:45 CET / 8:45 WET) – Welcome and opening remarks 10:00 CET / 9:00 WET
Join us online via Zoom: https://oeaw-ac-at.zoom.us/j/65318217896

Session IV: Society, Culture, and the Exploration of Shared Time-Spaces

10:00-12:30 CET / 9:00-11:30 WET

Extended Talk (35 min)

Culturally Iridescent Space-Time and Queeridescent Practice
Sacha Kagan
Independent researcher, Winsen (Luhe)

Keynote Q&A (10 min)

Panel Presentations (20 min each)

Istanbul Mon Amour:
Site-Specific Performance in a Transforming City
Emine Fişek
Institute for Urban and Regional Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna

Children and Public Spaces in Algeria:
Between Urban Invisibility and Mobility Challenges
Maya Benoumeldjadj 1, Norhane Chouiter 2
1 Department of Architecture, Larbi Ben M’hidi University, Oum El Bouaghi; AUTES Research Laboratory, University of Constantine 3, Constantine
2 Laboratory of Functional Ecology and Environment, Larbi Ben M’hidi University, Oum El Bouaghi, Algeria

Barāḥah:
Al-Ahmadi Neighborhood Yard Rooted in Memory and Generational Belonging
Nouralhuda Sheref 1, Muneera Al-Hussainan 2
Independent Researchers, Kuwait

Panel Q & A and Closing Remarks (30 min)

Proceedings are to be published in:
User Experience and Urban Creativity journal

Submission of abstracts (300 words max.) until April 30, 2026.
Submission of full papers until July 30, 2026.
Publication of UXUC Special Issue: November 2026.

Submissions should be made through the UXUC journal publishing platform.
Please indicate the thematic call you are submitting to in the “Comments for the Editor” field.

For all accepted submissions, publication costs will be waived for this thematic issue. Article Processing Charges (APCs) will be covered by the Institute for Urban and Regional Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), a partner institution of the Urban Creativity/ Wisethorough Support Program.

Description
Common perspectives on urban spaces are strongly influenced by collective knowledge, shared mental concepts, as well as practices and rhythms of everyday life. These basic structures of lived urbanity in turn shape the material form of urban environments and provide the basic tenets of research on urban spaces in multiple disciplines. However, recent advances in technology, science, and cross-cultural communication challenge traditional understandings of urban spaces in favor of multidimensional, multilinear, and malleable spatialities. We are pushed to understand space as a multidimensional matrix that can be accessed from multiple starting points, described from different perspectives and analyzed towards various outcomes. These new understandings of urban spaces and their inherent potentialities affect collective realities and spatial environments alike.

Consequently, researchers working on and with spatial conceptions of urban spaces are challenged to address these transformations in their research, to adapt their methods to new urban realities, and to discuss new forms of coexistence in the city. Likewise, new media of spatial research, new technologies, and new urban collectives create innovative pathways for spatial research that can revolutionize our understanding of contemporary urbanity. In this sense, space serves as the basis, as the medium, and as an outcome of spatial research in various intersecting disciplines. At the same time, we are asked to consider multiple pathways towards knowledge creation to take different aspects of shifting urban realities into account. To address these challenges, we invite artists, architects, designers, urban researchers, urban planners, scholars, and decision-makers to share current research, inspiring results, methodological advances, as well as new conceptual approaches on urban spaces in a Webinar hosted by the Lisbon Faculty of Fine Arts* co-organized by the Institute for Urban and Regional Research (Austrian Academy of Sciences).

The Webinar focuses on innovative concepts and methods of spatial research and how they can create new perspectives on urban spaces, revolutionize common understandings of everyday urban environments, and create new urban communities across human and non-human actors. This online event features presentations, and discussion panels aiming at sparking dialogue between researchers, practitioners, creatives, and decision-makers to re-think concepts, methods, and practices of research on urban spaces. Topics revolve around creative and emergent methods of spatial research, fresh approaches to pressing issues and problems, as well as new conceptions on urban space and contemporary urbanity.

The following questions serve as a guiding framework for the upcoming Webinar: How can new concepts of space change our understandings of urban (co-)existence and our perspectives on spaces of everyday life in the city? How can innovative emergent, arts-based, and artistic research methods transform common understandings of ‘the urban’ in spatial research? How can new conceptual and methodological approaches revolutionize our vision of urban spatiality and address current issues and problems?

We welcome submission from a wide range of disciplines such as urban studies, urban planning, systems development, artificial intelligence, architecture, design, artistic and arts-based research, but also sociology, spatial planning, and urban geography.

Submissions should be made through the UXUC journal publishing platform.
Please indicate the thematic call you are submitting to in the “Comments for the Editor” field.

For all accepted submissions, publication costs will be waived for this thematic issue. Article Processing Charges (APCs) will be covered by the Institute for Urban and Regional Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), a partner institution of the Urban Creativity/ Wisethorough Support Program.

Format: Webinar with presentations, panel discussions and keynotes.

Editor: Pedro Soares Neves, Researcher collaborator CIEBA/FBAUL; ITI/LARSyS/IST Lisbon University; CIDEHUS/UEvora Évora; Portugal / Publisher Editor WT/ UC
Co-editor: Philipp Schnell, Institute of Urban and Regional Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences
In case of questions please contact: philipp.schnell@oeaw.ac.at.

Image Credits:
Silas Lundquist in Unsplash; Sharon Hahn Darlin and Artem Vynohradov via Wikimedia Commons

* via CIEBA / Thematic line in Exploratory Projects and Society / Systemic City - Interdisciplinary Practices group / research collaborator Pedro Soares Neves.