Whether put into effect by transnational politics or global economies, new technologies or urban social movements, networks have become the defining characteristics of twenty-first-century social and spatial organisation. They have widely changed our cultural forms of cohabitation and communication over recent years. They have also changed the ways we produce and experience the spaces we live in: Cities, regions and larger entities of spatial cohesion are no longer fixed territories, but emerge as highly contested and instable topologies. They are performed and constituted by networks of interacting realities.

The research employs a variety of strands along which the project itself can develop within networks of exchanges and interventions.

First, we look at contested spaces across Europe by following the routes of networks laid out by artists, architects, urbanists, curators and activists, gathering material, sharing ideas, filming and interviewing people along these journeys. For this, we have identified an initial set of ‘field studies’, which will expand along the progress of the research. Second, we invite groups, practices or initiatives to share information about their work on our website’s database, which offers a growing archive of urban interventions, public art projects and architectural experiments. In these ways, the research is open to contributions by interlocutors from various disciplines and backgrounds, who will take part in shaping the project.

Interaction networks and transient aggregations of spatial practices do not only form important sites for critical urban engagement, they are also sites of knowledge production. Networked Cultures seeks to conceptualise the knowledge embodied by these new forms of socio-spatial organisation and group action and will explore the ways in which they offer new perspectives for dealing with contested spaces. In particular, it will investigate how the examined spatial practices can reduce our dependence on fixed and separated knowledge, while giving us the tools to develop new knowledge together. The development of a set of practice led frameworks around architectural and cultural networks will contribute to enhance an understanding of how the architecture of space is malleable and can be transformed by those who are actors in a space of relationships.

In accordance with the particular character of the project, public communication and presentation form an essential part of it. As the Networked Cultures database grows, more and more information will be available online in the run of the project. Intermediate outcomes of the research are distributed via conferences, workshops, exhibitions and publications. Audio-visual reports and other components of the project will be presented in various exhibitions. In 2007 the results of the research will be further developed into a book.