This year's international conference of the Jaap Bakema Study Centre focuses on the years 1965 to 1989, in which welfare state arrangements were contested on both left and right, by counterculture movements and the rise of populism. While government institutions sought a proper response, urban renewal and city repair became a new field of work for architects and planners.

Esra Akcan is the keynote speaker for the Jaap Bakema Study Centre conference 2019 Architecture and Democracy 1965-1989: Urban Renewal, Populism and the Welfare State. Akcan’s research explores the concept of ‘open architecture’ through the thorough investigation of the urban renewal of Kreuzberg, Berlin’s immigrant neighbourhood, in the 1980s.