Mark Gillem, PhD, FAIA, FAICP, Professor of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Oregon's College of Design, is serving as the Conference Director for the 18th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE). The four-day conference is occurring this week at the National University of Singapore with a theme of "Rupture and Tradition: Disruption, Continuity, and Repercussions." The conference participants are exploring how ruptures caused by pandemics, wars, and other forces are restructuring how we understand traditions.

The conference brings together more than 120 scholars from a variety of disciplines, including architecture, landscape architecture, planning, art history, anthropology, archaeology, conservation, folklore, geography, sociology, and urban studies. They are presenting peer-reviewed papers structured around the conference theme. 

The Department of Architecture at the National University of Singapore and the Singapore National Heritage Board are key conference sponsors. In addition to his role as conference director, Professor Gillem is the president of IASTE, a nonprofit academic organization based in Eugene that hosts biennial conferences, publishes a biannual peer-reviewed journal, and publishes a working paper series with over 2,000 individual papers to date. 

Professor Gillem teaches design studios, seminars on urban design, and the Human Context of Design. In addition, he is the chair of the Architecture PhD program, and the director of the UO’s Urban Design Lab.

Read more about the conference: iaste-2022-singapore