Department of Architecture Professor Hajo Neis, director of the Department of Architecture at UO in Portland and director of the Portland Urban Architecture Research Laboratory (PUARL), has announced a collaboration between PUARL and Pursuit of Pattern Languages and Societal Change (PURPLSOC) to present the international 2015 conference on pattern language, at Danube University in Austria in July. PURPLESOC emerged from the 2013 fall International PUARL conference when Professor Peter Baumgartner from Danube University in Krems, Austria, and Neis initiated an organization forming a new cooperation.

The cooperation consists of alternating conferences in Austria and the United States. After three successful international conferences on the Overall Pattern Language Approach in Architecture and Urbanism by PUARL, for the first time the conference will shift to Austria as the First World Conference on Pattern Language, and will be held July 3-5 at Danube University.

While PUARL with the Overall Pattern Language Approach in Architecture and Urbanism focuses mostly on a range of principles, concepts, and design methods within the discipline of Architecture and urban studies, the PURPLSOC conference in Krems focuses primarily on Pattern Language application in various fields such as design, media, arts and IT, pedagogy, education, social innovation and social activism, and also including architecture, urbanism, and regionalism.

The organizations are issuing a Call for Contribution and Papers through March 28, 2015.

“With the start of the new PUARL-PURPLESOC cooperation we hope to accommodate the large world-wide interest in the Pattern Language approach to integrated design and problem solving, that is now applied in a large number of different disciplines all over the world,” Neis says. “At the same time we also would like to continue the work and progress on the Overall Pattern Language Approach in Architecture, in which this area of design and research originated, well exemplified close to home in the first large-scale community project of the Oregon campus in Eugene and in Portland. With two main locations in Europe and the U.S., and yearly alternating international conferences, as well as cooperative project work, we intend to make more progress and contribute to solving urban problems in this fascinating field of investigation.”

More information is available at the websites for PUARL and PURPLSOC.