Architecture and Urban Design

Architectural and Urban Design in Times of Transitions.

Massive urbanisation puts pressure on public space and demands new programmes, for instance, alternative gathering places such as public interior spaces and a variety of forms of collective spaces. This diversity of programs cannot be planned in advance, but interventions in the city need constantly to be grounded on sharp design approaches to respond adequately to the necessities of our times. In general, mobility and public life manifest themselves in various forms as carriers of urban development. Design experiments, as put forward in this course, have to show how to work with continuously changing urban conditions, how mobility transforms the city and public space can take various forms, how programs hybridise, and how new technologies can be used to keep up with the urban dynamics. Given these themes, designs also present awareness of the inclusiveness and accessibility of various systems and places, facilities, and technologies.

In this interdisciplinary Master's design studio, you combine these issues and present them to your peers and a team of interdisciplinary supervisors. You focus particularly on the consequences of urbanisation for the major foundations of the city of the future urban infrastructure and public space, and you envision an experimental design within a larger set of visions produced by you and your fellow students. In these designs, students and staff are interested on the one hand, in the urban intervention in the built environment and its effect on architecture, and on the other hand, in the architectural treatment of the city and its effect on urban design.

The studio is supported by an interdisciplinary lecture series that provides an overview of vested theories and cutting-edge research on people movement, urban vitality, and public space. This includes seminal works by Gehl, Whyte, Jacobs, Appleyard, and Lynch, and research work by Cullen, the Smithsons, and Venturi and Scott Brown. The role of citizens and designers in shaping vibrant urban public spaces is explored through readings, film, and active discussions with students. This is certainly not your average dry theory course. The course material will come alive through active discussions and the direct application of theories in analyzing real urban settings.