Designing for Eco-systems in Transition

The 21st century is an era of unprecedented technological acceleration, climate change, environmental degradation, resource scarcity, and intensive societal transitions. The Anthropocene has made evident the impact of human intrusion on living and Earth’s systems, manifesting as “wicked problems”. Tackling these problems from monodisciplinary perspectives is counterproductive. What is needed is a transdisciplinary approach that works towards the development of sustainable design strategies for environments and ecosystems in transition. In this end, the Theories, Territories and Transitions Section of the Architecture Department of the Faculty of Architecture has developed this interdisciplinary Q5 course in cooperation with staff of the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, the Delft Deltas, the Infrastructure and Mobility Initiative, and the European Association for Architectural Education. Every academic year we will collaborate with our partners, and with domain and site-specific experts, to explore constructed ecologies and human altered environmental systems and landscapes across European contexts. Students will develop analytical research tools and develop strategies and methods that leverage the spatial disciplines and interdisciplinary design for transitions.

The course will offer formative feedback through weekly interactions with tutors and experts.

This course will be evaluated via two moments of summative assessments:

• interim presentation (charette-style review) | assessment will be offered as formative feedback and cumulative assessment using qualitative indicators (insufficient, sufficient, good, excellent)

• final presentation | assessment will be given numerically (5-10) | the disciplinary background of students will be considered | marks are gradients of learning objectives and course rubrics

The deliverables that will be assessed are:

Project portfolio: collective (team) compilation booklet documenting both, group work and individual/domain specific research. This deliverable will be utilized to calibrate domain-specific (individual) grading. This will be carried out by experts in each domain.

Final project presentation and exhibition contribution: individual projects, presentations and exhibition material. The final presentation/exhibition will have 50% weight in the overall assessment with a relative weight of 50% on individual evaluation. The domain-specific work will be evaluated by the track-tutors, whereas the group-work will be evaluated by the whole tutoring team at the final exhibition.

Assessment:

50% Group work/collaboration (50% in weight for individual grading)

50% Final assessment

Additional Note:

Students pass the course with a 6.0 or higher. With a lower grade, the course can be repaired to change the grade into a pass. The repair is unsupervised and needs to be completed within 2 weeks after the end of the course. When the repair is unsuccessful, the student needs to follow the entire course again, or possibly another Q5 elective in the third education period.