Omgeving en Infrastructuur: Stad en Landschap

The course "Environment and Infrastructure: Urban systems and Landscape" deals with core knowledge areas and skills around the spatial and technical design of infrastructure (specifically hydraulic and transport infrastructures) in various physical environments and contexts. Given the diversity of these environments and the various competencies you will need to start designing these infrastructures, the course is structured around an Integrated Design Project with preparatory lectures and exercises in Urban Systems and Landscape and Infrastructure. The Integrated project runs from start to finish and combines and applies the competencies gained from the disciplinary lectures and exercises.

Integrated Design

The integrated project synthesizes the knowledge and skills developed in the exercises looking at a complex infrastructural project in a landscape context. The focus is on waterscapes (riverbanks), its relating infrastructure and roadscapes (dikes, paths & cycleways, roads & highways). The integrated project will elaborate on methods and techniques of an integrated design approach. After starting with a problem exploration and defining the objective of the design, an optimal design solution will be

developed by generation of alternative concepts, verification of these concepts and finally an evaluation. By iterating over design loops a more detailed and precise solution may be acquired. Concurrent to the design method, design techniques will be supported by modelling experiments to gain thorough knowledge on the site at hand including its topographic complexity and opportunities for design solutions between urban systems, landscape, and infrastructure.

Landscape and Infrastructure

The Landscape and Infrastructure lectures and exercises elaborate on engineering design principles for integrated infrastructure design in a landscape context, with a focus on the technical principles of primary flood defence systems. Competencies in landscape analysis are also developed in this module, including basic knowledge levels on (1) perception of landscape environments, (2) landscape design at multiple scales and (3) principles of waterscapes and route design in a landscape context.

Urban Systems

The lectures and exercises on Urban Systems aim to train students in understanding, analysing, and assessing urban infrastructures as a part of complex urban systems. It focusses on three main systems: traffic, water (including flood defence systems), and green space/public space, and the possible overlap or combination of these systems. The course will pay close attention to infrastructure zones in the cities which underwent transformations recently, and which have to adapt to a changing context in the future. Three scales and their interrelations are considered: the scale of the city as a whole, a zone of integrated infrastructures, and a specific cross-section of a zone in detail. Starting at the city scale, we will zoom in to scale of the zone, followed by the scale of the cross-section. Based on a proposal on the scale of the section, we will zoom out again to zone scale, and to the city scale, to see the potential effects the proposal can have throughout spatial and temporal scales. While doing so the spatial and structural integration of the infrastructures will be considered.