052-0708-00L  Urban Design IV

SemesterFrühjahrssemester 2020
DozierendeH. Klumpner, S. V. Baur
Periodizitätjährlich wiederkehrende Veranstaltung
LehrspracheEnglisch


KurzbeschreibungThe ‘Urban Stories’ lecture series introduces a city during each lecture. The city’s urban development is described through contemporary phenomena and is critically presented as strategies and tactics. The urban phenomenon we explore in this course show urban conditions, models and operational modes.
LernzielHow can we read cities and recognize current trends and urban phenomena? The lectures series will produce a catalogue of operational urban tools as a series of critical case studies, and as basis for future practice. Urban Stories introduces a repertoire of urban design instruments to the students.
This will empower them to read cities and apply these tools in the urban environment. The course will approach the topic employing analytical cases on different scales, geographies, in diverse socio-political, ecological and economical environments. With our collection of tools compiled in a 'toolbox' in the logic of an evolving archive, we aim to tell the fundamental story of contemporary urban development. This specific analysis offers insight and knowledge that helps students to make informed design decisions. The tools are grouped in thematic clusters, compared, interpreted and via interviews annotated by local experts. This approach sensibilities the students to understand how to operate in different local but also international contexts.
InhaltUrban form cannot be reduced to the physical space. Cities are the result of social construction, under the influence of technologies, ecology, culture, the impact of experts and accidents. Urban un-concluded processes respond to political interests, economic pressure, cultural inclinations, along with the imagination of architects and urbanists and the informal powers at work in complex adaptive systems. Current urban phenomena are the result of an urban evolution. The facts stored in urban environments include contributions from its entire lifecycle. That is true for the physical environment, but also for non-physical aspects, the imaginary city that exists along with its potentials and problems and with the conflicts that have evolved over time. Knowledge and understanding along with a critical observation of the actions and policies are necessary to understand the diversity and instability present in the contemporary city and to understand how urban form evolved to its current state.

How did cities develop into the cities we live in now? Which urban plans, instruments, visions, political decisions, economic reasonings, cultural inputs and social organisation have been used to operate in urban settlements in specific moments of change? We have chosen cities that are exemplary in illustrating how these instruments have been implemented and how they have shaped urban environments. We transcribe these instruments into urban operational tools that we have recognized and collected within existing tested cases in contemporary cities across the globe.

This lecture series will introduce urban knowledge and the way it has introduced urban models and operational modes within different concrete realities, therefore shaping cities. Urban knowledge will be translated into operational tools, extracted from cities where they have been tested and become exemplary samples, most relevant for providing a deeper insight of how urban landscape has taken shape. The tools are assembled in thematic clusters and scales for support comparability and cross-reflection.

Tool case studies are compiled into a toolbox, which we use as templates to read the city and to critically reflect upon it. Furthermore, in order to better understand the co-production of urban space and the interdependence of influencing factors, we have developed a frame of reference in the form of the triad PEOPLE (individual and collective stakeholders, lived and percieved space), PROGRAM (simple and complex instructions, representations and concepts of space use) and ENVIRONMENT (eco-geological, built and constructed space). This matrix is then applied to the various case studies and its tools in favor to arrive at a trans-disciplinary and multi-perspective approach that enables socially, ecologically and economically sustainable urban design.The presented contents are meant to serve as inspiration for positioning in future professional life as well as to provide instruments for future design decisions.

The lecture series is as well a preparation for design studio work and can be deepened and applied in the other teaching and research projects of the chair.

For further information: Link
SkriptThe learning material, available via Link is comprised of:
- Toolbox 'Reader' with introduction to the lecture course and tool summaries
- Weekly exercise tasks
- Infographics with basic information of each city
- Quiz question for each tool
- Additional reading material
- Series of interviews with local experts of the different cities

The compiled learning material can be downloaded from the student-server.
LiteraturPlease see 'Skript'.
Voraussetzungen / Besonderes"Semesterkurs" (semester course) students from other departments or students taking this lecture as GESS / Studium Generale course as well as exchange students must submit a research paper, which will be subject to the performance assessment: "Bestanden" (pass) or "Nicht bestanden" (failed) as the performance assessment type, for "Urban Design I: Urban Stories" taken as a semester course, is categorized as "unbenotete Semesterleistung" (ungraded semester performance).