What is our current perspective on a permanently transforming city? Which aspects do we notice when looking around, what remains invisible to us? The chair of Stadt Raum Entwerfen (Urban and Regional Design) is interested in identifying the common and unusual potentials of urban settings, understanding the habits of users and the programs of the public realm as well as left over spaces and in working together with other disciplines on sustainable transformation processes.
This winter term we will look at the interdependencies of inner-city water, a city's economy, ecology and society. More and more we can watch rivers in cities transform from hardly accessible, highly efficient infrastructures (transportation, effluence, power) to integrated green blue infrastructures that support a city’s ecology, leisure activities, public health issues and cultural offerings. Rivers are hotspots of contact and that makes them hotspots of control. The value of riverbanks needs to be discussed, but what would be the currency? Money, taxes, property value, health, inclusiveness or our ecological footprint …?
In teams of two, students will analyze a cut out perimeter of the riverbanks in one of five German cities. Goal is to research and detect the multilayering of interests along these inner-city stretches and to find ways to document the various forms of appropriation as well as the spectrum of values (money, leisure, ecology, business, …). We will not only look at the status quo, but we will look at how the role of the river and its banks for a city has changed over time, which will help to make proposals for its future. Thinking about the future of the urban, encountering urban transformation processes and finding innovative solutions for urban settings is a joint venture. This means: close interdisciplinary collaboration, continuous exchange of knowledge and mutual understanding and inspiration. For these reasons (and because it’s more fun!) this seminar will feature an active learning exchange with students of the Urban Greening Lab of New York University.
NYUrban Greening Lab How to “green” a city (as dense as NYC) has been the focus of the Greening Lab of New York University for many years. The NYUrban Greening Lab stands for the integration and interdisciplinarity in the study of urban environmental change: “Understanding biophysical and social change in the cities of the 21st century requires new tools, approaches, and intellectual infrastructure. In the NYUrban Greening Lab, we use urban ecology as a lens to explore the complex ways that environmental and social change intersect. Drawing from our different disciplinary perspectives, we integrate biophysical, social, and design studies in order to better understand the complex interplay of urban social and environmental systems. Our mission is to undertake, model, and promote multidisciplinary investigation, learning, and exchange – and in doing this, to more fully explore the Earth’s possible urban futures.“ (https://wp.nyu.edu/urbangreeninglab/)
The class will not be a taught together with NYU, our goal is to establish contact and an exchange of knowledge base among students.
There will be one online meeting with NYU taking place on a Friday night (Dec. 9) between 8 and 10 pm Weimar time to meet NYU students in their time slot!
This is a 6 ECTS course. Please expect the workload to be accordingly.
KickOff: 10/19/2022 and then Wednesdays 06:30-08:00 pm, HG R 002