People-centred Urban Design & Public Space
The aim of this course is to enable students to design public spaces based on an understanding of how people perceive, understand and utilize urban space, that would in turn lead to future places that are supportive to what people want to do, minimizing the chance of misuse or neglect of these spaces. The course covers the seminal normative theories of urban design and illustrates to the students the relation between those theories, their limitations and how they relate to other courses such history of urban form, neighbourhood design and the basic theories of environment-behaviour studies. The course conveys to the students the importance of public space and the multiple functions it plays in people’s lives; how its is at once a place for movement, for leisure, a workplace and a place to learn and grow. It equips students to address public space and be able to address its multiple economic, social and political dimensions; having the knowledge and synthesizing skills to plan and design the most integral and central urban element as defined by the latest global manifestos. Through field visits and literature review, the students will be trained on physical survey, behavioral observation, reading maps, photographic documentation, conducting interviews, documentation and analysis of collected data as well as participatory design and presentation to stakeholders.
1. Demonstrate design principles and methodologies for analyzing multifaceted problems in urban design presenting solutions guides and design standards, evaluating alternatives and solutions scenarios, preparing and presenting presentations and discussing the design of various projects in terms of areas, standards, patterns and degree of complexity in light of the cultural, social and economic determinants of the surrounding environment.
2. Demonstrate the foundations of design, theories and history urban design, theories of the human relationship with the built environment, in addition to contemporary trends in urbanism, including participatory approaches to intervene in the built environment, meet the needs of all groups of users, community development, and achieve the principles of environmental, social and economic sustainability.
3.Creating urban solutions that focus on the human element and meet its social, cultural and economic needs,support its use of the built environment and take into account the temporal shifts.
4.Understanding different theories and standards of beauty with the ability to design for everyone and respectdifferent cultures.
5.Skill in expressing the design in different ways and methods (drawing, film, 3D models, ...) and writing reports and making presentations to the concerned parties.
6. Preparing the technical outputs of the urban design projects and making the project drawings.
7. Respecting the social and cultural identity in the application of urbanism.
8.Efficient and effective cooperation and integration within a multidisciplinary team and the ability to successfully manage a team.
9.Searching for the necessary cognitive and technical information and the latest developments in the field of urbanism, and adopting the principles of self-learning and lifelong learning