This is a multidisciplinary design studio that aims to provide an opportunity for students to acquire relevant concepts and skills relating to development, urban design and building construction, and to test the theory of building and urban design through practice. Poverty, social and political exclusion, extreme density, environmental degradation, marginalization, land conflicts, informality and top-down governmental re-development plans threaten the life of millions of inhabitant at risk of eviction and forced to develop resistance mechanisms. This studio will explore what it takes to design an effective response to urban habitat – inclusive, secure, adaptive, and sustainable – in a conflicting urban setting. We will develop the skills and competences which designers and urban practitioners need in order to respond effectively to situations where high density and informality are at the centre of a contested urbanism- a conceptual analytical neolgism developed by course tutors Camillo Boano and William Hunter, as illustrated in their essay for the Journal of Developing Societies http://jds.sagepub.com/content/27/3-4/295.abstract.

image by William Hunter

Through a project-based, practical studio-type exercise that investigates the application of design in development in a critically reflective manner. A carefully sequenced progression of phases - including urban/actor mapping, spatial profiling, and individual/coordinated interventions - allows students to add design value via connected and mutually reinforcing strategy (organizational design) and spatial intervention proposals (redirected architectural practice).

The complexity of design in development scenarios is compounded by scarce resources, skewed power relationships at the individual, community, and institutional levels, unresponsive provision and limited access to housing and infrastructure, legal and spatial informality, and the contested interweaving of top-down vs. bottom-up agendas. This studio prepares students to enact positive change through design in development scenarios by embracing this complexity and reorienting existing processes toward more just and equitable spatial outcomes.

The OBJECTIVES of this module are to invite students:

To analyse and reflect on the challenges of a socially just urban development planning practice in the context of a specific case; 

To confront the theory and ethics of urban development planning through participatory processes of design and the production of space in an informal settlement;

To develop skills and competences of architects and urban practitioners as enablers and not just providers of predetermined built forms;

To critically analyse urban densities and transformative processes both at the policy and at the spatial level;

To understand and navigate the critical tensions produced in intertwined spatial realms where livelihoods, productive activities and everyday housing activities reflect multiple and contested interests and opportunities;

To elaborate spatially at the level of buildings and urban design, on density and verticality;

To develop a methodology and framework for a professional approach to building and urban design for development;

To understand how to develop strategies and sound design proposals for the development and upgrading of urban areas, in ways that are socially and culturally acceptable, economically viable and environmentally sustainable