Program Overview

Program Overview

The Urban Intervention Studio is a course that focuses on the interaction with collective spaces in the city, their role as publics and meeting places, and their transitional state. The course explores methods of creating new public domains through designing and constructing small-scale architectural interventions in 1:1 in close collaboration with local sites, communities, and stakeholders.

Course Content

The course builds on notions that developing places from within the context of the existing rather than tearing down and starting from scratch creates a more sustainable and just city in terms of preserving resources, supporting reuse, cultivating heritage, and enabling communities. Students will examine and reflect on overall urban issues around the case area that can be investigated from a theoretical and strategic perspective. They will also explore place from a phenomenological and perceptual position, prototyping site-specific urban interventions into an existing spatial situation.

Learning Outcomes

The course gives students insight into and experience of how small-scale interventions can act as agents of change in areas in transition, and how art, architecture, and landscape can provide a site-specific response to place and program. Students will:

• Explore various tools and media for engaging with a local context, identifying spatial qualities, and deepening site understanding.
• Apply a variety of design tools and methods, developing their strategic design approach and design interventions from mapping, drawing, model making, and building.
• Engage in group work, exploring how different competencies and skills combined can strengthen collaborative project work.
• Develop their abilities to translate and conceptualize spatial insights into design interventions, focusing on aesthetic qualities and how interventions can affect the site.
• Explore how an iterative design process of prototyping can be an effective method for testing potential design solutions.
• Practice communicating concepts, ideas, and designs through graphic representations, 1:1 mock-ups, text, and oral presentations to fellow students, supervisors, and local stakeholders.

Knowledge and Skills

Students will gain knowledge of:

• Various ways of approaching and intervening in sites in transformation through design strategies, cultural innovation, and temporary interventions.
• The potentials and conflicts that exist around integrating temporary projects as part of long-term planning strategies.
• The interrelation between spatial appearances and the underlying site policies and agendas.

Students will develop skills in:

• Identifying potentials and qualities in transforming urban landscapes through spatial site analysis and stakeholder interaction.
• Translating findings into architectural and strategic concepts for short-term and long-term interventions.
• Working independently with concept development, material and design exploration, and construction of small-scale architectural installations.
• Collaborating with student colleagues as well as local actors.
• Modulating building materials through both handheld and digital building tools and working with mixed media approaches.

Competences

Students will develop competences in:

• Translating empirical experiences into theoretical reflections – and reverse.
• Working conceptually with artistically founded site-specific architectural interventions and prototypes in combination with other representational modes of the discipline.
• Drawing and mapping design interventions into the context of wider area development strategies on multiple scales.
• Designing and building installations at full scale, incorporating design decisions and process management.
• Interacting and collaborating in a complex setting with students, teachers, and often a wide range of external stakeholders.

Examination

The examination is an assessment of project reports and assignments produced and handed in throughout the course and the oral presentation of these. Evaluation is based on the analytical, conceptual, and aesthetic qualities of the students’ collective work, including assessment of the coherency in both the process and the final project and proposal.

Teaching and Learning Methods

The course usually takes place at a location outside the University Campus, and every year, the studio is moved to a new location. Students will do on-site research and site analysis, innovation exercises, concept and design development, interaction with local stakeholders, and creation of 1:1 interventions. The course content is a mix of day-to-day assignments, lectures, discussions, workshops, presentations, and production of actual designs.

Literature and Resources

Maps, literature, field trips, lectures, case study sites, organized group collaborations, exercises, construction tools and space, project presentations, student feedback sessions, desk crit, and supervision are used throughout the course.

Recommended Prerequisites

Minimum one year from a design-oriented education such as landscape architecture, urban design, etc. Students from art history, geography, anthropology, or similar are welcome but must expect to explore themes specific to landscape architecture and urban design, meaning working with design-oriented problems and communicating through graphic representations and 1:1 prototyping. Academic qualifications equivalent to a BSc degree are recommended.

Remarks

The course is identical to NIGK15032U Urban Intervention Studio.

Course Details

• ECTS: 15 ECTS
• Type of Assessment: Written assignment, ongoing preparation throughout the course, and oral examination.
• Type of Assessment Details: Oral exam based on projects and assignments produced throughout the course. An overall assessment is given after the oral exam.
• Aid: All aids allowed.
• Marking Scale: 7-point grading scale.
• Censorship Form: No external censorship. Several internal examiners.
• Re-exam: Oral exam based on projects and assignments produced throughout the course. 20 minutes. An overall assessment is given after the oral exam.
• Criteria for Exam Assessment: Please see learning outcome.
• Course Type: Single subject courses (day).
• Workload:
  • Lectures: 15 hours
  • Preparation: 242 hours
  • Theory Exercises: 10 hours
  • Practical Exercises: 90 hours
  • Excursions: 30 hours
  • Guidance: 25 hours
  • English: 412 hours
• Language: English
• Course Number: NIGK19000U
• Programme Level: Full Degree Master
• Duration: 1 block
• Placement: Block 4
• Schedule Group: A and C
• Capacity: 30
• Study Board: Study Board of Geosciences and Management
• Contracting Department: Department of Geoscience and Natural Resource Management
• Contracting Faculty: Faculty of Science
• Course Coordinators: Bettina Lamm, Anne Margrethe Wagner
• Teacher: Various, including guest lecturers and supervisors.