THE CATALYST
The architect and city planner Miguel Miguel Robles-Duran, offered to Designer Ruedi Baur, a proposal to develop together a new city in Venezuela. This and other similar questions initiated the course, along with the basic question : What contributions can design, specifically the visual communication of architecture and urban development, achieve?
Apart from that which is mentioned above, these projects require a personal starting point, as city construction frequently strengthens after contributions from visual communication. The representatives of both disciplines stand behind the challenges, of both the projects and the emergence of public discussions. But that is not something natural : to vary the tasks and areas of expertise, perspectives and readings, functions and work processes, languages and conventions.
AREAS OF EXPERTISE, SPECIALIZATION
The Institute Design2context offers this unique post-graduate course in the 2009-2010 Autumn semester, as an extensive research project embedded alongside the further postgraduate programs (CAS + MAS) in the institute. The course follows „Vom Lallen zur Visuellen Identität“ (2005), „Urban Identity“ (2006), „Multiplicity“ (2007) and is based on the proven model of the CAS ‚disorientation / orientation „, which concluded with two Lars Müller Verlag publications in 2008 / 2009.
The CAS City Civic is created as a laboratory, where specialists from different disciplines, both theory and practice – designers, architects, urban planners, sociologists, anthropologists, researchers, historians, city administrators, politicians – come together to investigate new ways of shaping the city to further develop the practice. The course is open to anyone involved who would like to participate in „the other urban“.
The transdiciplinary program is built on the basis of a ten three-day-long expert colloquia accompanied by international advisers. A research team, from the Institute for Design Research, examines and tests exemplary, potential designs. This design and testing is done in parallel and in cooperation with town planners who are assigned the conception of a new city in Venezuela. The participants of the course are brought together with the research team for a continuous cooperative exchange. The ultimate goal is a publication with selected results of the research and seminars.
THE INITIAL POSITION
In the context of the ten three-day-long modules, experts of different disciplines, along with a guest advisory, bring together different points of view in relation to the specific module topic (or focus). The individual course days are dedicated to separate focuses. These focuses are outlined in the following questions.
What is the city of the present, and what cities do we wish for in the future? What means are needed to develop these? Who is involved and when? Those preceding are general questions for the framework of the first course, initially focusing on : the role of Design – specifically communication Design – in exchange with urban planning. Due to more process design scale formats and often short term interventions in urban spaces, there is a need for communication and a transparency of the interferences into the city (opposite the different publicness), as participatory concerns are increasingly transforming the field of urban design. Disciplinary borders set the course and architects, town planners and designers look for the mutual competencies, opening up new fields of inquiry:
What are the past roles of the disciplines and wherein does their specific authority lie? How is the city planned and developed? Which are the basic conditions for the new interests of collaboration? In what form does design obtain a new task with the development of public and private areas – in particular the urban. What constitutes this design-specific point of view? What skills and attitudes of visual communication are transferable and required?
What knowledge is necessary? How could the city benefit with the cooperation of other city planners? Are there qualities, areas of competence, specific approaches and / or positions (points of view) in visual communication that can be implemented in the urban planning process? Does visual communication offer its own methodical approach which effectively transforms the urban planning? And conversely, what perspectives and design methods of urban design can stimulate visual communication?
What are the roles, for example, of representation, knowledge of orientation and identification in information design? Or how, for example, does the perception and design of a city, as well as life in the city, change with medial complexity?
“CREATE US A NEW CITY”
This phrase inevitably reminds us of the utopias of the last century and their failure. If the assignment is taken seriously, and if one anticipates to experimentally explore new forms of the social life in 21 Century after this city’s challenges provoked by the financial system, then the perspectives change. Therefore, we want to take this call seriously and think not only together with experts over this new city, but also over the special role of the design conception.
If you could design a new city, what would it be? What can we learn and use from the past? What if design were involved in this draft? What contribution would design offer? What knowledge is necessary? How do designers of different disciplines define intimate and public space today? What if the contextual dynamics of the project are expected to transform continuously?
How can it be that the authoritarian (the uniform) deconstructs the universal demand of modernity, but it still remains productive concept to continue? What if the focus on the open process would temporarily steer? What relationship should exist between the city, citizens and nature? What are the forms of social exchange that remain unnoticed by the given spatial structures? What would be the everyday conditions for this new urban environment? In what ways do identities develop? What if you first developed the visual language of urban design? What would be the cosmopolis today? What if the transparency, the readable, orientation information stood in the center?
What are the roles of the heterogeneous individuals and collective rituals? What if you were to develop this city now?
The Civic City website, http://civic-city.zhdk.ch, keeps you up to date with the current conditions of the course program as well as providing further background in relation to the project.
If you want to get in touch with us, please send an email to civic.city@zhdk.ch