| Kurzbeschreibung | Building cities is not solely a matter planners, designers, and developers, but also of the public. Urban Scale Models are well equipped to enable public participation in such development processes. This course focusses on such physical models, and provides students with an historical, theoretical and personal understanding of the urban scale model as a public tool. |
| Inhalt | Urban development is obviously not a matter for designers, planners, politicians and developers alone. In any case, the city is a form of co-production. Not only because somewhere in a development process there is always a moment of participation, involving citizens in the discussion or development of the city, but also because the city is in the end mainly 'produced' by its inhabitants. Usually, such a participation moment is too little and too late, often only offered at the moment when policymakers and developers have already decided what is to be built or what is to be adapted. It is becoming increasingly clear that involving residents at an early stage of a process leads to more support for the developments, and therefore to more successful urban developments. In this seminar, we focus our attention on the physical urban scale model, because it is precisely models that are well equipped to enable participation in development processes. Models have strong performative characteristics, enabling the participation of different actors, not only the stakeholders in a project, but also the public at large. Models are well equipped to function as instruments of negotiation. They can steer a discourse around the development of particular projects through their accessibility for a lay public, and by inviting the public to interact, react and participate. Aspects as materiality, abstraction, scale, legibility of the model, as well as the mediation techniques through which the model is brought to the attention of a larger public, define and calibrate the degree of accessibility and the possible of involvement of different actors. These aspects thus define what we can call the ‘publicness’ of the model. In this seminar students will explore together with various actors such characteristics that enable urban scale models to become public instruments.
Using historical and theoretical examples, students will be shown how models can enhance an urban discourse and how this discourse is shaped by different actors on the model. Through a few introductory lectures and the discussion of some texts on urban models, a theoretical framework is developed. In a few guest lectures, the actual functioning of the model in practice is examined and the theory tested (lectures by for instance an architectural office focussing on participation processes, the planning office of the municipality). Also the relationship between the physical and the digital model will be discussed. Besides that, the students will engage in the course by building a few models themselves. In each model they investigate a particular aspect of the model, which define the publicness of it (e.g. scale, abstraction). In a final model, they reflect on the relationship between the different aspects and the accessibility of the model as an invitation to interaction and participation. These models will be presented in an exhibition at the HIL building. |
