Modules and courses
Module 1. Urban Metabolic Flows
Students acquire a metabolic vision of the city and the key flows involved in its social metabolism, their relationship with urban form and the transformation of the city, their measurement, and the ability to diagnose and intervene on these flows in relation to sustainability.
M1.1. City and Society
The objective is to introduce students to key authors, practices and theoretical concepts of urban metabolism. Through a long historical review, the course focuses on providing ideas and tools that may be relevant to ecological urbanism today.
The first part of the course analyses key proto-ecological authors: anarchist geographers like Reclus and Kropotkin, regionalists such as Geddes and Mumford and landscape architects as Olmsted, Migge and McHarg. After the Meadows Report, the second part presents – through concepts of landscape ecology and energy efficiency – fundamental references of urban planning and eco-housing projects. The course stresses the social and cultural dimensions of the built environment and the role of community practices towards self-sufficiency, spatial justice, and the territorial balance of resource management.
M1.2. City and Water
The course explores the relationship between the city and its territory through the comprehension of its social metabolism focused on the water cycle. By analysing the historical evolution of the water model, the course ranges from the changes in organic society to industrial society and the current crisis in order to propose sustainable interventions for today's urban needs.
The main goal is to provide methodological tools to develop the capacity to diagnose and design intervention models in this significant urban flow. Students address the use and management of the water cycle as well as the urban and territorial transformations involved.
M1.3. City and Energy
The aim of the course is to highlight the relationship between energy flows and the built environment. We will analyse how the double crisis – that of energy cost and climate change – is affecting our production and consumption model and thus, our use of energy in cities. This includes housing, urban facilities, urban accessibility, city services, food, and others. We will gain criteria for the diagnosis and intervention on these energy flows in urban environments.
Module 2. Strategies of Action
Students gain a critical vision of the tools for intervention on the city for its sustainable transformation on three complementary scales or scenarios. The module stresses the ability to identify opportunities for action on urban flows and spaces based on these tools to improve urban metabolism.
M2.1. Regenerate
The course aims to cast a critical reflection on policies, strategies, and tools that drive contemporary urban regeneration processes. The content will be deployed in three of the main aspects that are currently widely discussed within urban studies and planning disciplines: environmental balance, spatial justice, and economic restructuring. The proposed methodology will set cross-readings between the concreteness of a Barcelonian case study and the more general framework defined by international authors and best-practice examples.
Participants in the course will acquire an in-depth understanding of urban planning tools and processes, as well as a wider critical view that may enable alternative approaches to present and future challenges. To that end, very active participation in design-based learning, as well as critical reading and reflection, will be required.
M2.2. Reinhabit
Visions and strategies of intervention on architectural and urban spaces from the perspective of habitability, defined as the capacity to provide living conditions for the use of space and the performance of socially acceptable activities. Development of tools to generate a narrative on the compatibility between activities and spaces, as these vary, considering the built environment as a resource.
The aim is to reconsider intervention in the built environment from a specific reading of the potential for the occupation of space and hence redefine an adaptive, culturally sensitive, and multiscale habitability in which individuals and communities are actively involved.
M2.3. Refurbish
Interpretation of existing buildings from four different and combined points of view: the physical scenario of architecture as a supplier of habitability, the role of construction elements in achieving the necessary physical and environmental conditions, the parallel lives of the architectural object and its consequences on the sustainable use of material resources.
The main goal is to develop skills to analyse the built object, recognise the problems and opportunities in order to reuse it and identify different technical strategies for intervention.
Module 3. Design Studio
Students address and develop viable and sound projects of urban intervention in the built environment to improve its sustainability through a methodology based on analysis and comprehensive diagnosis to develop strategic approaches and intervention designs.
The studio aims to address intervention projects in the built environment based on a real-life case study within Barcelona metropolitan area, through hands-on student teamwork. The first part involves the analysis and diagnosis of the case – continuing the work of the first semester – and the second part focuses on the development of strategic and intervention proposals. Regular feedback with first-semester faculty and representatives of public institutions is scheduled.
Regular reviews, public discussions, and lectures – about the studio topics, reference cases or complementary know-how – are scheduled in the afternoon. Students dispose of an atelier for the development of the project throughout the day.
Module 4. Final Dissertation
Students undertake analyses or innovative solutions in projects of sustainable intervention in the built environment, or explore the potential applicability of research outcomes or issues and research work from the needs raised by those projects.
The dissertation is an individual essay oriented to guarantee the autonomy of students, their capacity of innovation and their ability to undertake scientific or technical research. Dissertation topics are decided a few weeks after the beginning of the spring semester in order to develop in-depth a topic related to the Design Studio or to address other topics in agreement with the tutor, following preliminary research.
Tutorial sessions continue to provide support once the studio is over and regular joint sessions allow for common discussion of progress. The dissertation is presented to a jury in early September and becomes part of an open archive of shared knowledge that provides material for further essays and studios.
Share: