DESIGN STUDIO 4

Specific Foundation / Core

The course is also offered to exchange programme students.

In the context of Design Studio 4 students: - Understand the basic concepts and issues pertaining to Urban Design - Comprehend the continuity between Urban Design and Urban Planning, Architectural and Landscape Design - Practice the application of comprehensive methodologies of identification, recording - representation and analysis of the urban environment and public space - Practice design skills in the creative synthesis of interventions at the various scales of urban design - Fulfill the organisation and presentation of a complete, well rounded urban design scheme, rationale on the physical outcome and the process of successive design phases: development – documentation – proposal presentation.

Design Studio 4 examines the basic disciplines, concepts and processes of urban design: the design of the materialized city form. Urban design is a dynamic field of architectural design correlated to urban planning and landscape architecture. It comprises of a constantly shifting field which develops its tools, practices, scales and context, responding to the rapid transformations of cities. For this reason, it keeps up to date with the influx of knowledge from other scientific fields that study the natural, social, political, cultural or economic facets of the city. Urban design deals with the multiple scales of the urban structure: from streets to city blocks and neighbourhoods, to urban areas and networks - developing correlations the built / void form of the city and the lived experience of public space. In the present circumstances of economic, environmental and social crisis, Design Studio 4 draws on the reality of Greek modern cities examining scenarios of interventions on the existing urban fabric. In the context of the design studio, architectural synthesis, as a public - space transformation strategy, takes the form of a catalyst for the development of meaningful transformations of everyday city experiences. Furthermore, design studio 4 emphasises the environmental dimensions of urban design placing particular emphasis on processes: stakeholder - community participation / frameworks and phases of project implementation. Egnatia Street, the spine of the historic centre of Thessaloniki, integrating manifold historical layering with an important role and purpose in the city’s traffic network, while exhibiting apparent evidence of degradation of public space on the pedestrian level, constitutes the studio’s main focus for the ’15 spring term.

Urban Design, Public Space Design

11-02-2016