Continue the Debate! – By Jurrian Arnold, Jorick Beijer & Floris van der Zee
• Urban designers and planners don’t produce designs anymore, they guide processes: more attention for communication in education.
• Education should focus on the smaller scale: in a spatial, financial and process-oriented way.
• The disappearance of an evident client in practice has consequences for education as well.
• Uncertainty must become a key aspect in the Urbanism program: more emphasis on flexibility.
With these statements put forward on November 22nd the debate on the future of education in Urbanism was launched at our faculty. Remarkable is that the event wasn’t organized by the department of Urbanism, nor by study-association Polis, but by an organization from outside the faculty. Temp.architecture.urbanism did a study, commissioned by the Netherlands Architecture fund, on possibilities of temporary use of vacant spots in Amsterdam. Their traveling exhibition ‘Nieuwe ruimte voor de stad’ (New space for the city), that could be visited till December 16th in the Oostserre, must lead to a discussion within the professional world as well as in the field of education. The debate was a good attempt to start up this discussion, though we believe it was not strong enough. Therefore this article tries to bring the discussion further and is a call for organizing a new debate.
Maarten van Tuijl and Tom Bergevoet (Temp.) explained today’s situation within practice as an introduction to the debate. They state that because of the current stop in large scale area developments new urban designs need to be developed which can deal much better with uncertainties. Time is a key factor in this context. Developments must become much more flexible, adaptable for delays and make use of unexpected changes. According to Van Tuijl and Bergevoet it is about “a shift from blueprint planning to cash flow planning”. A change from a supply-oriented towards a demand-oriented market with new clients and commissioners.
Design for ‘open’ planning requires other skills than designing a final image. This is why urban design and planning needs to be re-invented at four aspects, argue Van Tuijl and Bergevoet. Not only in terms of design, but also in legal, financial and process-oriented aspects. This lead to the main question of the debate: does the current education relate to this change in practice?
Prof. Han Meyers reaction was clear: “At this moment we don’t have any projects that specifically deal with these circumstances”. Similar clear statements on the four statements mentioned above were lacking. The same could be said about the reactions by the other panel members; representative responsible staff and students from the Academies of Architecture of Rotterdam and Tilburg as well as from the TU Delft. The feeling for a need/necessity to change the educational program seemed to disappear during the debate. And in fact, the situation is less dramatic as presented so far. The current program does show examples of projects which partly deal with today’s context. However, it is not clear what the priorities of the current program are and how this will prepare us (students) for the new reality. Amongst other students we notice that this situation causes a feeling of uncertainty. What do we actually learn, and how does this contribute to practice?
The debates organized by Temp. as well as in the recent Urbanism Weak are nice attempts in setting up a renewed discussion on the education in Urbanism. We would like to make a call for the continuation of this discussion! With the following four statements we aim to offer a constructive contribution to a better education in Urbanism at the Faculty of Architecture and we hope that this will help the department of Urbanism in the changes they are facing. The link between education, research and practice is central in all of them.
• Urbanists should take initiative
If the urban designer/planner wants to stay in the game he should learn to take initiative. This means that students must be dared to define new design assignments, learn how to generate social support and understand how to communicate with new commissioners/clients.
•Joining up of education and research
It should be without doubt that students become closely involved by running research activities within the department. By doing so, students will be confronted with existing research and design instruments, while they could help thinking critically about the development of new ones.
•Practice is our research domain
Students should be stimulated to do research within the field and get in contact with stakeholders. We look forward to a synergy between research and design in relevant current cases within an academic context.
•Interdisciplinary work is a
necessity
Broad expertise is essential for the discipline, so interdisciplinary work becomes a necessity. This should be started within the faculty with Architecture, Real-Estate & Housing and Building Technology, but also outside the faculty with ecologists, sociologists, (social) geographers, political scientists etc.
Jurrian Arnold, Jorick Beijer & Floris van der Zee
MSc students in Urbanism
