Graduate Planning Studio

Course goals

Learning objectives

• Understand how spatial planning (and its approaches and tools) intersect with contemporary challenges 
• Analyze these contemporary challenges and their relation to spatial planning from interdisciplinary perspectives
• Develop interventions based on critical thinking, in depth-research and stakeholder consultation
• Evaluate proposed interventions based on their transformative character

Content

Course description

The Graduate Planning Studio aims to stretch the imagination in how things might be otherwise using approaches and tools from spatial planning. The Studio provides a creative and critical setting in which students are encouraged to rethink contemporary challenges and their relation to spatial planning through a research project. How can spatial planning play a role in dealing with issues of climate change, inequality, poverty, democracy, and so forth? Each year the semester-long Studio is organized around one overarching theme that invites long-term and imaginative thinking in spatial registers, challenging student teams to combine critical thinking with in-depth research and practical application in their approach to this theme.

Through a combination of research and design, small student teams are tasked to analyze these challenges from interdisciplinary perspectives and come up with inventive interventions in dealing with them. Participants in the Studio thus will employ a mix of knowledges and skills, to analyze the overarching theme and issues at play in an interdisciplinary matter; develop interventions based on critical thinking and stakeholder consultation; and evaluate these interventions based on their transformative character. 

The Studio forms an integral part of the master program of planning and is organized according to principles of collaboration, engaged scholarship, and reflective practice. It opens with a kick-off event with guest speakers, and ends with a symposium where student groups present their projects to each other and invited outside guests from planning practice and beyond. In the weeks in between, small student groups work under the supervision of a faculty member on their self-directed research plan, an interim report, and a final report; receiving feedback from each other along the way. In addition to the kick off event, students are given literature as a starting point to ground their research and design work, which stimulates the challenging of “business as usual” planning analysis and intervention towards transformative planning.
 

Pedagogy

The Studio is organized according to principles of collaboration, engaged scholarship, and reflective practice.

The kick-off meeting and final symposium will have all course participants and supervising faculty members in the room. During the semester, students mostly work independently as a small group on their project. The groups receive feedback on their ideas and process every two weeks from their supervisory faculty member. A number of times during the semester a feedback session will be organized in which student groups give each other critical feedback on their projects.

Course readings

There will be three types of course readings.

The first kind of reading is relevant for Studio participants in all years, and geared towards understanding the overall process and objectives of the Studio. Readings will for example discuss interdisciplinary work, stakeholder consultation, and transformative change.

The second kind of reading is relevant for Studio participants of a particular year, and geared towards understanding the overarching theme of the year. Readings will for example discuss the topics that the guest speakers at the kick-off discuss.

The third kind of reading is relevant for Studio participants in a particular group in a particular year, and geared towards an introduction of the subtheme that students groups will take on in their projects.