URBAN DESIGN, EDUCATION AND THE PRESENT URBAN PREDICAMENT - Open to the public
Friday April 5 and Saturday April 6, 2019 • University of Maryland, School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.
We are living in a time of rapid climate change, growing social inequity and increased inability to create affordable housing. Human settlements are increasingly inhospitable, their aesthetic quality is compromised by the lack of availability and ability to deal with the globally emerging settlement patterns as the hyper-city and the “light city” of infinite suburbia, compounded by an increasing hostility against development and by a growing presence of object buildings. Architects and urban designers are uniquely positioned to positively impact these issues and areas of concern.
These challenges will likely require a more open and inclusive attitude in considering the various aspects at stake and a change in how we conceive the education of an architect designing at the urban scale. The best human settlements are resilient, functional and beautiful. Today, the imperative of sustainability has evolved into complex system addressing environmental threats, social inequalities and affordable living. A new demand for high efficiency, supported by technological innovation is increasingly intertwined with a multiplication of needs and legitimate desires.
Although awareness of the value of quality urban form has been growing in recent decades, given the contemporary “context”, are current imperatives of more beautiful and welcoming habitats increasingly being considered just “frosting on the cake”, obscured by way more substantial “problems” and “solutions”? This colloquium is intended to focus on the nature of the present urban predicament, offering different opinions on this matter and how a curriculum in architecture/urban design should be shaped to address it. We will focus on how to prepare tomorrow’s architects and urban designers to address the “immediate issues of our age” from climate change to social inequity, affordable housing and technological innovation in a variety of physical contexts.