Urban Studies and Design Lab

A Research Group on Urban Studies and Design at Seoul National University
Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Department of Environmental Design & Graduate Program in Urban Design
서울대학교
환경대학원ㆍ협동과정 도시설계연구실

자원순환형 도시설계 연구

Theme: What characterizes good urban design for a declining city?

COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This workshop course opens an opportunity of thinking about the criteria for good urban design. Today a number of new urban projects and landscape works are being practiced. Some projects claim to remediate urban problems, including social stigma, de-population, and poverty concentration, among others. However, only a few is well appreciated within the academia. In the course, students are assumed to find, investigate, and appraise a highly influential urban design project in South Korea and neighboring countries in Asia both as a researcher and potential committee member for an urban design prize.

Participating students will be given a mission of nominating a well-designed urban project for ‘2019 SNU Urban Design Prize.’ As a potential committee member and researcher, students are asked to respond to the following questions: What are a list of recent urban projects that positively transformed a neighborhood or a place facing various symptoms of urban decline? How are the impacts of such projects measured and evaluated? Who is influenced by the impacts? What are the key information that helps to understand the process and consequence of good urban design? This course is designed to respond to the above questions. Rules of the course are as follows:

1. The first mission is to nominate a few projects that are widely recognized as exemplary urban design works in South Korean and Asian cities. The project must address―potentially remediate―at least some aspects of urban decline at a number of different scales. Here, ‘urban decline’ can be defined in different dimensions according to students’ evaluation, such as population losses, disappearance of jobs, inactiveness of a commercial area, and increased social vulnerability, among others.

2. Nominated projects should be contributing to the livability of a neighborhood, to the quality of the life of a community, or to the competitiveness of a district/city. Realized projects are preferred, though projects under implementation are also fine as long as at least some of the project demonstrate meaningful direction for the future of urban design. The project should be more than one or two buildings and are planned/built since 2000.

3. Make a short presentation that involves project summary, description, images/maps, analytical graphs, interviews, and critical evaluation of the selected project. The presentation should touch upon fundamental values and design philosophies associated with shrinking-sensitive urban design (Figure 1). The term will be further explained on the first day of the class. Explain how a number of urban problems are being addressed and tackled through the project.

4. For the finals, students will choose the best urban design project of their own and present it to the public.