| This syllabus may have been updated. To ensure that you're looking at the most recent version, please hit "Reload." | |
11.332J Urban Design Studio
| |
| 4.163J/11.332J Singapore Urban Design Studio
Professors Eran Ben-Joseph, Julian Beinart and John de Monchaux Teaching Assistants Robert Cowherd and Brent Ryan
Fall Semester 1999 0-12-9 Units H Credit
Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays 2:00 6:00pm Room 10-485
Each year the Fall urban design studio investigates and makes propositions about current planning and city design issues in a dynamic urban setting. In recent years the studios have put forward ideas for strategic areas and sites in Tokyo, Taipei, Miami, Barcelona, Boston and Chandigarh. In each case these ideas have been based on serious field study followed by systematic exploration of a variety of familiar - and often unfamiliar - propositions about future patterns of place, activity and access. The studio's pedagogic objectives are to introduce students from a variety of backgrounds to the issues in cities that can be addressed through good urban design, and to the bodies of knowledge, techniques and values that must be engaged in that task. But in every case, thanks to the interests of the sponsors of the studio, there has also been a wider public objective attached to the studio task. Typically this objective has been to stimulate public understanding and debate about a live issue in that city such as a major urban design policy, siting choices for public facilities, or the design and location of a significant transportation investment. The final work of the studios have been published in public brochures and, in many cases, has also been the subject of exhibitions in the various host cities. This Fall, with the sponsorship of the Singapore Urban Redevelopment Authority, the studio is set in that city and will examine the future of a fifty hectare area in the downtown. The site is bordered on the north by the Singapore River and on the south by the Chinatown conservation area. It is crossed by the Central Expressway and is aadjacent to the existing MRT Station at Outram Road and adjoins the new MRT line and station at Peoples Park. Over the next twenty years or so half or more of the site will be redeveloped at much higher densities and its central feature, the Pearls Hill Park and reservoir is to be enhanced and perhaps reconfigured as an important open space in the city. A URA prepared brief for the future of the site will be the starting point for the studio's work. Students and faculty will visit Singapore in August to study the site and its setting and prepare an initial set of ideas. In the Fall the studio will follow the attached schedule investigating development typologies, overall plans and detailed urban design proposals. The studio results will be presented in a report based on student work that will be prepared during IAP in January 2000.
The studio is intended to offer students an opportunity to: o engage and become familiar with the range of issues entailed in achieving good urban design; o formulate configurations of use, built form, public space and landscape and access systems that will together respond to these issues; o become familiar with digital environments as a mode within which to analyze, sketch, develop and present urban design proposals; o develop abilities to work in multi-skilled teams; and o produce graphic and written evidence of arguments and ideas in a lucid and publishable form.
For more information contact: Eran Ben-Joseph, Room i0-485M, xt 37305, email: ebj@mit.edu Julian Beinart, Room 10-485M, xt 37918, email: jbeinart@mit.edu John de Monchaux, Room 10-402, xt 38299, email: demon@mit.edu Bob Cowherd, Room 10-485, xt 5-1595, email: cowherd@mit.edu Brent Ryan, Room 10-485, xt 5-1595, email: bdr2@mit.edu | |
 | Main Page | This Week's Events | About the Department | Academic Programs | Admissions | Financial Assistance | DUSP Classes | People | Publications | DUSP Grads | Activities | Student Awards | |