Humanizing Urban Space: Social Production and Speculative Design of neighborhood place

Are Cities today the great places to live and enjoy the everyday life?. This is the critical question still haunting us since the time we defined ‘City’ as a great urban form at the dawn of Industrial revolution. The critical text against Modernism by Jane Jacobs, ‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities’ (1992), reminds us of the great crisis existing with the quality and loss of human values in our cities. There is urgent need for a critical thought and approach to design and planning of urban form and architecture of cities. The social and cultural patterns of everyday urban life construct the important human values, sense of belonging, identity, safety and a strong and healthy community. The studio will focus on developing a theoretical perspective on the humanizing problem and explore urban design and architectural ideas to develop a design for public place in the urban context. The students will use the place making theories as a base to first decode the social and cultural patterns of urban life in the project area, evolve a theoretical frame for analysis and demonstrate to explore a speculative design of the urban space and architectural character.