This Foundation studio aimed to develop intimate understanding of a city and equipped students with conceptual, methodological, analytical, and communication skills necessary for becoming a professional urbanist. This studio focused on an evidence-based approach for framing and analyzing complex urban situations and problems. The students employed mapping, observing, representational and analytical abilities to carefully understand the needs of people, conflicting interests, financial or administrative constraints.

The studio operated in ten parallel units with a studio Tutor and a Teaching Associate guiding a group of 15 students. Occasionally, the students were exchanged between the groups for various exercises. The students were evaluated based on the quality of presentations, clarity of thought and strength of analysis for the pre-designed and pre-tested weekly exercises. For this studio, the rigors of student work, the relevance of outputs and healthy relationship for peer-to-peer learning were especially emphasized.