Design Research for Urban Landscapes – Theories and Methods

Date: Over two days – 15 March 2021, 14:00-18:00 and 16 March 2021, 09:00-14:30

Location: Aarhus School of Architecture, Nørreport 20, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark

Course instructors: Martin Prominski, Hille von Seggern.

Guest speakers: Katrina Wiberg and Marie Markmann (TBC)

Target group: PhD fellows within the field of landscape architecture, urban design and planning that are utilising design as a methodology. The general discussions of design research will be relevant to PhD students from related fields.

ECTS Points: 1

Within the spatial design disciplines such as landscape architecture and urbanism, ‘research through design’ as a tool and practice have often been neglected. This is due to the specific and projective character of design. Specific issues are difficult to translate into transferable ‘universal’ knowledge and projections are hard to evaluate, which can make it challenging to meet the standard criteria of research. How can researchers in the design field overcome this perceived barrier and utilise ‘designerly thinking’ as a way to contribute towards innovative research? If embedded appropriately in the established research process, research through design has a huge potential for producing creative and intuitive knowledge that could be particularly relevant today. Its inherent transformative and projective characteristic can be useful in our current complex entanglement of social, environmental and economic challenges. This impending need for synthesising complexity is pushing traditional scientific disciplines in the search for other means to reconnect with real life, with real people and their contexts. Thus, the role of the researcher as a designer has never been more relevant, and time has come to transfer this designerly knowledge into the domains of science.

In their newly published anthology Design Research for Urban Landscapes – Theories and Methods (Routledge 2019) Martin Prominski and Hille von Seggern along with a number of authors describing theories and methods used in PhD research is making a strong and valuabale contribution to the development of design research. Since PhD students from the Aarhus School of Architecture have been engaged with the research environment around Studio Urban Landschaften network from which the publication draws, we are delighted to be able to present the book and host this masterclass in continuation of it.

The masterclass is a call for projects that are working with design research in urban landscapes with a focus on design methodology. The aim of this close-knit two-day masterclass is to provide a much needed companion to the theories, methods and processes involved in doing designbased research. The masterclass will be facilitated by leading researchers in the field of landscape and urbanism, hosted by Aarhus School of Architecture, which has a special focus on research through/by design. It is specifically aimed at researchers undertaking PhD research to provide a clear foundational pathway and applied approaches to help use design methodology in their research.

Course instructors bio:

• Martin Prominski is a full professor and chair of Designing Urban Landscapes at the Leibniz University Hannover, Germany. He has a PhD from TU Berlin (2003) and is a registered landscape architect. His current research focuses on design research strategies, enhancing urban landscapes and integrative concepts for nature and culture. He is a member of the Studio Urbane Landschaften, an interdisciplinary platform for research, practice and teaching on urban landscapes, and the co-founder of the Sino-German Cooperation Group on Urbanization and Locality Research.

• Hille von Seggern is a landscape designer, artist, registered architect and urban designer. She works and advises on ‘crossing-field-projects’ in Hille von Seggern & Timm Ohrt AlltagForschungKunst and Studio Urbane Landschaften cooperation projects. From 1995 to 2008 she held a full professorship at Leibniz University in Hannover, Germany, and in 2005 founded together with Julia Werner, the Studio Urbane Landschaften as a think tank for research, practice and teaching.

Please sign up by emailing: Mia Mimi Flodager, mmf@aarch.dk

Please attach a short description of your research project and how you plan to utilise design research methods for urban landscapes (maximum of one page, 500 words).

Deadline for signing up with the attached description of your project: 25 February 2021

The total number of participants: Up to 6

Reading list

Reference text: Design Research for Urban Landscapes – Theories and Methods. Edited by Martin Prominski and Hille von Seggern. Routledge 2019.

A detailed reading list will be distributed prior to the start of the course.