The objective for the students is to be able to link a reflexive attitude (to create a critical thought on the topics) and a specific design approach, in order to transform the reflexion into space questions and to develop spatial hypotheses in urban contexts. Seminar Workshop (1st semester) and Urban project (2nd semester): “To make the city with the networks and the nature”. A long project initiated by a seminar/workshop in the 1st semester gives the knowledge to develop in a specific situation (for the year 2009-2010 the town of Santiago in Chile) the urban new theories of sustainable (nature and mobility) and to prepare a research formalized on new spatial figures. The metropolisation in the majority of the cities of the world induced an urban sprawl and a domination of the car as transport. The need for a sustainable approach of the cities implies to propose alternatives to this model. And if they depend on the local specific conditions, economic, social and cultural (hyperdensity of the Asian cities, reasoned density of the Latin-American cities, sectoral density of the European cities), they develop common principles.
This new approach associates to the axes public transport (tram, BRT, subway) a process of densification and intensification of the city to create dynamic urban polarities and linear cities around flows. But to be appropriable by the citizens, these new dense places must have a spatial quality and a strong articulation with nature. Which types of combination of uses and morphologies can be imagined to answer qualitatively to these environmental considerations and ways of life? How landscaped projects can contribute to qualify these spaces on various scales? The students will make spatial proposals in the context of a specific city.
