Course: MaCT02 25/26 Advanced Urban Design

 Credits: Avi Sharma - Computing Risk and Planning Resilience - AUD 2024/2025 

Intro Description & Structure

During the Master in City & Technology + Thesis Project, students work on an Individual Thesis, focused on the development of one research or pilot project.

In order to bridge the gap between education, research & practice, leaders from the professional fields of design, tech, networking and the third sector join the MaCT team to place concrete challenges on the table, ensuring each individual thesis has direct impact and is meaningful within real-world scenarios.

The students develop cutting-edge tools, designs and approaches to effectively design in the context of planetary scale urbanisation, the climate change crisis and rapid technological development.

We work with:

Computation is not only a platform to develop processes, but also a platform to critically think (and act) on the way on which we design today, how this might respond to meaningful challenges, and how we can empower it to adapt through feedback to the uncertainties we will face in the future.

Ecology is not only a space of criticality, and of consequent mitigation of adaptive action, ecology and ecological thinking become vectors to drive behaviours within the spaces we inhabit, rethinking who we are designing the planet for and how, to shape meaningful and symbiotic living systems, capable not only of adapting to uncertainties, but also enabling collaborative, reparatory and regenerative behaviours through spatial design.

Communities are not only the users of spaces, they are the livelihood of cities, reflecting complexity and intersectionality, as well as understanding aspirations. In recognizing their pivotal role, urban planning must be rooted not only data but also engage with empathy, and ensure active involvement of all those who interact with the urban environment towards the co-creation of equitable, inclusive and just spaces that are also resilient, vibrant, and reflective of the collective identity and that of the future.

The thesis is a platform to shape multidisciplinary leaders empowered to pioneer the transition of the urban environment in the era of big data, towards resilient & circular cities, inclusive & just communities and adaptive & more than human urban environments.