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Circular #2 – 2017 & Application to Master Program

Research and Teaching Programme at Urban Design HafenCity University Hamburg

UD is concerned with the urban.
Its object is the contemporary-future urban society in the practice(d) forms of its co- and constant re-production. To understand the city as historically developed and produced involves turning to its uses through very diverse users and ways of use – it is from within this assemblage of practices of humans and things that the interdependencies of the urban emerge.

UD is pro-discipline.
Urban Design re-assembles heterogeneous motifs and disciplinary knowledges of the city. Such co-production of different actors with various disciplinary backgrounds aims at relationally unlocking the potentials of the urban. UD assembles all those disciplines that are concerned with urban and spatial production, for instance architecture, urban planning, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, geography, landscape planning, interior design, cultural studies, landscape architecture, ethnology, tbc.

UD knows what it does.
What is at stake is to develop, test and convey an appropriate methodology and form of knowledge for the interaction with the city in terms of research and design. To this end, studying and designing procedures are linked together, so as to combine knowledge originating in theoretical conceptualisations of and empirical experiences with the urban with knowledge that derives from practicing design methods. The analysis of the existing is the foundation of this approach.

UD mobilises the urban.
When we talk about design, we refer to the design(ing) of the urban. UD makes visible and negotiable the knowledge of/about urban situations so as to unlock and demonstrate potentialities hidden therein. What emerges are lenses, dispositives and perspectives of reading the city as quintessential products of Urban Design. These products provide the material with which new ways of producing the urban can be developed.

Read more and apply till 15 July here

M.Sc. Urban Design - basic facts in brief

Qualification: Master of Science (M.Sc.)
Programme duration: 4 semesters (2 years) fulltime
Credit Points according to ECTS: 30 CP per Semester, 120 CP in total
Course of studies: 3 Modules Urban Design Project (each 10 CP), 7 Compulsory Modules (each 5 CP), 5 compulsory/elective Modules (each 5 CP), 2 elective Modules (each 5 CP), Thesis (20 CP)

Academic Calendar:
Winter term: October 1 to March 31
Lectures: mid-October to the beginning of February
Summer term: April 1 to September 30
Lectures: beginning of April to mid-July 

 
 
 
 

Circular # 2 – 2017

Just in time for this year’s application phase we are offering insights into our research and teaching programme Urban Design at HafenCity University to prospective students. This second edition of the »Circular« assembles the following contents: As usual, the inner cover is devoted to the upcoming annual theme.

While »A Day in the Life of Building a Proposition for Future Acitivities« dives straight into the hustle and bustle of last year’s Summer School, the excerpt from »Questions and Debate in Project Management« features a conversation between various people involved in one way or another in the project Community Building Poppenbüttel / UD Summer School. The centre spreads are reserved for outtakes of key readings: This time, we’re featuring Michel de Certeau’s contrasting views of looking down upon, and walking in, the city, taken from his »Practice of Everyday life« and presented with the kind permission of University of California Press.

Hannah Arendt, in an excerpt from »The Human Condition« kindly provided by the University of Chicago Press, discusses the nature of power as something that needs to be actualised and cannot be stored – and thus requires spaces of appearance.

Nina Power’s recent essay »Rainy Fascism Island« brings to the fore the urgency to spatially ground analyses of inequality, political ideologies and urban realities in actual places. We’re closing this section with Friedrich Engels’ classic description of his landing in London in his once again timely »Condition of the working class in England«.

This year’s annual theme »Luxury. Spatial Politics of Comfort« is featured in the retrospective of our kick-off event with research presentations by Yuca Meubrink (HCU) and Luna Glucksberg (LSE).

We couldn’t resist including an ad for the first two books in our new series »Everyday Urban Design«, published by boto press. Each Circular provides a snapshot of one of our core subjects, in this case the methodology seminar »Urban Territories 1«.

Lastly, we include a very short history of the HafenCity Lecture series whose guest speakers addressed topical questions around migration and mobilities. Enjoy reading!

Download Circular # 2 here

Research and Teaching Programme Urban Design
HafenCity University Hamburg

www.ud.hcu-hamburg.de