Re-Enchanting the City: Designing the Human Habitat - UNSW Australia

The city is humanity’s most complex and extraordinary artifact. As the world population grows and becomes ever more urban, the making of future cities is no longer just about aesthetics or convenience. Questions of sustainability and culture are more and more crucial. In fact, it can be said that, the future of the city is the future of the species.

This course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary nature of city making. The focus will be on a cutting-edge, high-density urban infill project, Central Park, in contemporary Sydney. We will use this project to explore the interdependencies of the professions at play; urban design, architecture, construction management, planning, landscape architecture, interior architecture and industrial design.

We will investigate the entire development process from the earliest planning and site purchases through to completion, and from the broad contextual scale through to the design intricacies. In so doing, we will examine design innovations in green technologies, structure, construction, environmental and building service, framing this within the wider context of infrastructure, governance and the political economy.

You will engage in critical discussion from different perspectives including design and sustainability. You will also analyse the cultural, environmental and political conversations that drive the development, as well as gaining an understanding of how key players interact in city making. Throughout the course you will see how different built environment disciplines relate in this process of planning and creating a city.

Drawing on designers, thinkers and developers that are leading their professions, this course will investigate a key question facing global cities today: how do we engage local democracy to make urban density both sustainable and poetic?