This summer marked the close of the 2013-14 academic year, which ended with our students’ final presentations. After an intense three-day jury in July, we were proud to have seen all their hard work materialized into such high quality theses.
It was an honor to count on Camillo Boano, director of the the MSc in Building and Urban Design in Development at The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, UCL as an external jury member, who we had the opportunity to listen to earlier at one of our open lectures about informal urbanism and the architecture of engagement. Among his many insightful comments, he highlighted that although working with informality is always political, urban design is essentially related to place and about shaping a process; notions of formality/informality are not always enough to categorize a place given that cities are made and remade by a complex set of formal and informal design acts. He shared his experiences working in participative processes and pointed out that first and foremost, we must constantly ‘relearn’ as design becomes a broad, open and non-specialized series of acts that shape space and relationships: architecture of participation is about doing, not just thinking.
After bidding farewell to this wonderful batch of students, we look forward to the next term starting at the end of September, which will feature the integration of a new humanitarian shelter and settlements course in partnership with the Red Cross and the Red Crescent Society (IFRC) taking place from the 6th to the 31st of October 2014, thanks to an agreement between Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC) and the Federation. In the meantime, we hope you had a wonderful summer and invite you continue following us for another very exciting year! Stay tuned to our blog and social networks for news and updates on activities!