Designing Educational Urban Design Studio As a Part of Public Process of Designing City

Abstract

Educational design studio versus design praxis is a latent discussion topic among education practitioners in developing design educational method, but always actual one since this topic has never been responded satisfactory. One of the important topics is designing appropriate urban design studio. Since urban design is a result of the decisions and actions of many people which determine the future shape of cities, one major urban design issue has always been how to synthesize these many interests into meaningful physical form. The focus here is on the public process of designing cities, where the design of cities does not start on the drawing board but starts with a commitment by people. Those phenomena are the concrete challenges for developing urban design education and also architectural education. Urban design studios and architectural design studios, as the back-bone of design education, should be developed to accommodate interdisciplinary complex process of decision-making and opinion-making in an open work session to prepare and encourage its students for being capable of participating in the public process of designing cities as professional urban designers and architects. In this context educational urban design (and architectural) studios have to be designed and developed as a part of real public process of designing city, with “community partnership” and “project based learning” as the key words.