Special Topics in Urban Planning 6

The course aims to introduce students to interdisciplinary methods of research on the city, so that they can critically analyse the fields they investigate in the context of student projects. The course aims at a holistic approach to the City and focuses mainly on the identification, promotion and exploitation of the physiognomy, i.e. the very identity of the city. The course will also provide an approach to the methodology of research and analysis of the physiognomy of the city, with a parallel search for its qualitative elements. The aim is the aesthetic approach to the identity of the city, the acquaintance with wider dimensions of the urban landscape, the distinction, as well as the interpretation and evaluation of its particular characteristics, bearing in mind that each form addresses and functions at all three levels of human existencematerial, emotional and ideological. It will also analyse those specificities that testify to the value system according to which a society functions individually and collectively, through the examination of natural, social and spatial specificities as they are reflected in the cultural landscape of the place. The course covers, among others, the following topics/cognitive units– Conceptual background of the city and its public space. – Overall approach to the concept of place in practical, psychological and ideological terms – The temporalities of the place – The people of the place – The city as a matrix for the production of culture – The concept of landscape in all its expressions as a carrier of physiognomy – The multisensory landscapes – The landscape of personal perception – Methodologies and tools for analysis, visualisation and design. – Connecting the city with digital technology and modern requirements – Research by design (by design)