3 ECTS credits
90 h study time
Offer 1 with catalog number 4018381FNR for all students in the 2nd semester at a (F) Master - specialised level.
This course contains two parts : a small syllabus (how does a society conceive of its public space?) and a textbook (an introduction and 8 subsections). Both the syllabus and the textbook invite the student to explore his or her presuppositions concerning public space, to deconstruct and to enlarge them. The student installs a logbook which contains his or her new insights. This logbook starts with a baseline assessment that is drawn together during and immediately after the first lecture. This baseline explains how the student conceives public space and its activity in our society. He or she adds new insights during his or her own studying and exploration of public spaces and texts about public spaces. A copy of the logbook is given to the me at the start of the exam.
In the syllabus public space is analysed as a bearer and a seismograph of processes and polarities within (a) society. How can one decipher concepts and visions on public space? Where to find those visions? Who is phrasing them, on what occasions? Do societal taboos and societal vogues interfere with visions upon public space and its design? If so, how do these interrelations function? Are we dealing with allergies, with types of neurosis, with blind spots and cultural fixations ( examples during the lectures). Does scale interfere between visions on (and projects in) public space on the one hand and specific reputations a given space may get on the other hand? Does public space operate differently in an inner city area than in more residential or peripheral areas?
The textbook deals with 8 subthemes concerning typical characteristics of public space. Each subtheme contains mandatory sections and free ones. In at least one section, the student reads both the mandatory and the free texts.
Depending on the academic year, the textbook can be made lighter and smaller. In doing so, we create room for observational training. This training can be extended to tree sessions/lectures. They focus on specific skills in observing, reading and understanding a given (public) space or area: how to make observations; to look to what specifically; how to make notes; how to communicate afterwards about what one has seen of understood; ... The exercises are given in the field. Students have the opportunity to present their halfway notifications and presentations. The presentation of each student is used to further deconstruct and enlarge both skills and presuppositions concerning public space(s). This is organized as a moment of group learning in which students can amply comment on one another.
Students can opt not to participate in the observational training. In this case they read and study a larger part of the textbook
None
Final competences are twofold:
Understand the societal meaning of public spaces, and connect meanings with their tasks as planners. Act operationally in both tracks and remedy when contradictory information comes up.
The final grade is composed based on the following categories:
PRAC Paper determines 100% of the final mark.
Within the PRAC Paper category, the following assignments need to be completed:
The examen is not ‘open book’. By means of a specific assignment, the student has to write an essay in which he or she can display how the subject matter has been processed and appropriated. Text- and author-citations are not required. The exam does not assess reproduction or memorising but critical understanding, also from one’s own presuppositions.
This offer is part of the following study plans:
Master of Adult Education: Profile Social Studies (only offered in Dutch)
Master of Urban Design and Spatial Planning: Standaard traject (only offered in Dutch)