Handbook

This course considers the city as a site of inquiry, experimentation, and collaboration. Students in the course will be looking at how some of Sydney’s biggest urban challenges can be addressed through design interventions at the local scale. Key themes to be examined include strategic planning, city-shaping infrastructure and pressing concerns of densification, housing affordability, gentrification, as well as social and spatial inequality.

Through a series of intensive design workshops, accompanied by lectures, tours and site visits, the students will be introduced to key government, professional and community stakeholders. The course will be structured as an intense 10-day design studio workshop that will foster design innovation between disciplines, while also providing connections to local industry, issues and practice. The focus is on how to implement the key strategic directions set out in Sydney’s latest Metropolitan and District Plans. The big urban challenges faced, and Government proposals to solve them, will be explored through focused design projects at the local level. Working in multidisciplinary groups, students will be asked to use real-life scenarios to test their ideas and directly engage with key community and professional stakeholders through the design process.