Introduction
Course Outline Sustainable Urban Dynamics The course Sustainable Urban Dynamics and its complementary theory course Urban Dynamics - Theory and Methods make up the two thirds of the 3rd semester of the Sustainable Urban Design Master’s Program at School of Architecture at Lund University and are designed to engage in both theoretical discussions and spatial explorations through a semester-long design project that focuses on ‘the context sensitive design’ in China.
The course includes students enrolled in the architecture school, the SUDes Master’s Program, as well as Erasmus exchange students. Therefore, the course is filled with diversity, having students from a number of different countries and a number of professional backgrounds including planning, architecture, and landscape architecture.
The Sustainable Urban Dynamics studio is organized around an approach to urban design - ‘context sensitive design’. While the approach can be far-reaching, the studio focuses on three central theme aspects that will form the central driving forces for the theoretical discussions, investigative research, and design explorations.
These three key themes can be described as following:
1. Sustainability with Chinese Characteristics This studio will demand that each student gain comprehensive knowledge about China’s history, geography and culture. Today China is a place of rapid change. It is of the utmost importance that each student becomes an expert in historical perspectives, cultural understanding, economic arguments and environmental situations of Dujiangyan and the whole country in order to discuss how to make China’s future more sustainable. Each of the solutions should, therefore, be uniquely grounded in the specific situation of China, Dujiangyan, and the local context of the design site.
2. Place Making in a Global World Numerous critics have highlighted the generic and placeless qualities of globalized urban Sustainable Urban Dynamics
development. At the same time, proponents have applauded globalization and its qualities
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of connectivity. Throughout the course, theoretical readings initiating the students on the benefits and challenges of living in a global world will be introduced. The challenge for the students is to become experts on the discussions of globalisation’s effect on urban
