The brave new urban design pedagogy: some observations

摘要

Some years ago Denise Scott Brown, a renowned architect, urban designer and academic, addressed the question of teaching urban design, still a new academic field, introduced in the 1950s and 1960s. Championed by the then Deans of Columbia, Harvard and Penn [University of Pennsylvania] schools of design, its pedagogy entailed alternative models (see Birch 2011; Brown 1990). Reflecting on her own training in architecture, followed by planning at Penn during the progressive years of the 1960s and 1970s, Brown recalls her social awakening from the constant critiques of the planning faculty directed at the practice of design which they considered megalomaniac. While concluding that a solid grounding in planning education is essential for urban designers, she was not convinced that planning programmes can truly teach design, implying that it is best done in schools of architecture (Brown 2009).