Urban Design Days: Promoting Interdisciplinary Design and Communication Through Experiential Learning

Group Project

Grant recipients

Nadine Ibrahim, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Rania Al-Hammoud, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Jeffrey Casello, School of Planning

Sina Golchi, Graduate Research Assistant

Kareem Mostafa, Graduate Research Assistant

Sara Al Humidi, Undergraduate Research Assistant

(Project timeline: September 2019 - August 2020)

Description

How cities grow and function is the endeavour of engineers and planners, among others, however, urban topics are taught in independent siloed courses, and undergraduates in these disciplines lack the opportunity to work collaboratively together in creative design settings. An experiential learning opportunity is proposed as a 2-day design event for students in both Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and Planning. The project activity seeks to promote interdisciplinary design thinking through communication and leadership, both within and among teams, thereby breaking the silos and creating learning synergies. The project will investigate experiential learning by engaging student teams in designing neighbourhoods, and collectively all teams contribute to designing the whole city, while exploringintradisciplinary and interdisciplinary communication as an innovation to the pedagogy for urban studies. The students’ success will be measured by the communication to develop the neighbourhood elements and to assemble and connect neighbourhoods to form the overall city.