TRANSFORMATIVE URBANISM
YEAR | 2019-2023
SUPERVISION | Dr. sc. ETH Dipl.-Ing. Anne Brandl | Prof. Dr. Hans-Jörg Rheinberger
AWARDS | Science Award for Architecture
of the Federal Chamber of Civil Engineers (Austria)
of the Federal Chamber of Civil Engineers (Austria)
How can spatial development be democratized? What is the value of everyday knowledge held by local residents – and how can it be linked with expert knowledge and decision-makers to foster understanding, support, and meaningful change?
The research explores the role and responsibility of the urban planning profession in the context of the urgent societal transformation toward sustainability. A five-year real-world laboratory initiated by the author in the Rhine Valley – involving over 1,500 people across 42 different formats – serves as the framework in which theoretical reflection and practical engagement converge into a new professional model of urbanism in an age of multiple crises: Transformative Urbanism.
The titular concept Imagined Territories refers to the central method of this practice: Urbanists act as enablers of collective, consciously conflictual reimagining of landscapes of all scales by creating discursive formats that address territorial questions. In doing so, they serve as catalysts for both spatial transformation and the societal change it helps to shape. The core competence of the urbanist lies not primarily in the classical design of spatial futures, but in framing, provoking, and navigating processes of societal negotiation and imagination – in order to make sustainable visions of the future collectively conceivable and thus realisable.
