2009 - Sustainable Urban Design Seminar

This web site features the outcomes of the UBC Urban Studio, a collaborative effort of the UBC Landscape Architecture Program, Community and Regional Planning, and Architecture . The studio is currentlydirected by Professor Patrick Condon.

Overview

Urban Studio is a UBC graduate course that uses urban design to explore emerging issues within the changing physical fabric of the Greater Vancouver Region and larger Georgia Basin (the trans-border watershed that includes the southern BC and north Washington coastal areas). The course integrates the three design and planning disciplines of Landscape Architecture, Architecture, and Planning, and has been offered since 1993 .

The overarching goals of the UBC Urban Design Studio are

  • to design for people and their real needs;
  • to use form and structure to make "places;"
  • to understand the various schools of urban design thought and to experiment with their adaptation to local circumstances;
  • to provide a particular site with evocative visions for a complex and dynamic urbanism;
  • and to enhance the economic, social, and ecological sustainability of urban form, and of a selected part of the city in particular.