Augmenting Urban Landscapes and Ecology in the Digital Age
<aside> 🚧 This is a living document. It will change over the course of the co-design process.
</aside>
Course code: BETA-B3LH
Level: 3 (advanced bachelor’s course)
Period: 2023-2024, first period
Course Team: Joja Bos (they/them), Simon Dirks (he/him), Jitske Hell (she/her), David Skogerboe (he/him), Toine Pieters (he/him)
Email: [email protected]
Locations: Teaching & Learning Lab, BBG 3.22 & 3.19. Where necessary or desirable: online teaching. Excursions may be part of the course.
Class times: Wednesdays 13:15–17:00 / Fridays 13:15–17:00
Office hours: Online appointments can be requested via mail or over Teams.
Link to the archives: https://solisservices.sharepoint.com/:f:/r/sites/living-pasts/Shared Documents/ARCHIVE/living_pasts_archive?csf=1&web=1&e=jhm0q0
In principle, students should be in their second or third year of studies. They do not need to have completed any particular course to be able to join. An interest in bridging the fields of the Humanities, Science, and/or Social Sciences is essential, however. The course is built on principles of co-design, which means we welcome and wish to integrate any relevant expertise students bring to the table.
In this hands-on course, you and your interdisciplinary team will uncover the rich history and promising future of Utrecht and share your findings with the public. Combining historical, architectural, and societal data, you will develop and design an innovative media product for the city of Utrecht that ****conveys ****historical data and future possibilities to a chosen audience. In the process, you will learn how to collaborate across disciplinary borders, take charge of your own learning process, and experimentally assess the added value of new media and ICT. The course will result in presentations and, if feasible, interactive demos of the teams’ final prototypes.
The course follows a principle of continuity, and will also give you the opportunity to expand upon the design prototypes of previous teams. Previously, this course focused primarily on the co-creation of historically focused projects. And while this largely remains the same, this iteration of the course will follow the spirit of continuity from past to present but will expand to include the exploration of Utrecht’s future. We will not just be looking at what the past can offer the present, but also what the past and present can offer the future. Some examples of what has previously been created in the course (see ‣ for more inspiration) are:
Bites of Lombok (archive) An application that introduces Lombok through the history and personal stories of food establishment, with a neighbourhood cat as your personal guide.
Willem gaat werken (archive) Experience a day in the life of Lombok factory worker Willem Schipper in 1925. Play here.
Escaping Zuilen (archive) An educational escape room to showcase the rich history of Zuilen in an innovative and interactive way.
**Under the Lime Trees (archive)** A visual novel inspired by events on the Maliebaan during World War II.
Empathizing Werkspoor construction workers (archive) An immersive VR experience that teaches about the working conditions at Werkspoor in the early twentieth century.
Taste of time (archive) Bringing historical recipes from Utrecht straight to the modern kitchen.
In September 2023, our area of focus will be the Utrecht Science Park (USP). Depending on your team’s preferences and disciplinary knowledge, you will approach your project with your own unique combination of data sets (historical events, social dynamics, soil sampling, etc.) and visualization techniques (linked data architecture, game technology, documentary, etc.) to showcase your findings. You will work with data provided by the Utrecht Archives and other partners, and collaborate with scientists, data & heritage experts, programmers, and local history buffs.
Living Pasts is a co-design course in two respects: students build a product prototype together, and students are co-responsible for the contents of the course. Depending on your needs, the problems you encounter, and the feedback you require, you will shape the course itself in collaboration with the course leaders. You can, for example, request that specific expertise be ‘flown in’ or ask for tailored guidance by process facilitators. You and your team will plan the various phases of the course, such as the problem analysis, research, design, pilot testing, and evaluation.
This process of co-design is commonly found in the development of many real-world projects, wherein numerous stakeholders must collectively build toward a consensus of both outcomes and a feasible way to get there. You may encounter a similar way of working during your thesis, internship, or future job, and thus this is a valuable skill to sharpen. In addition, this didactic approach will challenge and improve numerous transferable skills, including cooperation, organization, problem-solving, and creativity.
After this course, students will be able to: