Students’ reflections on the unseen in the city

Looking forward to your contributions reflecting on the selected texts provided by the tutors!
The selected papers will be published here.

The Unseen in the City seminar

The offer of this year’s summer semester at the Bauhaus Faculty of Architecture in Weimar includes a seminar offered by a group of PhD students: The Unseen in the City. With the aim of exercising an indirect reading of the city, participants will form theme groups: architecture, urbanism, sociology and marketing.

Course description:

Various actors construct the city for reasons of their own, in both physical and social ways. For the same reasons, certain experiences of the city, too, are framed to be observed and apprehended in a specific manner. These favored “framed views” overshadow numerous other urban activities and structures of everyday life. Moreover, some urban activities are intentionally hidden away not to disrupt the preferred image.

The PhD-students of the IPP-EU/UH invite all Master students to discover the unseen structures of the city of Weimar via joining this design-oriented seminar. By combining the four main expertise areas of the PhDs (urbanism, architecture, marketing and sociology) we would like to ask the students to join us in a “scientific role play”. The seminar aims to enhance the participants´ competences in group work and interdisciplinary change of perspective, which are both crucial parts of professional and academic life.

The seminar will be conducted in five phases:

(1) Input: an organized series of lectures related to the four main fields will provide a solid theoretical framework on the topic

(2) Revealing the unseen: research on and collection of data on the unseen sites and structures in Weimar (e.g. the underground mosque or the defensive design elements in public spaces)

(3) Field visit: a guided tour to the sites previously identified through phase two will be organized and conducted

(4) Group work: after choosing one of the four fields, the students will have to form working-groups.  By focusing on one of the sites identified in phase three, they will have to compile a design-project. Each group will be mentored by one PhD student, specialized in the groups´ chosen field.

(5) Outcome: the final outcome of the group-work shall be a design proposal that will be presented to the public, followed by a critical discussion, which will lead to deeper understanding on the subject of the “unseen in the city”.