»Before the pandemic, we taught primarily in traditional classroom formats«, says Dr. Steffen de Rudder, associate professor of Urban Design at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, explaining the initial idea behind the project. »We had to quickly transfer our course offerings into digital formats for the summer semester. Now, we’re experimenting with the advantages of online teaching formats and working on combining digital and in-person formats«.

Several well-known universities such as the University of California San Diego, the Aarhus School of Architecture, Robert Gordon University Aberdeen, and the Academie van Bouwkunst Amsterdam are participating. The Department of Transport System Planning at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar is also involved in the project.

Starting in the 2020 winter semester, the four European partner universities will be jointly addressing topics that students will then work on in urban development projects. The designs have been created through the use of spontaneous association and interpretations in a very short time period. The first topic is highly relevant: the accelerated decline in retail in city centres due to the corona pandemic. One project involves students developing ideas for the department store Karstadt in Berlin-Wedding, which is set to close within a few days. »We see these impromptu designs as test cases and we can imagine expanding this project internationally in the long term, supplementing it with attendance phases and excursions«, days Dr. de Rudder. A joint symposia, tutorials and a summer school programme are also planned within the funded project, which will address questions of mobility on both the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and the University of California San Diego campuses. The focus is on questions of urban design and traffic planning.

The DAAD is funding a total of 48 digitalisation projects at 41 universities with nearly 5.5 million euros from the »International Virtual Academic Collaboration« (IVAC). The goal of the programme is to provide strategic and practical support for universities and instructors, and to shape and expand international university cooperation as well as global mobility within the concept of digitalisation.

For further information, please contact Martina Jacobi, scientific staff member in the department of Urban Design: E-mail: martina.maldaner.jacobi[at]uni-weimar.de. Phone: +49 (0) 36 43/58 26 24. 

Further information can be found on the DAAD website: https://www.daad.de/ivac/

Further information on online teaching in the department of Urban Design can be found at: https://www.uni-weimar.de/de/architektur-und-urbanistik/professuren/staedtebau-1/lehre/online-lehre/