Urban Housing and Development

The professorship is conceived as an interface between small-scale architectural design and large-scale oriented urban planning.

Modern society does not require a particular way of life, but structures in which many different cultures can develop. Today, we live in an urban landscape that is becoming increasingly complicated and generating ever more complex structures. In order to be able to develop in the future, our society is forced to organize itself down to the last detail and to a very high level of abstraction. If we as urban planners and architects want to play a role in the force fields that generate these structures, we must be able to control and steer complex processes. In order to turn visions into realistic plans, the urban planner must be able to translate the findings of other disciplines from economics, project development and infrastructure development into spatial concepts. He will constantly have to cross the boundary between architecture and urban planning. The urban planner of the future will not be able to afford demarcation from other disciplines and arrogance towards socio-economic laws.

Our chair focuses on the relationship between small-scale architectural interventions and large-scale functional contexts in urban, suburban and rural areas. The focus of the course is on developing specific zoning and development regulations that are attuned to highly variable conditions and leave room for individual architectural freedom without losing context and coherence.
These components are addressed in the required courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels with varying emphases at appropriate scale levels. In contrast to the very tightly organized compulsory subjects, the design seminars, elective course and diploma theses offer specific freedom and opportunities for cooperation with other teaching areas and universities.

The focus of our interest is clearly the concrete urban design.
Today, in order to be able to conceive an urban spatial idea with an acceptable relevance, a series of precise preliminary works and accompanying measures are necessary:

- Urban spatial perception analysis
- Digital plan generation and evaluation
- GIS-based data acquisition and management
- Integration of other disciplines
  (economy, ecology, mobility management, sociology, politics)
- Planning law process support
- Strategic control and moderation

These components, which are very different in structure, must be mastered in their basic features by an architect who is trained in contemporary urban planning in order to be able to communicate with the actors involved in the design process.