Master of Urban Design

The Master of Urban Design at RMIT is a global program with design as its core emphasis.

Upbeat Music plays throughout.

OPENING TITLE: Master of Urban Design

The Master of Urban Design is a global program with design as its core emphasis. Research focuses on three urban contexts: Barcelona, Ho Chi Minh CIty and Melbourne. 

Dr Gretchen Wilkins [Program Director, Master of Urban Design, RMIT University]: So we’re here in Barcelona as part of the Master of Urban Design program at RMIT University and this is the first of three studios that we do in Barcelona, the other in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City and also Melbourne.

 This studio here is working with local practitioners and industry connections to formulate a problem around what the future of Barcelona will be, specifically relative to the industrial waterfront, and that’s a program that we’ll also pick up in the other three cities so that there can be a comparison around how the cities change relative to shifts in industry production, manufacturing and the industrial areas of the city.

The ports are very different, the waterfronts are very different,  the same sorts of issues are being raised as economics and industry change as well as population especially Melbourne.

Text on screen: This video highlights the 2014 Barcelona Studio 

Maria Buhigas [Urban Planner; Founder, Urban Facts]: Barcelona has been a model for many cities. Many cities still come to our city to see what we have been doing, how we have been doing things here, and I guess that Barcelona is facing all the issues that have to do with the definition of what an urban quality of life means.

Eva Prats [Principal amd Founder of Flores and Prats, Professor of Architecture (urbanism)]: So I think it’s interesting to know how we habit these cities that we visit and how this new culture of tourism gets involved with the local culture.

Victor Ténez Ybern [Associate Professor Landscape Theory and Design, School of Architecture Barcelona, UPC, and Head of Fluvial Spaces at Barcelona's Metropolitan Area]. The urban thinking in general; the issue of how to involve people in the urban design process as a creative invitation; I think it will be a main issue for the next years.  There should be a re-built relationship between the people and the public space.

Marti Franch [Principal at EMF landscape architects; ADAPT’r research fellow]: For me, collaboration in practice is important because we aren’t working for ourselves; we work for public spaces and the collectivity.

Maria Buhigas [Urban Planner; Founder, Urban Facts]: The city is now thinking in an area of the port that may help to establish a new relationship between the port and the city. So basically both the port and the city traditionally grow separately, not looking at each other.

Marti Franch [Principal at EMF landscape architects; ADAPT’r research fellow]: For me, the challenge is how to bring a more complex and multifunctional use to this harbour area but above all, not losing its industrial and production character.

Ricardo Flores [Principal & Founder of Flores & Prats , Associate Professor at School of Architecture Barcelona, UPC]:  We believe a lot in this urbanism of small pieces that were used in that building before, 20, 30, 50 years ago, how they react to your new intervention, the new uses, so that this makes a link, again in different levels of society and links your small project to a whole neighbourhood very fast.

Eva Prats [Principal & Founder of Flores & Prats, Professor of Architecture (urbanism)]:  We talk a lot about sustainability nowadays. I think sustainability starts by giving time to the reflection period that any project needs.

Unidentified??:  The waterfront in Barcelona is a project that maybe will take some time to grow and to be in the imagination of the Barcelonians.

Marti Franch [Principal at EMF landscape architects; ADAPT’r research fellow : One thing to me that is very particular, and I think it’s very important for international collaboration- whether at a student or professional level- is how you react to the place, so how you land in a place even if you are local, there’s plenty of places you don’t know, and what kind of dialogue you establish with this place.

Text on screen: The 2015 Barcelona MUD Studio will be directed by Eva Prats.

CLOSING CREDITS:

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This video features the song “City Strum” by Anitek and “Strange Republik”, by Stolen, used with permission. Photos by Adria Goula.

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