APRU SCL Webinar Series: Back to the Field? Community Design After COVID-19
The profound disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020 has presented not only a societal crisis but also an important moment for community design practitioners and educators to critically reflect on their work. With the ongoing spikes of cases around the world, will we be able to fully resume our practices before? For places that have recovered from outbreaks, what have we learned from the crisis that may require us to approach community design differently? What changes have already been adopted in ongoing practices? How can community design address the longstanding social divides that have become even more evident during the pandemic? How can “fieldwork” and “field school” in particular serve as a vehicle to bridge the social divides?
This TWO-DAY series of online workshops will bring together community design educators and practitioners to share lessons and experiences during the pandemic and collectively reflect on the questions above. Through cases in the Pacific Rim, including Australia, Cambodia, Ecuador, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and the United States, presenters will examine experiments with online and offline methods of community engagement, the role of nearby places and placemaking in community engagement, and the continued importance of fieldwork for learning and practice. In addition, topics related to the challenges facing children will be highlighted along with the role of landscape and natural environments during and beyond the pandemic.
Resources
View the full program here.
View the abstracts and presenters’ bios here.
Watch the Day 1 recordings (welcome, breakout room 1, breakout room 2 & breakout room 3)
Watch the Day 2 recordings (breakout room 1, breakout room 2, breakout room 3 & closing)
Learning Objectives
- To explore the challenges and experiences facing community design during the pandemic
- To examine experiments with online and offline methods of community engagement
- To examine the role of nearby places and placemaking in community engagement
- To reflect on the continued importance of fieldwork for learning and practice
- To explore the challenges facing children during the pandemic
Jeffrey HOU, PhD, is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Director of the Urban Commons Lab at the University of Washington, Seattle. His work focuses on public space, democracy, and civic engagement. In a career that spans the Pacific, he has worked with indigenous tribes, farmers, and fishers in Taiwan, villagers in China, and immigrant youths and elders in North American cities.
Jayde Lin ROBERTS, PhD, is a senior lecturer in the School of Built Environment at UNSW Sydney and an interdisciplinary scholar of Urban Studies and Southeast Asian Studies. Her research on Myanmar focuses on informal urbanism, heritage-making, and the influence of transnational networks. She is the author of Mapping Chinese Rangoon: Place and Nation among the Sino-Burmese (2016) and a Fulbright US Scholar in Myanmar (2016-2018).
Iderlina MATEO-BABIANO, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning and Assistant Dean, Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Melbourne. She is part of the award-winning Place Agency. She teaches Urban Design and Place Making for The Built Environment. Her research is concerned with improving our understanding of how people interact with place, creating unique challenges and opportunities for positive place-based change.
Arijit SEN, PhD, is an architect and vernacular architecture historian who writes, teaches, and studies urban cultural landscapes. He directs the Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures Urban Field School, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. He has coedited Landscapes of Mobility: Culture, Politics and Placemaking and Making Place: Space and Embodiment in the City.
TAN Beng Kiang, DDes, is Associate Professor at the School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore, and a registered architect. Her teaching and research interests are in participatory community design, service learning, and social and environmentally sustainable housing. She led design studio projects in ASEAN that are community centric and received the 2018 Pacific Rim Award for Excellence in Public Interest Design for Smile Village Project.