Name: Designing Change
Author: Eric Firley

Published on February 26, 2019

Over the timespan of just one generation the planet’s pace of urbanization has dramatically increased. Through these dynamics and its resulting environmental threats, new challenges have emerged that deeply question the validity of the post-war planning paradigms. Dominant ideologies have been replaced by a problem-solving attitude, increased economic pressure and an urgent quest for evidence. What impact does this have on the work of the urban designer and planner, and how can the profession prepare for the future?

Designing Change tries to answer these and many other questions through in-depth conversations with 12 leading practitioners in the field. Conceived as an unpartisan contribution to the discourse about the future of the built environment, Designing Change offers an unorthodox combination of case-study analysis and theoretical debate. It addresses the topic’s complexity through a rigorous focus on process, client relationship and development initiative.

Eric Firley teaches at the University of Miami School of Architecture and is the initiator and co-author of the Wiley’s Urban Handbook Series

CHRISTOPHER CHOA (AECOM), London - Reconciling Opposites

BRUNO FORTIER (Agence Bruno Fortier), Paris - Nature and Artifice in the Production of French Urbanism

FINN GEIPEL (LIN), Berlin - The Emergence of a New Type of Urbanity

ADRIAAN GEUZE (West 8), Rotterdam - Contemplating the Squatter Legacy as a Reminder of Urban Diversity

DJAMEL KLOUCHE (AUC), Paris - Digital Acceleration and Environmental Restraint

WINY MAAS (MVRDV), Rotterdam - Mission Impossible

DENNIS PIEPRZ (Sasaki Associates), Boston - North-American Campus Work from the 1980s onwards

ELIZABETH PLATER-ZYBERK (DPZ), Miami - A Recent History of Zoning and Design Codes in the US

ALBERT SPEER (AS+P) with MICHAEL DENKEL, Frankfurt - The German Way of Keeping the Power Balance in City-Making

PAOLA VIGANÒ (Studio Paola Viganò), Milan - Concrete Descriptions of Future Situations

LIU XIAODU (Urbanus) with WANG HUI, Shenzen - China as a Place of Attainable Utopias