PhD defence: Laura Winge
Laura Winge defends her thesis,
Codesigning Urban Spaces with Children Response-Able Explorations and Sensuous Entanglements
Supervisors:
Associate Professor Bettina Lamm, IGN
Professor Eva Brandt, Design School, Kolding
Assessment committee:
Professor Erling Björgvinsson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Associate Professor Liesbeth Huybrechts, Hasselt University, Belgium
Associate Professor Trine Agervig Carstensen (chair), IGN
Summary:
This PhD thesis, is part of the research project “Move the Neighborhood with Children,” a research project that uses design experiments to investigate what urban spaces and design processes look like when designed by children. The thesis has arisen from both a professional and academic need for practice-based and participatory design research regarding co-creation with children. Practice-based design research supports a growing practice field of co-design of urban spaces with children and also contributes to the academic fields of both co-design and urban design with children. The thesis is a practice-based design study using three qualitative case studies. The cases are subject to co-design methods that take an open, explorative approach to the research field to illuminate the research question:
How can children and their things and matters codesign urban public spaces?
What are the conditions, challenges, response-able approaches, and potentials for urban co-design experiments with children?The empirical data of the thesis comprises three cases, in which children – in collaboration with architects, design researchers, and carpenters – designed and built playful installations in two urban green spaces in a Copenhagen neighborhood. The cases have been developed in collaboration with stakeholders, including a municipal urban renewal secretariat. This has provided the opportunity to investigate how co-design of urban spaces with children unfolds in the context of local urban renewal. The co-design experiments have focused on design iterations through artifacts and prototypes, design negotiations, and translations. The three cases examine urban co-design experiments over time. They constitute an exploration of how children design urban spaces, how their views of the context develop, and which playful, social, aesthetic, and imaginative ideas characterize urban spaces and local urban development. The thesis examines whether urban co-design can involve children in the field of integrated urban renewal, and whether co-design can be used both as a public development consultation tool and to prototype public urban initiatives. The thesis’ theoretical basis aims to strengthen a practical field that increasingly applies urban co-design as a starting point for citizen involvement and development of shared urban space with urban space experiments.
A digital version of the PhD thesis can be obtained from the PhD secretary Anne Marie Faldt at anmf@ign.ku.dk