Pedagogical and Academic Reflections from the iWater Summer Schools: Storm Water Management in Urban and Landscape Planning

Abstract

The importance of blue-green infrastructure and sustainable stormwater management in planning has increased during the last decades. However, due to the systemic, multiscalar and multidimensional character of water, the use of multi-inter-transdisciplinary knowledge has become a precondition, generating at the same time new curricular and pedagogical challenges. On the other hand, Studio courses are solidly positioned at the core of many design and planning disciplines but have witnessed the increasing use of intensive formats that might affect the way in which the learning process is developed. This paper analyses - from a critical perspective and through a particular Case Study (iWater Summer Schools) - some of the potentials and challenges affecting the intersection between Studio-teaching, intensive learning processes and landscape planning in highly multidisciplinary conditions. In particular, and after conducting a literature review on studio-based and intensive courses, the paper proposes a set of strategic points to design and assess intensive landscape planning Studios. These points are used to critically discuss the methods, results and especially the learning processes that took place in the iWater Summer Schools and to propose some future pedagogic lines of research.