Design Thinking in the Sociopolis

This workshop was co-created with Shirley Shen (Haeccity Studio Architecture) and Cedric Yu (ALTFORMA) for their MArch studio course at UBC in October 2022. The course, Socipolis: Modelling Mixing Middle Through Collective Design, invites students to explore a section of the Broadway Corridor and reimagine what it could look like (without towers!). Further, students are asked to depart from the colonial way of thinking about land use, and bring social connection back in focus as the primary purpose of cities.

There are four modules to the semester, the third of which focuses on collective design. Teams of students developed a concept for a lot in the neighbourhood, and are asked at this point to combine their models into a single site model, and work collaboratively on the interstices, the public realm, the connective tissues, identify community amenities that are missing, et cetera.

The Vancouver Design Nerds team, led by Jesi Carson and Jared Korb, developed a custom process for architecture students to collaborate using the design jam framework. VDN offered a (re)introduction to design thinking as a collaborative tool, and facilitated group work using the architectural model built by students during the course as a physical jumping off point to co-design public space along the Broadway Corridor.

Photos by Shirley Shen: