Designing concepts and strategies

In urban transformation some of the most interesting and complex design challenges are related to redevelopment of city centres and waterfronts. Here the conflicts between ‘the old’ and ‘the new’ are the largest, and here the potentials for mistakes are at a critical level. One of the problems is, that new developments often employ very modest research on the subject and often very little has been done in order to challenge traditional concepts and to invent new sustainable concepts for redevelopment.

In order to avoid mistakes in urban redevelopment we need to learn from research and evaluation of the best planning practice. But what might be just as important is to learn from concept development practice, which can give us a comprehensive understanding of our complex cities and make us develop a way of experiencing the unique qualities of the architectural typologies at the site. Finally the combination of research and design based development can provide us with a range of conceptual models for alternative development of different valuable parts of the city.

This article is focusing on the design-based methods in concept development, which can be tested with the purpose of developing new design concepts and to generate easily grasped images of a coherent transformation.

The case is taken form the water front development in Aalborg, where a series of architecture and building workshops has been conducted. The methodology is described in relation to three workshops from 2005 and 2008. The concepts and strategies are briefly described in the article, and the adaption by city planners and developers has been critical reviewed.