Urban Shapeshifting

The course will address the question: what are social paradigm and how are they connected to design thinking and rethinking of public spaces? Are social paradigms always visible, or also subtle and hidden? Who do they serve and how? What is unconscious bias and are we all affected by it? How do broken social paradigms manifest in the complexity of the city of Jerusalem? How can we use the public space to transform them, or at least raise awareness and create a shift in our perspective? This course aims to question the role of broken social paradigms in our living spaces, explore the individual and collective, intended and unintended implications of it and design a transdisciplinary intervention that offers a possible transformation in our biased perception to benefit all inhabitants of the city.