Norms Power and Design - new analytical tools for planning design and architecture (2025)

Welcome to Norms Power and Design - new analytical tools for planning design and architecture

Description: Across planning, urban design, industrial design, and architecture there is a cultural preunderstanding that these fields of practice are benevolent and ‘good. However, at times these fields are complicit in social exclusion. At times due to ‘unintended consequences of design’ and at other times due to normative agendas related to power more or less in the open. This course will establish a theoretical framework for operational analysis of empirical cases across these fields. The materialization of power in various design solutions and plans require a conceptual scaffolding unearthing the relationship between human bodies, material artefacts, spaces, and technologies. The course will draw upon the latest contemporary research into power and design drawing on post-phenomenology, new materialism, and actor-network perspectives and give examples from the lecturer’s research. Participants will connect these ideas and frameworks to their own PhD projects in workshops, exercises, and through plenary project presentations. Participants must read a moderate number of readings in advance of the course. 

Prerequisites: Participants with master’s degrees in urban design, architecture, industrial design, urban planning, traffic engineering, sociology, urban geography or similar.

Learning objectives: The course is based on a didactic that moves between lecturing and tutoring from the lecturers and exercises enabling the participants to explore and test theories and concepts on their own PhD projects. Learning to reflect upon how one’s PhD project connects to norms and power based on the explored state-of-the-art research is the key learning objective. 

Organizer: Ole B. Jensen

Lecturers: Ole B. Jensen and external lecturers TBA

ECTS: 3 ECTS (or 5 ECTS  for a successfully evaluated post-course assignment submission)

Time: 16,17,18 June, 2025

Monday 10:00 -16:00

Tuesday 9:00 -17:45

Wednesday 9:00 -12:30

Place: Rendsburggade 14, 9000 Aalborg, Aalborg University

Room:

16 June : 4.513

17 June: 4.325

18 June: 4.531

City: Aalborg

Maximal number of participants: 15

Deadline: 26 May, 2025 

Important information concerning PhD courses: 

There is a no-show fee of DKK 3,000 for each course where the student does not show up. Cancellations are accepted no later than 2 weeks before the start of the course. Registered illness is of course an acceptable reason for not showing up on those days. Furthermore, all courses open for registration approximately four months before start of the course.

We cannot ensure any seats before the deadline for enrolment, all participants will be informed after the deadline, approximately 3 weeks before the start of the course. 

For inquiries regarding registration, cancellation or waiting list, please contact the PhD administration at phdcourses@adm.aau.dk When contacting us please state the course title and course period. Thank you.