Workshops
Design Workshops
Our design-led workshops bring people together to explore design options, and participate in formulating design principles and concepts for a particular site or area.
Urban Design Works will put together a team of design and engagement practitioners to explore your chosen site or area with your audience of stakeholders.
Workshop Stage 1
Participants are guided through an initial stage of understanding site opportunities and constraints, and the expectations of different stakeholders.
We analyse the context and characteristics of the chosen site or area to help the group identifying the attributes and qualities they would like to be retained and built upon within the design of new proposals.
Workshop Stage 2
This is followed by a second stage in which a number of participatory exercises are used to develop a design strategy informed by the shared understanding gained in stage 1.
A stage 2 design strategies will include design principles and parameters, and can contain concept designs. Stage 2 strategies can be used as the basis for developing a more detailed development brief, or design code, including project outcomes and sustainability outcomes, and spatial requirements and quality aspirations.
Skill Placements
Urban Design Works can support organisations to train and retain design expertise and develop their in-house capacity over the longer-term. We can work with you in different ways to achieve this. Skills placements are ideal where a department, team or business has identified a skills shortage, or where there is a collective desire to increase a shared capacity for design knowledge and skills.
Through our collaborations with both the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University, and the School of Architecture at The University of Sheffield, Urban Design Works can enable built environment graduate placements within local authorities to boost in-house design capacity. Placements ideally run for 6 – 12 months.
Throughout the duration of the placement graduates will benefit from the guidance and support from within their academic school, and will also be assigned a mentor from professional practice through Urban Design Works. The hosting authority is expected to nominate a senior officer, often a line manager, to supervise the placement with contact from both the University, and mentor.
Urban Design Works will help grow in-house design capacity of hosting authorities by providing skills training CPD to all its built environment staff. All built environment staff within a host authority will also qualify for a 10% discount on the Foundation Certificate in Urban Design course.
Get In Touch
If you’re interested in our workshops please contact us using the form below or email: [email protected]
