The city is approached as a text made of materials, movements, infrastructures, and social performances. Students learn to read and interpret spatial environments through walking and translate these observations into creative and analytical writing. Through guided walking seminars in the urban landscape, students learn to observe and interpret spatial environments with attention to architectural detail, bodily experience, and the politics of social life in public space.
Walking is used as a primary method of research, enabling students to engage directly with the topic of placeness, by engaging with the scales and atmospheres of the city. Alongside observation, students develop practices of note-taking, mapping, and creative reflection that translate spatial experience into written form. Short writing exercises and field notes serve as tools for analyzing how architecture, infrastructure, and movement shape the experience of place.
 

Throughout the semester, students will experiment with different modes of writing, including descriptive, analytical, and speculative approaches, to articulate their encounters with the urban environment. Reading assigments in spatial theory and urban thought provide conceptual frameworks for understanding how space is produced, inhabited, and performed.