This past week UJ_Unit2 got to spend the week with Phil Astley
from the UK. At this relatively early stage in our thesis process (completing site
analysis & generating concepts), the week spent with Phil has been very
helpful in helping to focus the direction of my project and the themes I am
dealing with.
Although the emphasis of Phil’s presentations had to do with
health, the various methods and strategic planning approaches were practically
relevant to our own various projects in the unit.
It was interesting to consider the idea of healthcare within the overall scope of the "wider determinants of health" which Phil spoke of. This considered things such as the environment, communities/the social environment, as well as the space and the connections thereof.
What we got up to:
Together with a few short lectures that dealt with various aspects
of strategic planning in delivering healthcare infrastructure, Phil also had us
engage in a few short exercises to apply what was being learnt to our specific
sites.
The exercises were on
1. What are the drivers for change, at a strategic level, for our individual schemes
a. Where do these various drivers sit in
relation to each other in terms of importance and certainty/uncertainty
2. Who are our the potential users, and
understanding their various criteria and needs
3. Scenario planning. Bringing in the time
factor and building up the “narrative” of our individual projects.
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| Group exercise with Unit2 Colleagues on scenario planning |
I really enjoyed these. Although, due to time ,we didn’t go into much
detail with these various approaches on our individual projects, one looks
forward to applying these tools to one’s current process.
Readings
Before Phil’s visit, we were tasked to go through a
document on Planning Healthcare and Infrastructure (PHI). The document provided an interesting systematic
approach to planning and implementing primary and community healthcare services
that are context sensitive and relevant to local communities.
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| Summary from reading PHI document. |
This systematic approach
provided a few helpful ideas that can also be applied to our own sites.
Pecha Kutcha slideshow
presentation
As one of the tasks for to end off the week, and to sum up the
weeks lessons, we were also tasked to prepare a 3 minute (max) PowerPoint presentation
of no more than 10 slides (See slides and notes). The intention of this was to present, in a concise
but clear manner, the findings from our sites, our approach and process thus
far (including the week).
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| Slide: Testing the tools learnt during the week on my project. |
This exercise was helpful in considering
what the most crucial elements in one’s narrative/ process are thus far.
Lessons and reflections
It was interesting to see Phil applying ideas of Open
Building in strategic planning. Open Building really stood out as an approach
for laying out and specifying the systems of a development. Phil focused much
on the higher planning level of development. The use of the terms "primary system", "secondary systems" and "tertiary systems" in referring to the different levels of planning, is what initially helped me in grasping the idea of levels.
Together with the individual crit/ consultation received
from Phil, the week spent really challenged me to focus my scheme more, as well
as assisted in how to achieve a more contextually relevant response.
The idea of considering the potential users, “getting into
their heads” so to say, has been very helpful to my own process. This being
mostly because of one of my major themes being to respond to the shared social-spatial
conditions in Fietas.
I look forward to the scenario planning in view of the
specific drivers for change relative to my site for consideration.
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