IFHP Summer School 2023 – Call for applications

The IFHP Summer School:

The call for applications to the IFHP Urban Planning and Design Summer School—The City of Being(s)—is open! The unforgettable educational and social experience takes place in Finland, August 14–25, 2023.

Architecture and urban planning are at the core of creating ecologically and socially sustainable environments. The paradigm of human-centred design needs to be turned toward a more holistic and post-humanistic approach. The 27th IFHP Urban Planning and Design Summer School invites students and young professionals in urban planning and design, architecture, and urban studies to elaborate on city spaces as places of being. Relativity, everyday practices and negotiations, rewilding, and new approaches to heritage are just some aspects of the inspiring field of possibilities.

The IFHP Urban Planning and Design Summer School is based on an intensive workshop that includes hands-on collaboration with diverse actors, such as professional designers and planners, stakeholders, and activists. This year, the workshop is organized in Pori, a coastal city in southwestern Finland. Working in small groups, the participants make design proposals that answer real questions emerging from the given site and its context. Every design solution should create both ecological and societal good.

In addition to the workshop in Pori, the course includes a two-day stay in Helsinki with high-quality lectures and a city tour, a study trip to Tampere, and social events. The course, organized by the best experts in planning and urban studies, entitles participants to five study credits (ECTS).

The City of Being(s) overview:

In a city, everything is connected. Streets and parks, buildings and open fallows, memories, wishes, and all kinds of beings create a rich and continuously evolving process. Despite this relational reality, we tend to think of the urban in terms of contrasts: natural vs. built, center vs. periphery, physical vs. digital, humans vs. animals. Now we have reached a point where the loss of nature has become an existential question for humanity on this rapidly warming planet. Architecture and urban planning are at the core of creating new approaches toward ecologically and socially sustainable environments. To progress in this ambition, we must shift our thinking and see spaces, processes, and negotiations from a more-than-human perspective. The paradigm of human-centred design needs to be turned toward a more holistic and post-humanistic approach — to the City of Being(s).

The call for applications is open until April 30 on our website, www.ifhpsummerschool.fi/apply!
Find more information about the summer school on the website. For any further inquiries, please contact info@ifhpsummerschool.fi.
Follow IFHP Urban Planning and Design School on Instagram for news and updates!