We invite students of architecture, geography, urban studies, sociology, IT and similar fields to attend our distinguished workshop “Numbers and Cognition in the Urban Environment” (3 ECTS) at EKA Summer Academy. The workshop will take place from August 19–23, 2019 at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn.
The workshop is free for the participant and there is possibility for scholarships to cover other expenses (travel and accommodation).
Read more and apply for the workshop by June 10 here: http://bit.ly/2IAU2od
The fieldwork-based workshop focusses on public space/traffic and mapping social activities/feelings. The participants will be challenged to find relationships between the physical world and human activity. It will be important to find a means and method for measuring and documenting the environment. Cognition refers to experience that can be used in the future to make decisions to design and re-design space. We will map the movements or activities of human masses, using photo and image analysis and Wi-Fi positioning to do so.
Participants will become well-versed in methods and means for quantitatively and qualitatively documenting the street-level space, which can in turn later be used for analysis of other places. At the end of the summer school, all of the data that was gathered will be made public to allow third parties to use them in their projects – for example, to plan more fluid, safer traffic conditions.
Supervisors Raul Kalvo is an architect and programmer, as well as a teaching staff member at the Estonian Academy of Arts. In the last four years, Raul has been engaged in building analytical models of cities and application of the models in various projects. Mikk Meelak is an architect who is interested in meshing physical and digital space.
Testimonials. EKA architecture and urban design student Markus Puidak had had previous experience in data-based urban analysis, and he participated in the “Numbers and Cognition in the Urban Environment” course at the invitation of supervisor Raul Kalvo. “The content of the course and the international scope of participants was very important in my choice. I was the one to introduce Estonia to the rest of the class. The course was very exciting: collecting and analysing data and visualising it in the urban space. I noticed that the participates valued the specific focus of the course. One student came for the course from New Zealand, which goes to show the topicality of the subject,” mentions Puidak.
“These 4 days were full of work but on the same time I felt myself relaxed. I can even call the atmosphere surrounding me funky. Raul Kalvo and Mikk Meelak are great tutors, they are responsible and professionals in their field, moreover it was really cool to hang out with them after our work. The best thing about the course is the fact that we looked at the city through the eyes of the researcher, not tourist. And I enjoyed all these counting exercises,” wrote Nilufer Musaeva, from Higher School of Economics, Russia who participated in the “Numbers and Cognition in the Urban Environment” course in 2018.
“EKA Summer Academy of Art, Design and Architecture – Possible Futures” is funded by the European Regional Development Fund.