The Urban Design Journey:
The blurred lines of the role of an urban designer creates an opportunity to build a superteam!
Our recent visit to the local Lord Williams School’s career fest has got the edge team thinking about our individual routes into urban design and how we have come together via such varied paths. As a profession that is not accredited, there is no set route to becoming an urban designer. We see this as an amazing opportunity to build a team who are passionate about the built environment, people and creativity, with a breadth of knowledge and experience across multiple fields in and around our industry. The role of urban design is ever evolving, and our relationships with the Urban Design Group and Oxford Brookes help us to be part of that evolution in what is such an exciting profession.
Future Fest
We had the privilege of attending Lord Williams School’s career fair Future Fest last week. It was such a rewarding experience, mingling with a real variety of industries and local businesses offering advice and guidance for young people to understand what opportunities lie ahead of them as they embark on the beginnings of a career journey. Many of the questions posed to us were centred around:
‘So what is Urban Design?’
‘What do you get up to in a typical day?’
‘What subjects should I study?’
Blurring Boundaries
Huda and I found our responses evolving throughout the evening; trying to define what is such a broad profession and summarise succinctly what we would do in a typical day was no easy task! Urban design has always been reluctant to pin down its definition, which gives us the ability to be fluid and flexible, blurring the boundaries of or role with others in the built environment and creative industries. At edge we are privileged that every day is different. Collaborating with clients & consultants, problem solving, story-telling, developing new ideas and concepts…not just on our projects but on how we run and shape the business; the list was endless. The students and parents were really intrigued as we demonstrated the vast possibilities of a career associated with our industry. There were more than a few parents who suggested they might look to make a career change!
With a growing number of options to study urban design at undergraduate and postgraduate level, we were able to explain the many possible routes into urban design, and how the importance of developing an interest in a broad range of subjects across arts, sciences and humanities can be a great start. Having reflected on this within the team, we were amazed to be reminded of the variety in our individual professional journeys. With qualifications in architecture, landscape architecture, sociology and politics, fashion manufacture, architectural technology, and planning before we embarked on further studies in urban design, the team benefits from a breadth of knowledge and experience to draw form in our work and how we run a business.
Raising the Profile of Urban Design
As a team of professionals who work so closely together with that range and breadth of knowledge, we feel very at home collaborating with other disciplines, which is such a fundamental part of our day-to-day. Being able to take complex problems and understand different perspectives and drivers for an approach to an idea, it is very rewarding as an urban designer to be able to bring together those approaches to build consensus around a collective proposal that works for everyone. This contributes so much to making every day different; interacting with the many other professions we engage with, helping us to continually learn and develop.
The collaborative approach extends to our desire at edge to be part of the ever-evolving journey of urban design as a profession. We work closely with the Urban Design Group and Oxford Brookes to engage in critical thinking and supporting students in their early journeys into urban design. We hope that our growing relationship with Lord Williams School, through engaging with their careers programme and inviting work experience students to work with us again this year, we can help to further raise the profile of our industry, and support young people in the early stages of an exciting career in urban design. Thank you for the invite Lord Williams School and Rebecca Vaughan, we hope to see you again next year!
Written by Anna
