Mentally Urban Issue #1

How does an urban setting affect our psyche? Do mental conditions influence urban decision-making? Students of architecture, landscape architecture and urbanism, but also of political science and engineering from TUM, left their beaten paths in the winter of 2019/20 visiting the “mentally urban” lecture series, which focused on the interdependence of urban design and mental health – a so far scarcely addressed combo.

Experts from various disciplines shared their perspective on how the mental and the urban interlink: Medical researcher in epidemiology and public health (LMU), Jan Stratil, talked about “knowing what’s effective”; professor for urban design (HM), Andrea Benze, about “perception of space and patterns of use of the elderly”; the medical scientist and director of the clinic for psychiatry and psychotherapy (TUM), Hans Förstl, postulated: “no cold feet when thinking about cities”; geographer and spatial epidemiological

researcher in Zurich, Oliver Grübner, lectured on “geographies of emotions in cities based on twitter”; Sociologist and Scientific Director at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Ortwin Renn, on “risk and evaluating (urban) situations”. Though each lecture approached the theme with a different focus and the applied research methods were various, all lecture guests shared the same aim: to enhance the wellbeing of people.

In a concurrent seminar 9 students amplified all the exciting lecture input in edifying discussions with us. This magazine is the result. Issue #1 is a collection of written articles, interviews, reports of site visits and movie reviews, stating first thoughts, gaining knowledge and making observations on the topic “mentally urban”.

Among many new insights, we also picked out three toeholds for further research. Risking Contact, Stressing Perceptions and Experiencing Truths became the three main features structuring the contents of this first issue.

We are momentarily working on the issues #2, #3 and #4, all due in August 2020, reporting about urban contact influenced by new social distancing, contact typologies and mutual experience of contact of the disciplines urban design and psychology.

Implementation
This magazine issue #1 was the result of the concurrent seminar (Sustainable Urbanism I Vertiefung) with students of architecture, landscape architecture and urbanism from TUM to the interdisciplinary lecture series „mentally urban“ in the winter term of 2019/20.

editorial + lead:

Dr. Dorothee Rummel and Carmen Duplantier

Chair of Sustainable Urbanism

Prof. Mark Michaeli, Architekt ETH SIA

Faculty of Architecture

Technical University of Munich

Arcisstrasse 21

D-80333 München

www.land.ar.tum.de

Studierende

layout and editing:

Céline Ortmann

Alesia Prendi

Prayudi Sudiarto

articles and drawings by:

Yuqing Cai

Aida Demchenko

Xinyi Li

Maria Knoll

Spyridon-Nektarios Koulouris

Céline Ortmann

Alesia Prendi

Ivan Selednikov

Prayudi Sudiarto

for further information please contact:

Dr.-Ing. Dorothee Rummel

Tel. +49 89 289 22343

dorothee.rummel(at)tum.de

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