12 & 13 March 2026 | ETH Zürich, ONA, Neunbrunnenstrasse 50, Zürich Oerlikon.
The Spring 2026 NSL Colloquium Designing Moments of Learning: International Forum on Pedagogies for Urban Transformation will bring together specialists from various disciplines to reconceptualise urban planning as a process of collective learning.
Urban planning is often understood as an individual’s or group’s ability to envisage a certain future and integrate it into the present. However, even if this process is informed by other disciplines, participation, dialogue, collective imagination, and learning rarely lie at its heart. The event will explore urban transformation as a series of learning moments that evolve alongside the project itself, enabling agile responses and the constant evolution of the initial question or brief. It will also explore how design education can model such processes.
The event will expand and refine the range of tools and approaches used by architects and urban planners to guide and design processes. It will offer new perspectives from other disciplines and encourage reflection on the role of the architect as a facilitator and mediator. Various formats will be combined, including keynote lectures offering diverse perspectives on learning, site visits and workshop sessions applying concepts and insights to case studies, as well as active reflection. Through these different formats, the forum itself will create learning moments and insights.
More information on workshops and the programme will follow.
