COMPLEXITY AND TRANSDISCIPLINARITY IN URBAN DESIGN: RESEARCH AND EDUCATION

The Article is a written version of the Main Lecture held in the Closing Session of the Ibero-American Seminar about Interdiscipline in Urban Design carried out in San Jose de Costa Rica between 25th.- 30th. September 2013. Deal with some aspects of research and education in urban design, shown through the aspects of Complexity and Transdisciplinarity that characterizes the evolution of Science in the last decades. The article begins dealing with the complex interactions among Nature, Society and Knowledge, essential to later understand the other parts of it. Then deals with the new conceptions about Science and Research that arose from the prior interactions. Transdisciplinarity as concept and method of research and education is the third analyzed aspect. Then there are presented three approaches to handle with transdisciplinary research: the Sensitivity Model of Frederic Vester, the free of charge Toolbox of the French Prospective under the academic leadership of Michael Godet and the Embedded Case Study Methods developed by Roland W. Scholz in the Federal Polytechnic Institute Eth in Zurich, as integration among University and Society. The last part deals with the influence of Complexity and Transdisciplinarity in the transformation of the universities and of its learning-teaching processes to face urban problems.