Reimagining Place Through the Sandbox Studio Pedagogy: An Introduction

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion on the increasing awareness of the strategic importance of public space in the development agenda to address key global challenges. Although society has already gained deeper understanding of urbanization, globalization, and the challenges that accompany these phenomena, we still have very limited understanding of the diversifying publics and of the strategies in place that either gives privileges or marginalizes certain sectors of society. In other words, we do not understand who we are designing for. We argue that this is inexorably intertwined with the need to improve how place and placemaking are being taught in the academe. The chapter then situates placemaking pedagogy within a studio model, as approached in the case studies featured in this book. It concludes with an outline of the chapters and a call to adopt the Sandbox Studio as an approach in place-based and placemaking pedagogy.