Ecopolis 2017

Auer Mühlbach, München

Dr. Nina Möllers (Rachel Carson Center’s curator at the Deutsches Museum) and Dr. Ursula Münster (academic coordinator of the Environmental Studies Certificate Program) will be offering a unique seminar for students of the program.

This course is experimental in its approach. It has a triple function. First, it serves as an introduction to collaboration across different environmental disciplines - from environmental history to ecology to city planning. Second, it introduces students to the Bavarian Capital and the region by studying local and regional environments. And third, it aids students in developing and preparing projects for a student exhibition that will be shown in the Main Building (Lichthof) of LMU in late July 2017.

We will ‘read’ cityscapes of Munich and explore their connections across regions in Upper and Lower Bavaria. We will try to understand their pasts and develop visions for the future of these spaces. Student research and field work could focus on such diverse topics, areas or spaces as:

- the Olympic Park (built on top of rubble from World War II)

- the peatlands north of Munich that played an essential role for the brewing industry

- water in Munich (drinking water from the Mangfall Valley; manipulation of the Isar River for energy production)

- the English Garden (its military origins; biodiversity in the park)

- sites and modes of transportation and visions for their future

- urban commoning and Green City projects in Munich

etc.

Students will form multidisciplinary groups and prepare exhibits and presentations for the 2017 event in collaboration with the course leaders from the Carson Center and Deutsches Museum. Mentors and lecturers will include experts from different disciplines including architect Prof. Elisabeth Merk (head of the City Planning Office of Munich), Prof. Michael John Gorman (Chair in Biology and Director of Biotopia, the new Museum for Natural History); Prof. Christof Mauch (environmental historian and Director of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society), economist Prof. Georg Zollner ( Professor for Sustainable Management at Munich’s University for Applied Science), and many others.

The course has an accompanying wordpress site.

Grading: For attending the first semester, students can receive 6 ECTS points for their research and paper. The work of students who are fully involved in the exhibition and involved in the course for two semesters can count this as a final project (9 ECTS points).

Source: http://ecopolis.danfoss.com/