Multi- and interdisciplinary design of urban infrastructure development

The demand for a more conscious and integrating design process within the field of urban infrastructure development is based in the fact that the environmental crisis can only be dealt with by increasing the resilience of the built environment. Civil engineering and spatial design are fields with very different cultures and languages, yet interdisciplinary cooperation between these fields, as well as among sub-disciplines within each, is at the base of urban infrastructure development. Delft University of Technology (TUD) incorporated interdisciplinary design into its MSc-level education of students in the faculties of civil engineering and architecture focusing on reconstruction projects after crises. Via surveys of the participating students, the effectiveness of the interdisciplinary design methods used, and the interpretation of the terms multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary are revealed. From survey results about Multidisciplinary and Interdisciplinary understanding it can be concluded that “multidisciplinary” is considered a group process and not an outcome, and mainly communication skills are important. “Interdisciplinary” is considered the outcome and intertwining of knowledge and products. Interdisciplinary design is the integration of sectoral responsibilities, goals and solutions. Interdisciplinary design should entail a conscious and orchestrated process in which the disciplines present their ideas within a shared value system before systematic integration. The challenges are on a personal and cognitive level, an open attitude is necessary to be able to perceive and react, process and understand, retrieve information and make decisions and produce appropriate responses for co-creation. This can be done by training and learning the value of this open attitude and the acknowledgement of the necessity and added quality of the re-integration of engineering within the spatial design process.