Comedy Improvisation as a Tool for Urban Design Pedagogy and ...

Journal for Education in the Built Environment, Vol. 5, Issue 1, July 2010 pp. 7-26 (20) ISSN: 1747-4205 (Online)

Navigating Ambiguity: Comedy Improvisation as a Tool for Urban Design Pedagogy and Practice Aseem Inam: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

Abstract The purpose of this article is three-fold: to reflect critically on the nature of comedy improvisation as a method of unleashing individual and collaborative creativity, to investigate its application in studio pedagogy as a way of enhancing the design process, and to offer insights into its effectiveness as a pedagogical tool and its implications for urban design practice. While comedy improvisation has been studied and applied in fields such as business and management, there has been no serious attempt to explore its potential as an urban design methodology. Based on the author's experience as a professional urban designer and extensive training in comedy improvisation, an experimental urban design studio was conducted in Boston for graduate students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in early 2009. The article highlights the benefits of comedy improvisation such as creative collaboration, fostering innovation, supporting spontaneity, and learning through error; and describes the studio experience of building skills and testing ideas through pedagogical practice. The article concludes with useful insights from comedy improvisation for urban design practice, including building effective design teams as horizontal networks, developing highly creative design processes that are sensitive to constant change, and ways in which design innovation emerges out of specific types of group dynamics. Urban designers require such skills in a field marked by long-term non-linear design processes, interdisciplinary teams and multiple stakeholders with different viewpoints, and considerable ambiguity in decision making.

Keywords: Urban Design, Studio Pedagogy, Comedy Improvisation

7 Copyright © 2010 CEBE

A. Inam: Navigating Ambiguity: Comedy Improvisation as a Tool for Urban Design Pedagogy and Practice

Introduction: Process and Ambiguity in Urban Design A narrow and fairly common view of urban design is as a noun; that is, as a whole project. The project may be a new city (e.g. Chandigarh), a network of open spaces (e.g. Frederick Law Olmstead’s Emerald Necklace in Boston), an urban complex (e.g. Olympic village in Beijing), or a master plan (e.g. Masdar in Abu Dhabi). A broader view of urban design is as a verb that denotes engaging with the city as an ongoing process, from conception of an urban design initiative, to multiple alternatives and iterations, to an agreed upon strategy to refinement, to acceptance, to implementation, to modification, and beyond. Urban design is ultimately about the process of city building (Lynch, 1981). Since cities possess complexity, constant change, and difficult tradeoffs, urban design is more of an ambiguous grey area, rather than the overly simplistic notion of black-and-white choices or right-or-wrong decisions. Inhabiting this grey area, urban designers require the ability to make sense and act wisely, rather than simply pursue the impulse towards clear formulas and definite solutions. In order to be effective, urban designers have to learn to navigate ambiguity. The pursuit of any urban design initiative in the contemporary city necessitates working with a myriad of actors beyond the design team: abutting property owners, surrounding neighbours, elected officials, public agencies, opponents of the initiative, financial investors, and community groups. Navigating the shoals created by such stakeholders is one of the greatest challenges to pursuing the ideas and goals of urban design (Krieger and Saunders, 2009). Urban designers must learn to be more effective collaborators, willing participants in truly interdisciplinary endeavours, advocate for ideas that are beyond conventional notions of design, and mobilise constituencies around higher expectations rather than expedient solutions. Fortunately, there are guideposts to navigating such ambiguity and ambition, and one of the most significant ones is the power of creative collaboration. In 2009, an experimental urban design studio at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston tested the notion of design as a verb, a becoming and unfolding process, similar to the art of comedy improvisation (i.e. comedy improv), such that it fosters playful interactions among different ideas, strategies, interventions, scales, and materials, and injects continuous energy into the evolution of a project. The studio took place in MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, and was led by the author, who has practiced urban design professionally for over two decades. The students all had previous degrees and prior professional experience in a wide range of fields, including architecture, sociology, public policy, and history. Six students were selected to participate in the experiment, based on the quality of their resumes, work portfolios, and short essays describing why they wanted to be in the studio. In the studio, student performance was evaluated according to several criteria, including sheer effort in the face of challenging situations, willingness to take thoughtful risks, ability to engage with other team members even while disagreeing with them, and the quality of sketches, diagrams, photographs, video, and models produced throughout the semester. In recent years, there has been an increased interest in urban design in several quarters beyond those trained as architects: elected officials and political appointees in state and local government, municipal planning departments, community development corporations, real

8 Journal for Education in the Built Environment, Vol. 5, Issue 1, July 2010 Copyright © 2010 CEBE


estate developers undertaking large projects, and future urban designers - especially those who lack conventional design training, for example. One of the challenges of studio pedagogy and design practice is: how does one train those without a prior background in design to be creative, to collaborate effectively, and to address critical urban challenges, all at the same time? A highly promising approach, described in the following sections, is to treat urban design as a verb; that is, as an ongoing process of creative problem solving and applied innovation. The key, as we shall see, is to develop powerful tools for collaboration, such as comedy improv. The origins of the studio experiment lie in the instructor’s training and professional experience in urban design as well as comedy improv. The instructor, who is also the author of this study, has pursued sustained investigations and the testing of processes of collaborative creativity in both fields, and the studio was a collaborative interrogation of ideas developed over a number of years. Based on the experience of this studio, the purpose of this article is three-fold: to reflect critically on the nature of comedy improvisation as a method of unleashing individual and collaborative creativity, to investigate its application in studio pedagogy as a way of enhancing the design process, and to offer insights into its effectiveness as a pedagogical tool and its implications for urban design practice.

Creativity in Urban Design and Comedy Improvisation At its best, urban design is an extremely creative endeavour, because it involves the generation of novel and socially valued ideas that address complex urban challenges. All creativity, even seemingly solitary artistic pursuits, involves improvisation, collaboration, and communication (Sawyer, 2008). The studio explored all three aspects of creativity through the techniques of comedy improv. Improvisation is defined as a creative act composed without prior thought, while comedy improv is getting on-stage with a group of people and performing without any preparation or planning (Halpern et al., 1994; Napier, 2004). Improv is an especially challenging form of comedy to perform and brings out the performers’ best skills and abilities, including those that individuals may not consciously realise they possess (e.g. the ability to invent on the spot). The other two common types of live comedy in front of an audience are stand-up comedy (in which the focus is on an individual performing mostly prepared and often repeated material), and sketch comedy (in which groups perform mostly from prepared and practised scripts). Comedy improv differs in two fundamental ways, both relevant to the practice of urban design: performing unscripted in widely varying contexts and circumstances, and quickly learning to work creatively with people one may not know very well. In a comedy improv performance, everything is created on stage and in the moment: the setting, characters, relationships, narrative, and even the imaginary props. The performers adjust their roles in a highly fluid manner according to the actions of the others and the direction of the overall narrative, which emerges from moment to moment. Paradoxically, the spontaneity of comedy improv requires a high degree of structure, for several reasons. First, like urban design, the most effective forms of improv need specific sets of skills, including being attuned to one’s environment through careful observation (e.g.



learning to really listen) and being truly in the moment through the heightening of all of one’s senses (e.g. using sight, touch, and sound simultaneously). Second, improv requires a great deal of practice and repetition to hone one’s skills, to learn to work in a group in changing circumstances, and to gain the confidence to make mistakes and fail repeatedly. Third, improv is built on discipline – to persevere, to focus on key insights (e.g. “The best way to be funny is to not think about being funny”), and to perform at the height of one’s intelligence and abilities. The following exercises were performed during the studio: Super Eights, Name Alliteration, Simulclap, Zip-Zap-Zoop, Word at a Time Story, Free Association, Gibberish Talk, ‘Yes and’ Agreement, ‘One-Two-Three’ Scene Initiation, Singing Circle, Environment Build, and Silent Scene (Halpern et al., 1994; Napier, 2004). These exercises help develop specific skills. For example, Zip-Zap-Zoop is an exercise to develop the ability to pay close attention, use body movements and react quickly, while Environment Build uses body movements, hand gestures, and facial expressions to create an imaginary setting such as a bus stop or a kitchen. The studio proceeded by building on these exercises to develop skills and confidence quickly, and subsequently performing skits and scenes in pairs and groups. The improv exercises were interspersed with urban design exercises to develop a back-and-forth fertilisation of creative collaboration and project development (Table 1). In order to further crystallise this cross-fertilisation, each student was required to write a short reflective essay after each exercise and to post it on the studio website for further discussion. Table 1: Sequence of Exercises in Studio Group Exercises

Individual Exercises

1. Comedy improv exercises and scenes

2. Critical readings and analysis of design theory

6. Integrative urban design concept and design

3. Interpretation and illustration of theory

8. Final Integrative urban design project

4. Analysis of site and context through theory 5. Preliminary individual brainstorming of ideas 7. Revised individual design development

Ongoing: Reflective essays on comedy improv and design exercises Note: The numbers refer to the sequencing of each exercise over the course of the semester.

Throughout these exercises, the focus was on the primary ingredient for the success of an improv scene: for each individual to take responsibility not only for himself or herself but more importantly, for other members of the group, as it should be in an effective urban design team. The following sections describe four major areas of comedy improv that were developed in the urban design studio: (a) creative collaboration; (b) fostering innovation; (c) supporting spontaneity; and (d) learning through error.



Creative collaboration Comedy improv is primarily a social activity like urban design work in that both rely heavily on interdependent structures and practices. In comedy improv, a fundamental belief is that by building on each other’s contributions, more progress is achieved. In urban design, although a stated belief may be that the quantity and quality of creative work are improved when colleagues withhold judgment and further explore each other’s ideas, implicit editing and rejection remains often the norm. Obstacles to creative collaboration include tendencies to critique as well as a desire to increase social status through a social construction of authority and expertise. In human interactions, individuals constantly re-negotiate status with each other. Such status negotiations are apparent in brainstorming sessions and design reviews, where designers try to achieve higher status by publicly critiquing others’ work. On the other hand, creative collaboration is achieved by focusing attention on group objectives more than on individual needs and aspirations. The primary objective of using comedy improv as a pedagogical tool in the studio was to foster creative collaboration in the urban design process. There are several aspects of the creative collaboration process, including supporting other members of a team rather than being self-absorbed and trying to draw attention to oneself. Support and trust go hand-inhand for performers; they must trust that their fellow performers will support them: ‘The only star in improv is the ensemble itself; if everyone is doing his job well, then no one should stand out. The best way for an improviser to look good is by making his fellow players look good’ (Halpern et al., 1994, p.37). One means of learning to construct such agreement is the ‘Yes and’ exercise, which is a simple yet powerful technique for creating synergy. Instead of immediately finding fault and disagreeing with the other person, this exercise enables performers and designers to agree with him or her and even build on his or her ideas. When improvisers meet on stage, they agree to commit to the reality they create for each other, and a highly skilled improviser knows how to contribute to an idea through his or her own character, plot, and actions. The ‘Yes and’ exercise is performed in pairs, in which one person starts with a simple sentence such as: “Your coat is lovely.” The other person responds with the ‘Yes and’ technique: “Yes, my coat is lovely, and I made it for you.” The first person then responds: “Yes, you made it for me, and I have a thousand dollars for it,” to which the second person then adds: “Yes, you have a thousand dollars for it, and I am going to use that money to make a hundred more coats for you,” and so forth. Each person must always have the “Yes, and…” along with the repetition of the last part of the other person’s comment at the beginning of his or her sentence. The exercise seems contrived and it is, with the point being to resist a common reaction: “Yes, but…”. The exercise helps enforce the rule of agreement, which is ‘the most important rule in improvisation’ (Halpern et al., 1994, pp. 4647). By following this simple rule two players can build a scene and narrative, and it is also a relaxed way to build cooperation. In this manner, a performer knows that her colleague will immediately accept anything he or she says on stage. The benefits of the ‘Yes and’ exercise were felt almost immediately among the students in the urban design studio, some of whom were working with each other for the first time: 11 Journal for Education in the Built Environment, Vol. 5, Issue 1, July 2010 Copyright © 2010 CEBE


In terms of team dynamics, the improv has made me feel quite comfortable around...people I barely knew before the start of the class. [Moreover,] I find myself attempting to search for empathy while I am in a scene. Perhaps design is the same way. There is a “tuning in” into various contexts and details in site analysis and design. Particularly when you may not be familiar with everyone’s roles, you improvise your knowledge and consider your audience. (Zewde, 2009) The exercise helps establish basic agreement and familiarity in a design team to further creative collaboration. A non-verbal exercise that takes the idea of establishing agreement further is Simulclap, with the goal of honing each person’s skills in listening and ability to focus. The team stands in a circle and one person begins by turning to the person next to her and clapping his hands once while making direct eye contact. The goal is for both persons to clap their hands simultaneously. The person that received the applause then turns and claps simultaneously with the next person in the circle. This produces a cycle of two people clapping simultaneously racing around the circle. Once the simultaneous clapping (i.e. Simulclap) is moving in a highly coordinated and speedy fashion, the person who is receiving the applause may opt to give it back to the person that clapped at him or her. This will reverse the direction of the clapping. In this manner, the clapping can move around in different directions at high speeds, and each person on the team must pay close attention to receiving and sending the clapping while ensuring that it is done in such a coordinated way that it sounds as if only one person is clapping at a time. Improvisers and designers require cooperation through robust teamwork. Often, there is a lack of creativity in groups because individuals are unaware of each team member’s strengths. The shortfall in team performance is typically due to an inability to work together in a manner that maximises each member’s talents and contributions. In urban design, the importance of a supportive team environment is crucial to enhance creativity and productivity while working on complex and challenging projects. The students realised these parallels early in the studio: I believe the incorporation of improv into the design process allowed me to be more comfortable and confident in collaborating and voicing ideas and opinions with the group. Starting the semester with improv, literally with the first class, took away a sense of vulnerability and helped put us all on the same playing field - trying something new and seeing where it took us. The emphasis of collaborating and pushing the idea forward was helpful during the first attempt at the integrative [design] group work. (Creeley, 2009) Due to this dynamic, students became much more comfortable presenting individual design ideas knowing that other team members would be supportive by focusing on the strengths rather than the weaknesses of ideas and that critiques would tend to be constructive rather



than disparaging (for example, see Figure 1). In Figure 1, the student conducted an exploratory site analysis using a series of visual sequences to reveal the sense of the site (e.g. legible spaces, memorable urban form, perception of identifiable character).

Figure 1 Exploratory site analysis Source: Hannah Creeley A challenge that comedy improv confronts directly is the manner in which individual creativity and group collaboration occur through a give-and-take process where certain ideas emerge and others are lost. In the urban design process, the challenge is to avoid an approach that repeatedly leads to the lowest common denominator agreed upon by the group while letting more creative individual ideas emerge in the project: I wonder if this element of collaboration somehow led us to lose some of those vibrant individual ideas we had produced. [W]e were all trying to make integrative final vision work and make cohesive sense [such] that we let go of some of the more experimental ideas. While the [larger] group work was a critical part of the studio, it would have been interesting to incorporate some smaller group work sessions into the design process. For example…it [would] have been helpful to…work in groups of two and three to produce a site proposal. In these smaller groups we could each act as advocates of our [performance] dimension but also as advocates of producing a “good city form” for the site utilizing the understanding we had of each dimension at the point in the semester. (Creeley, 2009) 13 Journal for Education in the Built Environment, Vol. 5, Issue 1, July 2010 Copyright © 2010 CEBE


Collaborative urban design practice can be carried out in groups of various sizes, each with its own set of group dynamics. While many urban design firms do conduct internal charrettes in smaller groups to produce competing visions, the real challenge is to build upon individual ideas that are highly creative and may even appear unrealistic at first, rather than to resort to overly diluted group thinking.

Fostering innovation Innovation is an essential element in comedy improv and in urban design. In comedy improv, improvisers need the skills to generate interesting ideas spontaneously. Innovation involves developing a humorous situation from normal, mundane activity in unexpected ways. Urban designers need to develop skills to create new ideas and methods to stimulate innovative solutions to design problems. These skills involve the ability to brainstorm rather than to follow a tendency to self-edit, and to discover interesting overall patterns through what may initially appear to be isolated moments. The purpose of the Gibberish Talk exercise in comedy improv is to be inventive with a purpose: to create an invented language on the spot and to carry on a believable conversation. The exercise helps performers move beyond worrying about what each person sounds like and to explore accents and other ways of communicating (e.g. gestures, facial expressions). The team stands in a circle in which one person begins by turning to their neighbour and saying something in a completely gibberish tongue. The second person then responds to the first in the same gibberish tongue and in a tone of voice and attitude that suggests the beginning of a conversation. After exchanging a few sentences back and forth, the second person then turns to the other neighbour and begins another conversation in an entirely new and different gibberish tongue. Each person in the circle conducts at least two such gibberish conversations and possibly more, depending on how many times these conversations continue around the circle. The gibberish can communicate questions and answers, emotions such as worry or laughter, arguments and agreements, and a wide range of other possibilities. With the growing interest in urban design from non-designers, exercises such as Gibberish Talk are one manner of helping to foster innovation by discovering one’s innate creativity, whether expressed verbally, physically, or visually. At the same time there are design cultures that place such a high value on innovation and novelty that urban designers may fail to notice design solutions that appear to be obvious, yet can be highly intelligent in their simplicity as well as viable in their implementation. Comedy improvisers regularly dare each other to be dull. Too often, by expending energy in trying to be funny or original one fails to notice what is most needed to move a scene along. By being seemingly obvious, one is able to focus on present needs and provide satisfactory closure to an idea. Additionally, what is obvious to one person may not be obvious to another, and being obvious and being innovative are not mutually exclusive, yet this can be a common tension in design. An effective approach to being innovative without overlooking the obvious is to build improv comedy scenes piece by piece, starting with one individual’s idea and then adding to it in simple ways such that over time an overall pattern is developed by the team. This is also a



way of creating larger design ideas using smaller individual ones, as one of the students noted during the studio: I think that the concept of building a scene is very appropriate to the act of design… because [urban] design is so complicated, it is often necessary to pick a small part to focus on…and then slowly begin to build back other elements of the whole picture. Just as in improv, as you add pieces of information or goals into the design process, then the final outcome will shift slightly. (Snider, 2009) Thus, there are multiple ways of being innovative, including through on the spot invention, by building upon what may appear to be obvious, and via the incremental design process (for example, see Figure 2). The hand drawn sketch plan of the area in Figure 2 is a graphic representation of the incremental design process of the studio project. The sketch reflects the discussion between team members as they identified site priorities and debated design strategies towards the articulation of a collective approach.

Figure 2 Sketch plan of area Source: Hannah Creeley, Catherine Duffy, Blair Humphreys, Sarah Snider, Kathleen Ziegenfuss, and Sara Zewde

Supporting spontaneity A central principle of comedy improv is the spontaneity of action, as performers react constructively to the stimuli provided by audience members and fellow improvisers.



Similarly, urban designers may know the direction of their work, but cannot confidently predict whether the direction will remain the same throughout the course of a project. Thus, the ability to react spontaneously and constructively to one’s internal and external environment is crucial. In comedy improv, a necessary skill is known as ‘listening for the game’, in which the game refers to the structure of a scene that evolves in a matter of a few minutes as different performers contribute characters, dialogue, and narrative twists. The game in an improv scene is often discovered in the first three lines of dialogue, which establish the who (i.e. characters), what (i.e. topic of conversation), and where (i.e. setting) of the scene. Once the basic structure is established, the game (i.e. scenic structure) is created on the spot as part of the improvised initiation. A crucial skill in developing the game spontaneously from basic dialogue is a keen ability to listen to others in the team and to build upon their contributions with one’s own ideas, rather than negating others’ contributions through denial or disagreement. Spontaneity of action is also achieved by breaking free from traditional frames of references and associations, and therefore being able to accept and integrate spontaneous offers from other sources. Activating intuitive thinking through contradictory activity is one way to break traditional frames of reference. Professional urban design practice also requires the ability to perform unscripted, both within a team of professionals as well as with stakeholders in the community or the political arena. This involves listening and responding to moments and finding opportunities for furthering an idea, often in unexpected places. This ability to listen, respond and think quickly on one’s feet in order to explore design strategies further is beneficial to both the pedagogical process and design practice, as one of the students in the studio noted: I appreciated the quick thinking mentality of improve – it’s easy to get caught up with projects, labouring over different ideas, only to end up spinning your wheels. The push to react quickly to a problem felt good, and I think will help with the design process - not to stick with your first impulse, but to use it as a way to start exploring ideas…it really helps us all feel comfortable and open to new ideas, running with things, etc. (Duffy, 2009)

Learning through error Improvisers learn to not only fail, but also to embrace failure as a necessary ingredient for achieving uncommon results. In both comedy improv and urban design, comfort with failure leads people more readily towards success. By celebrating failures, one celebrates the process of risk-taking and the possibility of achieving greater results. If one feels shameful and embarrassed by his or her mistakes, he or she is less likely to take a risk the next time. Although this may seem to be a simple concept, it is challenging to implement in reality. The exercise, Singing Circle, helps comedy improv performers to learn to fail and helps team members learn to support their fellow performers in failure. The group stands in a circle, and one person begins by standing in the centre and starting to sing any song that comes to his



or her mind. The other persons use the lyrics and the melody as triggers to free associate with other songs. As soon as another person has another song in mind, he or she taps the first person in the middle of the circle on the shoulder, signalling for them to rejoin the circle, while the second person starts to sing a second song. This can go on for several minutes, with each person having sung multiple songs. The point is not to critique the tone of a person’s voice or the accuracy of the lyrics, but to applaud the risk-taking of singing on the spot and in a public setting. The team supports the person who is singing by clapping or singing along, and not letting anyone stay in the circle for too long. Most often, the performers sing poorly. This practice of explicitly celebrating failures helps to normalise them and realise the potential for the learning that can occur. In urban design practice, while failure is sometimes seen as a step towards success, it is rarely discussed in any meaningful way. Failure is supposed to happen privately and only revealed once success has been achieved. Comedy improv offers a technique for celebrating failures as they occur and collectively support the effort to reengage and begin anew, progressing towards further development of a project. Moreover, in professions such as architecture and urban design, the social construction of expertise suggests a sense of authority that the expert possesses to address the issues he or she has been recruited for. In these conventional expectations of expertise and authority, most urban designers rarely admit making mistakes, even though these experiences can offer great insights and lessons for the future. The principal risk of comedy improv is going to perform on stage with the intention of generating interesting ideas spontaneously, without apprehension or hesitation (see Figure 3). The fear is the embarrassment that one feels if members of the audience do not laugh.

Figure 3 A student performing a monologue in response to an audience prompt and as part of the comedy improv at the final studio presentation Source: Sarah Neilson Similarly, urban designers need to take risks with new ideas and design strategies to see if they are appropriate to the urban design plan or project at hand. Urban designers can learn 17 Journal for Education in the Built Environment, Vol. 5, Issue 1, July 2010 Copyright © 2010 CEBE


through tools such as comedy improv to develop the courage to take risks, be trained to embrace failure as part of the design process, and then become skilled at learning from those failures.

Developing Practice through Pedagogy The comedy improv skills described thus far in the article were learnt not only through exercises and practice, but also through an urban design process applied to a site and project in Boston. The site for the studio was located near downtown Boston, between the more historic Chinatown area and the emerging South End area, immediately southwest of the I-90/I-93 highway interchange. The site was bound by Herald Street on the north, Albany Street on the east, East Berkeley Street on the south, and Shawmut Avenue on the west. The Boston Herald building is within the site, and Castle Square housing project is immediately to the west (see Figure 4). There are several projects proposed in the area including the Parcel 24 project and the Massachusetts Turnpike Air Rights project. There have been proposals for market rate housing as well as affordable housing in and around the site. The Silver Line bus rapid transit follows along Washington Street, which has seen considerable development over the past few years.

Figure 4 Aerial photograph of the studio site Source: Boston Redevelopment Authority The site was selected because in some ways it is clear and legible in terms of urban form. The street network is essentially an orthogonal grid, two edges are defined by highways, and there is a major thoroughfare, Washington Street, passing through it. In other ways, the site is complex and even complicated. The location is in between two clearly defined areas, Chinatown to the north and the South End to the south; there are multiple and conflicting



demands for the future of the site, for example, between affordable and market rate housing; and there is no clear identity to the site in terms of land use: is it industrial? residential? retail? office? institutional? Or all of the preceding uses? What makes the site all the more interesting is that it is highly reflective of conditions found in most American cities, with their adjacencies to highways, multiple identities, and no particularly distinguishing physical character. Thus, it is both distinct and banal, an example of the kinds of places that the students – that is, future urban designers – will be called upon to intervene in. The pedagogical process simulated professional practice in some ways and diverted from it in others. The studio worked as a team and conducted multiple design exercises simultaneously. While pursuing the urban design project, the students also performed a number of comedy improv exercises to explore techniques of team building, collaborative creativity, and spontaneous expression. Another major divergence from professional practice was that the team had a horizontal network character rather than the vertical hierarchy commonly found in private firms and public organisations. Design ideas were debated and discussed without a singular leader to make final decisions, which led to longer time frames for discussions and often heated debate without quick resolutions, but ultimately yielded a deeper sense of supporting each other as team members with equal import and yielded extremely interesting ideas. Figure 5 shows a diagram of composite design strategy that emerged out of an iterative process of individual brainstorming and collective negotiation

Figure 5 Composite design strategy for the site Source: Hannah Creeley, Catherine Duffy, Blair Humphreys, Sarah Snider, Kathleen Ziegenfuss, and Sara Zewde 19 Journal for Education in the Built Environment, Vol. 5, Issue 1, July 2010 Copyright © 2010 CEBE


The instructor developed the comedy improv pedagogy based on his training and performance in comedy improv in Hollywood, California, years of professional practice experience in urban design, and prior teaching experience with other kinds of experimental urban design studio pedagogies. In addition, two of the most well regarded books in comedy improv served as references: Truth in Comedy: The Manual of Improvisation (Halpern et al., 1994), and Improvise: Scene from the Inside Out (Napier, 2004). Scholarly research on the uses of improvisation to create innovation (Sawyer, 2008), including in business administration (Vitug and Kliener, 2007) and computer design (Gerber 2007), also aided in crafting the pedagogy. In all, there were about 15 different comedy improv skill-building exercises carried out in the studio with the instructor and the students, as listed in an earlier section of this article. In addition, the students performed improv scenes in pairs, groups of three, and a group of six for added complexity. The group also watched a DVD of one of the leading comedy improv groups in the United States, the Upright Citizens Brigade (2007), including critiquing the performance and listening to commentary from the professional performers. Finally, the entire group from the studio attended an evening of live comedy improv performance at one of the most popular venues in Boston, Improv Asylum. Thus, over the course of a four month semester, students gained extensive exposure to and immersion in the art of comedy improv. The group usually eased into the actual improvisational scenes by beginning with a simple exercise sequence. Warm up exercises included Name Alliteration (i.e. saying one’s name out loud in an exaggerated manner while making a dramatic gesture - e.g. “Astounding Andy!”) and Super Eights (i.e. shaking each limb eight times while counting out loud), all of which are done standing in a circle. Each exercise was intended to be relaxing and to tap into each person’s creativity; for example, Free Association, in which one person says a word and others build on it, such that patterns of words emerge (e.g. pieces of furniture, or types of reptiles). Over time, the exercises became more demanding and collaborative, including Yes and, Gibberish Talk, and Word-at-a-Time narrative exercise. The pacing and order of the exercises allowed the group to ease into comedy improv without the discomfort and anxiety that are thought to come with performing in front of other. After the simpler exercises, the act of improvisation became more unaffected when the group began to create scenes with partners. For example, the students first performed One-Two-Three scenes in pairs, in which they attempted to structure a scene in just three lines to identify who they are, where they are, and what the dialogue is about. After this, the group was more comfortable with performing and behaving as a team, with a relatively relaxed group dynamic that enabled the creative playing off of each other and imaginatively created scenes (for example, see Figure 6).



Figure 6 Comedy improv performance at the final studio presentation Source: Sarah Neilson

The comedy improv work conducted as part of the studio pedagogy resulted in numerous lessons. In terms of the practical skills of working together, the improv exercises allowed the class to bond as a group very quickly, to remove barriers to interaction and honest discussion, and to foster an atmosphere of creativity, risk-taking and experimentation. The comedy improv also provided the group a practice run of working together creatively before the final design exercise at the end of the semester that integrated individual ideas into one urban design proposal. In terms of the creative process of design, the improv exercises proved very useful in mitigating some of the inherent biases of the students and opening their minds to new approaches. Among the most important lessons learned by the group in this regard were to minimise self-editing, to nurture a supportive creative environment, to learn to act in thoughtful yet unscripted ways, and to discover opportunities and patterns by building upon the work of others. These lessons were enhanced by the risky nature of the comedy improv and applied by the students to the design process. As an example, students critically reflected on the fact that a more direct application of the ‘Yes, and…’ exercise could have occurred during the in-studio collaborative design charrettes to more directly develop synergies between individual design ideas, such as: ‘Yes, you would like to put a research park there, and I would like would like to keep the [old Boston] Herald [newspaper printing] Building’ (Snider, 2009).

Conclusion: Effective Innovation in Design Practice As urban designers learn to navigate the ambiguity of the city building process with its multiple stakeholders, conflicting goals, and political decision-making, they need sets of skills that are not normally taught in architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, or planning programmes. In addition, while research on the applications of improv has been conducted in the fields of computer-human interaction (e.g. Gerber, 2007) and business administration



(e.g. Vitug and Kleiner 2007), there is a gap on such research in urban design pedagogy or practice. As this article has shown, techniques of comedy improv support creative collaboration in urban design as increasingly interdependent sets of work tasks require abilities to work effectively with others and communicate ideas with commitment, while being open to the ideas of others that may not normally be within one’s field of perception. The pedagogical goal of the studio was to experiment with the design process through an active testing of comedy improv in its application to the practice of design. The experiment yielded several critical insights for the students as future urban designers: The design process utilized in the studio certainly leaves me plenty to think about. It was definitely atypical, and as such, I found that throughout the semester I was comparing it to the typical process with which I have become accustomed. The… design process was certainly a success in that it challenged my thinking. I began to peel back layers of understanding and question why things are done the way they are, how they could be done different…or better, etc. During this process you begin to see some of the weaknesses of the typical way, while appreciating the inherent challenges of the design process. (Humphreys, 2009) What is striking about this particular student reflection is that its author not only had extensive prior urban design studio experience at the graduate level at MIT, but was also part of the team that won the prestigious 2009 Urban Land Institute Gerald Hines Student Urban Design Competition, competing with teams from all over the United States and being judged by a jury of renowned professional real estate development, architecture, urban design, and planning experts. This suggests that the design process adopted in the studio possesses great pedagogical and professional practice value. Many academic studios obsess about producing radical urban forms in which there is innovation for the sake of innovation, what I call the ‘tyranny of novelty’. The approach adopted in this studio was both more thoughtful and more radical than the producing of cutting edge formal ideas: to engage in an experimental and open-ended design process and critically reflect on its outcomes. The design outcomes followed in this process were nuanced but nonetheless significant. One example of this was adopting a fine-grained approach to the facilitation of a myriad of human activities such as moving, eating, or playing (see Figure 7), rather than ascribing to conventional land uses such as residential, retail, or industrial: What has been particularly interesting about this whole process have been the discussions that went along with all the design phases. The most interesting one was the debate about land use and prescribing users [which are usually taken for granted], which went on for quite some time. Though I found that conversation [got] frustrating at times…I think struggling through [it] was quite worthwhile. In the end I liked the resolution of the activity mapping and the nebulous design (Ziegenfuss, 2009)



For the students, the studio was clearly a challenging and sometimes frustrating experience, especially in the beginning. Through individual conversations, group discussions, and studio evaluations, it became clear that while students were excited by the unconventional nature of the pedagogy, they also felt uncomfortable about its deliberately designed ambiguity. The comedy improv exercises helped them to enjoy the process more and discover abilities they may not have recognised themselves. The instructor was impressed by the students’ capacity to be creative, and he assisted them to find ways of navigating the ambiguity. This was done by posing powerful questions (e.g. What is the relationship between the Zip-ZapZoop exercise and working with community stakeholders?), deliberate reflection in the written essays, and the facilitation of group discussions. Ultimately, both the instructor and the students appreciated the value of this studio pedagogy once time had passed and the immediate pressures of production and deadlines dissipated.

Figure 7 Activity map Source: Hannah Creeley, Catherine Duffy, Blair Humphreys, Sarah Snider, Kathleen Ziegenfuss, and Sara Zewde Note: The light yellow arrows indicate how the patterns of activity would evolve over time

Future trends in urban design include increasing extensive collaboration, within interdisciplinary design teams and with project stakeholders. Democratic decision making necessarily involves multiple shades of grey in terms of how various stakeholders perceive



and position themselves on critical urban challenges (Loukaitou-Sideris and Banerjee 1998). Comedy improv exercises help urban designers with tasks of creative group collaboration, truly listening to other people, and building upon other people's ideas in a constructive manner. The most significant overlap between comedy improv and urban design is teamwork that is creative, constructive, and collaborative. Often when collaborating in design, the ideas of others are viewed sceptically or with great reserve, with individuals often favouring those ideas championed by themselves and ultimately having to end in some form of compromise or acceding to the decisions of an authority figure such as the team leader or client. However, approaching ideas and iterations with a positive commitment creates more room for good ideas to grow and avoids their premature dismissal. Overall, such an approach creates a set of structural dynamics of design exploration and genuine creativity to enhance the quality of professional practice. The ultimate value of comedy improv lies in four types of contributions for improving design processes. First, it creates the conditions to allow multiple authors to collaborate in an iterative process in which design ideas by different authors are viewed supportively rather than sceptically. Second, it enacts and operationalises the conceptual idea of a horizontal network for genuine team collaboration. Third, it helps us to embrace design as an on-going process rather than a finished product, which parallels the never ending city-building process with its own twists and turns. Fourth, it provides a model of a professional practice that creates modes of collaboration for investigating specific challenges and design strategies beyond conventional expectations. In summary, comedy improv and urban design share a number of crucial characteristics that emerge out of a melding of the work of a number of comedy improvisation pioneers and research scholars (e.g. Halpern et al., 1994; Napier, 2004; Upright Citizens Brigade, 2007; Gerber, 2007; Sawyer, 2008), and the operationalisation of these characteristics in the MIT urban design studio: •

Innovation occurs over time through a process that appears to be highly inefficient since it meanders through a seemingly convoluted process of on-the-spot brainstorming and exploration of all kinds of ideas, including ones that might be dead-ends.

•

Innovation emerges from a horizontal network model of a team where each team member contributes in various ways such as listening, suggesting, augmenting, and extrapolating ideas of their own and of others.

•

A key skill in innovation is learning to listen and being sensitive to the clues in one’s environment, whether it is other people’s ideas or opportunities that are disguised as seemingly mundane phenomena.

•

Creativity occurs when the urge to self-edit and to judge others on the spot is suspended such that the team explores a fuller understanding of the value of each idea.

•

Each person’s ideas are rendered even more creative when team members support and build upon each other’s contributions through extensions and enhancements in order to make it a shared innovation.



•

Innovation occurs when performers and designers have the courage to take thoughtful risks, and to learn from failure by finding a level of comfort with it.

Consequential innovation in urban design is not only reflected in iconic form, cutting edge technologies, or current fashions; it also emerges out of creative and meaningful processes such as those found in comedy improvisation and experimental studio pedagogies.



References Creeley, H. (2009). Reflective essay: MIT urban design studio. Student essay, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Duffy, C. (2009). Reflective essay: MIT urban design studio. Student essay, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Gerber, E. (2007). Improvisation principles and techniques for design. In: Computer/Human Interaction (CHI) Conference 2007 Proceedings: Learning and Education. New York: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Press, pp. 1069-1072. Halpern, C., Close, D., & Johnson, K. (1994). Truth in comedy: The manual of improvisation. Colorado Springs: Meriweather Publishing Ltd. Humphreys, B. (2009). Reflective essay: MIT urban design studio. Student essay, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Krieger, A. & Saunders, W. (Eds.) (2009). Urban design. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press. Loukaitou-Sideris, A. & Banerjee, T. (1998). Urban design downtown: Poetics and politics of form. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lynch, K. (1981). Good city form. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Napier, M. (2004). Improvise: Scene from the inside out. Portsmouth NH: Heinemann. Sawyer, K. (2008). Group genius: The creative power of collaboration. New York: Basic Books. Snider, S. (2009) Reflective essay: MIT urban design studio. Student essay, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Upright Citizens Brigade. (2007). ASSSSCAT! Renegade improv DVD. Los Angeles: Upright Citizens Brigade. Vitug, M. & Kliener, B. (2007). How can comedy be used in business? International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 56 (2), 155-161. Zewde, S. (2009). Reflective essay: MIT urban design studio. Student essay, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ziegenfuss, K. (2009) Reflective essay: MIT urban design studio. Student essay, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
