The case study describes the pedagogy and the theoretical underpinning of an architectural design unit run in 2016 within the 3rd year “Explorations” course at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA). The unit Domesti-city drawn on tools borrowed from visual ethnography, interaction design and psychogeography to set up an inquiry on the socio-spatial conditions affecting a specific social group: the elderly. It focused on the construction of a narrative at the intersection of the etic (students’) and emic (elderly’s) perspectives to ground design interventions in the urban context of local town centres in Edinburgh.
The paper explores how the brief fostered this emic-etic connection to transcend the studio and engage outer socio – spatial reality.