Course Description
Engagement through landscape architecture using "design" as both a lens and tool with which to assist communities address critical social and environmental issues. To "engage" connotes deep and active involvement, which we will do through several means, including participation, analysis, ideation, and representation. stressed, as the ‘process’ of engaging challenges designers to confront and see beyond their own tastes and biases in order to develop meaningful proposals for the people and places we serve. Only by first asking ‘why’ can we effectively develop ideas about ‘what’ and ‘how.’
Athena Title
Urban Outreach Studio
Prerequisite
LAND 4060 or LAND 4060S
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Through the perspective of design engagement, students will gain knowledge about inclusionary design theories, key relationships between communities and contexts, and participatory design methods and tactics; and will develop critical skills in design analysis, ideation, iteration, and communication, in order to inform and influence their development as landscape architects. Specifically, student learning objectives and assessments fall under the following three primary categories: Knowledge • Define the value of landscape systems, systems urbanisms, and landscape infrastructure in cultivating diverse, catalytic, and adaptive participatory urban networks. -‐ Assessment: precedent deconstruction. • Identify specific challenges and potentials of landscape systems for integrating complex processes into urban design spatial and policy contexts. -‐ Assessment: analysis and program diagrams. • Describe how regional systems and civic sites operate, interact, connect across scales, and manifest in functions, dimensions, aesthetics, and materials. -‐ Assessment: strategic diagrams; conceptual design. Skills • Demonstrate proficiency in systems and site examination, analysis, testing, and generative design techniques. -‐ Assessment: studio projects. • Develop potential means for integrating and modifying current policies to promote landscape systems strategies and frameworks. -‐ Assessment: translation of policies into built form. • Develop a design vocabulary from the functions, processes, and characteristics of natural and cultural disturbances. -‐ Assessment: formal isolations. • Categorize and compare focus sites’ vernacular and historical legacies functions, processes, and aesthetics. -‐ Assessment: site mappings, inventory, and analysis. Values • Differentiate and apply types of multicultural aesthetics, values, and experiences. -‐ Assessment: degree of inclusivity in conceptual design. • Generate design proposals that integrate Thrift, Vernacular Landscapes, and Legacies -‐ Assessment: Interim and final design and degree of refinement during process. • Design a catalytic landscape systems framework that integrates divergent values, processes, and aesthetics -‐ Assessment: Instructor, peer, and juried critiques of process and products.
Topical Outline
This course applies a project-driven studio format with integrated lectures, seminars, and workshops on relevant concepts, skills, and techniques. Advanced application of foundational skills and methods is expected in order to develop strategies and designs for complex issues and sites. Critical course components include topical research, class discussions on assigned readings, site visits, stakeholder engagement, and progress and juried project critiques. Course and Project Schedule: Week 1 – 4: Understanding Systems – Instrumental Mapping; Weeks 5 – 10: Nested Scales – Leverages and Linkages; Weeks 11 – 16: Engaging Site – Strategies and Forms.