LA 3010 - Integrating Theory and Practice I

(CU-CEL, CU-SBY)

Fall. 5 credits. Letter grades only.

Must have a grade of C- or better to advance to next studio in sequence. Course fee: approximately $250 for supplies and fees.

Staff.

The studio engages students in the design process based on a site defined by significant cultural and natural conditions. The studio focuses on peripheral, yet complex sites of coastal cities, where the urbanizing force has not been strong or continuous enough in order to completely occupy or transform the maritime and/or fluvial ecosystems. The sites involved will be often related to industrial or infrastructural abandonment and will include relevant underdeveloped, fragmented open spaces that interact both with the natural systems and the city. The scarcity of water and a broad design history of the area are key conditions of the site’s location and the design approach. The landscape approach here operates as new humanistic lens that seeks to offer better habitat conditions for a wider range of species.

Outcome 1: Students will become prepared to address complex urban situations through the specificity of Landscape Architecture, thus to propose sustainable future scenarios for landscapes in a process of change and/or abandonment through enhancing the fragmented and unrevealed qualities of the site.

Outcome 2: Students will be instructed to address the complexities of the area, especially be defining their own strategy and site to implement it. The instructor will guide them to always relate their particular design to their global strategy that comprises a broader area.

Outcome 3: Students will become familiar with the local urban design history and design agenda through lectures and their own conducted research.

Outcome 4: Students will be encouraged to apply already-learned multi-layered site analysis skills and furthermore, to take a critical stance on the assemblage of data; also develop a creative use of complementary interpretive concepts such as the fragment, the frontier, or the interstice that work as vehicles for a concrete, process-based and material design approach in all scales.

Outcome 5: Students will be offered systematic help in order to explore the realities and representations at a distance, stimulating them to original, rigorous, and design-oriented representations.

Outcome 6: Students will be oriented towards good practice on semiarid coastal and fluvial conditions at an international level by establishing a rigorous and systematic knowledge on projects.

Outcome 7: Students will be instructed to evolve conceptual design protocols that fit to the ecologies of the semi-arid/Mediterranean landscape.

Outcome 8: Students will gain familiarity and confidence with the design scale, evolving skills in grading by controlling its spatial consequences through precise and dynamic models.

Outcome 9: Students will expand graphic and computer skills to clearly communicate strategies, design ideas, spatial qualities, and management requirements for their landscape design in time.