Bump Skiing at Winter Park
Last weekend was fantastic, though the snow sucks here in Colorado right now. The coverage is still way thin, but the weather was perfect last weekend at Winter Park for some easy bump skiing. Cait is first, then me.
Wayne Grace Memorial Student Design Competition
I’m blogging about an old project from 2007 I did as a student at Colorado State University mainly because I was going to add some setchbook entries, but found that my sketchbook is in the car where I can’t get to it and because I have nothing better to do right now with a winter storm winding down here in Denver.
The Wayne Grace Memorial Competition was an open student competition which has been happening annually since 2000. Each year three cash awards are given to students/teams who can submit projects representative of CLARB standards and the positive role Landscape Architects play in the built environment.
Denargo market Landscape Plan, Denver, CO.
The project I submitted was called ‘Denargo Market’ after the former industrial/post-industrial riverfront site on the lower west end of Downtown Denver.
The design intent was to re-use and re-purpose existing architectural and landscape materials in the construction of a series of pavillions identifying each neighborhood zone from urban agriculture to entertainment and art.
Principal Jim MacRae and former staff Heath Mizer at Design Workshop of Denver introduced the project and guided our class through a charette-paced two-week intensive design process, offering an urban development framework to base our landscape master plan upon.
Overall it was a great learning experience.
Learning By Doing
I was fortunate to have some of my owrk published along with a piece written by my former professor in landscape architecture at Colorado State University, Brad Goetz, on his teaching methodolgy.
Learning By Doing, CCASLA Exposures Magazine, Article by Brad Goetz
Learning By Doing, Exposures Magazine June 2009. [click for pdf]
The piece is entitled, Learning By Doing and was published back in May or June of 2009 in the Colorado Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (CCASLA) Magazine, Rocky Mountain Exposures.
Accompanying the piece were a series of drawings I completed as part of an urban design project at Colorado State for a retail district located in southwest Denver.
Denver Master Plan Urban Design, Nick Aceto 2009.
I can certainly relate the general perspective Brad takes on learning as outlined in the article, especially with regard to design. Design is a tactile process.
I had a long response written on the article and my experience at CSU, but perhaps fortunately, I accidentally deleted it. So I am doing my best to briefly state that I am familiar with the process of learning by doing. It was a process ingrained in my being as a child and carried on in my early career in landscape design.
I often pured over the books by Mike Lin and Grant Reid, trying relentlessly to perfect my understanding and craft of landscape design. I came to CSU in 2005 where I learned that, as Peter Walker puts it, ‘do(ing) something’ is often the best option when you dont know what to do next.
If there is one thing I’ve learned by doing at CSU it is that ’something’ often materializes when you’re learning by doing something. Is that clear?
Dan Kiley, Landscape Architect and the State of Nick Aceto
I was paging through some videos Michael Van Valkenburgh recorded for WNYC Radio on the Brooklyn Bridge Park on Youtube and managed to sumble upon a short piece on Dan Kiley.
MVVA and Dan Kiley, Landscape Architecture
I was paging through some videos Michael Van Valkenburgh recorded for WNYC Radio on the Brooklyn Bridge Park on Youtube and managed to sumble upon a short piece on Dan Kiley.
There are so many outstanding moments captured in the short film, but I was particularly intrigued by Mr. Kiley’s comparison of movement in sports with design and the natural environment. Going with gravity, as Dan puts it, not imitating or copying is the key to what I took as meaningful design and ultimately a meaningful or purposeful life. Dan says, ‘If you look like you’re skiing, you’re probably not skiing well.’
Doing the natural thing may mean simply not trying to do anything, right? Well, perhaps not anything on purpose, but with purpose.
With the recession carrying on into 2010 jobs are scarce for everyone, let alone the lowly designer. I have been fortunate enough to land a decent job with a local Landscape Architect and Planner in Berthoud, Colorado. Some of my former classmates at Colorado State have managed to maintain their jobs at some boutique firms in New York City and elsewhere while others have been jobless or underemployed outside the profession for several years. Needless to say, it’s a confusing and frustrating time to be a recent graduate, which isn’t to say that I’ve actually graduated. I’ve finished the studio sequence, but a handful of classes still loom over my future like a dark cloud.
Going to work this week has alleviated some of the mental anguish that comes with unemployment, though the questions still linger. Gravity, as Dan Kiley puts it, is what I should go with and I shall. Fear is what develops from a negative in a dark room as one author illustrates. My fear is of becoming a cliche, a shell of my true self coasting through the darkness. I think it’s natural for any young professional, frought with ambition and an over-inflated egocentric sense of self-worth compounded by a degree of higher education to over-analyze each baby step through the threshold of real life. Gravity isn’t necessarily something we’re born with a sense of, we learn to manipulate and play with it. When we are young and agile we play with gravity; attraction from one animal to another, puppy love, going steady, cliques, and other stupid st
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TBG Group Master Planning Process and First Week in the Office
I’m including only a very small cropped area of a larger master plan sketch I’ve been working on at my new job this week. The project is proving to be quite interesting with urban design, planning, landscape, and architectural components organized on a very constained site in a progressive town.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the project keeps momentum moving forward and that I can be a poitive contributor to the process while absorbing as much information as possible about the process. The project is precisely the flavor of work I’m interested in exploring; urban design and master planning with the added degree of site planning and landscape design that will certainly come later as the project progresses.
TBG Master Plan Concept Sketch
So far, I’ve had very encouraging and complimentary comments on the changes I’ve made and the different perspective I think I’m bringin to the concept. I remember Brad Goetz, a professor at Colorado State University in the Landscape Architecture Department referring to a comment by famed landscape architect and designer Martha Schwartz on the importance of imagining and design places and things that ‘you think would cool’ first and foremost. My interpretation of that would be that we need to respond to clients needs first but with careful consideration for those places we value and keep locked deep in the back corners of our minds.
Prospect Park
One of the reasons I enjoy Michael van Valkenburgh’s work so much is his honesty in landscape design. His projects, particularly his park projects in and around NYC seem like ‘cool’ places, so unaware of themselves. In essence, I think MVVA’s work is good because it is true to the purpose of landscape.
Conceptual Design
Denver Urban Design Conceptual Sketches
Another Old Video, Breckenridge 2003
My buddy Colin and I used to take videos on the mountain quite a bit. Colin doesn’t ski much anymore. I’m sure he has hours of video on a hard drive or tape somewhere, but for now these little clips are all I got from way back when.
Breckenridge 2003
I should never have quit skiing park, now my back is sore and I’m getting fat and soft.
Plan Trees and Plants
I’m working on some new graphics for landscape plans. I’m creating these symbols in photoshop and saving them for later illustration work.
Sample backyard Landscape Plan
