November 15, 2009 at 7:59 pm · Filed under Graphics, Landscape Design, Urban Design, perspectives
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.
November 15, 2009 at 8:46 am · Filed under Graphics, Urban Design, perspectives
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?
