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?