The course addresses the range of practical approaches involved in evaluating and planning sites within the context of natural and cultural systems. The course concentrates on developing the knowledge and skills to make one capable of analyzing and planning a site for development through practical exercises, and a site planning project.
The course explores and utilizes new multi-layered manipulative platforms that integrate digital and physical representations. The usefulness of these platforms may be in their ability to combine and update digital and tangible data in seamless ways to enhance the design and planning and communication with the public.
Specifically the course is aimed at:
- Teaching a process for site planning, and the considerations that enter into each stage.
- Providing examples of good site planning.
- Teaching important technical skills needed in the site planning process.
- Providing an opportunity to develop skills through workshop assignments, practical exercises, and site planning projects supported by lectures and discussions.
- Exploring and utilizing the possibilities of the Tangible Interfaces such as the Luminous Table and the Illuminating Clay as tools for urban site planning.
Some Topics To Be Covered:
Site analysis, evaluation and selection, spatial organization and programming, grading principles, analysis of surface runoff, utility systems, design of circulation, parking and subdivision patterns, street layouts, etc.
Text reader available on reserve in library for self copying. Other material will be handed out during the semester.
Recommended Text Books:
Lynch, Kevin, and Gary Hack. Site Planning. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1984.
Marsh, William. Landscape Planning Environmental Applications. NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1991.
Dramstad, Wenche. "Landscape Ecology Principles." In Landscape Architecture And Land-Use Planning. Washington D.C.: Island Press, 1996.
Pedagogic Objectives:
The principal educational objectives for students taking this course consist of mastering several introductory and enabling concepts:
- To understand spatial as well as temporal relationships between individual site factors and local or regional context.
- To identify basic relationships between natural and cultural processes and how they influence site planning decisions.
- To apply a variety of methods for "reading" sites.
- To evaluate natural and cultural site systems as they shape design programs and goals.
- To evaluate and critique alternative site development proposals.
- To practice techniques commonly utilized by site planning professionals.
The course combines seminar and workshop formats. Short informal lectures will introduce concepts, analytical techniques and site planning models. Short exercises as well as major assignments will provide practice in various site planning techniques.
Assignments as well as short exercises will be given during the semester. A final project will constitute one of the three assignments.
Students are graded on the basis of active participation, commitment, team work, quality of presentation and submitting the assignments on time.
Grade distribution will be as follows:
Assignments (3)..........................................30%
Exercises.....................................................20%
Final Project................................................30%
In-class participation, discussion..................20%
Progress during the semester and striving for improvement will be credited.