Claude Cormier, Sugar Beach, Toronto, Canada
UCBx Intro to LA
Welcome to this semester's Intro to Landscape Architecture class. Syllabus found --> here.
A figure ground map of Union Square and San Francisco. Market Street in lower right hand corner.
Week 7
Thanks for a great field trip. Reading this week: Great Streets, "Intro" and "Market Street" by Allan Jacobs. If you are interested in studying urban form, you may want to find a copy of "Great Streets- Jacobs illustrates the urban features of many international and national cities at the same scale so you can compare and contrast them. He uses figure ground mapping as a part of his toolkit to do so.
Please prepare a 1/3 page response for next week.
Week 5/6
Reading this week: Social Life of Small Urban Spaces by William H. Whyte. Please prepare a 1/2 page double- spaced, typed response for the reading, due at the beginning of the next class.
We'll see you this Sunday July 10th at 10 am at Mint Plaza between Market and Mission at 5th Street. There is a Blue Bottle Coffee there (come early if you want coffee!) We really need to start at 10 if we are going to make it to Levi Strauss Plaza by 1 pm.
You can watch the film on Vimeo.
Week 4
Very exciting to offer a lecture by Donlyn Lyndon, one of the authors of Poetics of Gardens. He is speaking at AIA East Bay on the art of placemaking.
Wednesday June 29, 2016 from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM
AIA East Bay 1405 Clay Street, Oakland, CA 94612
How Much: $20
Contact Sidney Sweeney
AIA East Bay
510-464-3600
events@aiaeb.org
Week 3
Reading for this week : “LAs on what Architects should know about Landscape Architecture." No response necessary, but feel free to turn one in if you'd like.
From "Design with Nature", this aerial perspective is the outcome of an overlay procedure involving paper maps, transparent sheets and pens. The theory: site, flora and fauna are naturalized to such a degree that one can translate from one to the other. The investigation: what are the best conditions for human habitation/interaction in an area? McHarg develops a cosmology and an ethic to support humankind as stewards of the biosphere and offers a practical technique for landscape planning.
Week 2
Reading for this week:
"On Values," Design with Nature, Ian McHarg. Please prepare a 1/3 page double-spaced, typed response for each reading, due at the beginning of the next class.
Not necessary for you to read, but Michael Laurie's beginning chapter in his textbook about landscape architecture has a reasonable summary of what a landscape architect engages in. Even with technological advances, greater environmental pressures and increased sensitivity to social justice, much of the description still holds true today.
Laurie also has a good summary of "Gardens in History." McHarg touches on the evolutionary stages of humankind's positioning with respect to natural landscape (pgs 70-75 in "On Values")- this chapter may help you understand his references better.
Week 1
Please email your photos of a natural landscape by Sunday evening midnight.
Reading:
The Poetics of Gardens, Charles Moore
In case it's helpful to you, I prepared this reading guide for my USF undergrads.
Civilizing Terrains, Bill Moorish - Please just skim this reading. It's part of a longer treatise. The excerpt is meant to give you a taste of how landscape architects draw and think about ideas.
Please prepare a 1/2- page double-spaced, typed response for each reading, due at the beginning of the next class. Please consider the response to be a part of a journal as you are discovering the different arenas that landscape can take on. I am not grading these per se- only assisting you to uncover ideas and to formulate opinions.