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Staff Forum gathers first time Jan. 26
Access, quality are issues in 98 legislature
Metro bus route proposal clarified
Nominees sought for staff award
Regents pass new statement on diversity
Hearing: It's a more complex process than we realize
Advisory group begins search for Bothell dean
Senate Meeting Agenda
Value-added education: Landscape students learn by doing in design/build studios
Value-added education: Landscape students learn by doing in design/build studios
Varey Memorial Garden
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Professional training in the Department of Landscape Architecture is rediscovering what the Renaissance masters knew—designing and building are part of one process. The department is a national leader in training landscape architects in the modern design/build Renaissance and giving back to the local community in the process.
Since genius craftsmen Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci helped give birth to the design profession, their hands-on approach of designing and constructing projects had gradually drifted into two very separate disciplines. However, experience shows that designing and building is a circular, not linear process and bringing the two back together can improve environmental designs and finished projects. A few innovative professional schools of landscape architecture, including the UW College of Architecture and Urban Planning, are training landscape architects in both creativity and craftsmanship, and providing valuable spaces for many communities.
The UW is one of four universities in the nation with a design/build program for landscape architecture students. Recent projects will be published in Landscape Architecture magazine featuring straw construction.
The landscape architecture program, the youngest of the programs to enter the design/build arena, has three projects under its belt, according to Daniel Winterbottom, the landscape architecture assistant professor who has taught each of the design/build studios. The projects have taught students much more than they could have learned if they had stopped at either the drawing or model-building stages. They have learned how to modify their creative ideas without sacrificing the design intent to meet the constant realities of client interests, team decision-making, and time and money limitations. In other words, student dreams come face-to-face with the real world, and they learn to make effective compromises.
"It is a great way to teach advanced students," Winterbottom says. "At the end of a studio, they have accomplished something tangible. They have gained confidence in themselves as young professionals and confidence in the value of their education.
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Model of intergenerational playground
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"Students not only become better designers by getting firsthand building experience, they learn collaboration and communications skills that are different than those learned in a classroom," he said. "And, they give something lasting back to the community."
The tangible contributions Winterbottom's design/build landscape architecture students have made to the Seattle neighborhoods and their own education include:
Doubling the size of the Gordon and Mary Varey Memorial Garden. Students added four major plantings including an ornamental grasses garden, a woodland garden, a medicinal garden and a garden to attract butterflies. In addition they built a wooden walkway that floats above the sunken gardens providing access from a social gathering space to a covered, contemplative area. Pavers include text from the memorial service honoring the Vareys. Gordon Varey was dean of the college from 1982 to 1992 and a well-respected Seattle architect. The garden is located on the south side of Gould Hall on 15th Avenue Northeast and is visited by the public, UW faculty and staff and the college.
An intergenerational playground at Providence Mount St. Vincent Nursing Center and Assisted Living Apartments in West Seattle. The center has living quarters for elderly residents plus a children's daycare facility. The playground the students built is a place where the elderly and children can meet, learn from each other and explore the outdoor environment together.
An outdoor classroom and activities center for the children's daycare center at UW married student housing, located south of Magnuson Park. Studio participants faced some tough design challenges—a steeply sloping site, the vagaries of using experimental sustainable materials, and incorporating an educational native plant garden for environmental education that appeals to young children. The result: a 20' by 20' hectangle timber frame, a straw bale seating wall that was decorated with the preschoolers' handprints that provides the students and teachers with an outdoor class that also functions as a play structure. A bridge connects the structure to the main childcare building allowing disability access.
Children's daycare center outdoor classroom at UW married student housing at Sandpoint.
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The next landscape architecture design/build will be closer to home. In the spring students will design and build a water collection system to irrigate an edible garden at the former Husky Den, which is being transformed into the college's community design center. Plans are to use arbors and vertical gardens to create a of sustainable/irrigated urban garden. But the learning won't end with tackling the landscape architectural questions raised by designing and building a sustainable urban garden. This project will be an interdisciplinary effort with the School of Social Work and the University District Youth Ministry to bring street youths and senior citizens together with landscape architecture students sharing a mutual interest in gardening.
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Daniel Winterbottom, UW landscape architecture assistant professor, applies stucco on straw bale construction for the children's outdoor classroom at UW married student housing, Sandpoint.
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"All three groups can share their interest in gardening as well as being part of something that they will want to be stewards of after it's finished," Winterbottom said. "The design/build model solves several problems: The community gets social and ecological amenities for little expense, students learn to design and implement a project with real time and budget limitations. It is the difference between thinking about something and making it happen. It's public outreach and good education."
Being a professional school at both the bachelor's and master's level makes the design/build studio an essential part of the educational process, according to Iain Robertson, chair of the UW Department of Landscape Architecture. "Our students intend to use their degrees professionally. They need to know how best to do something," Robertson said. "Design/build studios are invaluable in learning things you just can't learn in a classroom and in cementing the knowledge one does learn in a classroom. It is also public outreach. We can work with communities on specific projects and we can educate the public on how to work effectively with designers on other projects they may become involved with. We end up with better informed landscape architects and better informed clients."
The design/build approach passes the final test of its value in students' reaction, Robertson says. "I am continually impressed at how inspired our students are to work incredibly hard on these projects." ¶
Nedra Floyd Pautler
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