Engaging with the varied dynamic processes that shape urban public space along the waterfront in Baton Rouge.
Studio: LA 7001, Graduate Landscape Design I, LSU Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture, 2015
Instructor: Forbes Lipschitz
Description:
This course begins a four-semester set of studios that build sequentially in scale,complexity, and theoretical content. The first studio investigates issues of scale, terrain, composition,vegetation, and varied dynamic processes that shape urban public space along the waterfront in Baton Rouge.
The studio is comprised of 3 different design exercises to be completed in sequence, with supporting examinations of various theories and methods of representation. The project focuses on the relationship between topography, water level, and circulation in an imagined dynamic, urban riparian edge. This involves transforming a static 30’ retaining wall, into a complex, three-dimensional landform through the cutting and filling of land from the existing topography. The second project focuses on the the manipulation of mass and void to explore the spatial dimensions of field conditions. This involves establishing a ground pattern as the driver of surface materials and vegetation in a small, site-less public space. Exercise 3 builds upon this work and focuses on a site connected to the levee between Main Street and Laurel in downtown Baton Rouge. The task is to conceptualize a new urban square on this site that reconnects the city with the shifting river