Winter 2003

Departments

Exchange

Around the Pond

Extended Family

Great Sport

North 40

Arts

Books

Freeze-frame

Features

All my best friends are here

One giant molecule

I learnt to dream of Sicily

The Landscape Beautiful

Feature

City Delivery

STILL "GAZING UPWARD": UPP (Urban Places Project) students carry on the Waugh vision. Left to right: Don Hettrick '03, Professor Henry Lu, Rich Houghton '03, Jason Diauto '03, Thomas and Monica Spruell (owners of the Family Kitchen), Gemma Baro-Montes '03 THE URBAN DESIGN STUDIO COURSE is intended to push seniors out of the “ivory tower” and into what Professor Henry Lu calls “the real neighborhoods.” On judgment day last semester, otherwise known as gallery presentation day, students showed their designs, complete with detailed construction specifications for materials, demolition, grading and drainage – what landscape architects call “the deliverables.” Seniors in Lu’s studio had immersed themselves in the history, culture and physical realities of the McKnight neighborhood near Springfield’s Mason Square. They focused on the Bay Street corridor, a residential area of Victorian homes interspersed with what once were and could perhaps again be small parks. They identified areas that held potential as neighborhood gateways and green spaces. Working with their client, the McKnight Neighborhood Council, they met with residents and business people, researched the area’s heritage and developed design concepts. The course is part of the Urban Places Project (UPP), through which Lu and other professors and students in the department over the past five years have contributed services to various areas of Springfield such as the riverfront. Winner of nine awards from the university and professional organizations, the UPP outreach project was put on a formal basis last year with funding by the City of Springfield and UMass. The collaboration allows the city “to tap into the design and planning expertise” of the department, says Lu, while giving students and faculty “a real-life urban laboratory to conduct service-learning courses.” In the second half of the course, things got even “more real.” When neighborhood residents saw the plans, shaded in eye-popping spring green, they were delighted. So much so that they persuaded the class to leave them hanging in the Family Kitchen restaurant on State Street, where patrons could view them. And they gave the students the benefit of a community critique, conveying their concerns about design details, and plunging the students into a new phase, design development, where practical problems get worked out. “You got an idea of what it’s like to work with a client,” said student Seth Kimball ’03. The gallery day presentations demonstrated how students had reworked their designs based on community responses. Another student, Chad Arnold, felt the community critique “opened your eyes to different things” from what comes out in academic critiques. In his design, he removed artistically arranged stepping stones from a grassy area because residents feared playing children would trip on them. Unlike real-world clients, the neighborhood council has no funds to turn the designs and construction documents – which Lu estimates would cost up to $100,000 – into actual landscapes. Lu is exploring a partnership with Springfield Technical Community College, which abuts Mason Square, in which the college’s landscape contracting students would estimate costs and build some part of the UMass students’ designs. Chances are, Lu will work something out. UPP is known to deliver.

[top of page]

The Landscape Beautiful

“Little beauty spots”

City Delivery

LARP: More images