LA 4501 Historic Preservation and Commemoration in the Built Environment
This course broadly covers the history, theory, and practices of historic preservation, with a particular focus on the historical geographies of the American South. Students explore how to identify, investigate, and give voice to the historical narratives of spaces, places, and memories embedded in the built environment. To do this, we will develop diverse definitions of historical significance, survey various archives of information, and experiment with different written, visual, and material practices for spatializing memory.
The class also questions how preservation and acts of memorialization produce public memories, and the politics that surround how the past is remembered. Lastly, it covers the standard practices of professional preservation planning through the National Park Service Heritage Documentation Programs, which includes the Historic American Building Survey, Historic American Landscape Survey, and the Historic American Engineering Record.
Working in collaboration with photography students as partners, landscape architecture students must select three sites within the East Baton Rouge Parish to research and document. Students must choose a building, a landscape, and a structure. For each site students will work together to conduct in-depth research and produce visual evidence. Partners work closely with each other sharing their knowledge, skills, and understanding so that each party feels confident in working in new ways. This means landscape architecture students should make photographs as well, and photography students should also be conducting research.
Class is in conjunction with Art 4941 Special Topics in Photography.
LA 4001 Landscape Design V
The fourth-year landscape design studio focuses on landscape planning and design from the regional to the site-development scale. The studio places emphasis on generating planning and design strategies for urbanization and development that are informed by an understanding of the ecology and culture of the region and based on principals of sustainability. The fall 2013 “Delta Divides” studio explored the agricultural, industrial, economic, and cultural landscapes of the Mississippi Delta region. The Delta is an ideal testing ground for exploring the paradigm of urbanization and rural decline. The objective of the studio is to identify latent resources as well as untapped opportunities for design intervention to empower these struggling communities.
LA 4001 Landscape Design V: Research-Based Therapeutic Landscape Design
Taking advantage of the visiting instructor’s status as an evidence-based healthcare garden design specialist, the fall 2015 studio taught by Marie M. Bickham Chair Kathleen Bogaski focused on the physical, psychological, perceptual, and cultural influences of therapeutic garden design, emphasizing the design of gardens and landscapes for restoration, rehabilitation, discovery/learning, and other sensory/therapeutic stimuli. Students reviewed the scientific theories and research used as a basis for the general site design guidelines for a variety of healthcare garden projects, and they reviewed the patient-specific guidelines covering the major patient categories ranging from burn and psychiatric patients to hospice and Alzheimer’s patients, among others. Students explored the different types of healthcare gardens, plant material selection by use and specialized garden design, materials, and construction strategies to meet the special needs of users, funding sources, and healthcare sustainable site design and were introduced to the post-occupancy evaluation process/evidence-based performance evaluations for these specific project types.
Students traveled to Portland, Oregon, where they visited a memory garden for Alzheimer patients and five Legacy Health System facilities, including a wide variety of well-designed therapeutic gardens serving staff and users of the Oregon Burn Center, children’s hospital, birthing center, and rehabilitation facilities. Read more about restorative gardens here.
LA 4008 Advanced Topics Studio: Agri>Coastal
Using a telescopic approach to research and design, the aim of the Agri>Coastal studio was to develop scenarios, typologies, and generative spatial principals to restore nutrient balance in the Mississippi River Basin. Every summer, hypoxia threatens the economic and ecological vitality of the northern Gulf of Mexico, the nation’s largest and most productive fishery. Excessive nutrients, primarily from agricultural inputs, flow from the Mississippi-Atchafalaya River Basin into the northern Gulf of Mexico, where they deplete oxygen levels and cause seasonal “dead zones.” By linking upland agricultural systems to coastal hydrologies and ecologies, this course developed a new framework for nutrient cycling in the Mississippi River Basin.
Using data supplied by the LSU School of the Coast & Environment and the LSU AgCenter, students researched nutrient and hydrological systems, diagrammed and mapped site-related real-time data, researched nascent technologies, and proposed speculative regional landscape scenarios. The studio engaged a range of sites throughout the Mississippi-Atchafalaya River Basin and the northern Gulf of Mexico. Students developed spatial literacy and built proficiency in multiple modes of representation including orthographic, axonometric, perspective projection, and physical models. Students honed an iterative working method, translating concept into spatial form; responded effectively to critical feedback; and engaged a culture of critical yet productive peer review.
The Meat Movement
Regenerating the great plains, reducing the dead zone, and reforming the corn industry with a modern twist on historic cattle drives
Greg Dahlke and Abram Eberson
Strategy
Rebuilding a Matrix of Marine Habitat on Oil Rigs
Ran Liu and Shaoli Gan
LA 4101 Advanced Digital Representation
In the advanced digital representation course, students learn advanced techniques in digital representation, such as three-dimensional modeling, terrain modeling, animation, and advanced imaging and rendering.
