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Valley Drive Senior and Assisted Living Community Design Exploration through the application of process oriented design informed by readings, precedence and field observations/analysis to explore different approaches to site design towards formulating your own design philosophy; and integrating haptic (hand drawing) and digital techniques for presentation of visual communication.  Exploring the site design process, seeking sources of design inspiration, creating a sense of place, and investigating how to create more livable and healthy living environment to meet the special needs of our senior citizen population, places and neighborhoods.

In the third-year landscape design studio, students learn to consider the arrangement of buildings, circulation, and other landscape design elements. Studio topics emphasize earthwork and drainage. The fall 2013 “Shifting Sands” studio explored site design strategies for New York City’s barrier beaches where coastal and urban systems converge, overlay, and instigate new scenarios. New York has a long history of urban beaches from the wild spectacle of Coney Island to the master-planned expanses of Robert Moses’ Jones Beach. The Shifting Sands studio builds on this legacy and speculates on the role of beach parks in the city of the future. The studio focused on site design for more than 80 acres of undeveloped oceanfront property between 32nd Street and 56th Place, south of Rockaway Beach Boulevard in Far Rockaway, New York. This site is the largest parcel of subway-accessible beachfront remaining in the city, representing an important resource for city residents, New York’s ecological networks, and a highly sought-after development parcel. The study of these landscapes mediates the complex relationships between coastal and urban systems, creating opportunities for innovative site strategies to respond to global problems.

Landscape Design III is the third-year landscape architecture studio in the Bachelor of Landscape Architecture program at LSU. The fall 2015 studio explored site design strategies for a wildlife crossing in Calumet, Louisiana. In response to the fatalities resulting from wildlife-vehicular collisions, underpasses and overpasses have been designed and constructed to varying degrees of success. The studio included a field trip to Banff, Alberta, Canada—home to the most iconic  wildlife crossings in the world—and off-campus travel to project sites in order to conduct a range of fieldwork associated with data collection and on-site observation. As design competitions are an increasingly important facet of contemporary landscape architectural practice, this studio followed the structure of the 2010 ARC International Wildlife Crossing Infrastructure Design Competition. Focusing on the site design for a segment of Louisiana Highway 90 near Calumet, where Louisiana black bears are routinely hit by vehicles, students were required to construct a project narrative and visual communication strategy in keeping with the ARC competition brief. They were asked not only to design the crossing itself but also develop a didactic strategy that advances ecological awareness at both local and community scales.

Sweetbear Sugar: The Use of Sugarcane Production for Wildlife Conservancy

by Hagan Doyle, Aidan Gallaugher, and Seth Winkler

Landscape Design IV explores the application of process-oriented design, using writing to explore different approaches of design toward formulating a design philosophy and integrating haptic (hand-drawing) and digital techniques for presentation of visual communication. Students learn to explore the site design process, seek sources of design inspiration, create a sense of place, and investigate how to create more livable and sustainable places and neighborhoods. The spring 2016 studio was a Communication-Intensive certified course by the LSU Communications across the Curriculum program.

Learning objectives include:

1. Knowing how to conduct a site analysis and to document physical features and environmental and seasonal conditions, context, site issues, and design opportunities
2. Knowing how to develop a functional and facilities program, determine area needs and important functional relationships of program elements and the site
3. Being able to prepare one or more circulation diagrams for vehicular and pedestrian needs
4. Understanding the metrics of and being able to apply Accessibility Design Standards and vehicular circulation and parking and pedestrian circulation design criteria
5. Being able to generate inspiration and concepts to inform and generate side design
6. Being able to apply critical thinking through writing and drawing to solve landscape site design and develop skills in writing and drawing toward improving design communication challenges
7. Being effective in communicating design results both graphically and orally to an audience, such as in a design review