3rd Year Fall 19
Kent State University | College of Architecture and Environmental Design
ARCH 30101: Third Year Design Studio I—FALL 19
‘I would like to assert a more relational definition of migration as patterned movement across space and time. We can then look beyond the movement of individuals or species to the migration of landscapes. A landscape migrates when its unique assembly of components — the materials, entities, and actors that define it — shifts such that, over time, a new assembly forms. Qualitatively different landscapes can and do manifest upon a single geographic terrain.’
Brett Milligan, Landscape Migration: Environmental Design in the Anthropocene
Pretext
Relationships between humanity and the environment are becoming more synthetic, and divisions between nature and artifice, less distinct. The studio investigated different spatial, affective and material techniques that challenge, intensify or defend existing urban ecological systems. Students were asked to develop design propositions for a new Cleveland Rowing Foundation facility that prioritized environmental agency and enriched ecological and cultural conditions of place. Projects foregrounded the interplay between water and ground; craft and industry; environmental stewardship and recreational play. Novel interfaces between humans and natural habitat were probed to test new conditions of active recreation and ecological landscape.
The center was developed to serve the riverfront rowing community while also educating the public on methods of ecological restoration for the industrial valley. The merging of riverfront recreation and environmental agency drove design proposals in ways that incited public interest in environmental concerns and the natural ecology.
