Designing Across Scales Conway designers approach landscape challenges at different scales. Instead of focusing on one scale or another—for example, specializing in residential landscape design or regional planning—they see the relationship between these fields. Looking at a small site from a broader perspective explains context, while giving a large plan a closer examination reveals how it might affect individual properties. Our ten-month program introduces this zooming across scales. In the fall term, each student has his or her own small site-design project. Zooming out for the winter term, teams of two or three students work on plans for entire towns, regions, or large tracts of private land. In the spring term, the scope shifts to master plans for intermediate-scale sites such as parks, schools, and city streets. While completing these three projects, each student builds a professional-quality portfolio and gains preparation for a wide variety of careers. FALL-TERM PROJECTS | STARTING WITH SITE DESIGN Following orientation, each student is assigned an individual project selected from local property owners who have requested site-design services. Although they focus on a small area, these fall-term projects are never simple. Students learn design principles through application of a systematic problem-solving process. This involves eliciting and interpreting clients’ needs, developing a proposal for design services, analyzing and assessing site conditions, researching legal constraints, and conceptualizing alternative design solutions. Along the way, students learn to survey and create base maps. The classes and workshops held during the fall term—at
the school and in the field—introduce and reinforce the skills and concepts necessary to complete these site-scale design projects. Each week, students present their progress to faculty and classmates for feedback. These presentations provide an opportunity to integrate their growing understanding of site conditions with new skills in graphic representation and oral presentation. Near the end of the term, clients and a panel of guest critics attend a formal presentation of projects, providing feedback that students then incorporate into their finished products. At the end of the term, students deliver the completed plan sets to their clients.
Groups of students working together learn to use surveying equipment and software to produce a topographic map of their project site.
Professional critics, clients, alums, faculty, and community members attend formal presentations.
6 The Conway School Graduate Program in Sustainable Landscape Planning + Design
