Recreation & Open Space

Service-Learning Projects Serve as Studio’s Centerpiece

In fall 2017, Dr. Ole Sleipness again taught the Recreation Design and Open Space Planning studio. Undergraduate and graduate students engaged in a range of project scales and types, while developing and refining their technical skills in site engineering, circulation design, and graphic representation—all while tackling contemporary design challenges. As always, service-learning projects served as the studio’s centerpiece.

Students gathered at Red Rock Pass in Idaho.

The semester’s largest project was for Salt Lake City’s Folsom Corridor, an urban industrial area through which City Creek currently flows via culvert. Students developed a detailed analysis of the corridor’s potential for open space and recreation-based urban development between the downtown Gateway and Jordan River. Following a detailed analysis of the area’s historic development, infrastructural challenges, and demographic dimensions, students worked with LAEP alumna Jan Striefel (BLA, 1978) and Brian Tonetti of the Seven Canyons Trust to develop a range of design alternatives for recreational amenities along a daylighted City Creek. The project provided an awesome opportunity for LAEP students to work with alumni and community partners, to exercise their design skills in a very urban context, and to visualize design’s potential to transform an area’s existing conditions into a preferred future.

As a counterpoint to this urban setting, students also experienced the vast landscapes of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. As part of their engagement with the landscape, they stayed in West Yellowstone, Montana, learned about landscape architecture’s rich history of design within both national parks, and continued design activities within gateway communities, documenting their observations through photography and sketching. The experience provided a rich opportunity for sharpening students’ observational skills within one of the most breathtaking public land settings in the world.

Students participate in a sketch exercise on a field trip.

Exciting projects await students Fall 2018. Dr. Sleipness is looking forward to future collaboration with colleagues, alumni, community partners, and of most of all: LAEP’s outstanding students.

Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning | InSites 2018