Announcements

The Landscape Totems: Speculations on Growth and Decay

This research, by Kristi Dykema, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture, explored the disconnect between the perceived need to build permanent environments and the inability to maintain them in the face of forces of change. Using a visual dialogue about the impact of change over time in occupied landscapes, it aimed to illustrate the capacity to adapt for survival through the act of building.

Since all efforts to create permanence inevitably fail in the face of processes of human-induced or natural growth and decay, the essence of placemaking involves both physical acts of appropriation and the search for mythic order; in this regard, the technical act of inhabitation will always need a narrative to sustain it.

Using only a brief annotative text, the work involved the transformation of three case studies into mythic tales told through photos and drawings. In Queensland, Australia, a crew of cowboys spends nine months moving a herd of 130,000 cattle from the north of the Thorntonia Cattle Station to the south, then back again, using only portable steel fences. In Lamont, California, a private farm struggles to assert itself against a heavy-handed infrastructure that is slowly choking out productive land in the name of regional order. And in New Orleans, the rebuilding of the Lower Ninth Ward creates conditions where the willful abandonment of restraint must be confronted. Each case provides a story about Ground and those who think of themselves as Keepers of Place. As they learn the language of change, the unmitigated optimism of such ordinary people transforms fear into brief moments of balance.

The jury was impressed by the beautiful, evocative quality of the work, which was aimed more at inspiring future design than quantifying present conditions. The work explicitly conceived itself as an attempt to move beyond conventional methods for documenting existing conditions. It set out instead to create a collection of generative pieces examining the relationship between design and the inevitability of change, between built forms and such intangible yet influential variables as memory, fear, evolution and time.

School of Landscape Architecture to Honor founder Robert "Doc" Reich

The College of Art and Design is pleased to announce that the School of Landscape Architecture will now be named the Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture in honor of the founder of the school, Robert "Doc" Reich.

In celebration, we invite you to the LSU School of Landscape Architecture Naming Ceremony and Reception on October 27th from 5:00 to 8:00 PM in the Design Building Atrium. The formal naming ceremony will begin at 5:30 PM in the Design Auditorium Room 103. Refreshments and fellowship will follow. We hope you will join us in commemorating the Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture.

Landscape Architecture Gets Grant to Go Mobile

Students in LSU's School of Landscape Architecture will have more opportunities than ever to hone their skills out in the field, thanks to a $130,000 grant from the Louisiana State Board of Regents that will be used to help fund a mobile design studio.

As its name implies, the mobile design studio will be a portable studio complete with the latest in high-tech design equipment that will enable students to more effectively participate in community outreach projects. Already, students are involved in several such projects, designing parks, playgrounds, school yards and urban green spaces in needy areas.

"This will enable them to do so much more," says Elizabeth Mossop, director of the LSU School of Landscape Architecture. "It's all about getting the students out of the classroom and into the real world, designing community-driven projects for public landscapes."

The studio will be a key component of the School's Urban Landscape Lab, an initiative through which students and faculty undertake design projects in needy communities. Since the hurricanes of 2005, the Urban Landscape Lab has primarily been involved in projects in flood-damaged neighborhoods of New Orleans like the Lower 9th Ward, New Orleans East and Gentilly. The Urban Landscape Lab has also undertaken projects in rural areas in south central Louisiana that were affected by Hurricane Rita.

Funds from the grant will specifically be used to purchase high-tech equipment for the mobile design studio, including computers, plotters, plasma screens and oversized digital design tablets. As of yet, the studio does not have a physical home, but School administrators hope to find one in the coming months and plan to have the studio operational by early 2008.