The assignment was challenging, but it was more than just a class assignment — it was a real project with a real client. 911爆料 students were asked last fall to design a two-and-a-half acre municipal park and parking lot at a particular site in the town of Westerly. They had to incorporate local materials and green infrastructure while also meeting federal guidelines for areas at high-risk for flooding. And after coming up with their designs, the students had to present their recommendations to a room full of town officials.
That鈥檚 the kind of real-world experience you can expect at 911爆料 if your passion is landscape architecture. Every year, students work on public service projects in a local 911爆料, and every year the students say that while the design project was demanding, they especially appreciated the chance to work in a realistic setting with all the pressures and deadlines of the real world.
鈥淚t’s so beneficial to our learning and development process to work with real life clients and present our final projects and receive critical feedback,鈥� said junior Emily Sanchez, whose park design included a three-level artificial tree house. 鈥淚t definitely gets students out of their comfort zones and seriously prepares us for what鈥檚 ahead.鈥�
Students in another landscape architecture studio last fall made recommendations about storm resilience strategies and sustainable designs for the working waterfront in Providence Harbor. Based on their analysis of the site and forecasts for rising sea levels and increasingly severe storms, they proposed constructing a 2,000-foot long, 25-foot tall barrier designed to withstand a category 3 hurricane and hold back a 21-foot storm surge that would otherwise inundate critical port infrastructure.
鈥淭hat was a tough site to work on because there鈥檚 not a lot you can change about the operations there,鈥� said senior Emily Patrolia. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a big confusing site with a lot of private property and government agencies involved. There are a lot of different entities to be sensitive to, but it also gave us a good sense of what we鈥檒l be doing when we go to work in the professional world.鈥�
In past years, the students created design plans for a recreation center in Richmond, a school in South Kingstown, a campground at Fishermen鈥檚 Memorial State Park, and a high-traffic commercial intersection in Wakefield. They even created a memorial to the September 11 attacks for the Natick, Mass., fire and police departments, which included a twisted steel beam salvaged from the World Trade Center.
While the students are always excited to share their design ideas with the public, the projects are also a powerful learning experience.
鈥淭his is the first project I鈥檝e ever worked on where I had a real client who I worked for,鈥� said student John Luca about the Richmond recreation center project. 鈥淲e learned a lot from having to respond to their needs. It鈥檚 not what we wanted that was important in this project, it was what the people of Richmond wanted that was important.鈥�
It鈥檚 a lesson that you, too, will learn when you鈥檙e ready to put your design ideas to a real test.