A class trip to San Francisco not only confirmed what Eion Donelan ’19 wanted to do after graduating but also gave him a better sense of what it means to be a landscape architect.
Donelan, who now works as a landscape designer in Denver for Confluence Landscape Architecture and Planning, said the trip, and others, allowed him to experience the world through different lenses, providing perspectives necessary to be a thoughtful designer.
“The immediate impact of the San Francisco trip showed me the importance of landscape architecture and how we shape the environment in response to the people,” Donelan said. “It left me with this feeling of wanting more, with a nudge toward graduate school. The delayed impact of the trip was a targeted understanding of what I wanted to do professionally. A better understanding and purpose.”
That was what Don Burger, an associate professor and coordinator of the landscape architecture program, wanted to hear about the decision to incorporate an urban design studio into the curriculum.
The idea came about when South Dakota State University opened its School of Design in July 2015. While one product of the school was the Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree, another was an opportunity to provide students with a new experience.
Started in Chicago
Initially, that experience was a trip to Chicago. After Donelan’s trip to San Francisco, the urban design studio students chose to visit Nashville, Tennessee, and Charleston, South Carolina, in subsequent years. In fall 2020, they made a trip to Miami.
“We needed to give them a domestic travel experience that was affordable, and yet far enough away to provide the benefit of being away and seeing what else is out there,” Burger said. “We’ve found our students are kind of insular in terms of mindset, outlook and prospects when looking to the future.
“They want to stay in South Dakota, but there are times when we can take them elsewhere and show they can be successful there, too,” he continued. “We don’t want to export all of our talent, but I think it’s healthy to export some of it because eventually they look at coming back and bringing other perspectives and skills learned with them.”
Burger said the class, which is all seniors, identifies a particular site for a project, addresses a problem and makes change.
“It’s very intentional,” he said. “They’re going with the mindset of doing something to make it a better place—a better place to live, a better place to play, a better place to work, a better place to engage with neighbors. Whatever it is, it’s going to make it a better place.”
Plans in Miami
The 2021 class chose the Miami neighborhoods of Allapattah, Brickell, Coconut Grove, Edgewater, Little Havana, Little Haiti, Model City, Overtown and Wynwood. The students primarily focused on creating parks or similar areas where people can gather but some added apartments or tried to connect the parks to living or shopping areas.
The class is not a capstone, which takes place the following semester. However, students can continue the urban design studio project as their capstone project, if so inclined.
The students research which city area to update. They then contact community leaders to determine if the area is suitable for a project and schedule a meeting to get a firsthand perspective of the community. Once the project is done, the students deliver a presentation to the rest of the class and record one for the community leaders.
“We’re trying to address an issue or problem through design. We’re not necessarily trying to solve the issue but get community input. I think that has evolved and very successfully,” Burger said, noting none of the projects have been implemented. However, a project in Nashville sparked multiple conversations about its food deserts.
“I definitely thought about more issues that I had never thought about before,” said Kiana Metzger, who is from Rock Rapids, Iowa. “I learned how to properly analyze, look at history and use the ways we have learned to design to make a better start on design.”
Site visit beneficial
Not visiting Charleston in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the importance of site visits. In fact, without a site visit, Tegan Feye’s idea of creating a drifting park in Model City, Florida, would not have happened.
A drifting park is a track that allows drivers to make a car spin sideways, intentionally causing the driver to oversteer, in order to achieve a drift state.
Feye originally planned to update the area’s streetscapes. After realizing the sidewalks were narrow and there weren’t many trees, a walk with classmate Jedediah Vissia changed his plans.
“When visiting the neighborhood, I started to see tire marks everywhere. I talked with Jed, and we saw this as a problem,” said Feye, who moved from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Sioux Falls five years ago. “We saw they do racing and drifting so I decided to give them a space that’s unique to do it.
“I think the drifting park would help the community by creating jobs and giving the younger generation their own sense of place,” he continued. “I started to design the park and our professors suggested closing a road to make a space for drag racing. And after an in-class presentation, someone suggested making mini parks in the drifting park space, so I added a mini-soccer field and a water park.”
Think big
Students said Burger pushes them to think big, even if it’s not feasible. However, even he was impressed by Feye’s idea.
“I think the key difference is Tegen went with his eyes open knowing that he was going to do a design afterward for something. He was able to take that opportunity and actually do something incredibly creative and interesting and fun,” Burger said.
Also fun was Jeff Scott’s underwater snorkel park. The design incorporated a buffer to reduce the environmental impact on nearby coral reefs.
“My time at SDSU has prepared me for this project by always having an open mindset when dissecting and problem-solving a site that needs an innovation,” said Scott, who is from Lee’s Summit, Missouri. “I have also been reminded that landscape architecture is a wide field to go into, creating many options for us to impact the environment and communities.”
Vissia, from Plankinton, said previous classes taught him how to select plants for his designs while incorporating pedestrian traffic and how many people can fit in a space.
“I think I can learn a lot from it; either just the experience itself or from mistakes,” he said. “While I’m not making this for them to actually put into place—I mean they very well could, if they really wanted to—but to stretch the limits and see what the area’s capable of and what I’m capable of building in the area.”
The students are not the only ones who have benefited from the urban design studio.
“I’ve become a more empathetic designer because I’ve experienced some of these differences with the students. We do other things in that city. When the students come back and share their experiences, their stories, it really opens your eyes,” Burger said. “We make a difference and made an impact in Miami.
“Over and over and over again, the students said these people just can’t believe other people care enough to come all the way from South Dakota to ask them questions about their neighborhood. The fact we’re showing that we care about them and their situation, it can’t help change you for the better. We’re becoming more empathetic, more willing to be mindful of what’s happening in communities, especially in Brookings. And I think it helps the students see how important the work that we do actually is.”
And Donelan is an example of its success.
“We explored people and place, culture and environment, weaving together to form the urban fabric of San Francisco. I’ll say it again, the importance of landscape architecture is how we shape the environment in response to its inhabitants,” he said.
–Matt Schmidt
