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Paradise Redux: Urban Design Assignments, Part Two, Kent Macdonald

Project Description and Assignments

The next assignment asked the students to start trying to make sense of what they’d seen and learned about Paradise. There were three steps: an individual task that asked them to list noteworthy features of the town and possible mitigations or enhancements to those features; a small-group effort to brainstorm possible planning scenarios; and finally, a whole-class effort to reach consensus around a vision for the town’s future.

Paradise Redux: Urban Design Assignments, Part One, Kent Macdonald

Project Description and Assignments

This initial group of assignments lays out the planning-related tasks the students undertook in the first weeks of the course.

The first task was to gather basic background information on Paradise. The second was to make precedent studies of eight significant town-planning or large-scale projects realized over the past 90 years or so. The last task was a figure-ground exercise, based on Giambattista Nolli’s famous map of Rome in 1748, that would allow them to compare the precedents’ formal organizations with each other and with Paradise.

Paradise Redux, Kent Macdonald

Project Description and Assignments

This document lays out the two types of work that the students undertook over the course of six months: the creation of overarching planning guidelines and the development of architectural proposals for specific sites in Paradise.

The planning work was a group effort lasting about five weeks. In small teams at first, the students did research on the town, as well as some historical planning precedents. Later, they came together to establish explicit goals and an armature for the town’s reconstruction.

Following the initial phase, the students – working alone – chose project sites and building types, which they then …