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Detail Of Two Cities: Utilizing Urban Analysis And Recombination As The First Project In The Fundamental Design Studio, John Maze

Proceedings of the 18th National Conference on the Beginning Design Student

In the fundamental design studio, I have been using two disparate cities from dramatically distinct topological and topographical situations as the protagonists in an American urban love story. Students dissect the essential structure and quality of each city into discernible layers of data, and speculate about the similarities and differences between the two. Then collaboratively, students "mate" the cities together to form an offspring city that contains the "genetic" layers of data from its parents. The teams of collaborators must critically transform both cities into one, designing the insertions and overlays from one into the other at the regional scale, …