So I guess this means that I am back in school now, now that we have almost reached week six. It has been almost too hot to study so far, so now that the weather is cooling down, I am willing to talk about school. Alison and I are both taking two courses - Urban Futures and Designing Sustainable Communities. Both are very interesting and related to the other.
So far for Designing Sustainable Communities we have had four lectures, five seminars, and a self-guided field trip to Mount Barker. Mount Barker is a small town of 18,000 outside Adelaide where a lot of families live and then commute to Adelaide for work. It has been predicted that there will be two times the amount people living in Mount Barker in 20 years as there are now. Our job was to go to Mount Barker and experience the current character of the 'country town' and see where the predicted growth boundary is. So, Alison and I walked around with our cameras and took pictures of Mount Barker. We weren't overly impressed with a lot of it, but there was definitely some potential! The project that we are doing over the semester is interesting though, and I am also excited to be doing one design project per semester here instead of two. At home we would generally do two, which is great practice, but I am looking forward to spending more time getting to know Mount Barker and focus on one design in more detail. The whole project is broken up into different sections or road marks - analysis, design framework, and master planning - which we have to complete over our stay here in Adelaide. The lectures in this class are given by guest lecturers and have generally been very good. However, every once in a while I come out of class with a lot of bottled emotions because I have felt that both sides of the storey aren't always taught (and it is something that I have a lot of passion about). This is okay, it just means that I have realized which topics I would like to stand up for.
Urban Futures is a geography course that explores the future of urban areas. It has so far talked about housing diversity and spatial (in)equalities, transport oriented design (a huge thing down here!), and the history and theory behind some of Australia's cities. I have done the My City slideshow and tutorial readings so far for this class, which have all opened my eyes to how much location and spatial organization have to do with the future of urban areas.
I like school here. At first I thought it was very similar to at home, but the more I go to class, the more I realize that it is actually quite different. I feel that at Guelph we are all a part of the same family in SEDRD, but here there is no real space that feels like I belong to. It is not a depressing thing, it is just how the school is set up. There are Architecture and Landscape Architecture students, and students who are not sure which they prefer yet all in the same building. The classes are taken by a mix of students, so there really isn't a constant in the sense of seeing familiar faces. I don't feel like anybody other than those in my classes know who we are and that we aren't from here. I guess we just kind of blend in. Fine, let us blend! The point is, I like school at home and I like the way we have our own studio with critiques from our own professors who are always willing to help us grow as people and designers. Thank you everybody at home - you even make me miss your lectures and school work!
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