Outreach Studios
Outreach studios provide an opportunity to involve students with hands-on service-learning projects. These projects involve real world sites, clients and interaction with community members and officials. This experience provides much enthusiasm and energy amongst students, faculty and the communities they serve.
Examples of Outreach Studio Work
Re-Visualizing The Rebels: A University of Rhode Island Landscape Architecture and South Kingstown High School Collaboration
Project Summary:
South Kingstown High School is a 15 acre campus with buildings and parking areas covering a large portion of the property. The concept of clean-up days led to this collaboration aimed at creating a vision for a greener, less impacting high school environment. Students from the high school, teachers, officials and members of the community met with the landscape architecture students, to share their views about what was important and needed for the densely developed property. The design class developed 5 master plans that illustrate a range of ideas for creating a greener, more connected South Kingstown High School.
Click here to view the project report online (Adobe Flashplayer required)
Click here to download the project report (PDF, 8.16MB)
A Vision for a Sustainable Narragansett Bay Campus, URI:
Project Summary:
This senior landscape architecture design studio focused on providing two master plans for the University of Rhode Island’s Bay Campus. A stakeholder group that included faculty, researchers, staff and administrators from the GSO and other Bay Campus facilities participated in a work shop, an open charrette and public meetings in order to develop a coherent low impact campus. The students focused on introducing green infrastructure, improving circulation, maintaining views and developing a sequence of spaces and connections highlighting the site’s history, its missions and unique location.
Click here to view the project report online (Adobe Flashplayer required)
Click here to download the project report (PDF, 6.44MB)
The Greene School: A Comprehensive Design Manual, W. Greenwich, RI
Project Summary:
The Greene School, located in West Greenwich, RI is a proposal for a charter school which develops the culture of personal, community, and global stewardship using a curriculum centered on direct experiences with environmental science, and the technology that affects the natural world.
Click here to see the final report: The Greene School
Fishermen's Memorial, Narragansett, RI
Project Summary:
This studio project focused on ecologically responsible design approaches incorporating low impact development methods through the utilization of best management practices for an RV campground located in the coastal community of Narragansett, Rhode Island.
Click here to see the final report: Fishermen's Memorial
Gingerella Sports Complex, Westerly, RI
Park Design: Jesse DeFalco '10
RIDOT Courtyard, Providence,RI
Courtyard Design: Alice Donovan '11
Student Profile
Catherine Druken ‘13
Hometown: Newport, RI
Design and nature, all wrapped up in a single package. That was the appeal of landscape architecture as a career for art- and outdoor-lover Catherine. And at URI, landscape architecture hasn’t been the only thing that’s gotten her outside. From camping and rock climbing with the Outing Club, to local city projects with the URI student chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects to community outreach projects, Catherine’s had a lot of inspiration and opportunity to be creative and learn more about what design means to her. Though she’s always been an avid gardener, her experiences at URI have inspired her to take her passion one big step forward. She’s pursuing a career designing urban park-farms and teaching communities about the value of sustainable local agriculture in response to rising food prices.
Braden Drypolcher '12
Bow, New Hampshire
During the course of travelling the world and filling his passport, Braden began to notice that others around the globe seemed not to notice the natural beauty that he saw all around him. He became passionate about not only visiting such places, but also creating and preserving them. That passion led him to turn to landscape architecture - the perfect blend of his love of stewardship, science and art. And he says the landscape architecture program at URI offers “a tremendous technical education while inspiring a sense of design that has far surpassed my expectation.” Now, he wants to build a career creating spaces that simultaneously educates while instilling in others a sense of place and stewardship for beauty. He’s beginning that journey during his paid internship designing and developing a new quad at URI’s Narragansett Bay Campus.
