The fourth and final core design studio focuses on equipping students with the capacity to engage in the shaping of the built environment of the city through physical urban design—specifically, the physical design of a city’s public realm. The studio imparts students with five fundamental capacities essential to the contemporary practice of landscape architecture in an existing urban setting. These include developing an ability to read and evaluate the built environment and physical urban form; understanding the non-physical systems that structure the built environment; gaining familiarity with the transformative function of the public realm; developing the capacity to define and articulate an urban design proposal; and establishing an elevated familiarity with the built environment of Philadelphia. For the purposes of the studio, students develop proposed interventions through a FRAMEWORK—a collection of interconnected urban elements and actions composed and organized in such a way as to facilitate both short- and long-term urban transformation. Students are asked to take an assets-based approach, emphasizing both recognizable and latent opportunities already present within a community, while affirming the unique characteristics and potential of a place.
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