The Spring 2014 Graduate Masters Project focused on Liberty City, Florida, and leveraged landscape architecture at various scales to address the future of this community’s unique physical and historical qualities and its urban, industrial, and cultural context.
The studio focused on infrastructural elements like water systems, green infrastructure, and pedestrian networks and on how these could be adapted into landscape architecture solutions that aimed to be sustainable while, concurrently, aesthetic, poetic, and meaningful. Changing attitudes and perceptions about landscape’s potential to address urban needs in a place like Liberty City which has historically been defined by extreme disparities in economic well-being, health, food and energy abundance (or lack thereof) can lead to a renewed sense of urban transformation capable of addressing disparities while managing resources more efficiently.
The Master of Landscape Architecture candidates explored how various networks interact, function, and evolve in the urban landscape, with particular attention on how educational institutions like high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools like those in Liberty City can become catalysts for community change. The complement of projects speculate on how to formulate new or significantly transformed urban, ecological, built, and natural frameworks that address the needs and challenges of the area.
The Super Jury for the Master’s Project included:
Leo Alvarez, Design Principal, Perkins + Will, Atlanta
Susannah Drake, Principal, dlandstudio, New York & Cejas Eminent Scholar
Francisco Garcia, Director, City of Miami Planning & Zoning, Miami
Devin Cejas, Principal, WalkLAUD, Miami
Maria Lovett, Director “The Education Effect”
Gianno Feoli, FIU Department of Landscape Architecture Adjunct Faculty
Marta Canaves, FIU Department of Landscape Architecture Associate Professor in Design
Ebru Ozer, FIU Department of Landscape Architecture Assistant Professor
Roberto Rovira, FIU Department of Landscape Architecture Chair and Associate Professor
The Master Project Super Jury award recipients will be announced in Fall 2014 and a selection of projects are on view in CARTA’s International BEA Gallery.
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