Studio Project leads to a larger question

[Jason Granado]

**I think this is the right section**

Greetings everyone Im going to try to update this post as much as i can as my project keeps evolving

 

background of me:

Virginia Tech Graduate student in the washington alexandria architecture center

MLA 2nd year

undergrad in architecture from florida A&M

 

my design studio this year is looking at the “CIVIL WAR DEFENSE SYSTEM OF WASHINGTON DC”

pretty interesting topic but pretty difficult.

background of project:

there are 68 forts that make of the civil war defense of washington dc. only 18 are under the national park service, these 18 are the ones we are focusing on, they are all in different level of use. there are some with fort ruins on them some with programs( dog park) and some that seem that they have been abandoned and are totally overgrown.  all of the parks share massive earthwork remnants that is still seen throughout all the sites.

 

what i am looking at doing is getting rid of the boring static signs of the NPS that marks the sites. and creating a landscape that each fort shares but can be modified to fit the different forts. his leads to my question of branding within the landscape architects. and how do we as landscape architects brand the world?

[Jordan Lockman]

 

That is a really open ended question? Look at the prototype drawings that retail and hotel chains put together. On them you would see a planting plan. That does not list specific plants, but style and size of plants. It would say show a shade tree at this location, flowering shrub at another spot. On the site plan, the signage, lighting, colors, hard-scape dimensions, and so on all are similar or are of a particular style/brand.

When you walk up to a Walmart you probably notice/subconsciously expect certain things about the sites that are all uniform. That is intentional, look at these similarities as a cue to understand how the commercial world does their branding through site design.

The NPS even has their way of branding that is not as trendy, but works just as well. They have similar signage, lighting, path dimensions, etc.

[Kevin J. Gaughan]

Jason, I actually worked on a project in my junior studio very much related to this at the University of Maryland. It was called Fort Circle Park, and the intent was to create a 22 mile greenway connecting all of the existing forts still on NPS property, and showing where NPS should try to acquire more land through some envisioning site design. I am excited to hear more about your progress through this project.

[Jason Granado]

Yep same project but im not concentrated on fort circle park persay, im not looking to connect them physically but more so brand them with a common theme. at least thats what im after this moment.

 

my biggest hurdle right now is trying to find out what category do the forts fall into: they are all under the NPS but the NPS has sub category:

national monument

national park

national seashore

and so on…..

 

im just unsure which cat the forts fall under.

 

Ill update this post a little more today.

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