1)Victoria’s terrace party.

2) Columbia event on the 31st.

NYC reunion:  Two alumni gathering events are scheduled for the weekend of March 29-31, 2008:

1) March 29 – Victoria Marshall is inviting all UD03 and UD04 alumni to a terrace party in NYC

2) March 31 – Book launch + alumni event for the publication “Designing Patch Dynamics” organized by Victoria Marshall.  The book involved work from some students in U03 and UD04 who took the Baltimore studio.  It is finally going to be published after 4 years in the making!  The book will be used as a starting point to open up a larger discussion on the topic collaboration/transdisciplinary practice.  Victoria would like to have as many UD alumni as possible come to New York and participate in this discussion (or just come and listen/observe).  There will be some invited speakers as well to help engage everyone in the topic. Since the book is based on work of alumni, the event is also an opportunity to discuss how UD theory learned in school may have been applied in the professional practices of graduates.

These events make a perfect excuse for a UD03 reunion!  We can organize other activities too.  Please RSVP.

‘The book Brian and I are launching is called ‘Designing Patch Dynamics’ and it is the product of transdisciplinary research between urban design and ecosystem science based in Baltimore MD. It is published by Columbia University Press. As well as presenting the work of two years of urban design, and one year of architecture studio work, it is balanced with substantial academic essays from our ecologist partners and urban design professors.

It is available from Merritt Books for $19.95 which includes shipping and handling. Contact Merritt Books for e-mail or phone orders.
E-mail: info@merrittbooks.com
Phone:  845-677-5857       
Web: http://www.merrittbooks.com

The studio work happened in 2003 and 2004 and as the students have now been working for a while I want to position the book launch as a jumping off point to inspire our students to invent their own new
integrative practices.

Rather than a theme of collaboration I still like the Guattari text on ‘transdiciplinary metamethodology’- the idea that to work between disciplinary fields requires not a mixing together but a change of ways of working and most importantly of self. This has been my experience working at the GSAPP, working for an artist and starting TILL.

Transdiciplinary metamethodology is a mouthful. Pickett writes about ‘Integration’ in a way that doesn’t feel like a compression or compromise but more like an strategy for communication. An expansion system. This is where his work on models and frameworks is important to get all the branches and sub-disciplines of ecology to talk to each other and to talk with us and others as well. Like Urban Design Ecology is a relatively young field and so there is some resonance in this way. From his book integration is ‘establishment and growth of connections between apparently disparate areas, be they empirical, conceptual, or paradigmatic.

1) Name, city, email address

2) What kind of work have you been doing since graduating from Columbia?

3) How has your UD education influenced the way you work?

4) What type of projects have you worked on?  Feel free to include images.

5) Personal update – trips, married, kids etc. (photos welcome!)

You can post your reply as a comment on this page. If you don’t have time for the survey or just feel too lazy to write you could provide links to a website (your own or your company’s).

Address: 100 Maiden Lane Apt 2104. NYC.