University Program
A year-round hands-on, civic engagement curriculum at UCD enlists graduate students to develop master plans in the fall and design documents in the spring. UCD students prepare master plans comprised of 5 main components:
- a vision,
- a set of goals to implement the vision,
- a program of uses,
- a spatial relationship diagram and
- an aesthetic ordering system.
The master plan targets existing and proposed uses, relationships between uses, and programmatic requirements for uses, maintenance and safety issues, and preliminary cost estimates.
Once the master plan is complete the schools participating in the alliance program move into a design studio where graduate students synthesize the pieces of the master plan into a detailed site design. This process involves the students, teachers, parents and communities. All work together to develop a comprehensive and detailed campus plan, identifying cost estimates for traditional and non-traditional construction alike. The end product for the studio is a set of design development drawings. Landscape architects were selected to finalize the student’s drawings in the form of construction documents. In the summer students gain invaluable experience in independent design-build classes at DPS schools under construction. The traditional elements of each project go through the normal bidding process-while the non traditional projects are coordinated by DPS and UCD jointly.
Initially, UCD played a neutral role between the city and the school district, which shared a skeptical past relationship with the city and had limited collaboration. The University was an advocate for grantees ensuring that funds were spent appropriately. The University’s optimism and confidence was pivotal in generating other public and private funding. The relationship between UCD and DPS goes beyond the 22 schools involved in the Learning Landscapes. To date, UCD graduate landscape architecture students have completed 72 master plans and have prepared 36 sets of design development drawings.