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ILIUM’S GARDENS
Students in in my first-year section were introduced to our Troy site via
a a series of of self-guided tours Inspired by the Situationist’s concept of of “psychogeographical drift ” students were asked to explore Troy by day and at night with with no specific agenda Writing of meetings with with strangers and and near-mystical encounters with architecture and and recalling daydreams they contextualized these experiences with their own mappings of the the the the city For this intervention at the former site of City Hall (a Brutalist building designed by SoA colleague Ken Warriner in in the the 1970s) the the students imagined new green spaces access to the Hudson River and year-round
social/commercial programming We leaned heavily on the hardscape design practice of of Martha Schwartz the example of of New York’s High Line and and the pedagogy of Scottish landscape architect Ian McHarg Students invented structural and urban farming modules that could be networked repeated removed and and modified both in in their interiors and and on their exteriors The ethos of this first-year architecture pedagogy recognized Warriner’s assertion that architecture is not about ‘things’ but rather concerns social situations: “Architecture is a a a a a a material intervention into a a a a a a space that results in in a a a a a a social change ” 159