What Are Finals Like?
As the semester wraps up, we are faced with the inevitable: finals. So, what does that look like at DIS? I can only give insight into my specific classes, in which I had all final projects, with no exams. Here are some details of what that's looked like:
Urban Design Studio (Core Course)
As a studio course, my Urban Design core course counts for double the credits as a typical class (and we meet twice as often). Accordingly, my biggest final project came from Urban Design Studio. The class was structured with two main assignments over the course of the semester. The first assignment was to re-design a kollegium courtyard, and this second project was to create a master plan for a neighborhood.
Both projects were group projects, and we were able to choose our groups for this second part. After a long analysis process, which involved smaller group presentations on certain assigned analysis topics, we started designing. At the beginning, we worked mostly in plan, figuring out how to configure the space from a bird's eye view. We quickly began adding sections, cutting slices horizontally through the space, and then eventually moved on to axonometric and perspective views as well.
The final deliverable was a 20-minute presentation, in which we showed the visual materials we had compiled and explained our process. It took all day, from 9am until 4:30pm, for all of the groups to present. With so many weeks of brainstorming, drafting, and revising, it was very rewarding to see everything come together into a final product!
On the last day of class, all the studios pinned up their work for an exhibition in which everyone could see each other's work. It was so fun to be inspired by the work done by people from other classes!
Getting There: Transportation in Urban Europe
For this class, my final was also a group project. Each group had to choose a topic based on a location and/or a mode of transportation; my group focused on the Northeast Corridor train line in the United States. The deliverables were a presentation as well as a written report. Within my group, after an initial phase of general research, we each chose sub-topics to focus on. Some of my topics included the SEPTA funding crisis, the NextGen Acela High Speed Rail, and Integrated Fare Payment Systems.
Adaptive Re-Use in Europe
This class didn't necessarily have a separate final, because we had three larger projects sprinkled in throughout the semester. Our first of these bigger assignments was an individual report about the Nørrebro Library, a building we visited as a class, and then did individual research about and observation of. The second project was a group presentation contrasting two different assigned adaptive re-use projects. My group got two more large-scale projects, the Matadero in Madrid, Spain and Zeche Zollverein in Essen, Germany. The last of the three main assignments was a discussion post and series of responses about examples of adaptive re-use that we had come across at home or during the semester abroad. It was nice to divide up the bulk of the work across multiple times instead of doing everything at the end.
Climate Change and the City: Responsive Planning
For this class, the final assignment was to create a <10 minute video with proposals to redevelop the island of Refshaleøen in Copenhagen. We were divided into groups with themes based on urban planning around climate change. My group's theme was nature-based solutions, so we focused on interventions such as re-wilding and creating a natural buffer of plant life to protect the coast lines. We visited the site together, where I filmed a lot of b-roll clips, then we worked together to craft a script, recorded voice-overs, and a couple of the people with experience in video editing put the parts together. I was very thankful that they could take the lead on that, since video production is not a skill I possess!
All in all, I feel like I had a pretty balanced schedule of finals. I really enjoyed all of my final projects, and felt like they did a great job of requiring me to apply what I'd been learning about all semester.
Comments