Guerilla Planning

How forlorn spaces might be developed as community resources that lend a sense of place, however fleeting, can be a precarious exploit. Convinced the real challenge in planning and design these dog days is placemaking, my convivial colleague Rhett Beavers and I have been exploring the potential of a variety of fringe and derelict sites under the banner of the Landscape Architecture program at UCLA Extension. With big and brutalistic no longer winning the hearts and minds of the discerning public, we are thinking small and green.

July 10, 2012 - Sam Hall Kaplan

One of my prerogatives teaching a landscape design studio exploring public space at UCLA Extension is being able to pick the class projects with which to challenge the students. Time for them to get real and get down, walk the streets, wallow in the sites; to see, hear, smell, taste and touch. Me and my colleague, the loquacious landscape legend Rhett Beavers, are in effect the clients, the students the professional consultants, and the particular projects our whim, no matter how it might be a sugar coated pedanticism in the school’s offering of an urban laboratory.

May 24, 2012 - Sam Hall Kaplan