The idea of learning by doing precedent studies is a given in design. It’s a way of understanding what’s been done before – not in order to copy it, but with an eye to seeing where things were and where they might go from there.

Prior to this third-year studio, the students’ experiences mainly involved the design of individual buildings: their siting, organization, form, structure, and materiality. While it’s likely that the students may have had some exposure to urban planning principles and theory, it’s quite unlikely they had ever undertaken master planning of a large site, let alone the “redesign” of an entire town.

To jumpstart their investigations, the students were asked to do research on eight significant planning projects conceived over the course of the last 100 years. All of these places were imagined as antidotes to existing paradigms of the time; as a result, all of them made significant contributions to urban planning theory and practice, whether by virtue of their formal organizations, their relationships to context, or other aspects, such as sustainability, walkability, or use of public space.

The students did the research in small teams, and then prepared posters shown here. The intent was to determine those elements that might underpin what a re-imagined Paradise could and should be.