USU's LAEP Students to Conduct Workshops in Sanpete Communities

One hundred-twenty students and professors from Utah State University’s department of landscape architecture and environmental planning will travel to Utah’s Sanpete County Tuesday, Feb. 6, to conduct an intensive design workshop or “charrette.”

The USU students will work in small teams to make recommendations and offer design ideas for communities along the “Little Denmark” section of the newly designated “Utah Heritage Highway 89.” Students will address issues that include main street development, open space planning and preservation, the identification of new areas for development and traffic planning.

 

Professional landscape architects and planners from around the state will join the students in Sanpete County on Tuesday and work with them back on the USU campus in their design studios on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

 

Professor David Bell said this is the most extensive workshop to date.

 

“The Heritage Highway Project allows communities to take a regional perspective in developing opportunities for tourism and new business,” Bell said. “It also allows our students an opportunity to gain community experience while providing valuable services.”

 

This is the fourth department-wide community charrette conducted through LAEP.   Previous charrettes have been conducted in Richmond, Tooele and Heber City.

 

Tamara Shapiro is the Sumner Margetts Swaner Professor in the LAEP department.

 

“The French word ‘charrette’ means ‘cart’ and is often used to describe the final, intense work effort expended by architecture, landscape architecture and art students to meet a project deadline,” Shapiro said. “The use of this term is said to originate from the Beaux Arts in Paris during the 19th century, where proctors circulated a cart, or ‘charrette,’ to collect final drawings while students frantically put finishing touches on their work.

 

“Today, the cart has been replaced by computer-generated electronic illustrative drawings that can be printed out on large-scale plotters, and presentations can be made with digital projectors. However, the creative process, coupled with intense work in a very short period of time, has remained from the 19th century to modern day.”

 

The project is funded through partnerships with the towns of Fairview, Mt. Pleasant, Spring City, Ephraim, Manti, Gunnison, Sanpete County, the State of Utah Main Street Program, USU Extension’s Rural Intermountain Planning Program and USU Swaner Green Space Institute.

 

For information on the project, contact Shapiro at (435) 797-0960.