Designing the Parks: Part I

The History of Park Planning and Design - Charlottesville, Virginia

http://www.designingtheparks.com/
 

At both meetings, participants will include architects and landscape architects, historians, scientists, national and state park managers, partnership organizations, and others involved in park research, design, and management. Many types of landscape reservations will be the subjects of papers and presentations at both meetings of Designing the Parks, including but not limited to scenic and wilderness reservations, historical and archeological parks, ethnographic and memorial sites, national heritage areas, and protected landscapes of all types. The Charlottesville and San Francisco meetings of Designing the Parks will be linked in terms of content, themes, participants, and mutual relevance.

The purpose of the Charlottesville session is to assess lessons learned through an examination of park planning and design history. The research presented will provide a foundation for presentations and workshops addressing the unique challenges facing current park design and management, which will be the subjects of the San Francisco meeting of the conference. Following the San Francisco session, these principles will be applied to a design charrette to test and validate their conceptual application to future park design. This design charrette is planned to be offered to graduate schools of design across the country. Both meetings of Designing the Parks will also stand independently for those attending one or the other of the meetings.

Sponsored by the National Park Service, The Cultural Landscape Foundation, University of Virginia, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, Institute at the Golden Gate, George Wright Society, National Parks Conservation Association, and the Van Alen Institute.