Yesterday, the class presented the first round of facts and analysis. Each group brought an interesting and new light to Las Vegas that I hadn’t known about before. With each group, I learned new facts about the mysterious city that is Las Vegas. It was interesting to learn about the weather in the area and how it changes between the outer parts of the city and the Strip and Downtown areas. Learning about the different sustainable strategies already in effect in Las Vegas and other possibilities we should consider while designing was good to learn about.
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The semester is about a week and a half in and the researching for our project has begun. On the first day of class, we got a brief history and description of our sites in Downtown Las Vegas. While our professor was explaining why and how Las Vegas became what it is today, I was intrigued by things I hadn't known about the city. When the class came up with topics we wanted to look into further before we visited our sites, I was drawn to the history aspect of research.
Ken Meyer and myself are working on creating informative and clear images to represent the history of Las Vegas. It has been a challenge for myself to figure out what information should be included and shared with the class. At first glance, it seems like everything in important and influenced some aspect of the city to mold it into what it is today. After more investigation, I began to focus my research on Downtown Las Vegas since that is where our sites are located. After collecting the research, I made a chronological list with dates of facts that I found to be important to Las Vegas. I also color coded facts based on what they were about such as transportation, land use and important people. This helped to see all the information so that I could start to weed out facts that weren't as important as others. On Friday, Ken and I talked with Mr. McCown about what we had found up to that point and how we could push it to the next level for our presentation next week. He gave us great feedback about how we could lay out images, maps and text to deliver the whole story in a clear way. By walking through how the city grew and what was happening in the country and around the world at specific points, it allowed us to see the larger picture instead of just focusing on what was happening within the city limits. Moving forward, Ken and I decided to break up the history into important decades and deliver the information based on those decades. I am looking into the history between 1800 and 1930 as well as from 1970 - 2000. Working on a layout and creating dynamic images is still proving to be a challenge since board layout has never been one of my strong suits. I am hoping that by Friday we have a clear idea of images we have and need to be able to push through the weekend to have a strong presentation on Monday. Sarah Here I am , beginning my last semester at Iowa State University after four and a half years. Thinking back to when I first started here, I would never have imagined that I be where I am today.
Starting this final semester in the Downtown Las Vegas studio is exciting for many reasons. With the focus of this studio being Urban Design, this is a somewhat familiar area of studio. We have done Urban Design in previous studios but they have been in Ames. Having our project in Downtown Las Vegas allows us to learn about a city that many of us feel like we already know due to what we have read or heard about and allows us to peel back layers of such a unique city to better understand what can be done to improve this part of the city. Another element that is exciting is that this studio has fourteen students. For the past three and a half years, we have had thirty-six students with two professors. This has been fun for the social aspect but on days where there are critiques, it can get long. With fewer students, critiques can be more in depth and allow us to spend the appropriate time on each project. |
AuthorA senior student Iowa State University, I will be documenting my final semester of projects specifically pertaining to the Downtown Las Vegas project. Archives
May 2015
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