There are plenty of opportunities for FIU Landscape Architecture students to use what they’ve learned, or supplement their learning, by participating in community projects.
Last summer we began the initial scheming and strategizing for a butterfly garden at Carlow Park in Westchester, across the highway from FIU. While I’m no longer in Miami, the butterfly garden was completed this summer.
My involvement was in the initial planning; deciding how to lay it out and what trees, shrubs
The best week so far. Combined everything we’ve learned up to this point (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, MongoDB, Node.js) and paired up with another classmate to build a full-stack web application.
I’ve had this idea for a while now, to make my landscape design life easier. The goal is to be able to search for plants by location, filter by desired plant type (tree, shrub, flowers, etc.) and return a list of most-recommended plants for your specific area or site. Still a work in progress, but fulfilled requirements for this module.
Oh by the way we won “gold medal” for the best project.
Week three means the end of module one, and the creation of project one — coding a game using our newly acquired front-end skills. I’m not much of a gamer, in fact I don’t give a crap about games, but I do like card games alright. And so I replicated one, and further developed my JavaScript skills in the meantime. I introduce you to HackJack.
Module one was ridiculously fast-paced. We learned how to set up the development environment and dug deep into the fundamentals of responsive front-end design with HTML, CSS, Javascript and jQuery.
Good thing there’s free beer on the rooftop every day at 5.
Week one kicked my ass. Sort of. I can’t say I understand Javascript yet, the logic combined with the syntax. I had one of those “I’m too stupid” days on Wednesday as people finished the assignment and trickled out of the room… and I was still stuck on part two. Shanshan tried to explain it to me but by then I had shut down.
HTML/CSS is more instantly gratifying but solving a Javascript problem is overall more satisfying.. maybe becuase I haven’t completed an entire HTML/CSS “clone” project yet… to be satisfied by the final result.
Pair programming… well I have love and I have hate for pair programming. A good exercise nonetheless.
Friday afternoon was exciting, tying it all together into a single application, and understanding (well, being exposed to, but nowhere near understanding) the DOM and the Javascript processes behind Facebook and such.
Saying “bonjour” is much more challenging than “hola” or “buendia” or just hey, hi, good morning. Much easier to sound like a gringa, like a foreigner.
Really fun stuff. Optimistic about the future for a change.
The most challenging thing about architecture school is — well, there are many challenging things about architecture school. One of them is representing your ideas graphically – creating images of things that don’t exist yet, other than in your own head.
I was one of a very few that preferred to do this by hand as opposed to digitally. Some of the professors greatly appreciated this. Others hated it.
During the fall 2017 semester professor Rovira asked me to submit my concept sketches for a “project” or a “book” or something vague. So I did. A few emails back and forth and it became more clear to me what these were being used for.
Here were my sketches chosen for this publication:
I found this great yoga spot last weekend – right smack in between where I sleep every night and where I work 5 days a week. The first class was hilarious – I had no clue what she was saying.
So I learned some basic vocabulary: [Read more…] about Affordable yoga plus free French lessons