Landscape architecture students at Ohio State get down and dirty at a summer studio that transforms a vacant lot in Columbus into an urban agriculture site.
Photo: Zach Mortice/Bloomberg CityLab
What Landscapers Can Teach Landscape Architects
At Ohio State University’s Diggers Studio, a landscape architecture professor offers a hands-on lesson in bridging the divide between laborer and designer.
At one of the nation’s most prestigious landscape architecture schools, the summer studio of Ohio State University professor Michelle Franco has students learning how to pull up weeds, prune trees and mix soil. Sometimes, this calls for expertise beyond what Harvard-educated Franco can provide. So she brings in the people who know the most about this kind of work — actual landscape laborers.
Franco leads the Diggers Studio, a project of OSU’s Knowlton School of architecture that posits an alternative model for landscape production. Each summer, students participate hands-on in the design and construction of a community green space in Columbus, Ohio. They pick up tools and go to work alongside city parks crews and landscapers — laborers whose contributions are often made invisible by an academic and disciplinary apparatus that prizes the creativity and vision required to design a streetscape or park, but not the technical skill and sweat required to make it a reality.