Midtown Mukilteo Reflection

In my two quarters taking this studio, not only have I learned technical skills, I have also learned how to interact with groups better, give a professional presentation, and deliver my ideas to a client. After initially reading the Geography of Nowhere, I felt much more confident in my understanding of why buildings and structures are built where they are in present day America. Coming from the geography department to this class, it was slightly surprising that I had never come across this book in either my social or physical geography classes. Kunstler does a great job of explaining the history of planning, zoning and the general built environment that went into creating modern day United States of America. Although I had taken Introduction …show more content…
It also turned out to be one of the more challenging group projects I’ve ever worked on at the University of Washington, not only because of the task but also because of the group dynamic. Looking back on that project, I think it could have been a lot smoother had we designated very specific roles much earlier in the quarter and had one administrator to put together everyone’s work and to make sure people were actually doing their assigned work. That project was also the first time I’ve worked on a project that required a significant amount of design creativity, in which everyone had to express and argue for their ideas, while also always keeping the client in mind. As for, Maple Valley, coming into the practicum having a better idea of what was expected of our group, I felt much more confident in our work. Coming in and being able to ask Matt Torpey the right questions also got us off to a good start, I think that was one of our bigger issues winter quarter is that our group didn’t even know what it was we wanted to know. Additionally, knowing how to divide the work really helped our project go off without a hitch. Keeping in mind the Geography of Nowhere was extremely helpful in coming up with our concepts for Maple