Programs

Constructing Common Ground
September 14, 2004
By Monette Bailey
 

A "window" panel from the airzone art installation.   The completed airzone filled most of at Plant Sciences conference room. Students and professors went inside to discuss the meanings behind the clear, decorated panels.   Photos by Monette A. Bailey Profs. Margarita Hill and Shenglin Chang (second and third from left) were joined in VIEW kick-off events by Isami Kinoshita from Chiba University, Keiro Hattori from Meiji Gakuin University and Yasuyoshi Hayashi also from Chiba University.   Constructed of black and clear plastic sheeting, the bubble rose from the floor as a literal symbol of what two cultures can create given a shared agenda. The approximately 6-foot-tall structure was filled with air from a box fan taped into one end. Japanese and Maryland students worked in teams to draw their ideas of community development onto the clear sheeting. Those pieces were then taped into the black "house" as windows. "The idea is that you can't understand what's going on from the outside, but once everyone is inside, it all makes sense," explained Margarita Hill, associate professor with the university's landscape architecture program, while watching the students get excited as the structure took shape. The activity capped off a new two-week course, LARC 489C East Asian Landscape and Community in Transformation, co-designed by Maryland and Prof. Keiro Hattori with Meiji Gakuin University in Japan. The course is one of the products of a new center for collaboration, Voices Integrating East and West (VIEW). Profs. Hill and Assistant Professor Shenglin Chang, also with landscape architecture, worked in partnership with four American and two Asian universities to launch the new "research and education collaborative" to address issues of cross-cultural design and planning. Hattori brought the 23 students in his field study course to Maryland. The course included field trips, symposia, films and discussions. Professors from several universities, both eastern and western, joined the students in a series of VIEW activities. Hill said that the idea of citizen-involved community development is new in Japan. Hattori is one of a few professors leading the movement. With world borders becoming easier to cross, America's multicultural population should have more of an impact on its communities' architecture and planning. "Just in Montgomery County, 25 percent of the residents are foreign born. How do we as designers work to understand their needs?" she asked. The plastic composition, or airzone as it is called, was an effort to demonstrate similar and differing needs and ideas, and how people could work together to create a shared space that accommodates them all. Elijah Mirochnik, an assistant professor in the George Mason University College of Education and Human Development, designed the airzone/art installation. He says he's done hundreds of them with various groups, "but this was visually the most creative I've ever done." Mirochnik, a '75 Maryland School of Architecture alumni, sat inside of the airzone with the students to talk about the process of creating the panels when language was clearly a barrier. Kevin Gaughan, a junior landscape architecture student, said working with the Japanese students was "a great experience and it was a lot of fun hanging out with them." He also learned a lot. Although he and his American classmates found similarities when it came to concerns about communities (crime, access, facilities), he also saw how the cultures differed. "They live in much smaller areas than we do. For example, we have two or three bathrooms in a house; they have one. They take public transportation; we drive everywhere." During a field trip to Baltimore's Inner Harbor, one Japanese student pointed out a full garbage can and wondered why recyclables were in it. In Japan, they sort their trash into 28 containers and then they take it somewhere," said Gaughan. "We put it in two or three, put it out on the curb and think we're saving the earth." His remarks embody what Hattori, Hill and Cheng hope VIEW can do on a larger scale. "It's not just about sharing knowledge," said Hill. "You also hope to make a personal transformation, which is not visible enough in the education process." "It is quite important in the age of globalization to have exposure to different cultures, or you have a lack of understanding," said Hattori.