Walter Hood interviewed by Shannon Jackson in Boom California
Prof. Shannon Jackson, BCNM and TDPS, recently interviewed Prof. Walter Hood, Landscape Architecture, for Boom California. The article, "The Inside-Out Museum/The Inside-Out University" addressed how the arts and humanities and design can work together to illuminate urban experience. The interview also addressed the differences in development between the University of California, Berkeley and the Oakland Museum of California.
Read excerpts of the article below:
"In 1873 when California’s flagship public university moved to its present location, then part of Oakland Township, the edges of its campus were open to the ranchland surrounding it.
"By contrast, the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) was established in a dense urban neighborhood at a time of political turmoil and violence in 1969.
"It would be too simple to describe one campus as open and the other as closed. While urban form influences dynamics among institutions and their cities, it does not determine them, and both the university and the museum have a complex history of interactions with their settings. Now, both institutions are examining their connections to their publics and the relationships among their internal and external constituencies.
"In a course sponsored by the Global Urban Humanities Initiative... Hood will ask students to examine the museum and its neighborhoods in order to come up with proposals for change. Hood works on projects ranging from city-scale master plans to site plans to art installations and is known for his focus on the human element in design."
Read the interview in it's entirety here.
image credit OMCA