Nov 9.. 2014

Outline

• Ideation
• Conceptual Design(s)
• Stats
• Creativa Escuela Interview

“To understand the fashion of any life, one must know the land it is lived in and the procession of the year.” – Mary Austin, “The Land of Little Rain”

I was frustrated and lost trying to figure out what I can design to beautify Santa Elena, but after talking to a couple of people, I finally came up with 3 designs that correlates with the three scenarios that I originally came up with to frame my designs:

 

Yup, keeping it real simple. I just can’t believe that I am accomplishing what I came to Costa Rica for–to design based on ecological observations/principles.

I went to interview Carol, one of the staff members at Escuela Creativa. She gave me useful insights!

• ProNativas and volunteers work together to maintain the thematic gardens in CEC.
• There’s no formal curriculum, but teachers use the gardens to teach students about native versus invasive plants, species identification, etc.
• ProNativas has offered their posters to be hung in classrooms in order to educate students about native plants in Monteverde
• Pruning is like a getting a haircut; everyone has different tastes.
• Policy here is that all gardens, except the International Peace garden, only fosters native plants.
• Santa Elena, Cerro Plano, etc are part of the Monteverde ZONE, not Monteverde itself.
• ProNativas no longer maintains the garden as it was too much for Lorenzo, being the only gardener in ProNativas to come to the school every month. Instead he has trained the maintenance group at CEC. HOWEVER, I noticed today one of my favourite plants (Rondeletia amoena) here was removed so perhaps ProNativas may need to implement a formal curriculum/standarization method during their workshops.

Some final stats:

App mood boards (pictures taken from CPI, my spanish school):

What’s next:

• Exploring Santa Elena with my advisor
• Continue refining my app idea
• Continue researching on landscape designing Villa Verde’s construction site