5 Quotes by Roberto Rovira

One of the objectives of a studio is having the students get involved and understand the workings of a community, and integrate that with landscape architectural design ideas. It was a perfect fit to expose the students to the community process for position making, to have them develop ideas based on thorough analysis of the city and its contexts, and then come with a series of proposals that was then presented to the city of Sweetwater.

We basically had all the students' projects presented to the public there, and the reaction was extremely positive. I'd say it was a very successful presentation, and I think they were impressed by the level of analysis that went into some of the projects.

Essentially, we've been neighbors for thirty years but there really hasn't been a very direct connection with Sweetwater. So the mayor sees the economic advantages of creating an environment such as a college town, because it would bring students and faculty a lot of activity that would be very positive towards them.

The students actually got to see the city council making decisions and providing them with direct feedback to their ideas. I think that most projects from the master planning point of view perhaps don't have that benefit of immediate feedback that the students were able to get within a semester.

They would be able to provide the sort of environment that would sustain economic activity, and that students would be drawn to.