Carolyn Corl
Degree: MLArch
Expected Graduation Date: Spring 2021
Previous Degree: BFA, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma,WA
I’m From: Portland, OR
Why I Came to the UO and How I Chose My Major
Although I have lived all over the west coast and traveled to many parts of the world, I’ve always considered Oregon my home. I chose to pursue a degree in landscape architecture because I believe it has the power to enhance public value of our shared environments, and Oregon’s natural and cultural landscapes hold so much value to me. At UO I feel that I am learning how to design resilient and enduring landscapes that will enhance human connection to our unique environment.
I studied printmaking and history for my liberal arts undergraduate degree, and always found my interests in both disciplines tended to gravitate toward the human experience and perception of our built and natural environments. In history, I studied a lot of American Transcendentalism, which informed my art practice. After graduation I worked at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology on the Oregon Coast, which deeply values a situated sense of place in the coastal environment, and being there everyday I realized the power of “sense of place.” After that I spent several years traveling, learning horticulture and eventually working in residential garden design in the Bay Area before ultimately turning my attention to public landscapes through studying landscape architecture in a master’s program at UO.
Unique Qualities I Bring to My Studies
My backgrounds in fine art, history and horticulture are extremely important for informing the design work that I do in landscape architecture. From a fine art perspective I am able to see and abstract conceptual forms in the landscapes, analyze them through the lens of site historical research, and work through them through hand-drawing. My horticulture background allows me to understand the living systems that I am designing, make informed planting design decisions and factor in future maintenance needs of a landscape. Having been the crew member planting, irrigating and maintaining a landscape, I know what makes a landscape design last.
My Influential Professors
While each professor I’ve had at UO has been enormously helpful in my education, Mark Eischeid, who teaches landscape history, has been a helpful professor to talk to about my interests. I am very interested in the aesthetics of landscape architecture, especially across history, and his research that he does and passion for the subject has been influential.
My Extracurricular Activities
I am currently part of a working group at Mount Pisgah Arboretum that meets to plan and discuss future plans for interpretive installations in the arboretum. In the Fall I did an independent study where I worked with MPA to design an interpretive exhibit about riparian habitats and hydrologic processes in the watershed, and since then I have been part of the working group that makes decisions about interpretive programming at MPA. I am also on the HOPES organization’s committee that helps reach out and organize speakers for the Spring HOPES conference. Outside of school I enjoy rock climbing, skiing, hiking and doing plein air watercolor landscape painting.
My Greatest Learning Experience at UO
Having the opportunity to participate at the Overlook Field School at the Fuller Estate in Pennsylvania last summer was an incredible experience in learning how to combine my artistic process that I cultivated in undergrad with my landscape architecture design process that I am honing now. I love doing deep site analysis and this gave me an incredible immersive opportunity to look closely at a site through making.
After Graduation
Graduate school is challenging, but I always look forward to being a part of a design firm or organization that shares my same values for the environment and creative approach to landscape design. I hope that my work takes me to beautiful and interesting places and that the designs that I develop have a lasting positive impact on communities and the environment. I would really love to be able to do work in other countries and learn how to understand how to meet other cultures’ needs through design projects.
Your Gift
During my time at UO I have worked harder than I ever have in my entire life. The program is very challenging, but because I care deeply about doing good work and progressing as a designer I often surprise myself with what I am capable of. Being awarded scholarships like this one helps reinforce that the hard work that I am doing is being appreciated, and that is endlessly meaningful to me.
Thank you, so much, for supporting me in my studies in landscape architecture. As a discipline I really believe that is has the potential to do a lot of good in this world, especially in today’s climate, and supporting students like me shows that the hard work that landscape architects and students do is being appreciated and acknowledged. Thank you so much for believing in landscape architecture.