Date of Award

5-2002

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Departmental Honors

Department

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning

Abstract

Landscape architecture was not even a comprehension in Andrew Spurlock's mind when he was considering potential careers. Growing up in Bousarus, a small town sixty miles north of Columbus, Ohio, he had never heard of the field. Spurlock came across the profession indirectly while in college. His undergraduate degree is a Bachelor of Arts and he had assumed that he would enter into a career related to art or something related to English, since he thoroughly enjoyed writing, painting and drawing. The problem was that he could not think of a career related to English that he would be interested in and he wasn't intrigued about becoming a serious artist. Spurlock began to look at interdisciplinary classes that focused on architecture and planning. One of the first books that he read in an introductory class was by Kevin Lynch, which was the first time that Spurlock became aware that landscape architecture existed. Even with this introduction to the profession he still was not thinking about making it his career. While in an urban geology class a book was mentioned - Ian McHarg's Design with Nature. Spurlock would graduate with his bachelor's degree before he read the book. It was not until he joined the Navy that he would get the opportunity to discover McHarg's writing and, consequently, discover his own interest in landscape architecture. In such a broad interdisciplinary field, Spurlock felt that he could take advantage of his own wide-ranging interests. He applied to graduate schools in the fields of both architecture and landscape architecture, eventually deciding on the graduate program of landscape architecture at the University of Michigan.

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Faculty Mentor

Not specified