Professor Dagenhart’s teaching focuses on urban design, weaving ecological infrastructure with contemporary real estate development. He is actively involved in international teaching and research, most recently at Tongji University in Shanghai and the School of Architecture’s Modern Architecture and Modern City Summer Program in Europe. This semester, Richard Dagenhart from SoA is joined by Wang Yi from Tongji University, and Ming-Chun Lee from UNCC. Learning from Savannah - Atlanta As It Might Have Been is a collaborative studio joining the School of Architecture at Georgia Tech with Shanghai’s Tongji University College of Architecture and Urban Planning  and the School of Architecture at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. The three schools, with a total of 38 students and four international faculty, visited Savannah for fieldwork February 5-7, followed by a 8 days in a collaborative charrette and lectures at Georgia Tech, and concluding with presentation at in Charlotte. 

Professor Dagenhart shared his experiences in the course:

“An urban design charrette is always a good way for students and faculty to work collaboratively,  creating proposals to address complex problems in only a week or two. Our Learning from Savannah Charrette went a step farther by combining students and faculty from three universities, seven countries and seven languages, and several disciplines - architecture, urban design, city planning, landscape architecture, and real estate development. For the students, the charrette was an immediate immersion into a global and urban world where they will practice their future professions.  And we had a good time, too.”

The students and faculty then returned to their home universities to complete the urban design project on the selected site in Atlanta. In May, representatives from the three schools will meet in Shanghai at Tongji University for comparative studio presentations. A publication will contain and conclude the collaborate studio research+design project.