Existentially, each of us occupies a point in time-space. I am, for example, typing these words at a point with X, Y, Z and T coõrdinates; that is, at a physical point in the fourth-floor computer lab in Renaissance Hall (a.k.a., Northern School Supply) and at a temporal point the along the continuum from the Big Bang to the ultimate Universal Snuff. Stephen Hawking and the late Douglas Adams have explained this far better.

No matter where I find myself in Agincourt’s time-space continuum, there are amazing opportunities. Understanding what exists in the community today requires precedent, and that precedent needs a precursor, and so on.

This semester—spring 2015—Dominic Fisher’s 2nd-year Landscape Architecture design studio is tackling several design opportunities in Agincourt, places and spaces I’m not qualified to address (though that’s never stopped me before). Nine LA undergraduates are currently looking at smaller public spaces throughout the city: the four school lots, the pair of squares at the heart of town, the “Victory Gardens” on the banks of Crispin Creek just south of the Milwaukee Road tracks, and others. The trick will be placing themselves in the four-dimensional diagram I’ve borrowed.

Their second challenge will (if I understand Dominic’s pace correctly) be the comprehensive consideration of Fennimore county’s fair grounds, an eighty-acre wedge extending west from the Mighty Muskrat, just on its opposite bank from the site of Northwest Iowa Normal. As projects materialize, we’ll be posting them here and planning for their inclusion in the 2015 exhibit.

Hope you’re as excited as I am.