Third Semester Core: Planning and Design of Landscapes
GSD 1211, Fall
with: Scheri Fultineer, Christian Werthmann, Nicholas Pouder, Niall Kirkwood

This course reinforces and builds upon the range of conventions of landscape architectural production introduced in previous core studios and academic courses. Emphasis is placed on precision and craft in conceptual, schematic, and design development abilities. Issues of the physical, socioeconomic, technological, architectural, and ideological forces underlying the organization and form of human communities are incorporated into a series of projects. These range from the complex reading and mapping of the city, the development and testing of innovative program strategies in unconventional sites, and the development of design ideas to the advanced schematic stage. At each stage, students are expected to reconcile the sometimes conflicting characteristics among land resources, development pressures, privacy, and commonality. Throughout, a strong reciprocity between depth of thinking and the act of making is sought.

Objectives:

1. To gain a critical understanding of the issues, influences, and generative possibilities in landscape design and planning within the contemporary urban environment.
2. To provide a bridge between the concerns of landscape theory and individual design practices. The need for a theoretical basis for action within the shifting and complex nature of the communities we form and inhabit will be explored. Investigations of the nature, meaning, and social role of public and private spatial orders are examined.
3. To identify concerns for human settlement within the dynamics of urban ecology. The processes of growth, transformation, and the complex layering of ownership, density, distribution, and territoriality are explored.
4. To develop and refine both analytical and analogical skills in the interpretation, representation, and production of landscape architectural design and planning.

Instructors:

Each studio critic works directly with a small group of students for the duration of the semester. A combination of faculty, practicing landscape architects and visiting critics are selected each semester.