Ecologies, Techniques, Technologies IV

GSD 6242 is the final course in the Ecologies, Techniques and Technologies landscape core sequence. It is a required course for all MLA I, and MLA I AP students. The class introduces the concept of the poetics of a material landscape architecture. Each class participant will learn and develop skill in traditional, current and emerging practices of landscape making.

The learning objectives of this class are:
1. Develop skill in the use of the Diagnostic Section and Constructive Drawing as instruments of analytic observation of existing built landscapes and in the design conception, development, and documentation of material landscape propositions.

2. Develop skill in the application of the judgment of the senses to landscape making:
   2.1 The Differentiation of Size, Scale and Proportion
   2.2 The Application of Surface Refinements, Surface Diversity, and the Trace of the Hand

3. Understand that design proposes and workmanship disposes and that this dialectic is central to the making of a work of landscape architecture.

4. Know how and why to select a palette of landscape construction materials for a project. A material selection based on:
   4.1 Technical Performance
   4.2 Aesthetic/Symbolic/Emotional Response
   4.3 Environmental Performance
   4.4 Regulatory Mandate
   4.5 Economy – Measured as the Expenditure of Energy Over Time

5. Understanding the environmental and social implications of how “raw” materials are sourced and processed into “building” materials.

6. Develop skill in the design application of techniques of shaping materials for landscape construction:
   6.1 Wasting
   6.2 Forming
   6.3 Casting
   6.4 Depositing

7. Develop skill in the joining of materials as the source of detail design languages of landscape architecture.

8. Understand the logic of and develop skill in the design documentation of a work of landscape architecture.