Urban Soil Studies: From Field to Lab to Design

Aimed primarily toward soils and plant growth, Landscape Architectural Design and the Curation of Urban Landscapes, and taught collaboratively by a landscape architect, multiple noted soil scientists, ecologists and other guests, this course will provide basic understandings of soil and other growing media in relation to plant growth, for the purpose of designing, constructing and maintaining or curating urban landscapes.  Inherent in the course content, students will examine and critique current practices within landscape industries, primarily within urban, post-industrial environments. Though global conditions will be touched upon and may be selected as student research topics, the course will focus on practices within the United States.

The course is broken into three parts: 1) Soil Fundamentals 2) Current Culture, Practice, Critiques, and 3) Future Potentials.  

SOIL FUNDAMENTALS will include lectures and readings on soil formation, characteristics, chemistry and biology, and plant-soil relation-ships, and the role of carbon and carbon sequestration. This introduction will include a field trip to observe a variety of soil types and conditions within a forest, and one to observe the relationship between tree roots and soils at the Arnold Arboretum. This will segue into human practices with a session on prehistoric and ancient Human-Soil relationships.

CURRENT CULTURE, PRACTICE, CRITIQUES will focus on the development of landscape architecture and soil science, as well as the collaborative planting-soil-related practices used in the design, gardening, landscape and construction industries today; this will include deep critiques and potentials for improvement or innovation.  Topics covered will include site evaluation and hidden implications that can be found within historic soils maps, soil testing processes, soil design typologies, soil blending processes on and off-site, compaction ranges, potable water chemistry, and circumstances involving chemical contamination, and the role of phytoremediation. We will also cover project documentation processes like procurement, soil plans and details, specifications and field quality control during construction.  

FUTURE POTENTIALS will include topics looking toward the future innovations and research, including practical recommendations for funding research including ongoing research within forms and basics associated with grant writing. This portion will conclude with presentations from students’ research throughout the course.
 

The first day of classes, Tuesday, September 3rd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD. As this course meets on Monday, the first meeting of this course will be on Tuesday, September 3rd. It will meet regularly thereafter.