LAN2203HS
Instructor: Victoria Taylor
Meeting Section: L0101
Wednesday, 12:00 - 3:00pm

Course Description

“Flowing, molding, pressing, hammering, forging, cementing, growing, dissolving, eroding, grinding, tumbling, cracking, crumbling, scuffing, decaying: materials manifest process. To see materials as static is an illusion.
Air is breath, plants live and die, stone endures … material, formal, spatial, functional, social and cultural… Materials are shaped by processes in context
Materials arouse senses, carry meanings, materials furnish precision and nuance. Used in ways which contradict intended meaning, they may undermine and obscure it.”

--- Anne Whiston Spirn, Elements of Landscape And Language, in The Landscape of Landscape, 1998.

“Rather than by asserting the artifice or object-hood of design, it is through engagement with geological and biological action and the non-linear yet powerful relationships between structure and formal expression where landscape tectonics finds its poetics of construction.“

--- Jane Hutton, Substance and Structure I: The Material Culture of Landscape Architecture. Harvard Design Magazine No. 36

“North – Mud, salt, crystal, rocks, water North by East - Mud, salt, crystal, rocks, water Northeast by North – Mud, salt, crystal, rocks, water Northeast by East - Mud, salt, crystal, rocks, water East by North – Mud, salt, crystal, rocks, water East - Mud, salt, crystal, rocks, water. …."

--- Film script, The Spiral Jetty (1972, Robert Smithson)

The seminar focuses on the practice of exploring and developing a narrative within a site-specific context as an opportunity for students to experiment and test, in an iterative and temporary way, ideas of landscape as a strategy for city building and as an experience of place. The seminar explores the effects of material on place through sketching, hand made model making and iterative fabrication as a method of testing ideas. It offers a tactile approach – in combination with standard design detailing (plan, section, elevation) - to encourage students to think differently about materials in the landscape and how different materials influence site and the essence of the places where we live.

Grounded by both the professional practice of design detailing as a key language of landscape practice, theories of place specificity and public art and case study discussion, the seminar asks:

How can the material elements of public space inspire and elevate the human experience to give new meaning to our shared outdoor spaces?

How can our needs for light, rest, shade, privacy, social interaction and beauty translate into an artistic experience of space; where the elements designed for public use blur the line between public infrastructure, landscape design, urbanism and public art?

Within a site-specific context, the seminar offers students an opportunity to experiment and push their understanding of public realm design through material, form and process. The seminar encourages the acquiring of new insights into detail design as a language of communication and a strategy for city building that pushes us, as designers, to move our work beyond just functionality and into the realm of the senses. The seminar offers an opportunity to develop skills in design detailing, material selection and experimentation with how materials work together to understand what it takes to present a compelling work of high quality construction.

Students will combine the three forces of landscape design: MATERIAL – FORM – PROCESS to inform their work using a selected site on the West Toronto Railpath as a constant. The focus on this site located in Toronto’s west end Junction Triangle neighbourhood and adjacent to an active rail corridor seizes a timely opportunity to engage in the City of Toronto’s current (and long awaited) project to extend the existing 2.4km West Toronto Railpath (WTR) an additional 3km to connect it to downtown. The selected site for the seminar is the node where the existing railpath will connect to the proposed extension, under the Dundas Street West bridge. This is an energized, visually accessible node that allows students’ ample opportunity to explore the dynamic surrounding ecology, industrial character, a changing community and the integration of multi modes of transit that will influence the student’s work.

To encourage cross disciplinary thinking and to help students develop their own design approach, a series of guest lecturers will join the class on field trips and for in class sessions. With an emphasis on the translation of a drawing to a built element in a landscape, students will utilize their sketchbooks and pencils as well as the school’s fabrication lab.

Course Objectives

This course seeks to builds skills in the construction and communication of place-specific detail design and to build a familiarity with the contemporary discourse around public art and its integration into public space design in order to develop new insights into how to more effectively work toward the goal of creating cultural vibrant and livable cities. In addition to the craft of making, site analysis, reading, writing, and the graphic presentation of a narrative will factor into the final evaluation of student’s work.

A series of exercises presented through the term, building in complexity, are inspired and informed by the three critical forces of landscape architecture: material, form, process. To be confirmed in the first lecture, examples of each force are:

MATERIAL – stone, concrete, water, colour, sound, plants, wood, steel.
FORM – bridge, arch, wall, bench, island, edge, slope, screen, mound, pool.
PROCESS – fold, pour, bend, filter, weave, flow, reflect, grow, decay.

Students will produce a temporary 1:1 site-specific installation as a final work resulting from a slow build up and layering of concept, site analysis and material exploration exercises. Individual projects will build to three final group works, installed and reviewed on the selected railpath site. The site presents rich layers for exploration.

Grounded by theory through practice. The precise skills of detail design for construction documents combine with the loose play of hand sketching and then the more precise work of model building to result on final work inspired by the ideas of land art, landscape, public art and the study of a place.

Making SITE + MATERIAL An initial understanding of site will be communicated through sketches and video collage. Individual work.

Making SITE + PROCESS + MATERIAL A next stage of understanding of site will be communicated through model making and detail design. Two person group work.

Making SITE + PROCESS + MATERIAL + FORM The final exercise will be presented as 1:1 site responsive, temporary and intuitive interventions on the West Toronto Railpath site. A short booklet will accompany the final work to showcase the installation idea through hand sketches (site plan, section), one key photo or render, a 150 word description and a materials list (max budget TBD). This work will involve studio days /desk crits. The final work will be installed on site and critics will join us on the railpath to join for final eviews. The works will remain on site temporarily as permitted and to allow students to consider further feedback from railpath visitors. At the end of the exhibition period, each piece will be documented, and all materials removed from site.

Image Credit: Pause Plattforms, West Toronto Railpath 
Construction detail by ====\\DeRAIL Platform for Art + Architecture, 2017.