LAN3901H S
Instructor: Alissa North
Meeting Section: L9101
Synchronous
Wednesday, 12:00PM - 3:00PM

"Form ever follows function” — Louis Sullivan
“A house is a machine for living in” — Le Corbusier
“Ornament is excrement” — Adolph Loos
“Less is more” — Mies van der Rohe
"Man is nature as much as the trees” — Dan Kiley
"Try to pare things down. Very few moves do a lot” — Peter Walker

“A city is a complex series of events.” — Laurence Halprin

“People don’t realize that landscape architecture is political” — Laurie Olin

“Consider the phenomenological experience and the cultural meaning of such forms” — Michael Van Valkenburg

“Not every work of… landscape need be a timeless masterpiece" — Martha Schwartz

“Those [landscape architecture] works within post modernism share a visually perceivable trait: they orient to the external world rather than internal space.” — George Hargreaves

“My task here is not to provide another guide to design with plants in the conventional sense of discussing principles of form, space, colour, texture and so on. This has been, and continues to be, done very successfully. My intent is to consider plants from other perspectives, to seek a valid basis for aesthetics that has its roots in urban ecology, to explore functions and opportunities for urban plants that are consistent with the ideals of an ecologically sustainable philosophy” — Michael Hough

This seminar course integrates modernist and post-modernist landscape architecture theory and built works. Structured around the canonical landscape projects produced in North America during the modern and post-modern eras, the classes will examine the leading practitioners and associated works. Emphasis is on understanding landscape projects and theories generated during these periods, as a means of understanding how we have reached contemporary landscape theory and practice. The elective will foster the development of critical and analytical thinking through lecture, reading, class discussion, research, drawing, short critical response writing, and presentation. The investigations generated by the course may serve as a basis for a future publication, with students credited accordingly, as well promoting, for interested participants, the potential for fuller and funded publication collaboration. Overall, course members will be introduced to a wide range of landscape architects and their noteworthy works. From somewhere around Dan Kiley onwards, many of the practitioners can be brought to life, because of the personal interactions between Professor Alissa North and these landscape architects; with the intent to make the history tangible, and bring personality to these iconic designers, who are often only known by name and body of work.