LAN3016Y F
Instructor(s): Aisling O'Carroll
Meeting Section: L0101
Tuesday, 9:00am - 1:00pm, 2:00pm - 6:00pm; Friday, 2:00pm - 6:00pm

In the context of changing climate, culture, and technology, this studio will investigate the potential of archival re-readings and re-tellings to furnish alternative ways for landscape architects to interpret and respond to the current environmental condition. Our investigation will focus on the Alps, a landscape that has been constructed and reconstructed repeatedly throughout history— through political power, romantic novels, geological forces, artistic representations, and physical construction. As glaciers retreat, the mountain landscape is again becoming a fixation in cultural and social awareness as a harbinger of climate change. Together we will examine the inherited ideas that continue to shape our ways of seeing and engaging with the Alps through a focused re-reading and reconstruction of individual archival documents. Students will investigate a range of archival materials such as artworks, literature, photography, mapping, and geological and vegetative records. This research will furnish us with knowledge and techniques to propose new futures for today’s emerging, novel Alpine landscapes, including (but not limited to) the transforming ecologies of deglaciated valleys, melting and artificially preserved glaciers and snowfields, the unstable and collapsing mountain slopes, and shifting Alpine commons and agricultural landscapes. Through individual research, students will identify sites (archival and existing) to work with and will develop culturally and historically inflected design propositions. Design work may include critical site interventions, speculative landscape futures, experimental landscape performances, or long-term management strategies. Students will be encouraged to test different forms of representation, drawing, mapping, and model-making, and reflect critically on the relevance of specific representations (and representational techniques) to archival histories and speculative designs. Through this work and dialogue, we will reconstruct a plurality of Alpine archives and futures and collectively explore how history can serve as a critical basis for landscape architecture.

Over the course of the term, students will develop skills and methods for working with archives and historical material and, in particular, for critically examining and using visual representation in their design work. Design work and research will be situated within a wider discourse on archives, historiography, and speculative design. Through weekly readings, film screenings and guest speakers, the studio will draw from interdisciplinary fields, including landscape architecture, architecture, geology, archaeology, climate science, and art history. Students will be required to engage in weekly discussions and establish their own position in relation to course content — expressed through dialogue and design.

The course evaluation will be based on design work as well as participation and engagement in these weekly discussions. The course will follow a regular schedule and will be delivered through a combination of in-person and online teaching.