This core studio design course provides an incremental increase in scale and complexity from the first term studio work and prepares students for interdisciplinary work in future studio curricula. An in-depth study of systems allows students to examine how design concepts can translate in different physical and cultural contexts. The primary theme of the course is a focus on landscape relationships with special attention given to redefining the boundaries between landscape, urbanism, and the concept of public space.

This studio examined, critiqued, mapped and designed the future of suburban parks, their ubiquity, and the value of public open space in the suburban context in the 21st century. It sought to tease through design iteration of landform / topography, material, program, and vegetation, themes brought upon by contemporary research on suburbia such as: heterogeneity (diversity and the increased hybridization of ecological and social characteristics vs. the standard and the generic); productivity and performance (the harnessing of suburban space to generate net positive eco-system services and value, vs. consumption, waste, and depletion); and experimentation (the freedom in suburbia to invent new, recombinant forms and functions of architecture and landscape).