Cartographies of Living Systems

This course will be an introduction to essential aspects of designing with living systems. The lectures will cover a curated list of constructed landscapes that embody a high level of complexity in their composition, systems, and evolution.

In class and through additional drawing exercises, the students will explore the components of the sites in great detail: their plant communities, infrastructure, management regimes, climatic and geologic contexts, and the larger systems and territories in which they are embedded. Students will be introduced to meaningful landscape projects, and will learn a methodology for understanding the field of landscape architecture and its potential in relationship to the dynamic performance of living things.

In the lectures, the students will learn about a selection of significant built landscapes that span a range of sizes, ages, and places of origin. The projects will be taught through an analytical framework that prioritizes key landscape elements that are often overlooked in traditional representations of projects. The students will contribute to the course by translating this complexity through a drawing exercise. Altogether, the work of the studio will be a critical and comparative study of significant landscape architecture projects, past and present.

Course material will be provided. The course material includes a reading list.

• Course 063-0704-23L
• 2 Credits
• Language: English
• Prerequisites: MSc Landscape Architecture, MSc Architecture