Foundation Studio I

This course introduces a design methodology for landscape architecture that emphasizes the design of living systems and dynamic landscape processes in dialogue with the environmental sciences. With a focus on translating and synthesizing scientific information through rigorous drawing and critically engaging with the primary matter of landscapes, this course teaches core tools of the discipline.

This design studio builds on a series of precise exercises that translate and synthesize the scientific information learned in the linked fundamental module courses required by the MScLA program. Through these exercises, students acquire essential analytical and methodological skills to support design in the field of Landscape Architecture.

The Foundation Studio I in the autumn semester 2023 engages with a quarry site in Switzerland. Throughout the semester, students situate the local climatic, geologic, hydrological, pedological and vegetative processes in a larger context, and make proposals that respond to the specific material and ecological potentials of the site.

Course desk crits, pin-ups, site visits and reviews are generally scheduled in the afternoon, and are linked to the content covered in the lectures and other theoretical inputs from the morning fundamental course.

The reader is handed out during the first week of the semester. Relevant literature is included in the reader