Landscape Architecture Courses
LDAR 2291-01
PRINCIPLES OF PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
SECTION DESCRIPTION
Since it's creation over 100 years ago, landscape architecture has expanded beyond horticultural preoccupations to a discipline that engages natural, political and cultural systems to build ecological and social resilience. This professional practice seminar explores contemporary practices of landscape architecture through the exploration of six current trends in practice: operating, researching, engaging, constructing, programming, and sustaining. These topics are explored and discussed through student research initiatives, in-class lectures, readings, case study presentations from a wide range of practitioners, office visits, and site visits. The goal of the course is to expose students to the variety of ways to practice landscape architecture today. Students are encouraged to ask questions, bring their own experiences to class, and be open to new ideas and perspectives. Please see 2014 class blog for student content and writing samples: http://principlesofpractice2014.tumblr.com
Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture
LDAR 2291-02
PRINCIPLES OF PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
SECTION DESCRIPTION
Since it's creation over 100 years ago, landscape architecture has expanded beyond horticultural preoccupations to a discipline that engages natural, political and cultural systems to build ecological and social resilience. This professional practice seminar explores contemporary practices of landscape architecture through the exploration of six current trends in practice: operating, researching, engaging, constructing, programming, and sustaining. These topics are explored and discussed through student research initiatives, in-class lectures, readings, case study presentations from a wide range of practitioners, office visits, and site visits. The goal of the course is to expose students to the variety of ways to practice landscape architecture today. Students are encouraged to ask questions, bring their own experiences to class, and be open to new ideas and perspectives. Please see 2014 class blog for student content and writing samples: http://principlesofpractice2014.tumblr.com
Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture
LDAR 22ST-01
EMBODIED ENVIRONMENTS
SECTION DESCRIPTION
When we are outside, our sense of space is defined by a number of hidden climatic factors that we can feel, but cannot touch. Elements such as light, temperature, wind, humidity, and sound, have spatial qualities that impact not only how space feels, but also how it is shaped. These factors are constantly changing and define atmospheric conditions as they interact with physical elements in the environment. And as our bodies move through space, we rapidly process these changes and they influence how we react, inhabit, and interpret the environment, but we rarely pay enough attention to our senses to understand what they are telling us. This class offers the opportunity for students to develop their own tools for sensing and visualizing atmospheric space in real-time, as it is experienced by our bodies. We will move back and forth between fieldwork, instrument design, and prototype development, and we will also engage a theoretical discussion about the role that tools play as an intermediary between human bodies and the environment. No prior experience in working with electronics is required; this course will include a practical introduction to working with sensors and microcontrollers. It would be helpful if students have experience using Rhino and the Adobe Suite.
Estimated Cost of Materials: $200.00
Open to Architecture + Design Graduate Students.
Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture
LDAR 22ST-02
ADVANCED DESIGN STUDIO ELECTIVE
SECTION DESCRIPTION
This Advanced Elective Studio will be structured around design research into the political, spatial, social, spiritual, technological, and ecological aspects of rivers and coastlines. We will frame rivers, oceans, and the adjacent landscapes as the Hydro Commons and explore how art and design can strengthen stewardship, resilience, and senses of place to work toward environmental and climate justice. We will use design as a tool to uncover and weave together these histories, living cultures, and ecologies to explore new possible approaches to dealing with uncertain climate futures. Some of the overarching questions we will be asking in the studio include:
- How does the concept and the practice of the commons push back against the privatization and enclosure of water and the adjacent landscapes? What are the rules, laws and ideologies that created the commons and that continue to facilitate communal management and stewardship of water and land.
- How can the land that is retreated from due to climate change be reclaimed as a commons to help build resilience to climate change and work towards environmental and climate justice?
- How can creative art and design practices engage communities in designing and shaping these commons to help build social and ecological resilience and strengthen sense of place?
- Who has the power and agency to shape the future of our rivers and coastlines? How can we build landscape literacy, landscape imagination and a sense of stewardship through the public process? How can we use our creativity and design tools, to design an inclusive public process?
Estimated Cost of Materials: $200.00
Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture
LDAR 231G-01
TOPICS IN REPRESENTATION
SECTION DESCRIPTION
In this design research seminar we will examine practices of land access that challenge binaries of public and private property, building a body of evidence for ways of making and un-making spatial practice as we know it. To that end, we will interrogate the ways that settler colonialism and capitalism shape landscape architecture and other design fields, as well as design approaches that transgress those disciplinary boundaries. We will study examples of land rematriation, land-based reparations, community land trusts, housing cooperatives, commoning, and other forms of spatial reclamation.
Our work as a class will build towards publicly accessible bodies of knowledge utilizing storytelling and multi-disciplinary forms of making, including modeling, illustration, mapping, film-making, and audio interventions. We will define terms together, develop research proposals, and then create materials that communicate precedents, legal frameworks, and ways of working (sanctioned and otherwise) within and beyond design fields. Consider these outcomes to be “historical geographies of the future” (Ruth Wilson Gilmore).
Open to Graduate Students.
Elective
LDAR 231G-02
TOPICS IN REPRESENTATION
SECTION DESCRIPTION
Guided by a collaborative mission inspired by the work of Test Plot. “Site Work” is a hands-on collaborative that aims to get students, faculty, and community members working each week at a local test site clearing, planting, and caring for the land using experimental restoration ecology techniques that improve biodiversity and habitat creation. Students will learn about the relationships among seeds, soils, habitat fragmentation, land use education, and human labor. While the goal is to learn by doing, students can choose from tasks that vary in physical ability. We will learn from visiting experts, the living beings and tools we collaborate with, and our own observations.
Open to Graduate Students.
Elective
LDAR 233G-01
WRITTEN AND VISUAL NARRATIVE: CRAFTING THE THESIS BOOK
SECTION DESCRIPTION
All Landscape Architecture graduate students at RISD are required to submit a Thesis Book that is the culmination of the work undertaken in the Advanced Design Research Studio (Thesis). The Thesis Book class is designed to support the written and graphic component of the Thesis Book. The course will provide resources to support the framing and reflection of the thesis work through writing. In addition, the graphic layout of the book will be used as a tool to help structure the inquiry into student's thesis topics.
Estimated Cost of Materials: $200.00
Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture
LDAR 233G-02
WRITTEN AND VISUAL NARRATIVE: CRAFTING THE THESIS BOOK
SECTION DESCRIPTION
All Landscape Architecture graduate students at RISD are required to submit a Thesis Book that is the culmination of the work undertaken in the Advanced Design Research Studio (Thesis). The Thesis Book class is designed to support the written and graphic component of the Thesis Book. The course will provide resources to support the framing and reflection of the thesis work through writing. In addition, the graphic layout of the book will be used as a tool to help structure the inquiry into student's thesis topics.
Estimated Cost of Materials: $200.00
Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture
LDAR 3220-101
INTRO TO DATA SCIENCE FOR DESIGNERS AND ARTISTS
SECTION DESCRIPTION
This class will introduce students to computational tools and strategies to help them analyze data, unearth new relationships, and create impact. Through exploring a local environmental issue and dataset, students will incorporate data science techniques such as data acquisition, data cleaning, data transformation, statistical analysis, and visualization using R Studio. The applications of these tools will help students better understand and interpret complex information, as they uncover new patterns, affinities, and stories in the data, which will support their research and design practice. Participants will create a final work that will synthesize their process, insights, and reflections through a compelling visual form.
Elective
LDAR W207-101
CONSTRUCTED GROUND: TERRAIN AND LANDFORM
SECTION DESCRIPTION
This seminar explores the parallels between designing and constructing the ground. It's focus is on landform - analyzing it as part of a larger natural system; understanding its inherent opportunities and limitations; altering it for human use & occupation; and building it with varying construction methodologies. The means for this exploration will primarily be through three-dimensional representations with two dimensional contour plans; however, diagrams, sketches, sections, and narratives will be necessary throughout the semester.
Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture
LDAR W207-102
CONSTRUCTED GROUND: TERRAIN AND LANDFORM
SECTION DESCRIPTION
This seminar explores the parallels between designing and constructing the ground. It's focus is on landform - analyzing it as part of a larger natural system; understanding its inherent opportunities and limitations; altering it for human use & occupation; and building it with varying construction methodologies. The means for this exploration will primarily be through three-dimensional representations with two dimensional contour plans; however, diagrams, sketches, sections, and narratives will be necessary throughout the semester.
Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture
LDAR W217-101
RESEARCH METHODS FOR DESIGN
SECTION DESCRIPTION
As the scope and objectives of the design disciplines expand and diversify, the ability to implement effective research methodologies has become increasingly critical to position designers to generate and validate new knowledge. This course will survey research methods relevant to the design disciplines that have emerged from the sciences, the social sciences and the arts with special focus on those utilized by landscape architects. Methods we will examine include case studies, descriptive strategies, classification schemes, interpretive strategies, evaluation and diagnosis, engaged action research, projective design and arts-based practices. Students will work individually and in teams to analyze and compare different research strategies, understand their procedures and sequences, the types of data required, projected outcomes, and value by examining a set of projects of diverse scales. Visiting lecturers will present research based design projects. The goal of the course is to provide students with a framework of research methodologies with which they can begin to build their own research based practices.
Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture
LDAR W217-102
RESEARCH METHODS FOR DESIGN
SECTION DESCRIPTION
As the scope and objectives of the design disciplines expand and diversify, the ability to implement effective research methodologies has become increasingly critical to position designers to generate and validate new knowledge. This course will survey research methods relevant to the design disciplines that have emerged from the sciences, the social sciences and the arts with special focus on those utilized by landscape architects. Methods we will examine include case studies, descriptive strategies, classification schemes, interpretive strategies, evaluation and diagnosis, engaged action research, projective design and arts-based practices. Students will work individually and in teams to analyze and compare different research strategies, understand their procedures and sequences, the types of data required, projected outcomes, and value by examining a set of projects of diverse scales. Visiting lecturers will present research based design projects. The goal of the course is to provide students with a framework of research methodologies with which they can begin to build their own research based practices.
Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.
Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture