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

Choice of advanced design studios offered by the Department of Interior Architecture. Details & studio descriptions are made available to pre-registered students.

Estimated Cost of Materials: Varies depending on required studio course supplies or related travel. Anticipated costs will be provided in advance, and announced during the lottery studio presentations held in the department.

Open to Junior, Senior or Graduate Interior Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | BFA, MDES, MA Interior Studies

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

What do these words mean and what is their relationship to each other in the architectural design disciplines? Each word is packed with complex and evolving meanings that reflect the state of human knowledge about the environments in which we live and in which we intervene. Each word reflects our understanding of systems, physical, cultural and social, biotic and abiotic, as well as our aspirations to conserve, restore, or reshape those systems. Each word is ubiquitous in the contemporary quest to construct a sustainable, resilient future. But do we really understand what they mean? Are they critically interdependent or can they be considered separately? This studio will examine these questions with the twin objectives of establishing an evolving and dynamic understanding of the terms and generating working methods that respond to the complexities of scale encountered in the landscape.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Preference given to Landscape Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture