LA 693 Advanced Design Theory • W '00

"Modern/Postmodern Theory"
LA 693 ADVANCED DESIGN THEORY o Winter ‘00
MODERN/POSTMODERN
THEORY IN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

Offered every other year to grads and upper level, interested undergrads, LA 693 will be offered this millennial winter term on Monday and Wednesday mornings from 10 – 12 around the seminar table in Rm. 405a La.

The class is centered in reading and conversation about the ideas, tensions, theories - and especially landscape architectural projects - that express the continuing emergence of the environmental planning and design professions from cultural modernism.

At its most fundamental level, it is a search for new theory in the voices and vocabularies of today and tomorrow. But unlike modernism, this is not conceived as a starting from ground zero. Articles from Modern Landscape Architecture: A Critical Review, Marc Treib, Editor, provide a background of theory, vocabularies and many examples of projects reaching from Hubbard and Kimball to Garrett Eckbo to Peter Walker and Martha Schwartz.

Important newer writings from authors such as Elizabeth Meyers, Jim Corner, Ann Spirn, Sim Van der Ryn, Carl Steinitz, George Lakof (including the latest on quality, metaphor and meaning - summer ’99 - from Jerry) and many others have been collected into notebooks that will be made available for class use. Jerry’s collection of essays, Designing in an Environmental Field, is the 2nd required text.

Format:

Seminar. Reading assigned for each session. Each student is expected to prepare by bringing a page of reading notes, observations, questions, quotes, examples… to the table to fuel the conversational fire. A bucket of water will be kept on hand at all times, just in case. Guests theoretically tba.

Requirements

Attendance; Live Participation; Two Projects; Projects in lieu of Exams.

Project 1: BUILDING YOUR THEORY. Inspired by contemporary prototype theory (to be explained), sort examples of contemporary landscape planning and design work, discuss, argue about and eventually collaborate to build a visual, theoretical model that explains/guides your choices. Team project of from 3-4 students. Meeting place: The Hearth. Each team reports progress at mid-term.

Project 2. CRITICISM. Criticism is applied theory. Each team then member chooses one of their group’s prototypical projects and writes a 600 word illustrated, critical essay (in the sense of explication), applying all of the knowledge, wisdom and newfound courage from the class. The plan, this millennial year, is to then collect, locally publish and share these short essays.