Histories of Landscape Architecture I: Textuality and the Practice of Landscape Architecture

The course focuses upon a series of short modern texts, as they relate to the practice of contemporary landscape architecture; these texts will be required readings each week, and may be supported by a series of other recommended readings. The texts, to be provided in an on-line folder, will be studied each week and will be read by all the students (approximately two hours outside class). Every session will consist of a discussion and debate, led by different groups of students, and this will be followed by a lecture in which that week\’s issues are explored via examinations of current design. The OBJECTIVES of the course are to provide entering landscape architecture students with an agenda of issues and topics, along with some discussion of built work where those themes can be observed and assessed. The course is designed to raise current issues of theory and approaches to landscape design and to consider the application of these to a range of (mostly) current practice. REQUIREMENTS. Attendance and readings are required. Each week (after the initial session) three selected (or volunteered!) students will prepare and debate that week\’s topic(s), drawing if they wish upon other readings. When we have called upon all registered students, the remaining sessions will then be conducted as a general discussion and debate. After each class, the three students will hand in either their prepared remarks or a revision of them in the light of the class debates. These submissions will, along with a final essay, be the required written work for each student in the course: the final essay will be chosen by individual students in the light of the course material discussed and in consultation with the instructor.