Responsible teacher: Alice Labadini
Guest teacher: Kathleen John-Alder, Rutgers University, New Jersey

This course will be an intensive reading and theory course stretching over 3 separate weeks. It will include an introduction to the discipline of landscape architecture, an introuduction to contemporary theory, and a thematic component on the notion of "ground".

The first part of the course, led by Kathleen John-Alder (Rutgers University, New Jersew), will explore the term "ground" through a discussion of mid-twentieth century environmentalism in the United States, when practitioners like Ian McHarg and Lawrence Halprin began to reconfigure the practice of landscape landscape as an inclusive cross-disciplinary endeavor concerned with organizational systems and order. Second, it will follow this discussion with John-Alder's own work on "thick sections", or multi-layered timelines, as a means to reposition the role of history in the design process. Third, John-Alder will end with a discussion of her recent work on the Re-Build by design Competition and its exploration of the term ground in the face of rising water levels in the New York City region.

The second part, by Alice Labadini, will introduce students to selected theoretical fundamentals of contemporary landscape architecture discourses, and especially of what has been recently named "Landscape Urbanism". This part of the course will provide theoretical and historical perspectives on contemporary landscape design, and will especially look at how landscape methods and theories have entered and influenced urbanism’s discourses and design practices.

The third part of the course, also by Alice Labadini, will have a thematic focus and re-visit the notion of "ground", and explore this from different perspective. The students will be given theoretical references in the form of texts and lectures and will be challenged to discuss recent landscape architectural projects in relation to the idea of "ground".

Literature list will be available later