Being interdisciplinary is a way of thinking, and need to realize the specificity of the discipline and its limits; need to jump the fence in order to engage other disciplines. The central concern of design is not to match up the logic or expectation of a particular discipline, but to based on the issues and to search for possibilities. A good designer should have curiosity, openness and broadness as well as the capability of synthesizing his / her knowledge and experience into design.
We are living in a time that we must radically transform our human relationships to the earth. The crisis we are facing demands us to pool all of our creativity together, and demands adaptive, integrated solutions and systemic thinking. It is more than biology or ecology combining with art. It might be chemistry, physics, and certainly engineering, as well as psychology, and all the social sciences - and not so much a combining of these, as finding emergent ideas when these different kinds of knowledge come together. This kind of complex, systemic and multior trans-disciplinary approach is what we need to even begin finding solutions adequate to the need.
An overview of the development of picturesque aesthetics in the late 1800s, particularly its influence upon urban planning and architectural design in the 20th century, will shed light on our understanding of the interaction and connection of landscape architecture, architecture and urban design disciplines in the development of modern architecture; further, it will drive us to rethink the significance of landscape architecture in the contemporary study and construction of built environment. The developing history of picturesque aesthetics in the 20th century has witnessed the interaction among the disciplines of urban design, architecture and landscape architecture. It will further inspire us to think “crossing boundaries” between different disciplines on the variety of new issues associated with the living environment of human beings.
Different images of cities are inherited from their own culture. However, the inheritance is hardly to be analyzed dedicatedly. The password of different appearances of cities is the institution formed in the development process of a city. The convergence of engineering technology and institution of a city determines the image of the city. The appearance of a city is not simply an outcome of design, but duplicate and inheritance of institution genes.
Through a cohesive team of consultants and an extensive public/private partnership, this project reused the materials recovered from the warehouse and brick-making site, created knolls and views taking advantage of the topography, and built sustainable features and multiple design scales of program usage for visitors.
The intent of Shifting Fields is to create a more experience-rich site, which underlines the relationships to the adjacent functions and characteristics. Flooding and continually rising sea levels can become a productive — rather than destructive — phenomenon, and also can help to transform and strengthen a town’s identity.
Based on in the practices, precedents, histories and ecologies of the Flanders Fields, the designers of Herinneringspark in Belgium created a set of continuously evolving landscape installations featuring the memory of World WarⅠ, and aimed to tell stories of its past, present and future to visitors.
This project investigates the current tension between waste economies and lagoonal ecologies in the Rio Grande Delta. It questions the notions of growth through production and conservation through preservation by offering a new model for the region that couples marine disassembly practices with the conservation of ecologically sensitive areas. Situated in a shifting landscape — socially, economically, and environmentally — the project acknowledges the importance of both systems and attempts to choreograph infrastructural and ecological flows to enhance regional resiliency and productivity.
Energy is the basis of life and the fuel for modern civilization. The energy industry is reconsidered by uncovering where operations can overlap and hybridize with other infrastructures, economies, and ecologies. Energy Afterlife explores the reutilization of geothermal effluent from Reykjanes Geothermal Power Plant in southwest Iceland. Reusing its residual energy creates a post-production, spin-off process that yields a new landscape formed by thermal principles and the compression and extension of its temperature gradient. Algae cultivation and production, revegetation strategies, and temperature’s experiential qualities are interwoven to form a thermal resource park. Heat is reexamined as an invisible, phenomenological design material, which can be captured, contained, and released through conduction, convection, and radiation properties and techniques inherent in particular materials and forms.
Overlapping boundaries and ambiguous jurisdictions have shaped the landscapes of the western United States. Inscribing Wilderness proposes expanding the Arizona National Scenic Trail, the rectilinear geometries that have defined the borders of these landscapes create layered histories where physical and juridical space does not always match. Understanding that wilderness is a construction where boundaries are plural and porous, the proposal recalibrates lines of control, as displayed on maps, and lines on the ground, the result of landscape maintenance. The trans-state, trans-agency trail would create an autonomous territory, thus redrawing space through map and plan, where the irony of wilderness is exposed to confront visions, value, and expectations of conservation.