This article encapsulates the recent work of OSA, a practice-based urbanism situated in an academic environment (KU Leuven, Belgium). In the contemporary era of increased social, ecological, and spatial injustices, OSA’s work attempts to create resilient urbanisms through designing robust ecologies. Its worldwide sites of research and interventions are primarily addressed through three themes: water urbanisms, forest urbanisms, and creating new social ecologies as resistance. The first part of the article provides an overview of the ambitions of OSA with a number of examples. The second component consists of four excerpts of recent and on-going design research.
Traditional design education and training in China, including Environmental Art and Landscape Architecture, is essentially grafted from methods of architectural painting. The time has come to reexamine and reflect that is it appropriate to borrow teaching methods directly from Architecture and are there other methods that are developed from the intrinsic qualities of Landscape Architecture and can be used for disciplinary teaching? This article introduces a set of methods of terrainbased field investigation and site documentation, including outlining, mapping, representation, and intervention, which were developed by the author for a design studio in the Department of Landscape Architecture, School of Architecture at the China Academy of Art. The perception of landscape through multiple senses and the exploration on the unseen causes of appearance, as well as the relationships and connections within the terrain, are emphasized in such training.
In this article, Frederick Steiner, the interviewee, introduced the teaching system of PennDesign and its strengths and innovations, and explained the relationship between research, education, and practice based on his rich teaching and practice experience. He also gave suggestions about how to optimize the Landscape Architecture education and curriculum to keep up with the changing world. Steiner indicated that both the Sustainable SITES Initiative which he has made great efforts on and his latest book Making Plans can contribute to the professional training and public education. When it came to significant issues or promising topics that Landscape Architecture professionals need to pay more attention on the future, Steiner called for focus on the role of Landscape Architecture in the city, and climate changes and settlements to vulnerable populations, and highlighted the importance of taking a long view and designing with time.
Practitioners in the fields of landscape planning and design seem less taking advantage of, or even paying no attention to, existing findings of scientific research in other disciplines; and, they often conduct so-called “transdisciplinary” study on their own, but most of the outcomes are uncompetitive with those proven research findings in relevant fields. The author believed that it is essentially resulted from several dislocations between landscape practice and modern scientific research, that are, the gaps between holism and deconstruction, elements and functions, as well as graphics and texts. To bridge such gaps, this article puts forward two solutions: one is problem-finding and-addressing, and the other is synthesizing and visualization of research results, particularly through graphical interpretation.
This interview centers in an architectural design program titled “Home Above Market,” which is one of the special programs of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning at Tongji University for junior experimental classes since 2012. As an innovative teaching practice that combines multiple specialties and spans a long-time period, this program reflects and accumulates its knowledge and experience through a documentary book series. Wang Fangji, the interviewee, is the teaching director of the Home Above Market program and the leading author of the book series, who also enjoys a high reputation in China’s architectural design education. He points out that this program aims at encouraging students to observe and care about ordinary urban and social environment that is often neglected in current architectural education. He further argues that problem-finding and-addressing capability training is important to architectural students, which would help stimulate a more vibrant exploration of China’s urban architecture.
Li Dihua from Peking University, Jason Ho, Founder of the Mapping Workshop, Liu Yulai from Tongji University, and Wang Yuan from Huazhong University of Science and Technology were guest instructors at the 2018 Mapping & Making Summer Workshop of National College Student Campus Building Alliance. They each work on bringing new ideas to traditional design education. In this interview they shared their opinions on current design education and teaching in China. They believe that design education in China is currently at a point of crisis where both instructors and students need to be aware of the urgency to change. However, little attention has been given to the improvement of design education, nor has a discourse to explore a future direction been built. The interviewees approached the workshop as an opportunity for students and educators to see new possibilities in design education. Meanwhile, they hope to develop students’ curiosity and confidence in observation, exploration, independent thinking, and evidential design.
By reviewing the structure of the book Illustrated Principles of Landscape Ecological Planning and Design, this article reexamines the relationship between theoretical study, teaching, and practice in landscape ecological planning and design. It first explores how to apply the principles of ecological sciences (and other relevant disciplines) into related research, teaching, and practice of landscape ecological planning and design. The authors put forward a multi-level research system that integrates fundamental theories, application bases, and practice, in order to bridge ecological principles with planning and design practice. In addition, based on this landscape ecological planning and design system, the authors developed a T-P-C Approach, a universal operating procedure that links up Theories, Patterns or Principles, and Practice Cases and centers in spatial principles. Through a reader sampling survey, the research system of landscape ecological planning and design is refined and improved based on audience’s comments.
As our cities and environments become more complex and face unprecedented challenges, it is no longer sufficient to design for aesthetics alone. Urban design, landscape architecture, and planning now demand going beyond typical design services to support deeper insights via foresight, research, experimentation, and innovative advocacy. SWA is one example of addressing these emerging complexities through two-year-old XL Lab, the firm’s platform for structured research and innovation projects. XL Lab differs and shares attributes with dedicated research teams in firms from allied fields such as architecture and engineering, where research entities that inform practice have been operating for longer than in landscape architecture. This article discusses the need for research in design now, what factors formed distinct research and innovation teams across the industry, their models and approaches, and how firms identify and prioritize research themes or issues taking XL Lab and another two research teams as examples.
Chinese high cold mountains had long been an undiscovered terrain on maps. One of them was Mount Gongga, the highest peak of the Hengduan Mountain Ranges, elevated seven thousand meters above the Chengdu Plain. Mount Gongga has been experiencing visitor blooming, infrastructure updating, and route reshaping, making it a representative case study to examine how landscape routes and pauses can be curated for future changes in ongoing rural-urban transitions. Geographical remoteness keeps this high mountain a white spot to landscape architects and researchers. Topographic prominence stretches and condenses alpine landscape layers and intervenes field observations. "Trans-Alpine: From the Polar to the Peak", a Master of Landscape Architecture design studio at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design locating in Tromsø, experimented with an approach to inquiring into Mount Gongga from Norwegian alpine zones: a combination of research tools including thematic alpine mapping and fieldwork framework. The tool outcomes informed the landscape researchers to further imagine future pausing or route scenarios. Some of the results were curated in an exhibition space at the Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, as a reflective display of this landscape exploration across two geographies.
Through local culture and customs, we can see the relationship between human beings and nature, the humanity, morality, and value, the authenticity of life, and the wisdom of local folklore. Can Architecture and the contemporary architectural practices learn from local wisdoms to develop culturally sustainable local architectural concepts and methods? What is the significance of these methods for the development of rural communities? Since 2015, Kuo Jze Yi, assistant professor from the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at Shenzhen University, has continued to work in different villages in provinces such as Sichuan, Guangdong, Shandong and Henan, with research assistants, students, and local collaborators, combining teaching, research, and practical methods. In a participatory design approach, they allied with villagers and tried to use local resources to build public spaces that inherit local culture. Taking the Square of Collective Memory in Xianniangxi Village designed during 2017 and 2018 as a case study, this article examines the teaching, research, and practice outcomes of participatory design approach, and suggests methods of inheritance and innovation of local resources.