Undergraduate Course: Landscape Theories: Resilience (ARCH10070)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh College of Art |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course offers students theoretical and critical historical grounding in Landscape Architecture, incorporating an expanded canon for conceptualizing and designing resilient landscapes in the face of climate change. Through a mix of lectures, seminars, tutorials and writing labs, students will gain the needed understanding to move resilience beyond rhetoric, without reducing it to a purely environmental or technical problem to be solved. The course will set out and discuss the transformational potential (if any) resilience-thinking holds, associating this with new modes of landscape practice in an effort to (re) establish resilience as a mechanism of progressive socioecological change. |
| Course description |
In the context of the accelerating climate crisis and deepening inequalities, resilience has become Landscape Architecture's priority design objective. It appears to be everywhere, yet itself remains a vague notion, often uncritically incorporated into practice, its principles and ways of working. In response to this conceptual ambiguity, the course will engage with its many meanings and critically interrogate how resilience is historically and geographically contingent, politically driven, culturally significant and often double-edged.
The first part of course will focus on building a shared understanding of resilience by tracing its emergence in 1970s ecology, along with a study of associated terms. By blending theory and practice, the course will proceed through an exploration of the discourses and practices of resilience in both Western and non-Western contexts, placing emphasis on the social, political and ideological forces that underpin them, and the design methods that accompany them. From this broader understanding, students will focus their individual study of resilience on a chosen strategy/project//approach/site, developing this through tutorials and writing labs towards a final case study submission. Transdisciplinary inquiry and conceptual risk-taking will be fostered and encouraged throughout.
The students will be expected to come to class prepared for debate and informed discussion by having read the assigned material in advance. They will be required to articulate their own position and responses to critical cases and texts, to formulate individual research questions in response to the course material and to develop an original study/grounded critique of a case/site of their choosing.
The course will be delivered through lectures, seminars, individual tutorials and writing labs. Lectures (1h) will be delivered by both the course organiser and invited guests. These will be followed by 1.5 h seminars, allowing time for discussion around key ideas. Two approx. 20-minute individual tutorials and two approx. 3h-long writing labs (workshops) will support each student in the development of their summative assessments.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Situate and creatively interrogate landscape architecture's focus on resilience-thinking within its historical, environmental and sociopolitical context.
- Critically analyse the chosen case study, suggesting alternative theoretical framings and proposing how these might inform landscape practice.
- Persuasively communicate individual research process and findings, using written, verbal and graphic techniques with rigour and originality.
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Reading List
Berkes, Fikret. Sacred Ecology. 4th ed. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017.
Buck, Holly Jean. After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration. London: Verso, 2019.
Grove, Kevin. Resilience. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018.
Holmes, Rob. 'The Problem with Solutions'. Places Journal, July 2020.
Meadows, Donella. Thinking in Systems: A Primer. London: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008.
Reed, Chris, and Nina-Marie Lister, eds. Projective Ecologies: Ecology, Research, and Design in the Climate Age. 2nd ed. New York: Actar Publishers, 2020. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Research and Enquiry: By finding connections and gaps in existing scholarship and by engaging in grounded critique of landscape practice, you will follow your curiosity, gain problem-finding and problem-solving skills, deepen your critical thinking and develop research of both scholarly rigour and practical relevance.
Personal and Intellectual Autonomy: By taking control of your own research process and by reflecting on your findings and decision-making through discussion, you will build confidence in your own work, practice collaboration skills and increase your fluency in assessment criteria.
Communication: By engaging in dialogue with tutors and peers and by effectively articulating complex ideas and arguments through visual, verbal and written means, you will improve your ability of persuasive and adaptive communication.
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| Keywords | Resilience,sustainability,climate change,systems thinking,landscape practice |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Ms Barbara Prezelj
Tel:
Email: bprezelj@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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