WI 22 Landscape Architecture Courses
MWF 10:00-11:20
Elizabeth Umbanhowar, umbanhow@uw.edu
5 credits, VLPA or I&S + Optional Writing
(SLN: 16254, Honors SLN: 16255)
Contact Jennie Li, jencyli@uw.edu for add codes.This course explores landscape sites, systems, and symbols from the early nineteenth century until the present moment, stressing the intersections and entanglements of history with current politics, experiences and ecologies. Together we will interrogate historic narratives and examine both familiar and new landscapes, while re-centering global geographies and marginalized voices that help us make relevant the past in our Anthropocene “now.” Through creative exercises, diverse media and collaborative processes, we will critically examine the writing, production, and performance of landscape and its histories thematically through the diverse lenses of: power and ownership; memory and representation; knowledge and experience; labor and production; materiality and technological innovation; climate disruption and social change; identity and emotion; and race, class and gender.
L ARCH 361: Human Experience of Place (Undergraduate)
TTH 10:00-11:20
Jeff Hou
3 credits, VLPA/I&S, Diversity (SLN 16257)
The version of L ARCH 361 this year will examine the human experience of place in the context of city design. The complexity of cities today requires design investigations that address not only the physical forms but also the social and political forces that shape the built environment. This course examines the multiple and often competing forces that influence the making of contemporary cities and human experience of place. As a survey course, it investigates different paradigms and visions of cities, contested meanings and understandings of urban space, the social and political processes of placemaking, and the everyday experiences and imaginaries. It sees the urban environment, or cityscape, as a continuum of ideas, movements, processes, and change. Furthermore, it questions the conventional notion of design and examines a wider repertoire of spatial practices. Cases around the world including North America, Asia, Europe and Latin America are introduced to contrast and compare design practices and cultural contexts. While exploring the broader processes of city making, the course also explores specific design strategies and tactics that could begin to negotiate the competing social and spatial forces in the contemporary urban environment. For questions, please contact Jeff Hou at jhou@uw.edu.
L ARCH 498C: Perceptions of Nature in the Dense City
W 5:30-8:20 PM
Laure Heland heland@uw.edu
3 credits, VLPA/I&S, Diversity (SLN: 16263)
Fulfills Socio-Political Dimensions of Design selective for MLA students
There is a current trend to design green environments and infrastructure in dense cities, which claim to be “Natural” or “representing Nature.” What is the “Nature” that designers and planners are referring to – and for what purpose? Is Nature a pristine condition in an untouched environment or can it be a hybridization of human and natural systems? How do such definitions and perceptions impact both professional approaches, and the public acceptance of new design idioms?
Through lectures, readings and experimentations, this class will explore various perceptions and definitions of Nature associated with contemporary design projects of green infrastructures in the context of climate change. Independent research and case study will allow students to choose and investigate one particular aspect of these topics.
