LARCH 365WContemporary Trends in Landscape Architecture

3 credits · Landscape Architecture · Penn State

LARCH 365(W), Contemporary Trends, is a writing-intensive course that enables a more thorough investigation of social, environmental and cultural issues as they relate to design. The course is grounded in three basic concepts: RESEARCH, COMMUNICATION, and theoretical CONTEXT within the discipline of landscape architecture, past and present. The course develops the skills of critical thinking and writing as pertains to contemporary issues in landscape architecture, with an understanding of precedent and evolution of design theory. The goal of this course is to introduce students to a variety of ways that contemporary landscape architects address and use these issues in their work, and to develop their skills in critical thinking, the art of critique, and communicating ideas in both verbal and written methods. The course is devoted to a wide range of relevant issues and topics confronting the profession and discipline of landscape architecture in the 21st century. It investigates the modern designed landscape as a distinct mode of cultural production-with its own materials, medium, codes, ethics, and concerns-in the context of landscape architectural theory's interconnection to evolving societal constructions of nature, social issues, environmentalism, and the city. It begins with the emergence of a modern sensibility about landscape in the late 19th century and tracks developments through modernism, postmodernism, and beyond. Information dissemination will be by lectures, readings, student research in the form of monographs and critique of built work.