AR 342R, LAR 388, ARC 327R, ARC 386M
T 2:00PM-5:00PM, SUT 3.126
Open to all ARC Upper-Division Undergrads and Grads, LAR Grads, Fine Arts students, History of Arts students, Arch Studies Minors, Arch History Minors, and Landscape Minors
Instructor: Mirka Benes
This seminar considers the history and theories of representation in landscape/architecture. Using in depth historical case studies, we cover key modes of representation from the time of Leonardo da Vinci ca. 1500 to today. The instructor comes to this material from three aspects of her own experience: as someone who trained to be a painter; as an art historian who has focused on the study of images; and as a historian of landscape/architecture deeply interested in the roles of representation in the process of design. Drawing, painting, mapping, collage, and overlay exercises by students and instructor are an important part of the seminar work. There is considerable meaning in how we represent both the processes and the object/situation of landscape and architectural designs: to borrow Frederic Jameson's words, "the content of the form" (in this instance, the form being the media and techniques of representation) is as important as "the form of the content."
Visual representation is on many levels an ideological practice, besides an aesthetic and a knowledge-based practice. In the many techniques and media we choose to use in landscape/architecture representations is traceable a set of social and political relationships. By examining landscape/architecture representation from the Renaissance until today, the seminar considers the question: how do landscape and architectural representations operate in the process and practice of design? We will try to understand this in two domains: 1. The techniques, conventions, and media of representation in architecture, landscape architecture, and topographical/landscape forms, including landscape painting, drawing, cartography, overlays, and today’s digital practices, including AI. 2. The roles of representation in the profession of landscape architecture--landscape representation may function as a medium of design itself (the process becomes the design), and/or it may function as a tool of diffusion of the design and designer in a wide range of media and for designer-client interactions.
