GLA304 Implementing landscape sustainability in an urban context

The course focuses on landscape sustainability in an urban context, where environmental, social and economic aspects are intertwined. Attention will be brought to the role of the landscape architect and decision making in urban development projects.

A case area will be used, for 2024 FIlipstad in Oslo was used, and the class was in dialogue with Oslo municipality and the land owner Hav eiendom. A case area with an ongoing project development in an urban area will be chosen for 2025 - and meetings with the local authorities and the developers is a part of the learning process. The students will design an intervention that can be a part of solving the site’s challenges when it comes to sustainability.

Students are expected to explore design strategies that, while responding to some of the pressing 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, SDG (https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs) will produce landscapes that can simultaneously perform ecological, social, and political roles.

Through studio work, field discovery, lectures, and desk critiques students will gain insight into the course topic and the specificities of the selected case study. Throughout the semester, instructors will encourage a sense of autonomy and self-directedness, emphasizing an active, goal-oriented process to foster students' ability to develop an independent design project.

The course focuses on landscape and sustainability and is centered on maintaining and enriching contemporary and succeeding generations' well-being and quality of life.

• Develop a self-generated research question through in-depth analysis, well-structured methodology, appropriate design exploration, and alternative design scenarios relevant to the inquiry.
• Develop and carry out a process-oriented design project by applying a creative thinking approach.

Knowledge :

• understanding of ownership and legal processes in decision making
• understanding of communication and the role oft the landscape architect
• design solutions that solve complex challenges
• Formulate advanced and effective landscape strategies that include core knowledge skills of landscape architecture and planning theory, ethics, and critical thinking..

Skills :

• Professionally communicate ideas and concepts of landscape sustainability in landscape architecture orally, textually, graphically, and through multiple media.

The students are guided through the project by lectures, short presentations, assignments as well as continuous feedback to the developing work. Feedback is provided by the responsible staff, and in the form of peer reviews, during studio time, interim and final reviews.