The Landscape Urbanism (LU) programme leads to either an MArch (16 months) or MSc (12 months) degree. It explores the role that design and designers – specifically architects, landscape architects and urban designers – can play when working within the field of policymaking. Contemporary planetary urbanisation is structured by policies that respond to the dominant capitalist system governing our societies, economies and ecologies, which in turn have been shaped by human relations of power, production and environment-making. LU explores design within and beyond normative aesthetic and performative proposals, as we confront the processes, landscapes and territories of planetary urbanisation and the environmental, racial, socioeconomic and health-related crises they have triggered.
Design in the Capitalocene
The programme investigates how progressive policies can be implemented to target the ecological emergency within the Capitalocene. Our exploration of the links between design and policy will be framed within the following research areas:
Extractivism and Land Struggles
This research theme focuses on landscape investigations, and examines spatial practices related to extractivism and the land struggles they have generated. The study of these specific political ecologies is linked to the concept of consequential landscapes, particularly in the contexts of mining, industrial agriculture and other extractive industries. Our research in this area is supported by organisations such as the London Mining Network in the UK and Red Muqui in Peru, and foregrounds visions for futures projected by local communities and Indigenous nations.
Land Reform and Alternative Models of Ownership
This research area explores the impact of land reform in various contexts and how this can be leveraged to unlock radical futures, alongside the investigation of alternative ownership models such as Public-Common Partnerships (PCPs) and Community Land Trusts. These models offer radical alternatives to mainstream urban developments such as Private-Public Partnerships (PPPs), Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS) and new enclosures in the UK.
Agroecological Urbanism and the Agrarian Question
The agrarian question surrounding the relationship between agriculture and capitalist systems has been sidelined in the wake of an ‘urban age’. Our research into this topic will explore how so-called agroecological urbanism and its building blocks could offer an alternative to the predominant city-model. This research area will be supported by collaborations with the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience at Coventry University, as well as agroecological institutes in the Global South, where the agroecological movement originated. Our research will investigate how landed community kitchens, territorial hubs, agricultural parks and models such as enterprise stacking within communal frameworks could all be implemented. It will also examine the development of bio-based materials and procurement systems to explore the transformation of the construction industry worldwide.
Term 1
Territorial Formations: Design Studio
The Term 1 Design Studio provides students with an understanding of planetary urbanisation processes and contexts such as land grabs, land speculation, geomorphological processes and environmental emergencies, as well as the landscape techniques that inform the LU project methodology. These sessions reveal the processes and dynamics behind current modes of planetary urbanisation, enabling students to imagine, design and project unconventional forms of territorial organisation and to offer alternative scenarios to current models of urbanisation. These alternative models and scenarios rely on landscapes’ capacity to host, resist and modulate the struggles and contradictions between environmental and sociopolitical forces that exist within specific territories.
Term 2
Carto-genesis: Design and Research Studio
The Term 2 Design Studio enables students to develop the basis for a research-by-design thesis. We provide a research methodology, and thesis topics align with the overall agenda of the year. Students’ research considers geomorphological processes and social and territorial formations, and explores historical and contemporary forms of cartographic representation such as maps, videos, simulations, dynamic cartographies and webapps – the main tools through which we design and project alternative forms of territorial organisation. Students will develop detailed designs of landscape and architectural typologies, spatial policies, organisational territorial models, regulatory plans and visual decision-making tools that form part of their final dissertation.
Terms 3–4
Design Thesis
Students develop their dissertation over the final two terms of the programme. They will explore modes of documentation that extend beyond the fixity and stability of master planning, allowing their proposals to operate protectively and subversively. After research into cartographic production – encompassing forms such as atlases, cartographies, interactive tools and digital simulations – students produce a design manual for territorial organisation, followed by a detailed design development of a given scenario, in the form of a manual. This manual will describe the procedures and guidelines that drive their project, suggesting ways that its principles could be extrapolated within other similar territories. Students also develop project scenarios that set out the specific outcomes of their proposal within a given context and timeframe in the UK.
Workshop 1: Design and Policy in the Capitalocene
Term 1
This workshop highlights the relationship between policymaking and design, and enables students to understand how these processes have shaped most of the landscapes we inhabit. Students will create physical models and explore stop-motion animation techniques to visualise both the impact of existing and progressive policies as well as the benefits or damage they could cause. Through these models, students will explore future scenarios that describe how alternative policies can build fair and equitable landscapes for the benefit of local communities. This enquiry will be supported by a series of model-making sessions focusing on visualisation and design techniques.
Workshop 2: Consequential Landscapes
Term 1
This workshop will develop students’ understanding of the processes behind contemporary planetary urbanisation. Sessions explore cartographic techniques and introduce ways in which students can visualise multiple forms of socioeconomic and political organisation, as well as the spatial configurations produced by current models of urbanisation. This workshop will be supported by the London Mining Network and the Visual Investigations Team from the Financial Times. Through this, students will build connections with local communities and learn to communicate current knowledge and new technologies in the field of spatial investigations, as well as encouraging the accountability of transnational conglomerates and extractive corporations.
Workshop 3: Engage
Term 1
In this workshop, students develop a web platform that disseminates proposals and offers a way to engage different stakeholders in the development of a project linked to Green New Deal policies. The workshop is supported by a series of introductions to scripting languages and other software that will aid in the platform’s development.
History and Theory Seminar: Models, Methods and Concepts
Term 1
This lecture and seminar-based course is concerned with the ways in which the intersections and interactions of landscape and urbanism have been thought, modelled, designed and analysed. This will introduce students to different ways of critically engaging with these matters, enabling them to build an understanding of the potentials and problematics of landscape urbanism. This, in turn, supports students’ practice and development, and informs their work in other studios, workshops, field trips and seminars.
History and Theory Seminar: The Rhetoric of Mapping
Term 2
This seminar focuses on key moments and practices in the historical development of cartography and its use as a representational device. We explore methods of mapping in terms of their uses, implications and potentials, and this enquiry informs the creation of a cartogenetic manifesto by each student, as well as the writing of their final project thesis.
World-Ecology and Policy Design
Term 2
This seminar introduces students to the concepts, methods and techniques of policymaking, drawing on expertise from design and the social sciences to highlight the possibilities of policymaking as a spatial practice. Students will examine how policies design landscapes in lecture-based sessions which are followed by practical workshops. These sessions will begin by showing students how to dissect policy documents, academic publications, reports, manuals and evidence-based data. Subsequent workshops will provide the opportunity for students to design policy memos: official documents that synthesise key information. Students will identify and explain the constituencies, processes and instruments that design a landscape, and will develop a critical position supported by graphic evidence.
Research Methods Seminar
Term 2
This seminar explores different research methods used across the AA’s Taught Postgraduate Programmes during eight sessions in Term 2.