GLA304 Social sustainability in a context of vulnerability

Credits (ECTS):15

Course responsible:Kathrine Strøm

Campus / Online:Taught campus Ås

Teaching language:Engelsk

Limits of class size:25 students

Course frequency:Once a year.

Nominal workload:

Total workload of 375 hours.

A maximum of 93.75 hours (= 25% of 375 hours of the total workload per student) will be structured teaching, consisting of lectures, assignments, tutoring and feedback sessions, short presentations, reviews, and peer reviews.

The remaining 75% of the students’ workload (= a maximum of 281.25 hours) have to be dedicated, by each student, to the related studio work, in the form of self-study. This is where those materials and outcomes have to be generated, which are presented and discussed with the students, in the studio sessions as such (during structured teaching).

Teaching and exam period:Spring parallel.

About this course

Landscape architects are tasked with safeguarding the viability of the natural environment and working towards developing and maintaining a humane built environment in cities, towns, and villages. Conflicts, environmental disasters, food insecurity, and climate change consequences -draughts, floods, starvation, soil depletion and impoverishment, and wildfires, are widening disparities and exacerbating human mobility. The course focuses on landscape and social sustainability and is centered on maintaining and enriching contemporary and succeeding generations' well-being and quality of life. During the semester, students will work on aligning their design statement and project to the course theme. Besides, 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.

Design studio teaching, in a studio room, on campus. External Fieldwork accompanies the on-campus teaching method of 'studio'.

The studio instructors will meet the students once or twice a week for regular studio sessions (4-6 contact hours each).

For this GLA studio course, we will need a studio room that is available for a full semester (each day) for the respective batch of Master's students (GLA). It is very important that the graduate students are provided with a room where they can meet and work without restriction, and without having to evacuate the room now and then.

Learning outcome

The course focuses on landscape and social sustainability and is centered on maintaining and enriching contemporary and succeeding generations' well-being and quality of life. The studio work, field discovery, lectures, and desk critiques will lead students to gain insights 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.

Learning Outcomes

  • 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:

  • Apply principles of equitable development, social and environmental justice, and community resilience in the implementation of landscape projects responsive to the most pressing environmental and social issues in a contested world
  • Formulate advanced and effective landscape strategies that include core knowledge skills of landscape architecture and planning theory, ethics, and critical thinking skills.

Skills:

  • Professionally communicate ideas and concepts of social 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.

  • Lectures and in-class discussions on equitable development, social and environmental justice, and community resilience.

    Individual research and in-class discussion on the course topic

    Selection and analysis of contemporary landscape design projects related to the course topic

    Desk critics, Group discussions, Peer reviews, and Pin-up presentations

    Fieldwork and site analysis

  • In the course of organized teaching, conducted by the instructors, suitable input is presented, regular feedback is provided, the project development is guided and supported, and reviews allow the students to develop and defend their work.

    Guidance to relevant references, precedents, best practices, literature, or other elements of the professional canon will be provided.

  • GLA301, GLA302 er equivalent
  • Portfolio.

    Grading: A-F

    All submissions have to be submitted in the English language.

  • An external examiner reviews and evaluates the final project outcomes.
  • • Compulsory 80% attendance (participation) in all scheduled studio sessions. Students are expected to attend all classes. Regular and punctual attendance is the essence of successful participation in the course. Attendance will be recorded at the beginning of each session and is mandatory for the entire class duration. Whether excused or not, absence from any class does not excuse the student from his/her responsibility for the work done or from any announcement made during his/her absence.

    • Compulsory presentation of the individual studio outcomes at studio tutoring and feedback sessions, and all reviews. The students have to present their work in a prevalent way (prevalent forms of graphical and oral presentation of design-research work).

    • Active participation in the developing project discussion with the instructors, peer students and invited reviewers. Studio is a supreme place in design education; it is a physical space that becomes alive with activities if and when teachers and learners breathe life into it. Thus, it becomes a marketplace for ideas, a vital environment, and an essential factor in design learning. Students are expected to work in the studio during class time as per the course schedule. Specifically, it required them to develop and complete all the assignments and use studio time to develop their design project. Class time needs to be productive.

    • Active and coherent participation throughout the term in order to produce and aggregate work for the final portfolio. The portfolio is expected to be developed in a continuing and coherent mode of individual practice during the term and is not to be produced at the end of the semester. This process is closely guided by studio instructors and will lay out the specific expectations - typically on a weekly basis.

    • Students are expected to demonstrate weekly progress in the development of the proposal and project development in iterations of conducting research and testing it in a design application.

    • On a trial-and-error basis of continuous testing and vetting of their ideas, students take responsibility to drive their individual proposals and projects. Instructors provide guidance and assistance. Instructors will emphasize the 'learning by doing' design theory: through self-initiative and self-discovery, the students will gain a knowledge base that informs future decision-making.

    • Using graphic tools for exploration and visualization of this process. Presentation of the studio outcome(s) at interim and final reviews.

  • A maximum of 93.75 hours (= 25% of 375 hours of the total workload per student) will be structured teaching, consisting of lectures, assignments, tutoring and feedback sessions, short presentations, reviews, and peer reviews.
  • Students enrolled in the Master of Landscape Architecture for Global Sustainability programme.
  • Letter grades
  • Admission to the Master of Landscape Architecture for Global Sustainability programme. External students may enrol based on an individual case.