About this course
This lecture and discussion course surveys the history of landscapes and landscape architecture during the long twentieth-century with an eye toward examining the ways that past ideas, interventions, and experiences have shaped the practice of landscape architecture and allied fields as a domain of knowledge and cultural production.
This course is intended to introduce students to some of the major historical forces that have shaped our physical environments and to remind us that historical transformations have influenced our practices and experiences in the present day. Global in approach, though with developments in North America and Europe at its center, and proceeding chronologically and thematically, we will study the relationships between landscape change and design with themes including industrialization, urbanization, race, consumption, health, privacy, colonialism, nature, imperialism, gender, avant-gardes, and agriculture.
The goal of the course is to examine the ways that past ideas, actions, and experiences have shaped the practice of landscape architecture and landscapes in general and that we need to understand that past in order to make sense of how we shape our environments in the present. One central focus for the class is ways that major shifts in modes of transportation through rail, flight, and private car have shaped global landscapes and ways of imagining and shaping the world. Readings will expose students to historical scholarship on landscape history as well as concepts and methods from practitioners and theorists.
Same as ARCH 315 and ARCH 515.
LA 315 / ARCH 315: 3 credit hours
LA 515 / ARCH 515: 4 credit hours