Terrain Lab

Overview

Starting from the unique human-sea-shaped landscape of the island of Favignana, the Terrain Lab course from Architectural Association will provide a space for co-learning, interdisciplinary collaborations, and comparative studies to generate cross-cultural conversations around the maritime space of the Med as a space of transition where economic, political, racial, and ecological dynamics intertwine.

After a few days, the VS will travel to the island of Venice, where, from the Venetian lagoon - a delicate land-water balance ecosystem since its inception, we will bring together environmental humanities scholars, historians, scientists, geologists, artists, architects, designers, curators and writers, to discuss around strategies of care for water ecologies.

With the aim to foster an improved understanding of collective agency operating at the intersection of anthroposphere, biosphere, and geosphere, the VS seeks a pedagogy that understands design as a mean to research, disclose, represent and question the various processes involving territories in the transition. 

Skills Developed

• Learn a methodology which has the capacity to bridge architectural studies, landscape urbanism approach with urban political ecology, and environmental and cultural studies.

• Develop the theoretical, methodological and representational means to address the social, ecological and geopolitical complexities that characterize the current condition of planetary urbanization.

• Engage with the concepts of operational landscapes and the notion of the Capitalocene.

• Learn to combine geospatial knowledge and tools with design methodologies and representational means.

• Learn how to use GIS software, source data collection and develop cartographic representations to describe systems and patterns organizing the territory.

• Understanding urbanization as a no-fixed-scale phenomenon whose entanglements with nature exceed the boundaries of inhabited spaces and cities.

• Participate in the long-term construction of a dedicated exhibition and publication.