Independent research on topics selected by individual students in consultation with a faculty advisor .

Exploring the craft of speculative fiction to vision possible futures, this seminar takes on the future of our discipline as a site of design. Grounded in the histories and theories of radical pedagogies and practices, we will engage our skills to design speculative landscape futures and the pedagogies that will seed their emergence. The course itself will be a co-constructed pedagogical experiment in which we all take an active role in creating.

This seminar explores the history of landscapes as sites of pleasure, sensuality, and eroticism. Cases will range from the idealized topos of the enclosed garden to the marginal spaces of coastal landscapes and modern urban parks. By examining built works as well as those of myth, imagination, and fiction, we will analyze the ongoing significance of Arcadia and its progeny for revealing the erotic potential of landscape as a medium.

Explore the art and craft of designing with plants with a focus on species, space and community -- both plant communities and communities of people. Through rapid design exercises creatively employing large-scale hand and digital drawings and full-scale mockups, students will explore how to move from inspiration to plant selection, procurement, installation and maintenance of horticulture-focused designed landscapes.

In this course students will learn about the relationship between urban areas and the rivers, coasts, canals, lakes, lagoons, and other forms of water that support them. We'll draw from notable examples across the Americas and Europe, and study the technologies and ideas that humans have used to live with water. Students will develop their own maps, models, and technical drawings of a case study of their choosing.