ON SITE: Landscape Architectonic Explorations

On Site, organized by the section of Landscape Architecture explores how locally sourced materials can be reconfigured into resilient, dynamic, landscape structures that engage geologic, hydrological, and biological systems, enabling new topologies to unfold over time. We aim at participants with different disciplinary backgrounds. Students are challenged to review their ways of spatial exploration and diagnosis and to develop a deep understanding of the qualities of the existing landscape.

The aim of the course is to explore the potential of site-specific landscape structures that go beyond normative performances and allow for alternative and surprising uses and meaning. The task for the designer is to make these structures accessible, mentally, visually and physically, by means of experiment and intervention, and transform them into site-specific, dynamic, and evolving landscapes.

Advanced digital surveying, design and fabrication technologies serve as key tools in this exploration. Students will conduct detailed sensing and modelling of the site’s material and hydrological conditions, using this data to develop material strategies that respect local resources and processes. Material transformation techniques—such as clay ripening, texture sorting, or earthmoving—will be applied to align material behavior with ecological and aesthetic intentions.

The course culminates in a built demonstrator that acts both as a prototype and a speculative model for how landscape architecture can merge technological mediation with ecological intelligence and resilience. Hands-on landscape engineering and construction work is part of the course, as well as interacting with the stakeholders and the public.