Landscape Lifecycles as a Speculative Design Research Practice for Transforming Waste Conditions

Research-based design has been foundational for landscape architecture. Analytical layering in geographically-based mappings has become a universally applied, formulaic approach. For waste landscapes, this has generated similar redevelopment strategies for drastically differing waste landscape conditions. This site typology, however, requires more nuanced approaches. As a design-research framework, “landscape lifecycles” aims to tackle waste landscapes with integrative strategies and techniques that reactivate waste as a legible and dynamic contributor to local and regional contexts; a method for integrating multiple diverse programs rooted in economic, environmental, and social performance to form hybrid assemblages in the transformation of perceived material and spatial waste. This article highlights design-research and generative representational methods developed through projects and coursework that embrace speculation as a means of engaging with waste conditions at multiple scales — from the material to the region. These methods range from speculative geographic, process, and abstract mapping to scenario testing to time-based, projective design that document, explore, and test an argumentative hypothesis and the multi-scalar design implications of research on the imaginative potentials of waste transformation.

Iñaki Abalos

Professor in Residence, Department of Architecture, GSD, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA

Orazio Carpenzano

Dean, Facoltà di Architettura, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome

Yung Ho Chang

Professor of Architecture, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai, China

Winka Dubbeldam

Founder of Archi-Tectonics, Miller Professor and Chair of Architecture at Stuart Weitzman School of Design

Brian Ford

Professor Emeritus, Department of Architecture & Built Environment, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

Hsinming Fung

Professor, SCI-Arc, Los Angeles CA, USA

Carlo Gasparrini

Professor of Urbanism, Dipartimento di Architettura, Universita' degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Naples, Italy

Rahul Mehrotra

Professor of Urban Design and Planning, GSD, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA

Antoine Picon

Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology, GSD, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA

Mónica Ponce de León

Dean, School of Architecture, Princeton University, Princeton NJ, USA

Jane Rendell

Professor, The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, London, UK

Peter Rich

Professor of Architecture, Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg, South Africa

Michael Speaks

Dean, School of Architecture, Syracuse University, Syracuse NY, USA

Martha Thorne

Hon FRIBA, Hon COAM, Senior Advisor for The OBEL Award

C David Tseng

Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Chiao-Tung University, Taipei, Taiwan

Sarah Whiting

Dean, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA

Li Xiangning

Deputy Dean, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai, China

Landscape Lifecycles as a Speculative Design Research Practice for Transforming Waste Conditions

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