LA8201 Anthropocene Futures: Gowanus (Brooklyn, NY)
University of Minnesota Department of Landscape Architecture. Fall 2017.

 Instructor:            
Matthew Tucker, ASLA
Assistant Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture
mjtucker@umn.edu

LA8201 seeks to engage the contemporary Anthropocene discourse and, via the design process, conduct speculative yet applied project-based research to examine and postulate on landscape-based Anthropocene futures that transcend disciplinary boundaries. For Fall 2017, New York City and the contaminated Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn will served as our laboratory to examine such issues and consider new directions for critical landscape architectural practice in the 21st century. The design investigation considered the following:

What new garden typologies of the Anthropocene could emerge from this paradigm shift?

What new concepts and terms are emerging from the sciences and humanities that could influence how we think of the garden and the urban park?

What new ways of thinking about the environment and "waste" or "contamination" are possible?

How might urban processes be reconsidered as essential socio-ecological processes or new forms of urban parks?