This seminar will bridge the foundations of landscape theory, research, and design methods in order to frame a process for students to examine contemporary issues in landscape architecture and define research questions that would contribute to creating new knowledge in the field. The course will include guest lectures from practitioners creating a body of research in the field. This seminar initiates the thesis process by asking students to formulate their own proposals for research through design.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture

This 3-credit elective centers around the Sustainability Lab, an initiative between LDAR and INTAR departments to explore creative material approaches to sustainability. Looking specifically at materials common to New England, this skill-building seminar will explore one selected material each year and expose students to different techniques and methods of researching and working with the region's intrinsic materials.

In tandem with the co-requisite studio, students will collaborate with expert scientists, artists, craftspeople, and designers to refine their material literacy and develop multiple hands-on explorations that go beyond our disciplinary conventions to generate innovative fabrication techniques and applications for the built environment. This process includes becoming familiar with a material's inherent characteristics and behaviors, its composition and connection to vernacular and craft, and finally, developing novel research methods for design that rely on physical experimentation. 

This is a co-requisite course. Students must register for LDAR/INTAR-500G - Sustainability Lab: Advanced Research Studio and LDAR/INTAR-501G - Sustainability Lab: Material Explorations.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture and Interior Architecture Graduate Students.

Elective

This 3-credit elective centers around the Sustainability Lab, an initiative between LDAR and INTAR departments to explore creative material approaches to sustainability. Looking specifically at materials common to New England, this skill-building seminar will explore one selected material each year and expose students to different techniques and methods of researching and working with the region's intrinsic materials.

In tandem with the co-requisite studio, students will collaborate with expert scientists, artists, craftspeople, and designers to refine their material literacy and develop multiple hands-on explorations that go beyond our disciplinary conventions to generate innovative fabrication techniques and applications for the built environment. This process includes becoming familiar with a material's inherent characteristics and behaviors, its composition and connection to vernacular and craft, and finally, developing novel research methods for design that rely on physical experimentation. 

This is a co-requisite course. Students must register for LDAR/INTAR-500G - Sustainability Lab: Advanced Research Studio and LDAR/INTAR-501G - Sustainability Lab: Material Explorations.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture and Interior Architecture Graduate Students.

Elective

Students will work within a guided research topic to develop a design investigation with defined objectives, methods, and outcomes. As a 9-credit studio, this course will also require that students design and execute a material, representational, or theoretical experiment tied to a design detail within their investigations. In this thesis studio, students will have periodic formal reviews with an advisory panel, and will use feedback from the panel to produce a book that gives a written and graphic presentation of the research context, process, and findings as well as a final assessment of the outcomes.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture

As the scope and objectives of the design disciplines expand and diversify, the ability to implement effective research methodologies has become increasingly critical to position designers to generate and validate new knowledge. This course will survey research methods relevant to the design disciplines that have emerged from the sciences, the social sciences and the arts with special focus on those utilized by landscape architects. Methods we will examine include case studies, descriptive strategies, classification schemes, interpretive strategies, evaluation and diagnosis, engaged action research, projective design and arts-based practices. Students will work individually and in teams to analyze and compare different research strategies, understand their procedures and sequences, the types of data required, projected outcomes, and value by examining a set of projects of diverse scales. Visiting lecturers will present research based design projects. The goal of the course is to provide students with a framework of research methodologies with which they can begin to build their own research based practices.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Landscape Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture