SS24

We invite you to explore and design more-than-human landscapes by representing and entangling in(side) its material practices. The studio is situated in the region of Lusatia (Spreewald and Lausitzer Revier) and focuses on the radical changes that this region is facing given the decrease of water availability due to climate change and the coal exit process. We will approach this situation of growing dryness as our common matter of concern in the studio: Which practices have terraformed watery landscapes in Lusatia’s Anthropocene? Which means of representation can depict shifting wet matters? Which design strategies enable space-making practices of landscape transformation?

‘Matter Matters’ (Barad, 2007)

The studio is situated in post-humanist new-materialist theories, centered in the notion and matter of wetness (Mathur & da Cunha, 2021), which draws from the premise that clear separations -such as water and land- are not possible. In this vein, the studio intends to approach waters and landscapes from non-static and non-dualistic perspectives grasping wetness as ubiquitous actor situated in manifold practical dependencies and entanglements in more-than-human worlds. To depict these material processes differently, we will work in webpage formats, exploring different ways of representing landscapes as living entities, animated by more-than-human practices entangled in wet material processes of transformation.With a different methodical approach -focus on more-than-human practices-, this studio builds upon the master studio ‘Inside Wetness’ (WS 23/24), which gives us a much deeper understanding of Lusatia. During the semester, we will be in vivid dialogue with actors and research projects related to the region. We will explore Lusatia during day trips, as well as during the excursion week in June. The studio will be taught in collaboration with Landscape Architecture Prof. Inge Bobbink (TU Delft) who has a strong focus on planning and research on water.