Post Natural Futures

Kerb 19 is seeking submissions which explore the theme Paradigms of Nature: Post Natural Futures.

The brief:

Are we steering in an 'un-natural' direction, or taking the evolutionary leap necessary to establish a more integrated mode of co-existence?

We are entering a period of extreme technological escalation, where we can now synthesise technologies with living systems. It may soon be possible to create self-generating, manufactured landscapes that have the ability to grow, repair, decay and multiply, responding to a multitude of forces.

How will the development of these bio-technological possibilities shape the way we create landscapes where the city environment could transform into a dynamic, interactive organism of limitless potential?

In what ways will the urban landscape adapt and change with these neo-natural realities, where it becomes increasingly difficult to draw tangible lines between what we preserve as ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’?

But will all this current wild speculation about a future predicting synthetic biological ecologies, trans-natural robotic systems and post-natural organisms ever be realised, and how useful is it in meeting our collective ideals?

Send submissions by 14 March 2011.

Kerb 17

(Coming soon to terrorize the status quo?)

Mitchell Whitelaw, of The Teeming Void, alerted us that Kerb 17 is now available or at least will be soon. Last Friday was its launch party. We checked Amazon, and it doesn't seem to be listed, though copies of two previous editions are still available for purchase: Kerb 15 - Landscape Urbanism and Kerb 16 - Future Cities.

Compiled and edited each year by landscape architecture students at RMIT, the latest issue tackles the question, Is landscape architecture dead?

kerb 17 critiques current modes of thinking about the practice of landscape architecture, offering up a discussion of where landscape architecture is, what it has evolved from, and what it might become in the future. The collection of works and ideas by international and Australian designers and artists featured in kerb 17 respond and demonstrate how through the medium of landscape and a potential mediation of design disciplines we can reconsider contemporary ideas of landscape.

Except for Whitelaw's article, the content remains a mystery to us. We can thus only speculate what's on offer inside from the riotously wacky cover.

Are we to expect a repudiation of hyper-modern designery and a celebration of the informal?

Is there a call away from the Dutch School of slick sustainability and cosmetic urban regeneration towards the messier logistics of radical sustainability?

Is someone making the case for post-nature as a legitimate site not just of landscape inquiry but of landscape design?

Rural nostalgia run amok?

Meanwhile, we wait.

Picturing the Death of Landscape Architecture

Last month we alerted readers that kerb was looking for article submissions for their 17th issue: Death of Landscape. The deadline has past, but there is still a way for you to contribute. The editorial team wants some images.



Does Landscape Architecture have the capacity to deal with the potentials of the future?

What is the future of Landscape Architecture?

How can landscape be shaped by concepts/models/ideas/theories that are not normally considered relevant to Landscape?

Send your illustrative answers to kerb@ems.rmit.edu.au.

Show them its rotting corpse in the overgrown lawns of Foreclosure, Florida or its perfumed diseased body getting further irradiated by a Middle Eastern sun. Perhaps you have evidence that it's actually flourishing in the toxic landscape of the Pontine Marshes and in the Pleistocene Park?

Whatever you've got, keep in mind that the due date is 17 October 2008.

Is Landscape Architecture dead?

(The real cause of the housing bubble collapse: a 60º driveway slope. Photographer unknown. Source. More here. Via Craig Verzone, of Terragrams.)

Editors at kerb, the annual landscape architecture journal compiled by undergraduates at the Landscape Architecture program @ RMIT, are calling for submissions for their 17th edition. They want to know:

Is Landscape Architecture dead?

Does Landscape Architecture have the capacity to deal with the potentials of the future?

What is the future of Landscape Architecture?

How can landscape be shaped by concepts/models/ideas/theories that are not normally considered relevant to Landscape?

Got some thoughts? Then send them to kerb@ems.rmit.edu.au.

The due date for abstracts is only a few days away — 5 September 2008 — but we are told that they will be happy to accept abstracts and full submissions up until 26 September 2008.

And by abstracts, they mean a 100-250 word outline of the proposed submission - be it written, multimedia, photoessay, model images, etc. The format is open; anything submitted will just need to be accompanied by text.

Landscape within Architecture (within Landscape)

306090 07: Landscape within Architecture is intended as a foray into landscape architecture and a catalyst for exchange between students, faculty, and administrators interested in understanding and expanding the presence of landscape within the pedagogy and practice of architecture. This volume includes essays by Frederick Steiner, Alessandra Ponte, James Wines, Kimberly Hill, and others, as well as student projects by Kristin Akkerman Schuster, Elena Wiersma, and Hillary Sample.

Guest editor David L. Hays writes: “Collectively, the essays underscore four main lessons for architecture and landscape architecture. The first is that exposure to alternate theory and practice expands the way designers think about and beyond aspects of work already familiar to them. ... A second lesson is to embrace time in practical as well as philosophical terms. ... A third lesson is to get students out of the studio. ... Explorations of real space educate the body and mind in ways that cannot be achieved within the confines of the studio. ... A fourth lesson for both architecture and landscape architecture is to move beyond appropriation by engaging in real collaboration ... [H]ierarchical division of design professions that characterized professional culture in the last century should be a thing of the past.”