Theoretical Terrains and Design Strategies of Landscape Urbanism

This Paper examines theoretical terrains and design strategies of landscape urbanism which is an emerging hybrid field at the intersection of architecture, landscape architecture, and urbanism. Landscape urbanism offers alternative approaches for theory, education, and practice in contemporary landscape architecture. It views the emergent urban complex sites-post-industrial sites, landfill, brownfield, urban void, etc., not as a weakness, but as a strength. Landscape urbanism poses an understanding of landscape as an element of urban infrastructure. In this sense, the landscape is seen in the context of contemporary urban development and public works. As a complex amalgam, landscape urbanism is more than a design style it is an ethos, an attitude, a way of thinking and acting. We can chart the main characteristics of landscape urbanism such as horizontality and surface, infrastructure, process, technique, and ecology. Multilayered examples of landscape urbanism can be seen in several experimental practices such as worts of Rem Koolhaas, MVRDV, Adriaan Geuze/West 8, James Comer, etc. It is possible to summarize the productive strategies for landscape urbanism as follows : thickening, folding, new materials, nonprogrammed use, impermanence, and movement.

Landscape Urbanism의 이론적 지형과 설계 전략