In the past two decades, the subject of landscape went under a fertile interrogation within design culture. This laid the latent capacity of the field to embrace a wide array of issues of the urban milieu bare. In parallel lines, research into its multifarious facets exuberated beyond normative categories. Critical visual studies emerge in response, aiming to extend understanding of movement and experience of time in landscapes and to manifest distinctive ways of thinking.

This course, dwelling on the interactions between people and landscapes through the specific framework of a specific mode of urbanism, aims to bring emergent forms of critical research into discussion. Touching upon issues ranging from urban form and identity to traditions, from emergent cultures to spatial practices in the digital age, it intends to make room for students’ original critical research contribution.