American Cultural Landscapes

3 units

Whether we are designing buildings, landscapes or neighborhoods, we are working on a cultural landscape - a place built from customs, memories, histories and associations as much as visual design itself. This course provides an overview of American cultural landscapes and their alteration, through readings, visual art, site visits and field surveys. Symbolic, utilitarian, architectural, scenographic or personal meanings will be explored alongside site histories. Throughout the semester, the course will interrogate the concept of vernacular landscapes, more broadly defined as landscapes of everyday life. From roadsides to homesteads to tourist attractions to landfills to urban neighborhoods, vernacular landscapes define the image of America to large extent. Readings will unpack the contingencies between design, economics, cultural politics, agriculture, consumption and technology that inscribe culture across the land. Course work will be informed by the work of geographers, historians, writers, preservationists, filmmakers and visual artists. J.B. Jackson and Lucy Lippard's theories about the cultural uses of land will be anchors. Along the way, course readings and experiences (including field work) will make stops along the way to examine local landscapes including a radioactive landfill, the neighborhoods of Detroit, the wild west, Applachian terrain, the Mississippi River, the Sunset Strip, the Buffalo Bayou in Houston and more. The course will pose a taxonomy of the types of cultural landscapes while presenting various methods for decoding, recording, interpreting, preserving and altering these places.