11297 Landscape Narratives
6cpRequisite(s): 72 credit points of completed study in spk(s): C10004 Bachelor of Design Architecture OR 72 credit points of completed study in spk(s): C10325 Bachelor of Design Architecture Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation OR 72 credit points of completed study in spk(s): C10413 Bachelor of Design Architecture Master of Architecture OR 48 credit points of completed study in spk(s): C10423 Bachelor of Design Interior Architecture Bachelor of Languages and Cultures OR 48 credit points of completed study in spk(s): C09079 Bachelor of Landscape Architecture (Honours) OR 48 credit points of completed study in spk(s): C10271 Bachelor of Design Interior Architecture OR 48 credit points of completed study in spk(s): C10272 Bachelor of Design Interior Architecture Bachelor of International Studies OR 48 credit points of completed study in spk(s): C10322 Bachelor of Design Interior Architecture Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation
These requisites may not apply to students in certain courses. See access conditions.
Undergraduate
Description
Travelling Geographies and Narrative Fields explores mobile landscapes through a framework of speculative cartography and narrative fabulation. Working with a range of experimental mapping and writing exercises that respond to contemporary ecological and atmospheric conditions of dust storms, smoke clouds, oil plumes and meteor showers, students develop projects in the form of speculative cartographies and narrative writing. This elective looks at ‘fieldwork’ as a dynamic process of charting shifting material, social, and spatial arrangements to create a reimagining of landscapes through their instabilities.
During this class, students are taken through a variety of analytical and sensory approaches to writing and mapping, where narrative offers both a method of observing changing landscape conditions and also a model for producing landscape imaginaries through text and image. This approach is supplemented with deep scientific and ecological research of each geography. From a list of specific case-studies – e.g. smoke from 2019-2020 fires landing on Aotearoa glacier, Geminids meteor shower, 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil plumes – students choose a ‘travelling geography’ to focus their projects on. Through a combination of independent research and class-based writing and mapping exercises, students develop a multifaceted project that investigates the complex conditions of mobile landscapes through the ecological, social, and spatial configurations they produce. The first half of this elective focuses on speculative writing practices as a method of narrating shifting landscapes. The second half of this elective engages experimental mapping processes in order to imagine new possibilities of ‘fieldwork’ in a changing world. The individual bodies of writing and mappings produced by each student is collated into a collective publication developed by the class as a whole.
At the conclusion of the elective students have an understanding of practical and theoretical approaches to narrative writing and critical spatial research – including scientific and interdisciplinary inquiry – and new skills in communication and design.
Typical availability
Autumn session, City campus
Spring session, City campus
Detailed subject description.