Thesis Studio/03


Reassembling Floodplains / Redesigning Urban Ecosystems

Alex Felson

This studio is available to students enrolled in ABPL90375 Landscape Architecture Design Thesis.

Studio Description

Landscape architects have an important role to play in adapting cities to climate change. Our focus on designing land for people, plants, and animals from regions to neighbourhoods and from parks to residences brings a holistic perspective. We combine creative vision with practical design and construction considerations to build urban spaces for human occupancy. We read the landscapes’ past, present, and future to creatively shape land recognizing temporal and spatial contexts. Our ecological understanding and focus on public space dimensions to inform human-nature relations and behaviour, positions designers to propose innovative and feasible changes in the face of more frequent and intense storms, sea level rise, drought and heat. You will serve as a provocateur, creating a practical and visionary landscape design focusing on Fisherman’s Bend, a post-industrial floodplain redevelopment. You will learn about this multifaceted ongoing project and develop design proposals based on your individual research and design agenda.

Studio Outcomes

In this studio, you will develop a clear research proposal and supporting design process applying landscape architecture theory and practice to climate adaptation and resilience. You will:

  • study a real-world project and the multiple drivers behind its development.
  • explore technical risks and tools to evaluate those risks on a post-industrial floodplain redevelopment.
  • define where landscape architecture can influence and even redefine this complex project.
  • define how design can be used as a form of research enquiry.

The semester includes three stages. First, you will develop analysis on Fisherman’s Bend focusing on climate change impacts and development plans. Second, you will develop your vision and landscape architectural adaptation strategies and determine how these fit into theory and current practice. Third, you will develop your design proposals for selected sites applying specific design applications including public space making, spatial considerations, materiality and temporal thinking, using incremental adaptations that form a compelling proposal.

Studio Leader

Felson is a landscape architect and senior certified ecologist, applying design, planning, and ecology to advance climate adapted urban ecosystems and resilient liveable cities. He is UoM’s Landscape Architecture chair. Felson served previously as the Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation’s Deputy Executive Director and UConn's Marine Sciences Associate Research Scientist. He taught jointly between the School of Environment and Architecture at Yale University and founded the Urban Ecology and Design Lab and Ecopolitan Design. He directed the NYC Reforestation Plan at EDAW/AECOM, built bioretention gardens in Bridgeport and founded the Earth Stewardship Initiative using research-based community design.

Readings & References

Fishermans’ Bend

Climate 

Schedule Fridays 14:00-20:00

Contact Handbook

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