Landscape Architecture + Urbanism

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First of all, I am saying that the wilderness is everywhere. Not just in the oceans, not just in the deserts and the mountain ranges, but everywhere. It trickles down the staircase of the minaret and into the prayer hall of the great mosque at Damascus. It seeps through the filters of the cooling plants at Rockefeller Centre. Paul Shepheard, The Cultivated Wilderness, or What is Landscape? (1997:9)

Practices and processes of making wild have been the focus of this year. Inspired by a study visit that Duncan Goodwin led to Glen Affric and Dundreggan in the Scottish Highlands, the projects, dissertations, and technical reports that the students have developed highlight the potential of exploring notions of wild. From the Scottish Highlands to South London and from challenging private control of urban neighbourhoods to curating flooding on the Thames, Making Wild takes many forms. Student projects explored wild places as physical and imagined, material and digital, spatial and social—emphasising processes of making wild.

The opportunity to take study visits and to learn from each other on campus this year has reminded us of the diverse forms of practicing and learning landscape. Design studios engaged with local community organisations, making bricks from local clay, consulting with school children, and remaking urban spaces. It has been inspiring to join conversations in the design studios and see the range of techniques that students are learning, from GIS and 3D scanning to sketch models and tapestries. The studios in Stockwell Street began to buzz again and the machines in the model making workshops came back to life.

We embraced the opportunity to see each other on campus, most explicitly through the Collective Landscape Futures roundtables that were hosted in the Stephen Lawrence Gallery. Opening up conversations between students, alumni, tutors and guests, the roundtables explored questions of native species, intersectionality, economy and ecology, and citizenships. This semester guests include: Iman Datoo, Sui Searle, Christina Geros, Larry Botchway, Indy Johar, Johanna Gibbons, Paul McGann, and Torange Khonsari.

The success of the year was only possible with the hard work and dedication of the students, tutors, and staff. Despite being back on campus the weight of the past two years, during which the Covid-19 pandemic unsettled our lives, was still present. Landscapes are messy, the relations that we have with each other and the land are complicated, and this year has been a time of navigating and negotiating these relationships with care and empathy. We were inspired by what new tutors brought to the school and excited with how students have responded. Although the work of landscape can be messy, through making wild this year the students have shown that it can also be extraordinary. I hope that you enjoy their achievements.

Dr Ed Wall Academic Portfolio Lead, Landscape Architecture and Urbanism