Envisioning environments (2013-present)
The Center for Touch-Made Landscapes
Advocating for Land Crafts and Land Care
Advocating for Land Crafts and Land Care
Though built on deep foundations, this project is a new phase and emerging. Please check back for news...
The Center for Touch-Made Landscapes advocates for land-making practices that embody skilled, vital, tactile intimacy between humans and their living worlds.
Burials, fires, stacks of stone, gardens, farms, groves: in virtually every place and time that humans have lived, they have made landscapes. No matter where, when, or what was made, it was done through touch, craft, and care.
Today, practices of land craft and care are often understood as individualized skills, as heritage activities tied to specific localities or peoples, or as techniques of architectural preservation. Holding these practices together as matters of landscape-making enables new understandings: of continuities across peoples, places, and times; of cultural significances carried in certain materials and acts; of unique kinds of place knowledge that are manifested through acts of tending. Holding these practices together also informs contemporary landscape-making: offering models and perspectives on what kinds of land crafts and care might be vital today.
For many years, my work in this area centered on landscape architectural practices of visual representation (detailed below). I investigated specific drawing techniques that professionals would use to generate feelings of dynamic connection between themselves, other living beings, and landscape phenomena. Today that focus is expanding to encompass a broader range of landscape-making embodiments, through a growing interest in creative, craft-based work that occurs on-site, within landscapes.
The Center for Touch-Made Landscapes advocates for land-making practices that embody skilled, vital, tactile intimacy between humans and their living worlds.
Burials, fires, stacks of stone, gardens, farms, groves: in virtually every place and time that humans have lived, they have made landscapes. No matter where, when, or what was made, it was done through touch, craft, and care.
Today, practices of land craft and care are often understood as individualized skills, as heritage activities tied to specific localities or peoples, or as techniques of architectural preservation. Holding these practices together as matters of landscape-making enables new understandings: of continuities across peoples, places, and times; of cultural significances carried in certain materials and acts; of unique kinds of place knowledge that are manifested through acts of tending. Holding these practices together also informs contemporary landscape-making: offering models and perspectives on what kinds of land crafts and care might be vital today.
For many years, my work in this area centered on landscape architectural practices of visual representation (detailed below). I investigated specific drawing techniques that professionals would use to generate feelings of dynamic connection between themselves, other living beings, and landscape phenomena. Today that focus is expanding to encompass a broader range of landscape-making embodiments, through a growing interest in creative, craft-based work that occurs on-site, within landscapes.
Supported by:
The Azrieli Foundation
Earthdance, Northampton MA
Council for the Arts, Cornell University
Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Cornell University
Earthdance, Northampton MA
Council for the Arts, Cornell University
Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Cornell University
Works...
online resource
Encyclopedia of Landscape Companions (in process).
study
Womens Introductory Stone Walling Workshop, The Stone Trust, Dummerston, VT (April 2024).
teaching
- Landscape History, Theory, Criticism 1+2, graduate-level courses.
- Environmental History of Landscape Architecture, undergraduate-level course.
John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto (2023-24).
event
“Drawing Liveliness / Dessiner la Vitalité”, a conversation with Claude Cormier, Ron Henderson, and Nicole Valois, Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Montreal (February 2019).
conference session
Chair, “Bodies of Data: Finding and Framing ‘Excess’ in Histories of Post-war Design Machines,” co-chaired with Frances Robertson and Silvia Casini, Society for the History of Technology Annual Meeting, Milan, Italy (October 2019).
presentation
“Drawing as Environmental Revelation: Sketching Plans and Sections in Modernist Landscape Architectural Design,” The Anthropology of Drawing, session chair Frances Robertson. Art, Materiality & Representation Conference, Royal Anthropological Institute/The British Museum, London, England (June 2018).
workshop series
Makers’ Workshops: interdisciplinary faculty working group on relational “soft” practices, co-organized with Stacey Langwick, Qualities of Life working group, Einaudi Center for International Studies, Cornell University (March 2018).
teaching
Advanced Topics in Representation and Theories of Landscape Architectural Representation, graduate-level courses, Cornell University (2017-2018).
article
“McHarg’s Entropy, Halprin’s Chance: Representations of Cybernetic Change in 1960s Landscape Architecture,” Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, 34.1 (2014), 71-84 (peer-reviewed).
essay
“The Analog Condition,” CC, eds. Sophie Hochhausl and Melissa Constantine (Cornell AAP Publications, 2014).
presentation
“Models and Scores: Cybernetics and Conceptions of Time in 1960’s Landscape Architectural Representation,” Landscapes in Time, SAH Landscape Chapter Symposium, convened by Sonja Duempelmann and Susan Herrington. Detroit, MI (April 2012).
movement/design research
Project Grant - Council for the Arts, Cornell University. Two weeks of collaborative research, techniques for site-driven design. With Margit Galanter (July 2011).
movement/design research
Designer in Residence - SEEDS Interdisciplinary Arts and Ecology Festival, Earthdance, Northampton, MA (July 2010).
online resource
Encyclopedia of Landscape Companions (in process).
study
Womens Introductory Stone Walling Workshop, The Stone Trust, Dummerston, VT (April 2024).
teaching
- Landscape History, Theory, Criticism 1+2, graduate-level courses.
- Environmental History of Landscape Architecture, undergraduate-level course.
John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto (2023-24).
event
“Drawing Liveliness / Dessiner la Vitalité”, a conversation with Claude Cormier, Ron Henderson, and Nicole Valois, Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Montreal (February 2019).
conference session
Chair, “Bodies of Data: Finding and Framing ‘Excess’ in Histories of Post-war Design Machines,” co-chaired with Frances Robertson and Silvia Casini, Society for the History of Technology Annual Meeting, Milan, Italy (October 2019).
presentation
“Drawing as Environmental Revelation: Sketching Plans and Sections in Modernist Landscape Architectural Design,” The Anthropology of Drawing, session chair Frances Robertson. Art, Materiality & Representation Conference, Royal Anthropological Institute/The British Museum, London, England (June 2018).
workshop series
Makers’ Workshops: interdisciplinary faculty working group on relational “soft” practices, co-organized with Stacey Langwick, Qualities of Life working group, Einaudi Center for International Studies, Cornell University (March 2018).
teaching
Advanced Topics in Representation and Theories of Landscape Architectural Representation, graduate-level courses, Cornell University (2017-2018).
article
“McHarg’s Entropy, Halprin’s Chance: Representations of Cybernetic Change in 1960s Landscape Architecture,” Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, 34.1 (2014), 71-84 (peer-reviewed).
essay
“The Analog Condition,” CC, eds. Sophie Hochhausl and Melissa Constantine (Cornell AAP Publications, 2014).
presentation
“Models and Scores: Cybernetics and Conceptions of Time in 1960’s Landscape Architectural Representation,” Landscapes in Time, SAH Landscape Chapter Symposium, convened by Sonja Duempelmann and Susan Herrington. Detroit, MI (April 2012).
movement/design research
Project Grant - Council for the Arts, Cornell University. Two weeks of collaborative research, techniques for site-driven design. With Margit Galanter (July 2011).
movement/design research
Designer in Residence - SEEDS Interdisciplinary Arts and Ecology Festival, Earthdance, Northampton, MA (July 2010).
