Dear students,

A very warm welcome to LK0313, Landscape Architecture: History, Theory and Practice! The course runs from 31 August to 1 November 2026 at the Ultuna campus in Uppsala, and is taught in English. We are looking forward to spending the autumn thinking, reading, walking, mapping, writing and discussing with you.

The aim of the course is to give you a deep understanding of different theories and viewpoints in landscape architecture and design through history, and of how they relate to landscape architecture practice. The course is organised along five themes: contemporary debates and current topics, site explorations, place, subjectivity, and reflecting on history. Within these themes, history, theory and practice are intertwined as perspectives on landscape architecture as a profession, a field of research, and an object of study.

The course combines lectures and guest lectures, literature seminars in smaller groups, essay workshops, a mapping and transect-walk workshop (in Stockholm region), excursions and study visits (including an excursion in Gränby, Uppsala, and a visit to ArkDes in Stockholm), as well as reviews with peer feedback and individual supervision. Along the way you will write short reflections on the readings, present and oppose texts in the seminars, produce a conceptual design that engages with the theories and historical cases we discuss, write an analytical text critically assessing a landscape architecture project of your choice, and reflect on your own position and future role as a designer. Throughout, we will pay particular attention to critical thinking and to graphic communication: sketches, photographs, figures and diagrams.

For each seminar there is a set of core texts that everyone reads, one text that you will be assigned to present or oppose, and recommended readings that you can draw on for your essay. The first literature seminar takes place already on Thursday 3 September, so we encourage you to get hold of the core texts and begin reading as soon as you can.

We meet on Monday 31 August, 13:00-16:00, for the course introduction, an overview of the assignments, and the first lecture, Critical Reflections on History, Theory and Practice in Landscape Architecture. Times, rooms and any updates are published in TimeEdit and will be on Canvas.

Note that seminars, lectures, workshops and excursions are mandatory course elements, and that costs connected to study visits are covered by students. Details will be posted on the course homepage before the course starts.

If you have any questions in the meantime, don't hesitate to get in touch. We look forward to meeting you on 31 August!

Warm regards,

Burcu Yigit Turan, course leader and examiner
Martin Emanuel, course teacher

Theme 1

Contemporary debates and current topics

Part 1

Giannetto R.F. (2013). “The Use of History in Landscape Architectural Nostalgia“, Change over time, vol. 3 no. 1: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/504756.

Hunt, J.D. (2004). Historical Ground: The role of history in contemporary landscape architecture. Routledge & CRC Press. (introduction)

Swaffield, S. R. (2006). “Theory and Critique in Landscape Architecture: Making Connections”, Journal of Landscape Architecture, 1(1), 22–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/18626033.2006.9723361

Way, T. (2020). “Why History for Designers?” (Part 1), PLATFORM. Retrieved June 16, 2022, from https://www.platformspace.net/home/why-history-for-designers-part-1+ Part 2

Part 2

Hirsch, A. (2025). Is Landscape Elitist? In Landscape Is…! Essays on the Meaning of Landscape (edited by Gareth Doherty and Charles Waldheim. Routledge: London and New York

Hutton, J. (2020). Reciprocal Landscapes: Stories of material movements, Routledge. (Introduction + one additional chapter that will be decided at course start).

Yiğit-Turan, B., Hellström-Reimer, M., Keravel, S., Leger-Smith, A., Lima, F., Arana, U. R., & Benedetti, U. W. (2022). Landscape architecture criticism in the Anthropocene. Journal of Landscape Architecture, 17(3), 4–5. https://doi.org/10.1080/18626033.2022.2195222

Theme 2

Site explorations

Corner, J. (1999). “The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention”, in Mappings, edited by Denis Cosgrove. 213-52. London: Reaktion.

Hutton, J. (2017). Material as Method, In Material Culture (edited by Jane Hutton). Berlin: Jovis.

Theme 3

Place

Part 1: place

Hayden, Dolores. (2009). “Urban Landscape History: The Sense of Place and the Politics of Space”, Understanding Ordinary Landscapes, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, pp. 111-133. https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300185614-010

Tuck, E. and McKenzie, M. (2015). Place in Research: Theory, Methodology and Methods, Routledge (pp.1-48)

Part 2: Place making/unmaking

Davis, Ujijji, “The Bottom: The Emergence and Erasure of Black American Urban Landscapes”, Avery Review 34 (October 2018), https://www. averyreview.com/issues/34/the-bottom.

Anguelovski, I., & Gottlieb, R. (2014). Neighborhood As Refuge: Community Reconstruction, Place Remaking, and Environmental Justice in the City. MIT Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/slub-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3339756 (chapter 6)

Yigit Turan, B. (2021). “Superkilen: Coloniality, Citizenship and Border Politics”, In Landscape Citizenships. Tim Waterman, Jane Wolff, and Ed Wall (eds.). New York and London: Routledge.

Theme 4

***Subjectivity ***

**Part 1: positionality, power and privilege, reflexivity **

Carlson, D., & Collard-Arias, M. (2022). “Trajectories of practice across time: Moving beyond the histories of landscape architecture”, Landscape Research, 47(1), 25–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/01426397.2021.1989393

Schmidt, S.J. (2017) “Hacked Landscapes: Tensions, Borders, and Positionality in Spatial Literacy”, Journal of Geography, 116:3, 99-108, DOI: 10.1080/00221341.2016.1257046

Parikh, A. (2020). “Insider-outsider as process: Drawing as reflexive feminist methodology during fieldwork”, Cultural Geographies, 27(3), 437–452. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474474019887755

Richards, M-L (2019). “Out of Line. Erasure and vulnerability as sites of subversion”, Future Architecture Library, (n.d.). Retrieved March 5, 2021, from https://futurearchitecturelibrary.org/archifutures-articles/volum-6-agency/out-of-line/

Warf, B. (2010). “Positionality”, in Encyclopedia of geography (Vol. 1, pp. 2258-2258). SAGE Publications, Inc., https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412939591.n913

Part 2: alternative modes of practice, co-production and agency

Brenner, N. (2016). “The agency of design in an age of urbanization—dialogue with Daniel Ibañez,” in Neil Brenner, Critique of Urbanization. Basel: Bauwelt Fundamente Series, Birkhäuser Verlag, 2016, 224-236.

Mitrasinovic, M. (2016). Concurrent Urbanities: Designing Infrastructures of Inclusion. Routledge (chapter 14)

Yiğit-Turan, B.; Cerulli, C. & Christ, M.C. (2025) “Getting Political in the Neoliberal City: Resistance, Transformation, and the Practice of Design for Social and Environmental Justice” “Getting Political” in the Neoliberal City: Resistance, Transformation, and the Practice of Design for Social and Environmental Justice”. pp:1-20

Theme 5

Reflecting on history

Andersson, T. (1994). “To Erase the Garden: Modernity in the Swedish Garden and Landscape, in Marc Treib (editor) Modern Landscape Architecture. MIT press

Claesson, R. (2017). “Doing and Re-doing Cultural Heritages: Making space for a variety of narratives”, (ed.)., in Meike Schalk, Thérèse Kristiansson, Ramia Mazé (Ed.), Feminist Futures of Spatial Practice: Materialisms, Activisms, Dialogues, Pedagogies, Projections (pp. 43-56).

Fabiola López-Durán. (2018). Eugenics in the Garden Transatlantic Architecture and the Crafting of Modernity,https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/lopez-duran-eugenics-in-the-garden. (introduction and epilogue, dive into any chapter you find interesting)

Schalk, M. (2017). Old News From a Contact Zone: Action Archive in Tensta. In The Social (Re)Production of Architecture. Routledge.