This wiki will be the primary teaching | learning vehicle for LAR 433 Landscape Architecture History and Theory. Together we will build an informative and exciting knowledge base that will help you complete the requirements for this course, and that will inform design activity in the studio and future seminar discussions. You can link to the syllabus and schedule to see the current thinking by the instructor, for fall 2009:

http://faculty.capd.ksu.edu/lcweb ... click on LAR 433.

The syllabus and related pages will indicate course objectives, procedure and schedule, required and recommended books, weblinks, grading, etc...

I have an interest in conceptual frameworks as a pragmatic approach to knowledge and remembering; and would ask the reader to consider the framework and matrix used in Problem Seeking by William Pena, et al.. the key part of that intellectual organization, for our purposes, might be the categories of function, form, economy and time. Think of how these ideas/areas of concern could order the knowledge used not only for programming and design (as intended by Pena) but also your knowledge and appreciation of historical landscapes, parks, gardens, plazas, urban spaces, settlement patterns, and so on. The interests and issues we confront could all be placed into that framework, for the purposes of description, analysis, interpretation and (perhaps) evaluation. (See: Approach to Content.)

For a history of wikis, click here.

"In a context of rapid growth and change, such as in Mexico or other Latin American countries, where instant cities can grow overnight, the permanence and certitude of designed open space gives direction and form to the city, a projection of the future.

Urban open space -- the void -- is not the remnant of architecture but the spatial essence of the city, its form and its sense of being."

Mario Schjetnan, as quoted by John Beardsley in Ten Landscapes: Mario Schjetnan at p. 15.