About the Course

Solar StrandLandscapes of Power         

Our capacity to implement sustainability across cultures, geographies, and time depends on how we imagine, value, protect and regenerate the landscapes that provide necessary materials and ecosystems services. In the past, these productive landscapes were often shunted to the periphery of design. The Fuller Center for Productive Landscapes at Overlook seeks to engage landscapes of food, of forests, of energy, water or waste, bringing them into the larger discourse of landscape architecture and environmental design. In 2014, the Fuller Center is focused on Landscapes of Power.

 

The goal of the seminar is to engage energy in ways that are resourceful, efficient, and poetic. We will focus on how environmental designers and planners can meaningfully contribute to the conversation about the sustainability, aesthetics, and ethical use of land in the process of power generation, distribution, and use. We will study current and emerging practices of power generation in the Pacific Northwest, including hydroelectricity, wind, solar, geothermal and biomass. Through readings, site visits, graphic analysis, and design, we will explore the disconnect between people and infrastructure. So many of the systems we rely on are invisible: water flows when we turn the tap and lights glow when we flip a switch. This disconnect between system design and resource use generates indifference and ignorance; we cannot care about that which we do not see. This seminar reveals the infrastructure and potential of power.

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