Atlas of Individual Practice

RMIT UNIVERSITY Landscape Architecture Research Seminar - Yaoyao Zhang -

Contents An Unfinished Journey: Towards a Landscape in Post-human World "Our absence brings presents."

Introduction

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Abstract 6

#1 Community of Practice #2 Where it all begins (part I): Arts, movies that use storytelling to illustrate futurist aesthetic #3 Where it all begins (part II): Drawing and storytelling as tool #4 Where it all begins (part II): Roaming & Gazing - Discovery the nuance in everyday-life

Chapter I

Q: How can we understand and design for the post-human landscape?

Chapter II

Journey continues

Bibliography & Appendix

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#6 S scale - The Symbiosic Matorral

#7 M scale - Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park

#8 L scale - Echigo Tsumari Art Triennale

28 #9 The Third Landscape - Gilles Clement #10 Terrain Vague - Ignasi de Solà-Morales

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Common Action: Reinhabiting the Landscape Q: What is the role of “(re)inhabiting” being a part of landscape practice? How to allow this action participated in a practice?

Conclusion

#5 What is Post-human Landscape?

Academic study of the possibility for post-human environment Q: How can we engage with theory to connect with the post-human landscape to enable a collective mindset of cooperation?

Chapter III

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A search for post-human landscape

#11 Reinhabiting as Design Technique

#12 Reinhabiting in LA Practice

#13 Reinhabiting in Academic Practice

#14 Reinhabiting in Creative Practice

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#1 Abstract

“Inevitably, when we imagine our future, what are we as humans always concerned about?” I often find myself asking this type of question. Growing up watching fantasy comics, Si-Fi films and surrealism paintings, these personal interests and experience has shaped my way of thinking and how I perceive the world. As a student of landscape architecture, when I project those ideas and questions into the world of landscape, it transforms to: “Facing rapidly dwindling nature, what attitude and perspective should we adopt when moving towards the future?”

The reality is that over-urbanisation of our planet undoubtedly has led to a social and ecological failure from abandoned places to empty cities. Then we started suffering from the consequences of nature’s destruction. It became our constant fear that nature began threatening us just like the way we are threatening nature. “Where exactly went wrong?” You might ask. Is it the so called “effective” and “successful” way we have been transforming land? Or is it the human perspective way too dominant that we ignore what is happening around us?

in these theories, which is being applied to multiple practices. The third chapter shows how practices in different fields are engaging with this action in detail. In the end, this document also shows how I approach my research project in my master study, focusing on re-inhabiting an abandoned post-industrial city in China.

This atlas encourages a futuristic way of thinking towards the unsatisfied reality, a path that develops from personal interests to perhaps a generative design thinking. It will not exist merely as my individual journey, but also aims to be an ongoing guide for posthuman landscape.

[ROAMING; GAZING]

“We are living in intellectually troubled times for landscape architecture. Part of the reason for the awkwardness in the present debate is not only due to imminent environmental degradation, but also to the rapid degeneration of our own symbolic understanding of nature.” Just as Christophe Girot addressed, the issue is that the way we inherit the perceptions of the landscape from our ancestors cannot keep up with the newest findings of our connections with nature. We as future landscape architects are responsible for realising a renewed relationship between human and nature. I believe that this has given birth to a new approach - landscaping in a post-human world will help us re-build a cultural and ecological harmony.

LANDSCAPE IN A POST-HUMAN WORLD

This volume of atlas records my personal journey (so far) through the lens of post-humanism in landscape architecture. Throughout this journey: discovering, unpacking and linking my work, practice as well as academic theories has become my approach to formulating a new understanding or a framework towards landscape in the post-human era.

Starting from my interests and my ways of discovering landscape, this journey has begun. In the following chapters, a series of precedent studies using images, diagrams and my reflections on how we should understand the post-human landscape, then researching what theories can facilitate us developing a framework, through these findings. The third landscape (1992) sets up a base understanding for the space unattended by man and ruled over by natural evolution, Terrain Vague (1995) further evokes the potential of the wasteland. (Re)Inhabiting as a technique rooted

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[(RE)-INHABITING]

[STORYTELLING]

[TRANSFORMING& VISULISING]

The Verbs - My Design Approach

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#1

Community of Practice

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Ink work

Ink work

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Digital Painting

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#2 Where it all begins (part I) Arts, movies that use stroytelling to illustrate futurist aesthetic

As a former art student, one of my favorite painting style is surrealism. I have always enjoy the bizarreness and futureist element. Even though this style seems hard to match modern landscape architecture, but the way it illustrates the narrative and a unique aesthetic has influence me in my own drawing style and how I approach the story within my design.

The Persistence of Memory Salvador Dalí Oil painting

I like getting ideas from different media. Personally I am very found of Si-Fi films, they allow me to imagine the world creatively. These films also put a lot of work on the landscape to render a certain atmosphere and e m o t i o n . Fo r m e, i t n o t only broadens the way of creating new lanscape, but also introducing a new perspective or a new thinking.

Annihilation Alex Garland Film

For example in the movie Annihilation, there's a scene that a human turned into h u ma n - s h a p e d t re e a n d merge with the new species.

The image itself is already powerful and provocative.

Mobius's comics First I was so attracted by Mobius's drawing style, the ink work, the colouring style. Then through stories, I find out they're all about adventures, explorations to the unknown. These fantasy comics inspired me to keep my curiosity and imagination.

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Other films like Her or The Witness illustrates future cities might look like. Dispite it is already an urban style in some of the modern cities.

The aesthetic is still vividly presented. The isolation and loneliness in the metropolis will be more dominant in the near future.

Her Spike Jonze Film

The Witness Alberto Mielgo Film 9

A series of storytelling digital paintings illustriate a co-living environment between human and new discovered species of funguses. The ability of storytelling via image can be very powerful, especially it is something that can not happen in real life.

The drawing style is amazing, not to mention the message that the artists are trying to deliver, the relationship between us and nature is out of balance, as well as our society.

Therefore to imagine a world that is taken over by fungus feels so abserd but also real at the same time.

"Our fairytale is a naive attempt to address the issue of different kinds of crises we are experiencing - not only ecological, but social and existential as well. In the routine of everyday life, based on capitalism, we tend to lose ourselves to our jobs, our forests to fields and commerce. We forget our capabilities, such as senses, of our natural organisms, and many other things."

- Aleksandr Čebotariov and Laura Kuršvietytė Symbiosis #1 Aleksandr Cebotariov and Laura Kuršvietyte Digital Painting

Symbiosis #2 Aleksandr Cebotariov and Laura Kuršvietyte Digital Painting

Symbiosis #3 Aleksandr Cebotariov and Laura Kuršvietyte Digital Painting

“The new species of fungi has been found. It has proved to be giving shelter to homeless people in the suburbs of Amazon-5.

Mycologists claim that the risen temperatures are the major factor due to which this new species e m e rg e d . C l i ma t e c r i s i s ha s appeared to be not critical at all to the new fungi, on the contrary – it, the fungi – the so called Mycelius Salvator has been f lourishing i n wa r m a n d hu m i d c l i ma t i c conditions."

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#3 Where it all begins (part II) Drawing and storytelling as tool The comics below is part of the storylines that illustrate how people will live in my design project. I enjoy this storytelling kind of way to show the design, because landscape deep down is connected to people's daily life, how design is being used and experienced are the key to decide weather its good or not.

Adaptable Shrinkage Author Comic

Jellyfish Clouds Author Ink Drawing In my bachelor degree, I often use ink drowings to express ideas. My creativity and thinking can be translated in these co n ce p t d raw i n g s. Fo r instance, The Persistence of Space was inspired by Dali, however the message is about the space may s h a p e d f ra gm e nt a l o r complet, but its continuity is connected by time or human activity. This approach often helps me unravel some difficulties in design.

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The Persistence of Space Author Ink Drawing

The Blind Author Comic

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#4 Where it all begins (part III) Roaming & Gazing - Discovery the nuance in everyday-life

Looking - Watching - Gazing

Imagine this, when you walking or taking a train just like every other day.

Something random on the street suddenly draw your attention. Like a father is taking photos for his son playing in the park, or somebody is feeding birds with his lunch, or a pair of shoes is hanging on the wires... The act of ovservation can be valuable and fun. It open up the nuance of the world that surround us.

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How to experience: Roaming - Walking - Wandering - Walking - Pacing To understand the city, you have to walk, to roam ,to wander. To feel the texture of the ground, the breeze when you passing the bridge, to see where is lively, where is quiet. To find connections between you and the city. To bond with it.

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Chapter I

A search for post-human landscape 16

#5 What is Post-human Landscape? #6 S Scale - The Symbiosic Matorral #7 M Scale - Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park #8 L Scale - Echigo Tsumari Art Field

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Research Question 1 How can we understand and design for the post-human landscape?

An image took from Pripyat Amusement Park near Chernobyl. Where nature took over when human escaped out of the town. The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on Saturday 26 April 1986. After the accident, a mass evacuation has soon operated. Leaving this park empty for decades. Now it became a safe zone and people starts to visit this broken place.

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Cridit: twetter user: bja samuel

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#5 Intro What is post-human landscape?

What is post-human landscape?

Before we jump in to this complex concept of post human world, I would like to start by discussing what could be the meaning of post-human landscape.

What we think about when we talk about post-human landscape? The most common understanding is that it is a place abandoned by human. Just like the towns near Chernobyl, people abandoned their houses and it turns into a no man's land.

Post-Human

Landscape

Due to force majeure or economical reasons causing an area where humans no longer inhabited.

A portion of land or territory which the eye can comprehend in a single view, including all the objects it contains (Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913).

Pripyat Amusement Park Anonymous Post-human environment

The Marshes at Rhode Island Martin Johnson Heade Oil painting

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On the other hand, it could also means the change in biological hierachy through natural succession. A form of bio-diversity emerges to the site and human no longer appears to be the dominant species.

What can really be achieved in landscape architecture when we are dealing with the post-human lanscape?

As Cary Wolfe claims, the nature of post-human, is a transition of relationship between human and nature. Landscape architecture needs to advocate this transformation: more robust, more diverse, and more visually harmonious, with less maintenance.

Post-human landscape design, which I would define as an environmentally conscious landscape that addresses multiple species and deals with the constructed character of what we call “nature.”

Therefore, lanscape architects should design a way of equilibrium - counterbalancing the dominant role of human in nature.

"Posthumanism differs from classical humanism by relegating humanity back to one of many natural species, thereby rejecting any claims founded on anthropocentric dominance."

-Cary Wolfe

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A new hierarchy to the environment where humans are equal to all other species and no longer dominant.

The word landscape finds its roots in the Old Dutch word “Landskip”, which designates a stretch of cultivated land.

This means that landscape is a result of an action giving on the land.

The combination of post-human and landscape itself is interesting because one often shows no signs of human anymore but the other one requires human's action. I guess the real question here is, do we design it for the human or for the exact opposite.

A bench in the wild Anonymous Post-human environment

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#6 S Scale The Symbiosic Matorral How it use landscape installation to achieve a post-human landscape?

The Symbiotic Matorral is a landscape installation implemented on a site of the Parque Ecológico Chipinque in the Sierra Madre Oriental of Mexico. The installation converts an abandoned trail for the maintenance of a high-voltage line, which violently crosses the area, in a 500-meter-long journey through the luxuriant ecosystem.

The installations let you hear like a rabbit, smell like a bear, see like a coyote, and fly like a green jay. The visitor is immersed in a multifocal exploration that merges the synesthetic spheres of the humans and animals inhabiting this highly diverse ecosystem. This light environmental infrastructure reconnects man with the delicate ecosystem to reformulate a novel, more sustainable, and ethic relation.

Bee habitats

The installations of "Becoming animal" (credit: Lgo) The transformed trait

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#7 M Scale Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park Industrial park: The antidote for the post-industrial zone Another huge topic is around cities that experienced fast industralisation and urbanisation.

Post-industrial areas and cities are a major part of this post-human realm, where people abandoned because of the economic failure.

Usually in this kind of scale, abandoned industrial zones require a landscape scheme to revitalise the space: solving pollution problems, working with natural reclaimed lanscape, inviting citizens to participate the programs, etc.

The Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park project is an outstanding example of a new type of industrial park. It shows how landscape, working and living space can be reclaimed from wasteland with a high recreational value. Repurposing an industrial wasteland as a landscape park stimulated a development that still remains unique today, and paved the way for many other projects with old industrial plants.

Today the concept of the Anthropocene synthesises the result: humans have significantly impacted the Earth, its geology and ecosystems, often in deeply troubling ways, generating an environment in which human and non-human actors are fundamentally entangled.

Are we heading towards a post-human future? We don't exactly know it yet, however, there are places that already being abandoned, viliages and cities suffer from overindustralisation or over-urbanisation ending up being an "ghost town".

The transformation of the old industrial zone (souces: IBA website)

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The florish of the uncontrolled vegetations (souces: IBA webside)

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#8 L Scale Echigo Tsumari Art Field

"The aspiration is to become a museum which gives a power to live to every single living creature rather than being a space prioritising how it looks by excluding living things."

-ETAT

The Last Class Christian BoltanskiJean Kalman, Jean Kalman Installation Photographed by ANZA Welcome Barthélémy Toguo Land Art

Every three years, the Echigo Tsumari Art Triennale is held in the region for a few weeks in summer. During these art festivals, approximately 200 artworks which are born from the region such as large-scale outdoor sculptures utilising nature, closed schools and abandoned houses.

The festival first took place in 2000 as part of a successful revitalization plan to attract visitors to the region which has suffered from depopulation and a series of natural disasters.

The field is filled with art installations (souces: ETAT website)

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Chapter II

Academic study of the posibility for post-human environment 28

#9 The Third Landscape - Gilles Clement #10 Terrain Vague - Ignasi de Solà-Morales

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"It is my belief that we should start to investigate possible options for a renewed relationship with nature that could also foster a new kind of landscape architecture, defending stronger cultural values of beauty and harmony. Only then will the immanence of landscape become a tangible reality again. "

- Christophe Girot

Research Question 2 How can we engage with theory to connect with the post-human landscape to enable a collective mindset of cooperation?

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Cridit: Arnoldius

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#9 Gilles Clement The Third Landscape

Gilles Clément + Coloco, Third Landscape Garden at St. Nazaire (2009)

The good news is that it is entirely possible to design plantings that look and function more like they do in the wild: more robust, more diverse, and more visually harmonious, with less maintenance. The solution lies in understanding plantings as communities of compatible species that cover the ground in interlocking layers.

Planting in a Post-Wild World. Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes (2015) -Thomas Rainer & Claudia West

"Our absence bring presence."

How do we define The Third Landscape?

The third landscape is the space unattended by man and ruled over by natural evolution.

The diagrams above are four general process to define a space: I. a landscape without human intervention; II. the train trail as a product of human interventions has altered the original landscape and ecology in different levels; III. site abandoned by human or rarely occupied; IV. ecological succession is improving the bio-diversity of the site.

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Neglect can bring positive environmental consequences, as was the case with the 150-year-old territorial conflict between Perú and Ecuador that left large areas of land undeveloped and hence untouched by loggers and gold miners. The absence of human foster a more casual and diverse nature, the third landscape brings us a new way of design.

I believe it is time for landscape architects to embrace this new design thinking. A design that to "not design", allowing the force of nature to take control and see what it can bring to the space.

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#10 Ignasi de Solà-Morales Terrain Vague

The possibility of wasteland Ignasi de Solà-Morales first used the term ‘terrain vague’ to describe “wastelands”that “exist outside the city’s effective circuits and productive structures” It is through this specific term that de Solà-Morales acknoledges the ‘evocative potential’ of these sites, who’s absence of use evokes a sense o f f re e d o m , m o b i l i t y a n d l i b e r t y ; hence, terrain vague may be read as a space of value - of ‘the possible, of expectation’ - instead of as a wasteland of abandonment.

Children play in wasteland (source: Rafael Gomez-Moriana)

"The photographic images of terrain vague are territorial indications of strangeness itself, and the aesthetic and ethical problems that they pose embrace the problematics of contemporary social life.

What is to be done with these enormous voids, with their imprecise limits and vague definition?"

Thus these become fertile ground for artists whom "seek refuge in the margins of the city precisely when the city offers them an abusive identity, a crushing homogeneity, a freedom under control." (de Solà-Morales, 1995)

Terrain Vague in Yumen city (an abandoned city in China)

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The Emscher Landscape Park, Ruhrgebiet, Germany

The mindset for the post human world Two theories essentially are proposing the same situation. What should we do to the places that has been wrongly managed in the past? The third landscape tend to suggest that we should let the human away from the place because it has the resilience boncing back to life.

Terrain vague, on the other hand, recommend that those wasteland has its own potential and we can still be apart of it.

To fuse these ideas in the context of post human world, we need to first acknowledge that human should no longer be the center of the inquiry. Therefore a form of equilibrium should be a part of this approach when we designing the post-human landscape. We should foster a repurposed landscape that can respect and encourage the ecological succession.

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Chapter III

Common Action: Reinhabiting the Landscape 36

#11 Reinhabiting as Design Technique #12 Reinhabiting in LA Practice #13 Reinhabiting in Academic Practice #14 Reinhabiting in Creative Practice

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Research Question 3 What is the role of (re-)inhabiting being part of landscape practices?

How to let this action participated in a practice?

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Cridit: Lgo

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#11 Design Technique (Re)Inhabiting

/inhabit/ to live in a place: These remote islands are inhabited only by birds. /locate/

/occupy/

/lodge/

/live/

/reside/

/roost/

/settle/

/abide/

/populate/

/dwell/

/perch/

/tenant/

/possess/

/indwell/

/stay/

/stay/

As I giving my community of practice an overview, suddenly I realise that most of the practices is about the action reinhabit, whether it's the human inhabinting the wasteland or the nature is revealing a process of ecological succession. Both phenomena are showing the same action - reinhabiting the abandoned space.

(source: Inhabit: A Permaculture Perspective)

Human Habitat Human

Human /inhabit/

Flora Fauna

Non-human

Space

Non-human

Nonhuman Habitat (source: Inhabit: A Permaculture Perspective)

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#12

(Re)Inhabiting

Landscape Architecture Practice

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The core: Realising we’re not the only inhabitats

­ ­ The technique re-inhabit is achieved by several approachs, however, the core concept aims

1 not only in letting faona and flora species re-inhabited in this diverse shrubland, but also re

post-humanism culture to the landscape and through visitors exploration.

inhabiting a

the “portal”

path of the animal trails

the “glade of becoming”

Again we can look back from this practice The Symbiotic Matorral to unpack how to use "reinhabit" and understand its very core of post- humanism concept, through its exploration and experiment in several interventions:

The luxuriant ecosystem on the site is highlighted and developed by the installations,

generateing a welcoming environment for wild animals to be re-inhabited. Reconstructing a diverse floral bio-diversity for animals to re-inhabit the site (to eat, to hide, to walk and

Installations: The “glade of becoming” observe). Using signposting to illustrate flora, fauna, and their metabolism. Promoting

awareness about the richness, beauty, and fragility of the natural environment that The visitor explores a multifocal installations where the human perceptive sphere fuses

surrounds us. Letting human experience what animals can experience on the site :“hear like with those

of the many other inhabitants of the matorral. This diagram shows how to use

a rabbit, smell like a bear, see like a coyote, and fly like a green jay.” landscape installations re-inhabiting the bees and creating livable habitats for wild animals.

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TING] #13

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(Re)Inhabiting Academic Practice

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The Third Landscape (2003) Gilles Clément Landscape Theory

Very often I find myself bumping into this theory throughout my masters, but until this point that I started to explore the discussion around the term and the controversy of it when landscape architects put it into real practice.

The inaccessible sanctuary: Herman de Vries Prior his theory , one of Gilles Clément’s landscape installation is experimented in a lawn next to north garden, Münster at the year of 1997. This experiment interestingly display an 3-meter-circled brickwall, leaving an unreachable inner space. Visitors can only observe inside from the hole.

The term itself is not something hard to unfold:” an undetermined fragment of the Plantary Garden -designates the sum of the space left over by man to landscape evolution - to nature alone. Included in this category are left behind (délaissé) urban or rural sites, transitional spaces,

neglected land (friches), swamps, moors, peat bogs, but also roadsides, shores, railroad embankments, etc.” However, how is this concept helps us foster a better environment?

Gilles Clément tries to explore through gardening, landscape installations, and large landscape projects.

asked at this point: can landscape architects take be A few questions can the role to define

the boundary between our living habitats and the natures? If so, will this approach really

serve a direct role in maintaining urban biodiversity?

The examples that I showed were similar in method: select a space and let it inaccessible

for human to interact, visitors can only observe from the outside. The “designed” space

will

organically orperates ecological succession and vegetation will be inhabitated naturally.

The idea of defining a third landscape is inspiring yet needs more discussion on its shortage and possiblity.

¡

The reality: antithetical to conventional conceptions of public space Derborence Island is Isolated and inaccessible to the public, a 2,500 square metre concrete clad elevated (7 meters) island contains what is intended to evolve into primary forest

through a process of ecological succession and self-organizing nature.

Unfortunately the residents of Lille don’t seem to be enjoying these esoteric pleasures and instead regard the island as “visual pollution”

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There are disscussions about weather should we allow people go to nature reserves.

Therefore, an enquary deserve to be asked: do we have the rights to set the boundary between unaccessible land that remains unattached and the space for human?

Research Question 4 As humans, do we have the capacity to build up walls/fences which forbid people from visiting a specific area where it keeps the nature undisturbed?

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Cridit: Gilles Clément

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Č ė

#14

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(Re)Inhabiting Creative Practice

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Symbiosis (2020) Aleksandr Čebotariov and Laura Kuršvietytė Digital paintings

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Č ė

­

­ What did“Symbiosis” inhabited?

These

artwork amazingly portrait a image of a hybrid world, the living environment is invated

by newly discovered specie of fungus, and it is unable to stop the process of

The reason that I was drawn into these beautiful images was because the drawing style and

the colour pattern that it choose, I only thought it is just a mixture between abandoned

space and the growth of the wild. However, the texted storyline illustrates an hyper-reality

future when the fungus gradually growing on top of human habitats, co-existing to our buildings, our streets even our bodies.

­

couldn’t

help myself. The fungus inhabiting ask

straight-forward, unstopable and even cruel, but

Can inhabiting be an act of invation? I human’s living environment seems very isn’t this how we inhabiting the whole world? The idea itself shows that the non-human nature can be a threat to human kind, but it also reflect on how we are the threat to nature all alone, the process are semilar except we became the victims at this point. “SYMBIOSIS”

reminds us don’t just always consider ourselfs the top of the nature.

It can shift so easily

with only the existance of fungi in this version of reality.

growth, because it exists in the air, it expand like a kind of virus to our living environment and the abandoned space. The more organic waste the more it can thrive, lefting human to adapt the undeniable situation.

When I ask myself why this artwork became so powerful to me? The answer is without a doubt that it is a work of fantasy. It boldly assume the possiblities that the fungi can be ­

Rethink the hierachy of species parasitical to human habitats and human (could be possible in theory), which amplify the

The visitor explores a multifocal installations where the human perceptive sphere fuses dramatic effect and attract people’s attention.

I think this way of visioning the future can be

with those of the many other inhabitants of the matorral. This diagram shows how to use helpful for landscape architects to not just

­ generate cool ideas but also sell their ideas to

landscape installations re-inhabiting the bees and creating livable habitats for wild animals. the audiances.

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Conclusion

Today the concept of the Anthropocene synthesises the result: humans have significantly impacted the Earth, its geology and ecosystems, often in deeply troubling ways, generating an environment in which human and non-human actors are fundamentally entangled.

This invokes the call for sustainability, often associated with decentring the human in the human/non-human web, in an effort to make our relationship with ‘nature’ more balanced and turn the tide.

Are we heading towards a post-human future? We don't exactly know it yet, however, there are places that already being abandoned, viliages and cities suffer from overindustralisation or over-urbanisation ending up being an "ghost town".

­

Landscape architects tend to intuitively subscribe to the contemporary nature trend and the call for sustainability – they offer their expertise in working with natural material and processes to shape sustainable landscapes.

The post-human discourse is not about saying “let’s get rid of humans,” but rather “let’s move humans

away from the center of our inquiry.”

The work on the posthuman helped me look at this Anthropocene moment as an opportunity for landscape architects to consider building for multiple species, landscape with a broader idea of what life forms should be treated as citizens, and what life forms should be given habitation.

Journey continues 50

Be futurist, be bold!

Futurist thinking helps us imagine a fancy world that we are unable to achieve or a

nighmare that we haven’t reached yet. Either way, it forms an assumption based on the

living

of the dissatisfaction of the reality that

we’re cullerentlly in, which raising a awareness issue

and potentially contribute to our future.

Post-human perspective

An equilibrium for all life forms Again I am still surprised by the post-human idea of our position compared to the other species. There shouldn't be a hierarchy between human and others, even though our impact to the whole planet is significant in a negative way. However, we're still need to work towards the right senario.

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Bibliography Wolfe, C. (2010). What is posthumanism? University of Minnesota Press.

Girot, C. (2012). Immanent Landscape. Harvard Design Magazine. viewed 20 May 2021, <http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/36/immanent-landscape#foot-1>.

Clément, G. (2003). The Third Landscape Manifesto.

Rainer, T., & West, C. (2015). Planting in a post-wild world : designing plant communities for resilient landscapes . Timber Press.

Latz, Peter, author, Ganser, Karl, Gielen, Cordula, Latz, Anneliese, & Ahrens, Caroline. (2016).

Rust red : Landscape park Duisburg-Nord. Munich: Hirmer.

PATRICK BARRON, & Manuela Mariani. (2013). Terrain Vague: Interstices at the Edge of the Pale. Taylor and Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203552172 Pasini Garza Ramos Rosas, (2020), The Symbiotic Matorral, LANDEZINE ,viewed 20 May 2021, <http://landezine.com/index.php/2020/04/the-symbiotic-matorral-by-pasini-garza-ramosrosas/>.

Reflection (Mapping as a tool) By re-thinking and refining the way we learn things can sometimes effectively improve our ability to design. When making this community of practice, I suddenly noticed that there are similarities between my personal interests and what I enjoy learning about landscape architecture. It sparks ideas and motivations (even more important) to improve my learning ability. In the process of linking and connecting, there are connections may not reveal in the first place, I tried linking them with the knowledge from landscape architecture, it may seem farfetched at first but once I try to dig more related precedents, new ideas may generate by this perspective.

As one of the generative techniques, mapping helps represent the connection, through line work, diagram, image and text to realize this representation. Once you collect all the context information and other may or may not related to the projects, put them together and linking them with lines, and maybe write the common quality between things. This generative approach can be really helpful when it is just the beginning of a project.

Ariane Lourie Harrison, (2020), "Posthuman" Architecture, Pca-stream ,viewed 20 May 2021, <https://www.pca-stream.com/en/articles/ariane-lourie-harrison-posthumanarchitecture-119>.

GANDY, M. (2013). Entropy by design: Gilles Clément, Parc Henri Matisse and the Limits to Avant-garde Urbanism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37(1), 259– 278. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01164.x Clément, G. (2003). Favoring the living over form, Pca-stream, viewed 16 May 2021, <https:// www.pca-stream.com/en/articles/gilles-clement-favoring-the-living-over-form-115>.

Metalocus. (2021). THE EMSCHER LANDSCAPE PARK, viewed 10 May 2021, <https://www. metalocus.es/en/news/emscher-landscape-park>.

Scheffler, N. Parc Henri Matisse, viewed 25 April 2021, <http://www.nathanaelscheffler.com/ parc-henri-matisse>.

Staniscia, S. (2021). Sceptred isles: the possibility of the archipelago. Architectural Review. viewed 4 May 2021, <https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/sceptred-isles-thepossibility-of-the-archipelago>.

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Appendix I - Atlas Precedent

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" We are the receptacles

of models of thinking inherited from our forefathers, and when it comes to nature, these models seriously hamper our actual perception of things. What we find out there has little to do with much of the idealized landscape preconceptions we carry. Older landscape models work effectively, only as ideals, with a deeply warped reception and conception of nature, which in turn, has measurable repercussions on the way we act upon the world. It is my belief that we should start to investigate possible options for a renewed relationship with nature that could also foster a new kind of landscape architecture, defending stronger cultural values of beauty and harmony. Only then will the immanence of landscape become a tangible reality again. " - Christophe Girot

RMIT UNIVERSITY Landscape Architecture Research Seminar - Yaoyao Zhang -