Groundlab present: Territorial Formations at BGS, 15th February 2016
The lecture will delve into the emergence of concepts such as territory and landscape as the basis for the renewal of design practices in architecture and urbanism. This process is concerned, on the one hand with research on anthropogenically created geomorphological formations or ‘created’ ground, and on the other with social, political and economic forces that drive and choreograph these environments.
The understanding of territory and landscape is the concern of various disciplines and professionals, such as geologists, sociologists, geographers, political ecologist and environmentalists, but it is the architects and urbanists who see them, though trans-disciplinary collaboration, as the core materials to reimagine the design of future territories. Landscape and territory are understood as cultural or spatial productions, derived from a constant and relentless interplay of human and natural activity – full of conflicts, struggles, alterations, and shifts, within or outside legal or institutional frameworks. This understanding broadens our idea of landscape and territory as intrinsically engaged with design practices and as the result of specific historical processes with political consequences.
