Restless Landscapes

Abstract

This article discusses the work of the architectural design research and teaching partnership of Smout Allen around the theme of Restless Landscapes. The work proposes that the intrinsic features of the landscape such as topography, geography, climate, and man’s manipulation of rural and urban environments provides the designer with a language that can inform design. Can one exploit the conditions that physically and perceptually shape the landscape to augment architectural design and bring to it a sense of nature and environment illuminated? Two design cases conceived between the realms of architectural and landscape design, architectural competitions and conceptual art illustrate this argument. An iterative design process of drawing, modelling and test prototyping is employed that compliments the notion of the restless landscape.