Lecturer: Tiziano Cattaneo  

Course name: Landscape Design
Course code: 501024
Degree course: Ingegneria Edile-Architettura
Disciplinary field of science: ICAR/14
University credits: CFU 9
Course website: n.d.

Specific course objectives

The course is attended by 5th year’s students, next to university career’s conclusion, and aims to excite a careful landscape sensitivity and an awareness of problems, methods, instruments and necessary expertise, useful in a future professional planning experience, corresponding to a renewed technical-scientific knowledge pooling, in natural sciences’ areas, in energetic technologies for environment.

Course programme

Syllabus
Landscape is today a basic planning theme in Europe, for populations’ living places’ quality (concerning this, see European Landscape Convention adopted by European Council in year 2000). This quality is felt as a right thanks to a public opinion’s higher awareness. While knowledge and protection of landscape’s specificities, in their historical, cultural, natural, architectural, morphological features, are considered warranty of their identity’s safeguard. Therefore, landscape is a resource for the community, because rich of using potential and profitability, in the larger sense of the words. Landscape’s planning, in connection with architecture and city planning, needs always more of a cross-disciplinary approach based on an integrated synthesis of morphological, historical, ecological, environmental, cultural features and of suitable technical-scientific methods to obtain the landscape.

Lesson program
Course’s theoretical lessons focus on deepening of contemporary theories about landscape and architecture, through the definition of their constitutive elements and the analysis of main studies and projects. During the course, some examples are showed that better explain the possible planning approaches to the theme of urban and natural landscape, recognizing as basic for landscape’s transformation the individuation of the environmental, architectural, historical and cultural preexistences in order to define the intrinsic feature of the working places. Lessons’ program is composed of two parts: - a first introductory part which will explain: contemporary landscape planning’s role; origin and development of landscape’s knowledge in Italy and in Europe; reference regulations, investigating its present placement in different disciplinary contexts. – a second part which explains the methods of analysis and classification of different territorial environments, which allow to know both settling structure origin and evolution and natural environment’s following transformations. According to course’s aims, special attention is focused on territory analysis methods, which involve resorting to specialist knowledge and action techniques referring to disciplinary different but complementary areas. In this course’s part some teaching seminars and conferences are provided with external professors and experts presences.

Project work
Planning work consists of a practical drill during course’s theoretical part and can be developed individually or by twos. Importance of landscape, as changeable, unstable, fragile element, is faced by applying new innovatory compositional strategies, that are realized through sustainable planning actions, considering both the new Italian and European normative pattern and the new energy technologies of landscape ecology. Planning areas chosen by the teachers have a territorial shape characterized by developed areas after undeveloped areas, having a high landscape value, which are aimed at be caught of nature, relationships and dominant features. The project means to read the studied territory’s dominant features and then to use these interpretations and of fascinations deriving from landscape’s analysis. The exercise concerns the landscape planning of a complex area, deepening the role of natural, environmental, morphological and infrastructural systems in the process of architectural landscape’s planning, including in the project all working scales, till building detail, according to the planning directions took by the students. What devised at the end of the course can be the basis for the final Graduation Thesis work.

Course entry requirements

Basic knowledge defined in test’s priorities.

Course structure and teaching

Lectures (hours/year in lecture theatre): 60
Practical class (hours/year in lecture theatre): 30
Practicals / Workshops (hours/year in lecture theatre): 30

Suggested reading materials

Reference texts are following indicated. Specific bibliography, also requested by students, will be given and commented during the course

T. Cattaneo . Progettazione del paesaggio. Maggioli Editore, Rimini, 2008.

M. Vitta. Il paesaggio. Una storia fra natura e architettura. Einaudi, Torino, 2005.

A. Toccolini. Piano e progetto di area verde. Maggioli Editore, Rimini, 2007.

Testing and exams

The exam consists of: the discussion of planning proposals worked out by strongly referring to themes discussed during the lessons; the learning of theoretical principles of landscapes learning, and finally the reference bibliography.