BODY-SCALE PERCEPTION AND EXPERIENCE: A TERRAIN-BASED FOUNDATION STUDIO OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

Abstract

Traditional design education and training in China, including Environmental Art and Landscape Architecture, is essentially grafted from methods of architectural painting. The time has come to reexamine and reflect that is it appropriate to borrow teaching methods directly from Architecture and are there other methods that are developed from the intrinsic qualities of Landscape Architecture and can be used for disciplinary teaching? This article introduces a set of methods of terrain-based field investigation and site documentation, including outlining, mapping, representation, and intervention, which were developed by the author for a design studio in the Department of Landscape Architecture, School of Architecture at the China Academy of Art. The perception of landscape through multiple senses and the exploration on the unseen causes of appearance, as well as the relationships and connections within the terrain, are emphasized in such training.