City Play: Post-Affordances and the Transformative Power of Place

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2018-03-21
Authors
Shirtcliff, Benjamin
Adib, Mahsa
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Shirtcliff, Benjamin
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Landscape Architecture
Landscape Architecture is an environmental design discipline. Landscape architects actively shape the human environment: they map, interpret, imagine, draw, build, conceptualize, synthesize, and project ideas that transform landscapes. The design process involves creative expression that derives from an understanding of the context of site (or landscape) ecosystems, cultural frameworks, functional systems, and social dynamics. Students in our program learn to change the world around them by re-imagining and re-shaping the landscape to enhance its aesthetic and functional dimensions, ecological health, cultural significance, and social relevance. The Department of Landscape Architecture was established as a department in the Division of Agriculture in 1929. In 1975, the department's name was changed to the Department of Landscape Architecture and Community Planning. In 1978, community planning was spun off from the department, and the Department of Landscape Architecture became part of the newly established College of Design. Dates of Existence: 1929–present
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Landscape Architecture
Abstract

Landscape architecture research and practice often focus on demand or instrumental value of the land to serve some need, like a healing garden or playground, or the intrinsic value of the land due to unique characteristics, like a protected wilderness or geological phenomenon, but rarely does the discipline concentrate on the transformative power of the environment. Sarkar (2012) suggests that transformative power refers to those unanticipated experiences with the environment that change or transform our worldview.

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This conference paper is published as Shirtcliff, B., Adib, M., 2018. “City Play: post-Affordances and the transformative power of place.” Paper presented at the Council for Educators in Landscape Architecture, Virginia Tech Blacksburg. Posted with permission.

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Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 UTC 2018