The Land Lab is a hybrid seminar / studio space, dedicated both to the acquisition of new knowledge as well as the development of projects that apply that knowledge.  Students will form project teams to investigate specific land forms and places, tracing them through multiple stages and histories of occupation, colonization, governance, subdivision, chains of ownership, public and private investments, shifting uses, disinvestment, ecological transformation, and efforts at reclamation. 

 

Each class session will be broken into three modalities: discussion, presentation of ongoing work, and time devoted to in-class project development. The outcome will be a book of "parcel biographies" that weave together stories of land and people, richly illustrated with maps, photographs, and data visualization.