communications

03
The work presented here is from Communications 03, the final
of the core communications courses undertaken by students
in their undergraduate degree. The aim of this course is to
engage with current landscape architecture discourse whilst
drawing on a wide range of sources that may form our own
individual creative practices. These may include art, film,
fashion, other design disciplines, popular culture, social
science and the scientific.

Within this course students develop an understanding of

their own practices both retrospectively and projectively by
generating a synthesis between work undertaken within and
outside the institution and source material. This forms a series
of archives/lexicons that communicate students’ individual
ambitions, questions and interests.

The intent of this course is to enable students to refine and

redefine their design practice expanding possibilities of
material and immaterial ideas. Over the semester students
examine and critique their own generative and explorative
methodologies and further develop and frame communication
skills.

Course leader:
Saskia Schut

Tutors:
Saskia Schut
Kate Church
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Parallel Encyclopedia
Construct your own encyclopaedia, this is to be an image based work. If an
encyclopaedia is a “literary work giving information on all branches of knowledge or
of one subject, usually in alphabetic order” how can yours propose a different view
of knowledge, your own parallel view, ordered according to associations rather than
through singular entities? Drawing on images from a range of disciplines use the mode
of the encyclopaedia to curate, frame and begin to position your own design practice.
Consider how you can use the conventions of the book (including cover, contents,
binding and layout) to help situate the content of your parallel encyclopedia
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Off The Roof
To further discover how you like to make and further develop/define what your design
practice is about this assignment asks you to take one of your designs undertaken
through a studio and explode it out, testing its formal, material and functional
possibilities... what is it? what more can it be? how else could it function? is it rich with
possibilities? how does it work spatially? formally? compositionally?

Consider the work you have made in the visual Parallel Encyclopedia, the text and the
drawings and models and how these suggest material and spatial possibilities.
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Content
Compile a document and design a mini exhibition that explicitly explores and
demonstrates your design position, your ambitions, questions, and design processes
through a combination of writing, drawings, models and reference images (parallel
encyclopedia and other design works). This is your argument, your manifesto. To
complete this you will need to consider how the document will be read and how it can
communicate your ideas from your position without you verbally explaining it.
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Course Details work by:
Title: Communications 03 Sarah Hicks
Tutors: Saskia Schut + Kate Church Alistair De Fegley
Date: Semester 2, 2010 Simon Meade
Yan Luo
This and other documented examples of design studios run
as part of the RMIT University Architecture program can
be found on issuu.com