Mark Smout and Laura Allen on Restless Landscapes
On 6-October, Mark Smout and Laura Allen shared Restless Landscapes as part of the 2021 Fall Urbanism Lecture Series, co-hosted by the City Design & Development Program (CDD), SMArchS Urbanism Program, and Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism at MIT. Mark Smout, Professor of Architecture and Landscape Furtures, and Laura Allen, Professor of Architecture and Augmented Landscapes are based at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College of London, and are the founders and directors of the design research practice SmoutAllen.
In their lecture, Restless Landscapes, Laura and Mark outline projects engaged with concepts of augmented landscape, technology and nature, instrumentation and playable objects. Their work is driven by an interest in the symbiosis of scientific methodology and social constructs; exploring ways in which to integrate data with the human experience.
Integrating design and scientific research they focus on the relationship between the natural and the artificial; their representational methods are flexible while the design research produced by their office remains consistently projective and critically thoughtful on the changing natural world. Their work often focuses on resilience and long-term sustainability, rich with detail that navigates the complexities of the natural environment. Laura and Mark also lead Unit 11: Uncommon Grounds at Bartlett School of Architecture and describe how their work and their pedagogy attempts to give agency to landscape architecture and encourages the development of unique creative practices.
By Joris Komen, Norman B. (1938) and Muriel Leventhal Fellow, Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism.
