Introduction
The evolution of the concept of landscape witnessed over recent decades coincides with an inexorable human impact on nature at global level (and the consequent abuse of environmental resources), configuring an ever increasing interest of creative and knowledge disciplines towards the project solutions which will become real typologies of interventions by administrators, by who decides how to create landscape on territory. And yet, does a real gap still exist between artistic process and ways of intervening in the field of landscape planning? What are the work methods that profitably mix the visions of an architect with the projects, the technologies and the forms of representation used by artists when they explore and build a land area?
Educational philosophy
A sort of methodological squint comes to light where asserted lines of research are dimmed by a necessary interdisciplinarity of knowledge. Where the individual professional figures (architects and artists, sociologists, designers, curators, anthropologists, filmmakers, philosophers) find a richness in the common points of the different subjects, highlighting and exposing an idea of landscape that is no longer easy to identify. The landscape becomes an open field of investigation, where every single professional experience increases its value, crossing and winding with other experiences on the landscape itself.
A landscape to be used, to be manipulated, according to the methods of a worktable, in which the physical characteristics of the land area are explored through experimental techniques, both theoretical and practical in a desire to expose the complex stratification of the different modes of intervention, of the single actors, of the technical-artistic planning solutions, always partial, specific and newer definitive, to be applied to a landscape in natural metamorphosis.
Extraordinary landscapes, rich in an inalienable territorial complexity that make up an endless puzzle to be explored piece by piece, case by case, in the awareness of living a process of knowledge, of interactive land area planning, which belongs to our contemporary culture, to our daily lives.
Summary
Fields of specialization: architecture, landscape, agronomy/botanics, landscape design, curatorship, space socio-anthropology, photography/video.
Professional profiles: architect, landscape designer, philosopher, sociologist, artist, visual arts curator, specialized communication expert.
Directors: Elisabetta Bianchessi, Paolo Mestriner.
Language: Italian (with several interventions possibly in English due to the high number of international lecturers - see Faculty section).
Title: Academic Master.
Credits: 60.
Duration: 15 months (part-time), from May to July of the following year.
Yearly schedule: intensive - 600 hours of class and 800 including individual studies, group studies, internship.
Internship or company project: the internship can be undertaken in an external institution or within the program, in a development laboratory supported by a partner company or a public administration.
Evaluation: a final thesis has to be presented to the Master scientific commission, and the student will also have to present a synthetic portfolio of projects and activities developed during the course and during the internship as well.
In collaboration with Politecnico di Milano
All the information related to the "Extraordinary Landscapes" Master program refer to the current edition (academic year 2009-2010), whose enrolments have been closed on April 16th, 2009. For updated information please visit www.paesaggistraordinari.org.
