Jorg Sieweke Research

Vergegenwaertigung

abstract of ongoing dissertation: The focus lays on design as applied research in landscapes of post-modernity. Although design in the first place is discredited as non-scientific by classical terms, it is recently acknowledged as productive decision-making process and as significant way of producing knowledge. The moment conventional sciences meet the limits of their disciplinary methodology, they start to get interested into the miraculous and chaotic trans-disciplinary methods of architectural design practice. Landscape architecture and urban design are facing contingencies of ever-complex environments, without ever having a sufficient database. The emerging discipline Landscape Urbanism appears to be one of the few holistic discipline that faces matters of natural and social sciences and actually integrates them in a trans-disciplinary design-practice. This practice creates both, prototypical artifacts and knowledge. The dissertation focuses on the specific methods of creating knowledge within this reflexive design practice. In order to identify the specific nature of this productive methodology, a serious of retroactive criteria are developed. One set of criteria focuses on the object: the underlying definitions of nature and landscape. Another set of criteria focuses on the applied method, exploring the potential of a critical and generalist design approach. In a reflexive process three sets of design projects are empirically tested to break down the ways of design creating knowledge. (River landscapes, urban landscapes, postindustrial landscapes) The results are summarized and referred to a reading of post-structuralist theory.