UC EVENTS

Presenter

Dr Julian Raxworthy

Title

The viridic: a design language for plants

Abstract

Landscape architecture has modelled itself as a profession on architecture, yet its main material – plants – has a very different nature than architectural materials, since plants grow and change over time, compared to architectural materials which are generally specified to remain consistent. However, while architecture has a model for thinking about construction called “the tectonic”, landscape architecture has not had such a model for plants. In an effort to develop landscape architecture theory, I developed an equivalent model of the tectonic for plants in Overgrown which I call “the viridic”, its etymology developed from the Latin viridis, which means green, and viridesco which refers to spring. In this presentation I will introduce and discus the viridic, and demonstrate that, as a material (but so much more than that) plants fundamentally alter how we might understand design.

Biography

Dr Julian Raxworthy is a registered landscape architect and Associate Professor & Discipline Lead: Landscape Architecture at the University of Canberra, and Honorary Principal Fellow at the University of Queensland, where he completed his PhD in 2013 entitled Novelty in the entropic landscape: Landscape architecture, gardening and change. He has been faculty at RMIT, QUT and the University of Cape Town, and visiting professor at l’École nationale supérieure de paysage Versailles and the University of Virginia. His book Overgrown: practices between landscape architecture and gardening published in 2018 by The MIT Press was supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.