We want to refresh our senses of places we cross every day and have forgotten to listen to and to look at. We want to open up new approaches to landscape perception and representation, providing different ways of seeing, hearing and experiencing. Working with audio-visual media means grasping the sensuousness of landscape and sketching spatial and atmospheric phenomena. 

On the search for a topological definition of landscape aesthetics, the chair’s MediaLab – an interdisciplinary team of landscape architects, architects, filmmakers and composers – teaches and researches on the visual and auditory culture of landscape. The critical involvement with the perception of landscape is the basis of qualified architectonic design. Methods continuously refined through the exploration of the reflective potential of different media lay the foundations for the work in LanscapeViusals and LandscapeAcoustics.

A crucial aspect of this approach is the comparison of the framed landscape with the sensual experience encountered through fieldwork, since the final goal is to find ways of incorporating new insights into our future environment.

LANDSCAPE VISUALS TOOLS

In the process of investigating urban and rural landscapes, the camera is used as a tool to analyze and edit the space through new montages that consider the spatial, temporal, visual and social aspects of a site. How can we summon and translate the things we experience in a new frame?  While using professional large and middle format film cameras as well a video cameras, we discuss the framed personal approach to specific spaces in the critictal context of the changing landscape surrounding us.To map large landscapes with it’s precise spatial and visual characteristics we use terrestrial laserscanner or photogrammetric techniques to cover small details.

LANDSCAPE ACOUSTICS TOOLS

We understand sound as a primary element of the spatial structure and aesthetic quality of a landscape. Combining experimental fieldwork with a state-of-the-art surround laboratory setting, we analyze, remodel and recompose sonic spaces. Guided by composers, acousticians and sound artists, our students learn recording and composition tools and discover new approaches to architectural design.

COURSES

Serendipity – audioviusal fieldwork is our elective course and thesis elective available each semester to students. Seminar weeks give students the opportunity to concentrate on varying questions concerning landscape perception.

> More Information about the current course

> The MediaLab Blog with students works from previous semesters

TEAM

Matthias Vollmer | Research Associate MediaLab/LVML | Coordinator MediaLab
Contact and coordination: matthias.vollmer@arch.ethz.ch

Ludwig Berger | Research Associate MediaLab
Dennis Häusler | Research Associate MediaLab/LVML
Johannes Rebsamen | Research Associate MediaLab/LVML
Nadine Schütz | Research Associate MediaLab