2025 - 2026 Spring
Landscape Design I Poster
"Wonderlandscapes: Experimenting Micro Ecologies and Macro Voids"

Landscape Design I – PEM311E (CRN 24530) – “Wonderlandscapes: Experimenting Micro Ecologies and Macro Voids” will be conducted by Assoc. Prof. Melih Bozkurt (PhD) in the 2025-2026 Spring Semester. This project employs the "Alice in Wonderland" narrative as a spatial research tool to explore scalar transitions and perceptual contrasts in landscape design. The “protagonist” assumes the role of an explorer navigating between micro and macro worlds.

Module 1: Exploring Micro Ecologies: Initiated by the metaphor of Alice falling down the rabbit hole and shrinking, this phase focuses on micro-details within the forest habitat. The “observer” acts as a "shrinking" observer within a macro forest landscape, documenting surface textures, organic traces, and patterns through a "scavenger hunt" method. Based on these findings, a unique micro-landscape topography is constructed, modeled, manipulated with AI, and designs initiated on the constructed landscape.

Module 2: Urban Voids and Memory: Set on the other side of the mirror in the colorful, steep, and vertically layered streets of Fener-Balat, this phase inverts scale perception. The topographic structure of Fener-Balat is interpreted as an challenge. Here, the 'wanderer' analyzes the palimpsest of the old city and urban memory hidden within the macro urban fabric to discover urban voids. Consequently, living landscape interventions compatible with the urban context are developed for these micro-voids within the dense urban texture.