Rod Barnett
Rod Barnett is Chair of the Master of Landscape Architecture in Auburn University's School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture. He is Director of the APLA Landscape Unit, a research and consultancy project that operates out of the school.
Barnett has developed three primary areas of research: emergence in landscape architecture, culture and identity in landscape architecture and Pacific Island landscape recovery. Current work undertaken by the APLA Landscape Unit includes Living Tissue and Under the Radar II. The former investigates, in partnership with the Birmingham,AL Regional Commission, the reformulation of thousands of tax delinquent properties as a network of social ecologies and successional landscapes. The latter project is Border Crossings, an examination of indigeneity and exoticism in public space design. It explores issues to do with nomadism, difference and displacement in the design of three public open space landscapes in Auburn AL, through the lens of kudzu vine, coyotes and Creek Indians.
Barnett is currently working on a book, Emergence in Landscape Architecture, due from Routledge in 2013. This text explores the increasing use of emergence theory in landscape architecture. It provides a theoretical basis for this use, at the same time as developing a critical perspective on it. An argument central to the book's purpose is that the invocation of open systems and emergent conditions often seems to disregard the affective encounter of human nature with the world.
Barnett currently teaches Thesis Studio and a seminar on emergence in landscape architecture, in which he develops a landscape architectural inquiry informed by writers as diverse as Georges Bataille, Michel Serres, Gilles Deleuze and Alain Badiou. The influence of these writers on his work can be seen readily in the articles available on this site.
Address: School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture
430 Dudley Hall
Auburn University
Auburn, AL 36849-5316
Barnett has developed three primary areas of research: emergence in landscape architecture, culture and identity in landscape architecture and Pacific Island landscape recovery. Current work undertaken by the APLA Landscape Unit includes Living Tissue and Under the Radar II. The former investigates, in partnership with the Birmingham,AL Regional Commission, the reformulation of thousands of tax delinquent properties as a network of social ecologies and successional landscapes. The latter project is Border Crossings, an examination of indigeneity and exoticism in public space design. It explores issues to do with nomadism, difference and displacement in the design of three public open space landscapes in Auburn AL, through the lens of kudzu vine, coyotes and Creek Indians.
Barnett is currently working on a book, Emergence in Landscape Architecture, due from Routledge in 2013. This text explores the increasing use of emergence theory in landscape architecture. It provides a theoretical basis for this use, at the same time as developing a critical perspective on it. An argument central to the book's purpose is that the invocation of open systems and emergent conditions often seems to disregard the affective encounter of human nature with the world.
Barnett currently teaches Thesis Studio and a seminar on emergence in landscape architecture, in which he develops a landscape architectural inquiry informed by writers as diverse as Georges Bataille, Michel Serres, Gilles Deleuze and Alain Badiou. The influence of these writers on his work can be seen readily in the articles available on this site.
Address: School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture
430 Dudley Hall
Auburn University
Auburn, AL 36849-5316
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‘The real secret of the primitive … has often been the same secret as
always: the primitive can be – has been, will be(?) – whatever Euro-
Americans want it to be. It tells us what we want it to tell us’.
(Torgovnik: 9) The use of Maori iconography in landscape architect Ted Smyth’s public open space work is examined as a way of initiating discussion on this issue. As is so often the case, the migration of symbols across cultures is here fraught with ambiguity and misprision. This is particularly the case when contemporary urban design purports to
rescue primitive forms from cultural oblivion by importing them into post-industrial space, and through this transference attempts to rescue post-industrial space from the very transience, mobility and genericity that enables it in the first place.
‘The real secret of the primitive … has often been the same secret as
always: the primitive can be – has been, will be(?) – whatever Euro-
Americans want it to be. It tells us what we want it to tell us’.
(Torgovnik: 9) The use of Maori iconography in landscape architect Ted Smyth’s public open space work is examined as a way of initiating discussion on this issue. As is so often the case, the migration of symbols across cultures is here fraught with ambiguity and misprision. This is particularly the case when contemporary urban design purports to
rescue primitive forms from cultural oblivion by importing them into post-industrial space, and through this transference attempts to rescue post-industrial space from the very transience, mobility and genericity that enables it in the first place.