Rooftop Garden for Indigenous Flora

About the course

This summer course aims at deepening our knowledge of the territory where Umeå School of Architecture is located, with flora as the starting point.

The investigation will begin with the study of sacred, edible, medicinal and venomous plants growing in the Umeå region, to understand their anatomy as well as their cultural and symbolic value. We will frame the notion of garden by looking into specific historic references, the Specularium and the Hortus Conclusus, and the contemporary experiments Living Archive and Anarchive conducted by Luis Berríos-Negrón.

In the second part of the course, we will develop designs for a small roof garden dedicated to these plants. The cultural dimension of the garden will meet the technicalities of building a garden on a roof. Collecting existing resources produced by the building, such as water or heat, will be a central theme enriching the experience of growing living things.

The course is given full-time in weeks 23-24 and 32-34. 

Please note that this course has two course instances to choose from:

1. Normal form of teaching at Umeå School of Architecture
2. Online distance learning

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