REGENERATIVE PRACTICES FOR EXHAUSTED LANDSCAPES

Teresa Galí-Izard

In this course, students will be introduced to a range of landscape practices that regenerate soil health and enhance biological integrity through the research of five projects in a range of climatic and geographical conditions. Each project is a Garden of the 21st Century, a collection of field sites within the Chair of Being Alive that are located in Switzerland, Spain, Chile, and the United States. Through the lens of each Garden, traditional and pioneering approaches in designing with living systems will be critically discussed, including adaptive grazing, water harvesting, afforestation, soil building, and agroforestry. An introduction to these strategies will enable students to learn about key parameters for designing landscapes with the goal of regeneration, as well as gain perspective on ecological topics including succession, disturbance, and management. Additionally, the course will examine the potentials and challenges of these practices to influence landscapes at a territorial scale.

The course will be composed in two parts: a series of lectures and a series of field sessions at the Garden of the 21st Century at Hönggerberg. The lectures will introduce key regenerative practices for five sites in varying climatic and ecological contexts. Each site is a Garden of the 21st Century, a collection of projects within the Chair of Being Alive that are located in Switzerland, Spain, Chile, and the United States. In parallel to the lectures, students will design and maintain their experiments at the garden in Hönggerberg and catalogue their investigations in a journal throughout the semester.