Gardens of Berlin: Transdisciplinary Ecology situates questions of planetary change through the city of Berlin as a diverse complex ecosystem, focusing on several urban gardens. Asking “what can a garden be?” the course proposes ecological thinking to engage with multiple disciplines informing the field of ecology including environmental, economic, social, political, artistic and spiritual to study relations between many human and nonhuman communities that compose each garden. As a digital course, sites will be introduced through virtual tours created in collaboration with local organisers from each of the projects, elaborating on their practices and contextualized with multi-media materials. In-person site visits or excursions may be included as the situation allows. Students will be supported to work autonomously and collaboratively in creative, critical, and reflective ways, embracing transdisciplinarity, concluding the course by designing a speculative garden.
- Course owner: Shelley Etkin