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Educational offer

High-level training course, 2024 Edition

Architecture for Landscape

Course periodNov 25, 2024 – Feb 21, 2025
PlacementDiller Scofidio + Renfro, AMDL CIRCLE, Mario Cucinella Architects, Ensamble studio, SANAA, HHF Architects, Snøhetta
Architecture for Landscape

Brief

From Stonehenge to greek temples, architecture is the signature of humankind on landscape, the artificial element that has always been connected to the natural environment.

Architecture and landscape are linked by a fundamental continuity that is now starting to fade, damaging the quality of the space we dwell. More than ever today, landscape is a precious heritage that architecture can and must enhance, while protecting it to pass it on to future generations:

architects shall not give up on working on landscape, instead, they should be able to design architectures that respond to each landscape’s specific feature and generate wonderful and unique spaces.

The “Architecture for Landscape” course was created on these premises: it aims at training designers who are able to meet the diverse needs of transforming territories, enforcing an attentive and productive dialogue with the surrounding landscape to respond to the needs of prestigious clients in outstanding contexts.

Through a thorough analysis of the natural world, light and geomorphological features of terrains, the designers will become more and more able to reconnect human design to the natural environment and be inspired by landscape to design outstanding, sustainable and impressive architectures.
The course will be made up of 84 hours of lessons, a 32-hour workshop and multiple lectures by well-renowned professional architects.

At the end of the course, YACademy Placement office will guarantee each student a proposal for an internship / collaboration within the partner studios.

Course info

Language

Italian & English

translation from Italian into English avalaible
Available places

15 In person
5 Online

Place

Bologna

Course timeline

25.11.2024 - 21.2.2025

3 days/week
Placement activation

March 2025 - May 2025

Enrollment fee

€ 2900 + VAT

Online
Enrollment fee

€ 9700 + VAT

In person
Scholarships

3

Full coverage of the enrollment fee for the most outstanding candidates
* it can be split in three installments (with a 6% increase on the total amount)

Teaching modules & Workshops

Theories and history of landscape

Historical and artistic itinerary on the evolution of landscape concept

The garden site

Management and realization of green areas

Botanics for design

Drawing design inspiration from plants

Extreme Architecture

The mountains’ teaching, remote places and impossible building sites

Climate Change

Future scenarios and mechanisms of transformation of environment and landscape

The landscape project

Building the places

Sustainable designing

Principles of sustainability and bio-architecture

Newtech for Sustainability

Trends ans innovation in sustainable architecture

The co-existence of species

Understanding and protection of biodiversity

Climate Positive Landscape

Protocols and methodologies for reduction of anthropic footprint

Art and nature

Contemporaneity compares with places

Building with wood

Techniques and possibilities of timber architecture

Vernacular architecture

Experiences of continuity between landscape and architecture

Site Visits

Sicily's salt quarries, Valle dei templi and Scala dei Turchi

Arcari Quarry

Innsbruck, Snøhetta's office

Special lectures and critiques

Shaped by the surroundings: The Whale

Lars Johan Almgren / Dorte Mandrup

Underwater landscape: Under

Patrick Lüth / Snøhetta

NYC in green: the High Line

Matthew Johnson / Former Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Balance and relation between built landscape and natural landscape

Toyo Ito / Toyo Ito & Associates

Architecture of Nature: Chinese scenario between history and landscape

Zhu Pei / Studio Zhu Pei

Ca'n Terra: the return to the caves

Antón García-Abril / Ensamble Studio

BIG: architecture between landmark and research

Bjarke Ingels / BIG

Arcari Quarry: the anthropic landscape as performative stage

Giuseppe Zampieri / David Chipperfield Architects Milano

Juvet Landscape Hotel: experiencing nature

Torunn Golberg / Jensen & Skodvin

Underground cities and architecture

Design workshop

Patrick Lüth / Snøhetta

The workshop will represent an opportunity for practical synthesis through which all the notions that will be made available through the other didactic modules will be tested, guaranteeing strategic responses to a real architectural project. The workshop, conducted in collaboration with Italkali, will look at the reuse of an old disused quarry in the Petralia Soprana hills, in the heart of Sicily. An outcrop of the mammoth layer of salt that was created millions of years ago in southern Europe by the evaporation of the ancient Mediterranean, the Petralia quarry is a true underground city: not a narrow maze of claustrophobic ravines and gloomy passages, but rather a succession of immense, immaculate halls, punctuated by massive pillars supporting 15 levels carved out of the heart of the mountain, for a total height of over 200 metres. A superlative place of complex description, sculpted by the explosions of dynamite and voracious machines, scratching through immaculate salt to carve twisted and complex geometric motifs that resemble cave writings. The Patralia quarries are truly an alien location, capable of abstracting the visitor from space and time, and not by chance contended - though rarely granted - by the most famous fashion brands and Hollywood productions, for their most exclusive settings and events. In the heart of the Sicilian mountains, in one of the most singular and evocative contexts on the planet, students will have the opportunity to measure themselves against the mystery of an underground landscape, a contemporary result of industrial activities, but a rare materialisation of that 'underworld' that has inspired legends and mythologies of all times.

Underground cities and architecture

Construction workshop

Construction is a fundamental step in architecture. For this reason, YACademy offers its students the opportunity to participate in the process of producing their own ideas. Thus, the students will gain practical experience on construction sites and, above all, the authorship of projects built for excellent commissions, destined for a major media echo and capable of defining a turning point in their professional career.

Placement

At the end of teaching modules and workshop, YACademy’s Placement office will guarantee every student an internship or collaboration proposal in one of our partner studios.

Teachers

Admission

Requirements

Students or graduates in Architecture/Design can apply to the course. The commission, based on the assessment of the application, may admit students with different qualifications.

Registration

To apply, it is necessary to register online and submit a Curriculum Vitae, a Portfolio, and a Motivational Letter. Moreover, it is necessary to pay the administration fee (€60 + VAT). The best 20 candidates will be admitted to the course according to the rules.

Scholarship

By applying for the course, the students automatically become eligible to obtain a scholarship: one will be granted to each of the best 3 applicants for each course, consistently with the Selection Committee's evaluation. Therefore, it is not necessary to make specific actions to apply for a scholarship. The scholarship covers the entire enrollment fee - regardless of the type of attendance chosen -, but does not cover the administration fee (€60 + VAT) that have to be paid in order to complete the application process successfully.

Timeline

Complying with deadlines is a fundamental requirement to take part in the course. All students are encouraged to pay the utmost attention to the timeline and to complete each phase in advance.

Applications opening

Applications deadline

Publication of the provisional ranking

Beginning of second-round admissions

Enrollment fee payment deadline for students admitted according to the provisional ranking

Publication of the official ranking (including second-round admitted students)

Lessons start

Download

Make sure you have downloaded the course brochure, from which you will be able to obtain any information about YACademy, as well as every single detail on how to access and enrol in the courses.

Rules eng

Regolamento ita

Download the 2023/24 internships report

Find out all the statistics and placement methodology for the year 2023/24: 39% of students entered Pritzker studios.

Past editions gallery

P1069021P1056209P1069181 1Dsc F5543 1Dsc F2241 1Dsc F1899 5 1Dsc F1899 6 1Dsc F1899 1

Partners

To each one of them, many thanks from YACademy staff and students.

Franchi Umberto MarmiAreslineCesare Roversi ArredamentiAmbasciata d’Italia al CairoManni GroupKlimahouseDe Castelli

The natural environment as a design stage

Architecture for Landscape

Cover Landscape

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