Vanishing String: The Future of Landscape in Different Aspects of Humanity, Space Odysseys

Student: YUEN Chun Yin Tony

Supervisor: Xiaoxuan Lu
Thesis section: Border Landscape / le voisinage
Programme: Master of Landscape Architecture
Date: June 2020

Abstract

The Vanishing String: The Future of Landscape in Different Aspects of Humanity is a thesis investigating the change of landscape in a possible but uncertain future stage. The notion of this thesis emerged with rising environmental changes concerns and global awareness of environmental protection, though the attention to these topics may regarded as paranoia among groups of people, as there is no scientific model in the laboratory can take all parameters from the reality into account to generate a complete prediction result. Coincide with the 50th anniversary of moon landing and the intensified space exploration fantasies heated by entrepreneurs and competitions between territories, many hold the believe that space migration shall be the last resort for the continuation of humanity. Space colonization has always been the dream in astronomy, it is not only reflected in various fictions since the first launched satellite in 1930s but also in the foundations of well-known companies specialized in space travel. Holding these antecedents and consequences, the position of future ‘landscape’ remains unexplored in landscape architectural practice for decades. Contextualized with the rapid expansion and development of the field in previous 20 years, the thesis is bridging the space industries and the landscape industry with systematic thinking and planning in an expanded time frame. This requires the thesis to go beyond the conventional scope of landscape architecture and rethink the position of the discipline base on given assumptions. This thesis critiques the formation of current believes of space colonization through landscape planning and philosophical lens, acknowledging the difficulties of maintaining life in ‘true void’ and unknown ground beyond the atmosphere. While engaging with logical and systematic design processes, providing new position and directions to Landscape Architecture, the argument nevertheless exemplifies the ‘Utopian’ fantasy in an inverted way, stimulating self-reflection on the significance of design constructions. Thesis film: https://youtu.be/Pfbn6s0eYOk

Keywords: space colonization; survival network; post-humanism; re-encounter bottleneck; future shock