Cal Poly Pomona College of Environmental Design International Program in Paris

PARIS STUDY ABROAD
01 June – 30 June 2022

CORPOREAL LANDSCAPES 
moving beyond the periphery

Corporeal Landscapes is an international program centered around the moving body (‘corp’ is the French word for ‘body’) as a sensory navigation tool for exploring the waterways of Paris.

Currently working with Associate Professor Rennie Tang, developing the Inaugural Study Abroad to Paris Program for Summer 2022. This program provides a unique opportunity for College of Environmental Design (Landscape Architecture, Architecture, Urban and Regional Planning and Art) undergraduate and graduate students. From a disciplinary perspective, this is an immersive and experiential learning opportunity to live within so many of the landscapes, structures and public spaces that are at the foundations of the environmental design disciplines. This program opens a wide window for our students to explore the the diverse, rich, complex and contemporary landscape, garden, architecture, art and urban design history of France.

JUSTICEscape 2.5 Lab for Writing Workshop Program

“Design always begins with a narrative – and gets concrete through interactions, artifacts, environments, infrastructures, experiences and stories.” -  Alok Nandi

The language of design has power – through narrative, art and discourse – design employs its power to shift perceptions and spark positive change. In the pursuit of embracive design, equitable representation and consideration of all peoples in the built environment, JUSTICEscape 2.5 questions the impracticality of decentering whiteness as the default socio-spatial lens without understanding its construction. Students will interrogate whiteness as an evolving construct that legislates caste and spatial experience - a paradigm by which granted entitlement of social mobility is measured. Research and assignments interrupt assumptions of ‘white normality’ incorporating the notion of ‘the white gaze’, sustained by classicism and modernism design principles, manifested through public space (or ‘whitespace’) and the cultural production thereof.

With Nina Briggs and Lilian Pfaff, students will craft written and artistic narratives, giving form and character to all-inclusive speculative futures and imagined realities, challenging systems of power for Subsurface Magazine. In weekly workshops, guest artists, authors, architectural historians, editors, afrofuturists, curators, activists and designers will guide students in developing immersive creative practices encompassing all forms of written (expository, persuasive, descriptive, objective, subjective, creative and review writing), spoken, performance, and visual narratives – windows into lived cultural experiences through compelling, stories translated into socio-spatial and environmental visions. Students’ narrative-art will give form to the cultural impact of their stories and instruct us on how to empathetically understand and ethically reshape the landscape.