Feral Floral Futures. Speculations on Landscape
with Nico King#futuregardens #speculativedesign #horticulture
This course investigates speculative design through a topic of special interest that is not usually addressed in the curriculum: horticulture, that is, around (living) plant material and vegetation as fundamental components of both “natural” and “human-made” ecosystems. In the context of this class, we will understand horticulture as a term not to denote decorative gardening techniques but as a precursor to biotechnology that has altered geographic realities for thousands of years.
Through lectures and reading discussions, the course examines human-made natures and their encounters with, and vulnerabilities to, equally human-made wicked problems and (un)natural disasters such as unprecedented climate change, wildfires, erosion, tree die-off, and species decline. This theoretical-practical exploration considers speculative design’s intersections with debates in landscape architecture, architecture, ecology, anthropology, as well as synthetic biology.
In sections, students will delve further into generating their own speculative horticultural ideas in written and visual form. How can the design of environments—natural, artificial, and virtual ecosystems, landscapes, or vegetation—respond to anthropogenic disruptions? Should they respond at all? And does their design challenge the very concept of nature itself?
Nico King is an interdisciplinary artist-researcher and trained landscape architect. She is a doctoral candidate in visual arts and anthropogeny (human origins) at the University of California, San Diego. Her research focuses on political ecologies and speculative design of natures and landscapes.
Nico held artist/architect residencies at SOMA Mexico (2019) and the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles (2016–17). Currently, she is a Jacobs and a Mellon Fellow at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens (2023–24). She has been supported by a Russel Foundation Artist Project Grant (2024), a Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship in landscape architecture (2020–21), the Tinker Foundation (2019), and the START Award for young architects and designers from the Austrian Federal Chancellery (2017).
Publications include articles and book chapters on social park design ideals, post-industrial mining landscapes, “ready-to-plant” leisure gardens as culture industry, and the return of the political to park design. Nico has an MSc (Diplomingenieurin) in landscape architecture from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU), where she was also a postgraduate research associate in modern landscape history from 2022 to 2025, and an MA in critical studies from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
www.cargocollective.com/nico-king
︎︎︎ MEDIA: mixed media
︎︎︎LOCATION: main location (indoor & outdoor)
︎︎︎TEACHING LANGUAGE: english
︎︎︎WHAT TO BRING : s ketchbook, laptops, camera/smartphone, as well as any tools and materials for drawing and collaging (analog/digital)
︎︎︎REQUIREMENTS: c uriosity, an open mind, readings will be provided to participants ahead of the workshop
︎︎︎MAXIMUM NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: 5