SLU news

Visiting researcher from Rhode Island School of Design

Published: 11 September 2019
Suzanne Mathew

Suzanne Mathew is an Associate Professor Department of Landscape Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. She will be working at the Alnarp campus for two weeks doing field studies in the Alnarp Landscape Lab.

Suzanne has developed field techniques for observing changes in light, shade, temperature, wind speed and direction, and humidity. In order to understand how these factors shape space in the landscape, and will be applying/testing them here during her stay. 

"The Landscape Labs here are an incredibly unique demonstration of how vegetation can be used to shape space outside, through the simple manipulation of plant species, form, density, and arrangement. For this reason it is a perfect testing ground for the techniques I use to understand how space can be defined by environmental changes in light, temperature, humidity, wind, and sound", says Suzanne.

During her stay in Alnarp Suzanne will be participating in the Theme Course LK037: Landscape Laborations: Traditions and Transitions. She will also be giving a lecture on her work in exploring microclimatic volumes in urban spaces in course on Tuesday, September 17th at 09:00, where she will be leading the students through a one-day workshop in which they will use a combination of artistic and scientific approaches to observing the spatial qualities of rooms within the Landscape Labs.

The rest of her time in Alnarp she will devote to gathering observational data, with the goal of using microclimatic information to describe the changing spatial conditions at for different zones in the lab.

Facts:

The visit is a result of/continuation of the STINT exchange between SLU and Rhode Island School of Design that was organized in 2017-18 by Andrea Kahn and Lisa Diedrich.

Suzanne Mathew is an Associate Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. She is a registered landscape architect with a multidisciplinary background in biology, architecture, and landscape architecture, and her work uses interdisciplinary approaches to measure and visualize the phenomenological qualities of landscape space. Her body of research has been dedicated to developing tools and methods for observing, measuring, and understanding microclimatic changes in the environment, as well as techniques for visualizing these changes so that we can see the spatial volumes created by invisible sensory phenomena. These methods incorporate a range of tools, including hand-held weather instruments for site survey, timelapse photography and film for temporal observation, and 3D modeling and geospatial mapping programs for spatial visualization. In addition to methods and tools for observing environmental phenomena, this applied research has generated a set of theories that interrogate the nature of sensory experience and landscape space, as well as the role human bodies play in interpreting and projecting invisible environmental dynamics.

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