Thesis: Erica Yudelman

Clouded Atmospheres

The Clouded Atmospheres studio works from the premise that landscape architects need to reconceive of clouds as visible symptoms of atmospheric moisture extremes – not as objects in the sky. The studio takes a process-based, landscape architectural approach to engaging with clouding in its true role as part of the landscape medium, following from theoretical work done by Tim Ingold, Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha, and Timothy Choy and Jerry Zee. Clouds are designed for and with in this practice, following their understanding as visible fields of the medium for living that is atmosphere and ground. Living beings themselves can be considered places of intermingling where atmosphere is respired into groundedness and groundedness is released into atmosphere – a mixing space and life process (Ingold 2007). The overall system of clouding that follows patterns is difficult to perceive in totality using human senses because of scale of space and time. Clouded Atmospheres also employs other-than-human senses, such as satellite remote sensing, to be able to expand the understanding of clouded process in place and translate that process to place through design. By freeing landscape from the myth of separation between ground and atmosphere, landscape architecture can act to bring atmosphere and clouds under its purview as media to be engaged as much more than a backdrop.