THEME | LAND +

- - What stories are connected to the land and the way it is occupied by different people at different times?
  - How is land both palimpsest and political?
  - What is the relationship between memory and land?

- - What does it mean to lose land?
  - Is an attachment to place or to land possible in a world of increasing migration and displacement?
  - Does the sameness of so many places illustrate a necessity for deepening our understanding of the land, or does it indicate that land has been engineered/ standardized/ processed into neutrality?
  - How does atmosphere register when designers do not visit the land where their designs will be located?
  - Does land give people identity? Or do people give land an identity?

- - What is land in an increasingly digitized world?
  - Is connection to land nostalgic longing or can humans thrive in artificial environments which supplant the land?
  - Does augmented reality offer opportunities for sustainable environments that allow many atmospheres immediately chosen by their users, hence allowing all to be designers?
  - How do we understand these shifts in our comprehension of the land?
  - Land is increasingly measured and documented. What are the challenges of measuring and responding to land?

- - We clad surfaces with materials extracted from the earth; is this still the land?
  - Does the use of ‘natural’ materials in building projects suggest a connection to the land? Even if the material is from another continent?
  - Land itself takes many forms. How do different topographies and geographies suggest different ways of living with or designing with the land from flatlands to highlands, from wastelands to wetlands?
  - In many ways we have lost our connection to land. How can we collaborate with those who craft the land directly such as farmers, foresters

- - How do we as designers, as design educators understand land?
  - How do we encourage learning from the land?
  - How do we design for the land?
  - What can the land teach us?

- - How does land influence the atmosphere of life?
  - What are the ethical and philosophical complexities arising from our relationship to land?
  - How does land engender relationships?
  - Is land animate?

- - Why do we create land?
  - How is land created?
  - Artificial land is made by humans. What creates atmosphere?
  - What are the experiential, ethical and philosophical complexities arising from living on new land?