Starting from a feeling of discomfort with the ways we live, build, and relate under a dominant system that prioritizes profit over people, I set out to explore alternative ways of being as a designer.
This thesis is comprised of three main sections, each guided by a central question. In LEARN: Critiques & Alternatives, I ask: How has the design and planning profession been complicit in universalist and capitalist urbanization processes, and what alternative attitudes and methodologies are contemporary practitioners trying out? Here, I focus on the positionality of landscape architecture and related planning professions. I provide an overview of self-critiques emerging from within the field and look for role models in design who are equally concerned with social and environmental justice. I then introduce the two primary theories that guide this work: (A) the pluriverse and (B) ontological design.
In THINKING-FEELING: Spatializing the Theory, I ask: How do these critiques and alternatives show up in the landscape? I turn to the typology that grounds this thesis—the European multi-family residential courtyard. I reflect on the process of travelling to various courtyards in European cities, subjectively weighing levels of collective autonomy alongside spatial design qualities, and gathering inspiration for the next phase.
In ACT: Realizing the Pluriverse in My Courtyard, I ask: How can I be an agent for the realization of the pluriverse in the German context? Building on the previous sections, I engage in an applied process of ontological design within my own courtyard in Linden, Hannover. I use journaling, sketching, and storytelling as documentation tools in an ongoing spatial-temporal reflection. Through this process, my own ontological design methodology gradually emerges.
In the final chapters, I zoom out to share broader reflections on the entire process, and to consider the political nature of ontological designing towards the pluriverse in a German context.