We discuss with Landscape architects Bradley Cantrell and Zihao Zhang the marriage of Speculative Design, Machine Learning, Landscape Architecture, Xenopatterning, and Modeling.

Bradley Cantrell is a landscape architect and scholar whose work focuses on the role of computation and media in environmental and ecological design.He has held academic appointments at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, The Rhode Island School of Design, and the Louisiana State University Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture. His work in Louisiana over the past decade points to a series of methodologies that develop modes of modeling, simulation, and embedded computation that express and engage the complexity of overlapping physical, cultural, and economic systems. Cantrell’s work has been presented and published in a range of peer-reviewed venues internationally including ACADIA, CELA, EDRA, ASAH, and ARCC.

Zihao Zhang, PhD is an assistant professor of landscape architecture at the City College of New York. By building transdisciplinary, critical analyses at the intersections among design, engineering, and environmental humanities, he investigates interspecies entanglements and interrogates conceptions of humans, nature, and technology in contemporary culture. He studies emerging cybernetic technologies and their ramifications on the constructed environment to expand designers’ understanding of the co-production between machines and ecologies and inspire innovative landscape strategies. Zihao holds a PhD in the Constructed Environment and an MLA from the University of Virginia, as well as a Bachelor of Engineering in Landscape Architecture from Beijing Forestry University.

Cultivated Wildness & Xenopatterning w/Bradley Cantrell & Zihao Zhang(Updated)

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