Zaneta Hong
Cornell University, Landscape Architecture, Faculty Member
- Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, Faculty MemberUniversity of Virginia, Landscape Architecture, Faculty Memberadd
- Trained as an industrial designer and landscape architect, Zaneta's research centers on the intersection of material ... moreTrained as an industrial designer and landscape architect, Zaneta's research centers on the intersection of material ecologies, landscape technologies, and sustainable design practices. In addition to teaching, Zaneta is the Co-Director of Alterior Office and Researchedit
The question of the “other” in design discourse is one that has been punctuated by the emergence of a post-humanist theory as of late. It is not a new question, but one that has expanded a take on new definitions of “human”. It has given... more
The question of the “other” in design discourse is one that has been punctuated by the emergence of a post-humanist theory as of late. It is not a new question, but one that has expanded a take on new definitions of “human”. It has given attention to, and renewed focus to marginalized and underrepresented persons; and more importantly, it has brought to the forefront, the role of nonhuman agents that frame our understanding of the co-evolutionary nature of context and information embedded in design and technology, and the systems and environments in which they represent.
Research Interests:
The humanist approach to architectural knowledge and production has traditionally taken the body as the irreducible unit of measure. Likewise health is an attribute most often ascribed to individuals, measured against other individuals,... more
The humanist approach to architectural knowledge and production has traditionally taken the body as the irreducible unit of measure. Likewise health is an attribute most often ascribed to individuals, measured against other individuals, and enacted upon at the scale of the individual. As architecture, along with landscape architecture, urban design and planning , more fully address issues of health, we have come to understand it as a collection of knowledge that also describes places and phenomena beyond the individual, from information and structures to systems and environments. Not only does this shift how we design for the built environment, but what we analyze, how we intervene, and in what ways we define irreducibility. This paper examines the role of the city as the pedagogical subject of inquiry and the site of speculative intervention for an interdisciplinary design education.
Research Interests:
Academic material collections, much like their professional and commercial counterparts are tasked with acquiring, cataloging, and storing specimens. In doing so, they provide a valuable resource for students, faculty, designers, and... more
Academic material collections, much like their professional and commercial counterparts are tasked with acquiring, cataloging, and storing specimens. In doing so, they provide a valuable resource for students, faculty, designers, and researchers. More than just a facility defined as a controlled and static environment, a materials collection is a laboratory for research, experimentation, and discourse. It begins with a ‘hands-on materials’ understanding at the basic and most immediate one-to-one scale, where the opportunities to see, touch, smell, and hear becomes part of the training for a beginning designer. But beyond these organizational and practical considerations, an academic materials collection can also provide a pedagogical framework that critically and fundamentally engages design education.
Research Interests:
Misuse is the deployment of a material in ways other than what was intended. This unintended application of materials becomes a practice many designers enlist in order to create novel and unexpected results. This alternative use of a... more
Misuse is the deployment of a material in ways other than what was intended. This unintended application of materials becomes a practice many designers enlist in order to create novel and unexpected results. This alternative use of a material produces instances of poetic infection and invert presumptions deriving outcomes from an oppositional position. Misuse questions the purpose and intent that originally brought the material into existence and defined its proper use. This act becomes simultaneously an acknowledgement and a subversion of identity. Material misuse is a statement about the power of creative thinking; through our own studies of materials we have developed the ability to create something
extraordinary out of something common.
extraordinary out of something common.
Research Interests:
The Materials Lab at the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture is one of the first academic materials collections; and it has served as the benchmark for many architecture and design schools when establishing their own... more
The Materials Lab at the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture is one of the first academic materials collections; and it has served as the benchmark for many architecture and design schools when establishing their own in-house materials collections. The foremost goal of the Materials Lab is to encourage its users to design critically bearing in mind the sustainability and performance of material choices in the constructed environment. By having a greater understanding of material attributes, individuals have the potential to generate informed decisions, reassess the meaning of craft, and drive innovation in design and fabrication. As the former Materials Lab Curator, this paper presents my experiences and perspective in developing this specialized resource facility; the methodology to which materials education can be applied to courses in architecture and design-related disciplines; and how the materials collection itself can enrich both materials research and culture.
Research Interests:
Landscape architecture has been slow to embrace the potentials of digital technologies to expand design processes and techniques. Instead these technologies often remain framed as an advanced representational tool, considered to lack the... more
Landscape architecture has been slow to embrace the potentials of digital technologies to expand design processes and techniques. Instead these technologies often remain framed as an advanced representational tool, considered to lack the intuitive capability of more traditional design processes. Drawing on the experience of design studios held at Harvard, the University of Virginia and the University of Melbourne (2014-2011) this paper argues for the potentials of three-dimensional modelling, parametrics and digital fabrication in extending design practices of landscape architecture. This paper highlights how digital technologies provide designers with additional techniques and processes for conceiving and constructing form and systems and achieving higher level of complexities in performance, representation, spatiality and materiality.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Landscapes are open systems, always in a state of perpetual information exchange with surrounding conditions. This exchange activates and sustains the material processes that continually form, inform, and transform landscapes. For... more
Landscapes are open systems, always in a state of perpetual information exchange with surrounding conditions. This exchange activates and sustains the material processes that continually form, inform, and transform landscapes. For landscape architecture, as with any practice of spatial design, the capacity to understand these processes and the ability to intervene in them lies within the representational models that practice employs. As we find the need to generate more responsible, responsive, and effective environmental interventions, a pressing issue for design, manufacturing resonance between these representational models and the complex environments they describe challenges the anthropogenic basis on which these models have been constructed.