Edible Terrain — Shurui Zhang Works

This course engages edible plants—such as vegetables, fruits, spices, and herbs—as mediums for landscape inquiry. Framing food not only as nourishment and commodities but as a cultural, political, and ecological force, students are invited to examine cultivation and consumption as ways of relating to the more-than-human world. We begin by researching selected edible plants through biological, technical, and historical lenses—tracing their evolution, growing practices, and cultural significance (e.g., culinary uses, migration patterns, and medicinal properties).

The course draws on theories of care ethics that challenge extractive relationships between humans and land, investigating how plants shape and are shaped by processes of migration, labor, and ecological change. By studying plants as living agents—and in relation to human practices—we will develop a critical understanding of the entanglements between nature and technology. Through storytelling, mapping, and design, we will construct narratives of co-evolution and co-migration between humans and plants, expanding the role of landscape architecture in shaping future food systems amid climate crisis.