Gavin Keeney, MLA
LANY / AGENCE 'X'
Index / Indexx / Indexxx
Gavin Keeney, MLA
LANY / AGENCE 'X'
Index / Indexx / Indexxx
GAVIN KEENEY / LANY / AGENCE 'X' ELECTRONIC PORTFOLIO  Gavin Keeney (Cornell, MLA 1993) has taught and written widely on the subject of landscape architecture as a topologically-inflected discipline … While the present-day form of the discipline often negates this sublime (formal) ‘nature’ within landscape architecture, it is (nonetheless) the ineluctable promise of the discipline to represent ‘the world’ … In many respects this resembles Emerson’s notion of knowledge as the terms with strike with the world … Landscape Architecture (the capitalized version) is currently undergoing expansion (and immersion), through a close dance with Architecture (the capitalized version), in the form of Landscape Urbanism and Urban Design … This fusion of disciplines represents a ‘return’ to the origins of the discipline of landscape architecture, insofar as the professional term is of relatively recent provenance … As this merger of previously divergent disciplines moves forward, it is essential to restore, as ‘ground’, the intellectual and discursive coordinates consistent with the emergence of a singular and specular discipline provisionally configured as L + A … Image (right) - The heart (and soul) of the 'immodern' piazza The following e-documents are hyperlinked to parallel e-documents in the LANY Archive-Grotto … The links include HTML pages (supplemental materials), PDFs (in the case of projects / proposals) and RTFs (in the case of essays and lectures) … The full scope of activities represented by the electronic portfolio mirror the interdisciplinary interests folded into the labyrithine ‘nature’ (the discours naturel) to be found within the Archive-Grotto, a type of ‘landscape’ consistent with the teaching and research work of Gavin Keeney through Landscape Agency New York … 
LA: THE ECHOING TABLEAU(X)Overview (HTML) / CV (HTML / RTF) / Publications (HTML / RTF) Gavin Keeney has written innumerable book reviews, project critiques, exhibition reviews, and essays for various professional and academic journals including: Oculus (AIA-NY); Architectural Record (New York); and Architekt (Prague) … His most recent work has appeared on-line and in print in: Old Town Review (New York); Log (New York), and Landscape Review (NZ) … He is author of On the Nature of Things: Contemporary American Landscape Architecture (Basel: Birkhauser, 2000) … L + A: MILIEU(X) & ANTI-MILIEU(X) Projects / Proposals (HTML / PDF) The design work of Landscape Agency New York has primarily taken the form of projects and competitions undertaken as polemical exercises exploring the cultural complexity of built form … Gavin Keeney has also collaborated with Ken Smith Landscape Architect on several projects, including the Lever House Landscape Restoration Plan … The Lever House project won an ASLA Design Merit Award in 2004 … The projects presented represent both real and irreal projects, reaching back in several cases to purely formal exercises undertaken at the Portland School of Art (Portland, Maine) and Cornell University in the late 1980s ... SONGS & DANCES: ELEMENTAL MINSTRELSY Syllabi / Lectures - UL471 / CCNY (HTML) / LARP 535-401 / U PENN (HTML) / OSU / SOA (HTML) / MUD / CCNY (HTML) / IFLA 2004 (RTF) / R, G, B: A Proseminar v.1.1 (HTML / RTF) / Studio 'X': Immodernity & Irredemption (HTML / 2005) Gavin Keeney has taught History, Theory, Criticism courses (plus design studios) at the University of Pennsylvania, City College (New York), and the University of Adelaide, School of Architecture (& etc) … He has lectured widely, including: University of Toronto; Ohio State University; and North Carolina State University … He delivered a keynote address at the IFLA Regional Conference, Prague, in May 2004 … More recently (Fall 2005), he participated in design reviews, taught an urban design studio/seminar, and presented remarks entitled "Upstream" at the Final Year Exhibition at the University of Adelaide (SA) ... See CV (as above) for specifics … PARATACTICS: ESSAYS THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE (IR)REAL (2005) - Immodernity Itself (RTF / 50 KB) / The Existential Draft/Draught (RTF / 41 KB) / Kant Nietzsche Undo Lacan (RTF / 41 KB) / Blurrring the Real (RTF / 26 KB) / An Elective Communism (RTF / 27 KB) / Sinister Perspectives (RTF / 34 KB) / The Way Out (RTF / 68 KB) / Supplements to the Same (PDFs/RTFs) ... Essays / Dossiers - PDFs / RTFs (HTML / PDF / RTF) / Reconnaissance: L + A = ??? (HTML) / Landscape Formalism, Anyone? (HTML) / Things Czech (HTML) The e-dossier entitled “Landscape Formalism, Anyone?” is a pro forma statement of interest on behalf of intertextuality and issues related to critical inquiry … This essay is primarily based on readings of cultural criticism in the form of Manfredo Tafuri, Fredric Jameson, Massimo Cacciari, and Slavoj Zizek … For a master list of printable essays and dossiers, see the PDFs / RTFs page (as above) … 
The e-dossier entitled “Reconnaissance: L + A = ???” is a summary of various firms, practices, and interdisciplinary activities involved with the so-called ‘Fusion Thing’; i.e., the integration of architecture, landscape architecture, and the allied arts under the conceptual sign of ‘topological jouissance’ (otherwise known as ‘philosophical aesthetics’) …“Things Czech” represents, as meta-page, research undertaken in the Czech Republic from 1994-2004 … This ongoing, 10-year project includes a series of essays, several published in journals both ‘here’ and ‘there’, plus three design projects (competitions and otherwise) consistent with the architectural studies undertaken in Bohemia and Moravia during frequent, return visits to the Czech Lands … Image (right) - 'Running Girl' and 'On A Swing', Kurt Gebauer (State Gallery, Zlín, Czech Republic) The series of essays and assemblages entitled “Looking Awry” reflect the most current discursive coordinates of Landscape Agency New York, an attempt to exemplify the enigmatic concept (idea) of mirror-writing … This notion of mirror-writing is central to the thematic of both the present production of essays and associated materials folded into the working documents of Landscape Agency New York (inclusive of the most recent iteration of the proseminar syllabus “Red, Green, Blue”) … The primary (and most recent) essays associated with this agenda comprise the topologically-inflected cycle entitled The Anti-Anti-Theory Trilogy (HTML / RTF) … Gavin Keeney’s work, as landscape aesthetician (architectural aesthetician), seeks to promote the mutual imbrication of landscape architecture and architecture, while drawing formal and conceptual fire power from the disciplines of music, cinema, and contemporary visual art … As such, the appropriations from other disciplines are, in fact, expropriations … The primary concern of this intertextual gambit is to reintroduce to landscape architecture the critical and aesthetical concerns more or less bracketed by abstract and formulaic disciplinary boundaries … SAs/BATs - Books-as-Things (HTML) GK/LANY/ETC   |
/S/O(MA) / LANY - 2004/2008