Turning up the Heat

When a landscape digital design practice emerged in the 2000s, it offered an unprecedented ability to engage with invisible atmospheric conditions. With big data and new software tools, dynamic systems could be integrated directly into design processes. Since 2015, the University of Melbourne landscape programme has explored these new design potentials in studio and electives focused on heat. The same decade has seen deeper acceptance of the climate crisis, more accessible and extensive data sets and more advanced software, yet student outcomes are no more sophisticated or innovative. Reflecting education and research practice, and drawing on student work and critical theory, this paper discusses conceptual difficulties in engaging with non‑linear digital design processes. Interest in atmospheric theoretical framings and technological applications has been replaced by passive solutionism and linear design thinking, or ‘problem-solving’. Centrally, conceptions of simulation as offering an understanding of atmospheric behaviours have shifted to a belief in control; an attitude mirrored in practice with problematic results. As the AI era begins, the implications for landscape architecture practice are critical. The increasing reliance on technology to accurately model ‘reality’ allows complex algorithms to decide the future of cities, diminishing, if not erasing, the role of creativity and design.