Ross McLean
Job title:
Senior Lecturer in Landscape Architecture
Role:
Programme Director MA (Hons) Landscape Architecture
Office:
Hunter Building
Research Output:
Edinburgh Research Explorer linkBiography
Ross Mclean is a Senior Lecturer in Landscape Architecture, and Programme Director of the new five-year MA (Hons) Landscape Architecture.
Framed under the broad concept of Lifescape, Ross’s work explores how we conceptualise landscapes in relation to the convergent, living qualities of social, ecological, and technological processes. Projects have explored processes of extended urbanisation, living infrastructures, ecosystem strategies, and practices of the everyday. His sole authored book Transformative Ground (2019, Routledge) encapsulated precedents from 29 leading design offices from around the world. The book explores how new expressive forms and design sensibilities, based on distinct societal and environmental concerns, have emerged in response to the context of post-industrial landscapes.
Ross is interested in landscape as an extended field of disciplinary concern, drawing on intersections between the arts and humanities, social and physical sciences. This interest extends to numerous interdisciplinary projects. For instance, Plastic Man (2017) was an experimental art-doc film with artist Yulia Kovanova, following an ecocidal figure who performs ‘acts against nature’ as a provocation about the conventional idealism of nature against the pragmatic understanding of ecological resilience. Other projects include, Scopic Practice, a research strand exploring the art of instrumentation, of how a range of creative practitioners deploy technological tools to bring elusive or large-scale phenomenon into perceptual grasp, often working across the arts and science.
Having been brought up in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides, Ross retains a strong interest in coastal communities and island life. He undertook a long-term study of Orkney, culminating in a number of recent journal papers that conceptualise island life on the archipelago. In partnership with the Pier Art Centre, Stromness, Ross has organised many research and student field visits to Orkney, often culminating in group exhibitions. Other island studies have included comparative studies of small islands in Scotland and Japan, to explore what defines a small island community by drawing out cultural attachment to the islands. Working with Aichi University of the Arts, Nagoya, resulted in several collaborative projects on the island of Megijima, as part of the Setouchi International Triennale (2013 and 2016). These links have enabled students to undertake residencies and exhibitions in Japan, including the Aichi Triennale, Nagoya, and Yamaguchi Institute of Contemporary Art.
Learning and Teaching roles
- Programme Director MA (Hons) Integrated Masters in Landscape Architecture (2023-current)
- Landscape Institute and Professional Placement Coordinator (2023-current)
- ESALA Director of Education (2021-24)
- Programme Director MA (Hons) Landscape Architecture (2020-24)
- Programme Director MSc (Hons) Landscape Architecture (2015-18)
- Programme Director MFA Art Space Nature (2009-14)
- Areas of Specialism (Teaching)
- Contemporary Design Theory in Landscape Architecture
- Landscape Architecture in Practice
- Islandscapes
- Environmental Art
- Comparative Theories of Landscape and Environment
Research
Research
Ross’s research is framed under the title of Lifescape, which will cumulatively become the focus of a forthcoming publication in 2025.
Underlying strands of research include:
Island studies: A long-term study of Orkney includes journal papers Staging Posts: Thinking through the Orkney Archipelago (2024, Shima), Breathing with the Camera: A portrait of Orkney through experimental films (2024, Shima). A forthcoming paper Islands: Spheres, Zones and Territories (2024) will further develop island-specific concepts. A comparative study of the Isle of Gigha (Scotland) and Megijima (Japan) includes Two Islands (2013) and Uncanny Islands (2016), both exhibited at Setouchi International Triennale.
Landscape studies: Includes Transformative Ground: A field guide to the post-industrial landscape, (2019, Routledge) a major critique of transformations in aesthetic theory and landscape architecture practice. The book explores how designed landscapes can reflect shifting cultural attitudes toward nature and society, with the power to communicate those values through design. The focus on post-industrial landscapes also includes There is a Work in the Interpretation of the Work (2019, Journal of Visual Art), reflecting an interdisciplinary symposium that examined contested values of “wasteland,” of the structural complexities, toxic histories, and cultural ambiguities of abandoned sites, where abandonment and opportunity, decay and growth, history and erasure, create a compelling entanglement between seemingly contradictory conditions.
Scopic practice: Explores forms of experimental and instrumental practice that bring environmental dynamics into perceptual grasp. At a time of significant environmental concern, the projects aim is to consider how advances in instrumental practice enable process-oriented and time-based practices to interpret and reveal a telescopic range of scales; from the cosmic, atmospheric, seismic, sonic, biomorphic, to the microscopic. This strand includes, Art as Environmental Inquiry: Collaborative and technologically driven approaches (2015), and the art-doc film Plastic Man (2017), reworked as a visual-poetic essay Plastic Man: Acts against Nature (2021) featured in Issue#0 of ForA on the Urban, launched at the Venice Biennale 2021.
PhD Supervision Topics
- Contemporary landscape theory and practice
- Landscape urbanism and infrastructure
- Island/Archipelagic studies
- Land/Environmental/Eco art
