For me design is a fundamentally creative act and the problem is not received knowledge from some outside source (a teacher, a client, a competition brief) but is something that must be continually construed in a collaborative and creative fashion as an effort to create conditions in which to carry out the process of inquiry and making. In teaching I place equal emphasis on concept and technique, idea and execution. This can be seen in the courses I teach, which range from a unique theory course on Latin American urbanism and landscape (LA 6140) to Site Assembly (LA 3180/6180). I also emphasize integration of different forms of expertise into the design process (whether technical or local knowledge). My studio courses are organized according to two main lines: borderlands, and instruments. Each of these draws from a theoretical foundation related to my own research and challenges conventional ideas and practices of landscape-making. The first foregrounds social territories that function as contact zones between multiple publics, ideologies, and cultural histories. The second emphasizes the relationship between instruments and landscapes. In this framework, instruments can range from modern paradigms or concepts to geotextiles and horticultural specimens, from a diesel excavator to a specific form of representation or drawing type.