432 Landscapes Afer The Bi furcaton of Nature 1 3D surface artculaton of existng topography from USGS, Digital Elevaton Model (DEM). Michael Leighton Beaman Rhode Island School of Design Beta-feld Models for Speculatve Landformatons 1 ABSTRACT Landformatons have not historically been the purview of design producton or interventon. Whether it is the spatal extensions in which they emerge, the temporal extensions in which they operate, the complexites of their generatve and sustaining processes, or a cultural and insttutonal deference to a noton of natural processes, designers as individuals or design as a discipline has not treated landformaton as an area of design inquiry. But the inability to grasp nature fully has not stopped geological-scale manipulaton by humans. In fact, anthropogenic actvity is responsible for the re-formaton of more of the Earth’s surface than all other agents combined. And yet as designers we ofen disregard this transformaton as a design problem, precisely because it eludes the artfces of informaton visualizaton employed by designers. This paper examines ongoing research into the generaton of speculatve landformatons through an analysis of underlying geological and anthropogenic processes as the quanttatve basis for creatng generatve computatonal models (fgure 1). The Speculatve Landformatons Project posits human geological-scale actvity as a design problem by expanding the operability and agency of environmental design practce through hybrid human/digital computatons.