Landscapes do many things for us, but perhaps their greatest power is the emotional presence they bring to our lives. Contemporary design practice seems to favor a notion of landscape function that has been decoupled from the human psyche. I would like to investigate how the interplay between the classical and the irregular in Renaissance gardens contributed to an emotional complexity within these works, and how the grotesque representational style helped to balance classical order within the formal garden. Landscapes today are supposed to “function” and “perform,” and there is not much talk of monsters or emotions. I would like to immerse myself in the contradictions of the classical and the grotesque in countless gardens throughout Italy and Rome itself. It’s unlikely that the material expression of pleasure and peril would be the same, but I would like to find new ways to keep the deviant urge alive.