IFLA Europe is proud to launch its 2025 Youth competition for Landscape Architecture students and young professionals entitled ‘NEW URBAN LANDSCAPES – Regenerating Cities – Revealing new urban landscapes’
IFLA Europe Landscape Architecture Students and Young Professionals Competition offers a unique opportunity for emerging landscape architects to gain visibility and recognition for their work at the European level. By sharing innovative projects and fresh ideas, participants not only contribute to the advancement of the profession, but also highlight the relevance and creativity of landscape architecture in addressing today’s environmental, social, and urban challenges.
Participation in this prestigious European competition can support their academic progress, professional development, and applications for scholarships or other opportunities. Participation in IFLA Europe competition reflects their engagement with the international landscape architecture community and contributes positively to their portfolio and CV.
This competition serves as a platform to promote excellence in landscape architecture, encourage cross-border exchange, and support the work of IFLA Europe’s 34 National Associations by showcasing the talent nurtured within their networks. It also helps raise public awareness of the profession’s role in shaping sustainable, inclusive, and resilient environments.
Participation in the competition is important not only for personal and professional development, but also for strengthening the landscape architecture community across Europe. It fosters dialogue between young professionals, students, and experienced practitioners, and underlines the value of collaborative thinking in building the future of our landscapes.
Theme
NEW URBAN LANDSCAPES – Regenerating Cities – Revealing new urban landscapes
Today, over 56% of the global population lives in urban areas, a figure projected to rise to nearly 70% by 2050. This long-standing evolution, whether through rural exodus or international migration, has not always been accompanied by long-term planning. Many of our cities have expanded quickly, often carelessly, layering concrete over soil, erecting walls instead of weaving connections.
The result? A double injustice, environmental and social.
Environmental injustice manifests itself in how urban quality is unequally distributed. In Brussels, the most vulnerable neighbourhoods, situated in the so-called ‘poor crescent’, are also the most densely built-up, with few green spaces and extreme urban heat phenomena. Across Europe, from Paris over Milan to Berlin, similar inequalities emerge: where nature retreats, citizens’ lives get harder, and those with the fewest resources suffer most.
Social injustice spreads into uneven redevelopment projects that displace rather than include, into planning strategies that neglect daily human needs, and into spatial segregation that reinforces exclusion.
Faced with this, we must reorient our vision of the city, not by endlessly adding, but by transforming what already exists, by uncovering what lies hidden in plain sight.
NEW URBAN LANDSCAPES is an invitation to rethink urban space through three core strategies: These strategies align with broader programs like the New European Bauhaus, the European Green Deal, and growing city climate agendas. They speak to a new urban imperative: to see cities as living ecosystems, inclusive, sustainable, and beautiful. Participants should consider the following questions when preparing their applications: What if urban landscapes were not just a backdrop, but a driver of transformation? What if public space became a collective right and a shared opportunity?
ADAPT the existing fabric: unsealing soils, greening surfaces, allowing water to infiltrate. Place Flagey in Brussels or Place de Catalogne in Paris are exemplary projects in which stone has given way to plants.
RECLAIM underused spaces: abandoned areas can become vital. The Marais Wiels in Brussels is now a haven of urban biodiversity. In Berlin, Tempelhof airfield is a massive public park on the site of a disused airport.
UNFOLD spatial opportunities: dismantling concrete to de-urbanise, as in the Parc de la Sennette in Brussels; opening up rooftops to collective uses, as seen in the Rotterdam Rooftop Programme; or reimagining interiors, like the Gare Maritime at Tour & Taxis, once industrial, now a lush and vibrant public hall.
Who Can Apply
The competition is open to enrolled landscape architecture students and young landscape architecture professionals (up to 40 years of age).
Both students and young professionals must be members of their respective National Associations which is a member of IFLA Europe IFLA Europe National Associations. or come from Council of Europe countries.
IFLA Europe will award a prize of €1,000 to the first-place winner in Category A and €1,000 to the first-place winner in Category B.
The winners are invited to attend and present their work at the General Assembly meeting in Brussels on 17-19 October 2025.
Participation in the General Assembly meeting will allow the winners to present their work to the full IFLA Europe community, including Executive Council members, delegates, and presidents from our 34 National Associations. Engaging directly with this network provides valuable exposure, professional feedback and potential future opportunities.
Important dates
– 19 June: Launch of the competition – 8 September: Deadline for application – 15 October: Jury review and announce the winners of both categories – 17 October: Proclamation of winners during the General Assembly in Brussels, Belgium
