The notion of the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch or event has shaken up established Western concepts of nature and landscape.[1] If every cubic centimetre of the planet has been influenced by humans who have become a geological force – which is a core insight of the Anthropocene discourse – the established dualism in Western cultures of nature versus culture has become obsolete. In the Anthropocene, there is no longer any nature out there that is unaffected by humans. In emphasizing this, the notion also tackles the idea of human supremacy. Humans are a species among species, or as Bruno Latour phrased it poetically:
It is perhaps time . . . to stop speaking about humans, and to refer instead to terrestrials (the Earthbound), thus insisting on humus and, yes, the compost included in the etymology of the word ‘human’. . . . Saying ‘We are earthbound, we are terrestrials amid terrestrials’, does not lead to the same politics as saying ‘We are humans in nature’. The two are not made of the same cloth—or rather of the same mud.[2]
Many disciplines in the sciences, humanities and the arts are currently reflecting on the conceptual shifts implied by the Anthropocene. Landscape architecture, too, needs to consider whether the concept is relevant to its research and practice. In the following, Gabriele Dürbeck’s comprehensive overview of the recent discourse on the Anthropocene serves as a frame of reference for this conceptual reflection.[3] Dürbeck’s analysis of a large body of scientific and journalistic texts led her to distinguish five narratives of the Anthropocene:
(i) The disaster narrative, which considers the Anthropocene as the sum of environmental depletion; (ii) the court narrative, which blames the developed countries in the Global North and the neoliberal socioeconomic system as generators of global environmental destruction, proposing terms like ‘Technocene’, ‘Capitalocene’, or ‘Plutocene’; (iii) the narrative of the Great Transformation, which advocates for efforts to mitigate the causes of environmental destruction along with reasonable adaptation to Earth system changes, using novel technologies and higher environmental efficiency; (iv) the (bio-)technological narrative, which propagates technocratic interventions such as geoengineering and ecomodernist ideas; and finally, (v) the reflexively oriented interdependency narrative of nature-culture, which presents the Anthropocene as an opportunity to rethink mankind from a posthumanist perspective.[4]
Each of Dürbeck’s five narratives has its own methods and aims, all of them are highly relevant, but with different implications for landscape architecture. The first narrative with its description of the problems of the Anthropocene, and the second, with its search for the culprits and victims, are more suited to disciplines such as the humanities, law or economics. The (bio)technological narrative as a third conceptual possibility proposes massive interventions in the Earth system, such as injecting sulphur dioxide directly into the stratosphere to form sunlight-reflecting sulphate aerosols.[5] These highly controversial geoengineering measures have a high-tech and large-scale character, and landscape architecture can hardly play a role in this narrative.
This leaves two narratives that can inspire landscape architecture or that can be inspired by landscape architecture: The Great Transformation narrative and the Interdependency narrative. The Great Transformation narrative has a broad perspective and ‘envisions a mixture of “mitigating” the root causes of environmental degradation and “measures of reasonable adaptation” using improved technologies with higher environmental efficiency’.[6] Green roofs and stormwater management are examples from landscape architecture of these improved technologies. Thus, the Great Transformation narrative is certainly relevant to landscape architecture, but Dürbeck raises a critical point when she says that this narrative ‘accepts and reproduces the capitalist-technological innovation process and its extension to the Global South’.[7] Projects such as Bosco Verticale in Milan or KÖ-Bogen II in Düsseldorf with their extremely high construction and maintenance costs for the green elements illustrate the pitfalls of this narrative. Thus, despite the relevance of the Great Transformation narrative, I would argue that the Interdependency narrative has the greatest inspirational potential for landscape architecture. It is the only narrative that calls for a fundamental change in the mindset of Western cultures, which are characterized by a nature-culture dichotomy.[8] For landscape architecture, which has always worked at the integration of nature and culture, the development of new concepts of ‘naturecultures’ is a core issue.[9]
From this introduction into the interdependency narrative, the following research questions are derived: (1) How can landscape architecture be positioned within this current discourse on interdependency? (2) What design implications for landscape architecture can be proposed from the perspective of the interdependency narrative?
Contemporary Concepts of Interdependency
According to Dürbeck, the Interdependency narrative ‘presents the Anthropocene as an opportunity to rethink mankind from a posthumanist perspective’.[10] It is not without irony that this narrative decentres humans in an epoch that acknowledges the fundamental impact of humans on the planet and takes anthropos as its signifier. Interdependency means developing new, non-dualistic perspectives on the entanglements between humans, animals, plants, water, soil, air and even technological things, in which humans are neither exceptional nor central.
Several theories in line with the interdependency narrative have already been developed. Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory is an early attempt to analyse networks of humans and non-humans without hierarchical bias between actors.[11] As a result of his global research on existing nature-culture relations, Philippe Descola proposed a relative universalism that ‘does not stem from nature and cultures . . . but relationships of continuity and discontinuity, of identity and differences, of likeness and unlikeness’.[12] The term assemblage, first introduced by Deleuze and later influential in urbanism discourses, has allowed for description of hybrid and fluid multiplicities of humans and non-humans.[13] Recently, two even more explicit concepts of interdependency have been developed in architecture and urbanism. The first one, cohabitation, conveys a spatial perspective and calls for a new design practice and spatial production by recognizing non-human species (especially animals) as urban actors.[14] The second one, multispecies urbanism, proposes a justice approach and aims at ‘a just urban development and spatial practice . . . generated by creating reciprocal relations between humans and more-than-humans’, thereby through spatial-ecological practice extending ‘the right to the city and the right to the urban metabolism to an alliance of more-than-humans’.[15] The list could go on and on, but the point I want to make is that, despite their undoubted value, none of the above concepts of interdependency have had a profound impact on the landscape architecture discourse.[16] The only recent design-oriented interdependency concept from within the discipline is nature-inclusive design,[17] but the term is problematic because it implies the old dualistic Western idea of an ‘outside nature’ to be included.
In summary, there is to date no concept or term of interdependency in the discourse that could inspire landscape architecture. However, an appropriate and inspiring term would be helpful to reinforce the valuable ideas from the interdependency discourse in the discipline. To fill this gap, I would like to introduce the concept of conviviality, recently redefined in a broadly supported manifesto.[18] With its central term vivere (Latin, to live), it perfectly captures the fact that landscape architecture is the design discipline that deals with living systems. In addition, the prefix con- creates the link to issues of interdependency. In what follows, I would like to examine conviviality more in detail in order to explore its potential for the practice-oriented field of landscape architecture.
Conviviality
The term conviviality was introduced by Ivan Illich in his book Tools for Conviviality (1973), where he intended the term to mean ‘autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment; and this in contrast with the conditioned response of persons to the demands made upon them by others, and by man-made environment’.[19] For Illich, conviviality signified ‘individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value’.[20] Yet, although the environment is mentioned twice, Illich’s book is primarily concerned with human interactions and issues, and lacks a post-humanist perspective. Similarly, in the first Convivialist Manifesto (2014), a group of sixty-four mostly French intellectuals proposed a new convivialist political philosophy to provide an ‘ideational glue’ for critics of neoliberal capitalism.[21] It had the remarkable subtitle ‘Declaration of Interdependence’ and contained the four principles of common humanity, common sociality, legitimate individuation and control of the opposition.[22] In order to increase the international resonance and improve the theoretical basis, a Second Convivialist Manifesto was published in 2020. Signed by nearly three hundred scholars and activists from thirty-three countries, it aimed to establish a ‘Convivialist International’.[23] As an important addition to the first Convivialist Manifesto, the Second Convivialist Manifesto includes ‘common naturality’ as a new principle, hence extending conviviality to the non-human realm. As one of five, the principle of common naturality asserts that humans do not live outside of nature but are interdependent with it and have a responsibility to take care of it, otherwise human survival is gravely endangered. This principle complement the other four, including the principle of common humanity, which declares that beyond differences of skin, nationality, language, culture, religion, wealth, sex or gender, there is only one humanity, which must be respected in each person; the principle of common sociality, which claims that humans are social beings for whom the greatest wealth lies in the richness of relationships with associations, societies or communities of varying size and nature; the principle of legitimate individuation, stressing that individuation and individualism are different from each other, and that each individual should be allowed to develop their individuality to the fullest without harming others, yet with a recognition of equal freedom and a respect for interdependence; and finally, the principle of creative opposition, acknowledging that humans are in opposition to each other if they are called to express their individuality, but such opposition is only legitimate within the framework of common humanity, common sociality and common naturality. These five principles are then subordinate to the absolute imperative of hubris control, which is a meta-principle designed to act as a regulator and safeguard for the other principles.[24]
Because of these principles, the convivialists propose changes in politics, economics and ethics. In terms of ethics, they call for ‘pluriversalism’ and the coexistence of cultures. They are suspicious of modernist universalism and homogeneity, asserting that ‘each culture and each religion carries many possibilities’, and that ‘today’s pertinent challenge is to know which out of these possibilities each culture and religion must update to fit our times and prioritize to contribute to the moral and physical survival of humanity’.[25] But in seeking a pluriversalism with an openness ‘to the maximum cultural diversity compatible with maintaining its unity, a unity that allows the maximum cultural diversity’, the convivialists hardly extend pluriversalism beyond human beings.[26] Although the Second Convivialist Manifesto includes a brief reflection on animals, calling for a respectful treatment of animals and the elimination of ‘gigantic industrial farms that treat animals as if they were just nonliving matter’,[27] there is much more room to explore the full potential of the principle of common naturality. This is where landscape architecture has the greatest potential to contribute to the convivialist movement by introducing its perspective, which includes not only humans and animals, but also plants, water, air and soil. And because of its method of design, the discipline even has the potential to translate a pluriversal ethic into spatial reality.[28]
In summary and in response to the first research question, I propose to position landscape architecture within the conceptual framework of conviviality, as a means of addressing the current discourse on interdependency. In the following paragraph, three case studies will be presented that demonstrate aspects of conviviality. Since, to my knowledge, no landscape architecture project has so far been purposefully designed from a convivial perspective as outlined above, this is an ex-post interpretation by the author. The criteria for the selection of these three case studies were first that they address principles of conviviality, particularly the principle of common naturality, and second they should express a novel, out-of-the box approach (which means that the design concept had priority over the design details in the case study selection), and third the overall selection should address different scales and practices of landscape architecture in order to draw a conclusion with a broad spectrum of characteristics for a convivial landscape architecture.
Three landscape architecture case studies that actively design for conviviality
1 Brantstrasse, Munich (Germany)
The Brantstrasse project in Munich is the first built project in which the ‘Animal-Aided Design’ planning method has been applied.[29] With the aim of designing urban landscapes of cohabitation between humans and animals, Animal-Aided Design fills a gap for the discipline of landscape architecture, which has rarely addressed the inclusion of animals through active design measures in urban open spaces. The method was first developed in 2013–20/14 by landscape architect Thomas Hauck and ecologist Wolfgang Weisser in the research project ‘Animal-Friendly Design of Open Spaces in the Context of Climate Adaptation (Animal-Aided Design)’ and consists of four phases.[30] In the Analysis and Concept Phase (A), target species are selected according to the habitat potential of the design site and the demands and preferences of the stakeholders. In the Design and Detailing Phase (B), the needs of the target species throughout their lifecycle are considered in the concrete design of the site. During the Construction Phase (C), it is important to treat the existing animals on the construction site with care and to monitor and train the construction company. The final phase of Monitoring and Evaluation (D) is concerned with monitoring the ecological success in terms of target species, stakeholder acceptance and the impact on maintenance costs. The three-year research project ‘Application of the Animal-Aided Design Method’ allowed the researchers to analyse all four phases during the construction of the Brantstrasse housing project. This project was chosen because it is a typical example of the conflict between urban densification and the promotion of biodiversity. This densification of a 1950s settlement in the Laim district of Munich, just 4 km from the city’s main railway station, was the subject of a competition in 2014, which was won by bogevisch architects and michellerundschalk landscape architects. The team proposed three new buildings with 99 residential units and two semi-public courtyards (Fig. 1). Based on this competition design, a team for the application of Animal-Aided Design was formed in 2015, including the Animal-Aided Design researchers, the architects and landscape architects, and the regional bird conservation association.
The project began with the identification of target species based on a survey of existing animals on the site and in the surrounding area. The decision was made to target the common hedgehog, green woodpecker, common pipistrelle and the house sparrow, all of which are easily visible to people, have a conservation value for the city of Munich and are usually displaced by urban densification processes in cities. So-called ‘species-portraits’ were prepared for these four target species.[31] These portraits documented the specific needs of the four species throughout their lifecycles, including Breeding & Rearing, Courtship & Mating, Wintering and Adult Phase. The team developed a comprehensive set of design measures that address these needs, which are presented here for the hedgehog and the sparrow. For the hedgehog, the designers developed a ‘hedgehog drawer’ as a winter home and nest for rearing young, which will be inserted into the tool shed of the new kindergarten (Fig. 2). As the hedgehog has to travel long distances to find food, the designers created openings in all the fences on the design site itself and also collaborated with the adjacent allotment garden organization to ensure permanent openings in the immediate spatial context – barrier freedom for the hedgehog! For the sparrow, the designers inserted fifteen ‘nesting blocks’ at various points in the façades of the new buildings to provide spaces for breeding and rearing (Fig. 3). Compared with the existing situation, the new buildings and paths take up a lot of space. In order to provide sufficient insects and plant seeds for the sparrows to eat, the designers not only developed specially composed meadows on the ground, but also plantings and sandy areas for ‘sand bathing’ on the roofs.
The Brantstrasse project shows that Animal-Aided Design is a method that landscape architects can successfully use to enrich animal life in urban open spaces. It requires creativity in the design of objects and spaces, as well as new maintenance plans. As a side effect, Animal-Aided Design improves the life of plants, soil and water by meeting the specific needs of the animals throughout their lifecycles. In summary, Animal-Aided Design strongly supports the convivialist principle of common naturality because it always considers the interaction between animals and humans within its design principles.
2 St. Louis Park, Basel (Switzerland)
In 2021, Mesh Landscape Architects (of which the author is one of three partners) and vegetation ecology expert Rüdiger Prasse participated in a competition for St. Louis Park in Basel. The competition included an unusually high level of consideration for the needs of plants and animals compared with other design competitions in urban areas. The new park is located in the Volta-Nord development area, a former industrial and commercial site that is being transformed into a new mixed-use urban district (Fig. 4). The city’s open space strategy for this area includes a new square (Lysbüchelplatz) and the St. Louis Park as a naturalistic park. This was an open, anonymous competition and the brief placed a strong emphasis on nature conservation, as most of the future park was former railway land where some highly valuable biotopes had developed. The gravel-dominated soils were still on the site, while the tracks themselves had been removed in 2020. The city’s development plan called for 12,500 m² (about two-thirds) of the park to be set aside as a nature reserve. This zone was to protect species of dry warm ruderal vegetation as part of a larger regional biotope corridor of dry warm habitats. The competition brief clearly stated that only 20 per cent of the protected area should be accessible to people via elevated paths with no resting areas, and that the remaining 80 per cent should be off limits. This non-accessibility was to be achieved through design measures.
Our team objected to the requirement that two-thirds of the future park should be inaccessible, as this significantly reduces the potential for interdependence between humans and other living beings. As an example of fortress conservation in urban areas, this requirement would exclude people from contact with species.[32] Furthermore, the exclusion of humans ignores the fact that the rare biotopes of the former railway area are the result of human use. The dry warm habitats with their ruderal vegetation only developed through a combination of artificial soils and regular human disturbance, such as rail traffic and even the use of pesticides. Maintaining this biotope quality without human use would require costly vegetation management. Our team tackled this oxymoron by asking: How is it possible to maintain the biotope quality by actively involving the park users? To achieve our goal, we proposed the concept of ‘Living together’ (Fig. 5) and developed a differentiated disturbance management with the active participation of park users. Nature conservation and open space use are interwoven in a ‘Nature Conservation Zone a.B.’, where ‘a.B.’ stands for ‘anthropogenic biodiversity’, instead of being separated in a traditional nature conservation zone adjacent to a usable open space as required by the brief (Fig. 6).
As a starting point for this approach, we analysed the required valuable biotopes and their requirements. The competition brief listed five plant communities to be considered in the design: Thermophilic calcareous rock pioneer meadows (Alysso-Sedion), couch grass fallow (Convolvulo-Agropyrion), dry warm silicate rubble meadows (Galeopsion-Segetum), dry ruderal communities (Sisymbrion and Dauco-Melilotion) as well as associations of root crop fields. Each of these five plant communities requires a specific raw soil substrate (Fig. 7), which we have provided in linear strips that formally resemble the former railway lines. Some of these strips of raw soil were still in place and could be used directly, and where new strips needed to be installed, existing material from other parts of the site could be redistributed. The linear stripes also create a sense of order, which we believe is an important aesthetic value for areas of high biodiversity in urban areas.
All these newly created habitat types depend on regular breaks in succession to survive in the urban environment. A vegetation management concept is therefore essential to maintain the high level of biodiversity. Our aim was to create a concept that delegates some of this management to the daily users through an elaborated spatial organization, rather than relying entirely on external and costly maintenance companies. For each habitat, we proposed a specific combination of maintenance measures that integrate human users as disturbance agents to keep the soil open (Fig. 7). This will ensure the long-term survival of plant species that require such disturbance sites as germination beds. At the same time, this will also secure the livelihoods of the insect species of the low- to medium-high dry vegetation stands (such as the grasshoppers Platycleis albopunctata and Calliptamus italica, found in the preliminary surveys).
If our proposal had won the competition, a conviviality among humans, plants, animals and soils could have been developed over the years through conscious and unconscious experience. However, the risk of going against the traditional conservation approach required by the brief was not rewarded. Instead, the jury chose an entry that followed precisely the separation approach called for in the brief.
3 Ciudad Dulce, Curridabat (Costa Rica)
Curridabat, a city of 65,000 inhabitants in Costa Rica, proposed a comprehensive new strategy for its urban development in 2015 that addresses the interdependence between humans and other living beings. Calling it Ciudad Dulce/ Sweet City, the city decided to put a radical focus on pollinators:[33]
The Sweet City vision recognises pollinators, which are the largest producers of plants, trees, and ultimately soil, as the centre of urban design. By reframing the role of pollinators, and recognising them as native inhabitants and city dwellers, Sweet City overcomes the long-lived antagonism between city and nature that has characterised traditional urban development.[34]
The city is confident that providing better conditions for pollinators, such as an abundance of sweet nectar, will almost automatically produce an urban environment that ‘is also biodiverse, comfortable, clean, quiet and colourful, as well as better organized’.[35] The Sweet City will be realized through a comprehensive set of measures, of which the spatial, participatory, educational and horticultural aspects will be presented below.
Sweet City Spaces
Soon after the Sweet City concept was established in 2015, twenty-one master plans for selected neighbourhoods and eight master plans for selected corridors were designed.[36] At the neighbourhood level, several new parks have been or are newly designed or renovated, incorporating pollinator-friendly plants that attract bees, bats or hummingbirds. A spectacular example is the Parque Central de Curridabat, where a huge shady space has been created with a steel net construction covered in native creeper plants (Fig. 8). At the corridor level, the ‘Sweet Sidewalks’ project promises biodiverse linear connections in Curridabat and 1,560 m of sidewalks have already been built (Fig. 9).[37] These sidewalks include 1.5 m of walking space and at least 0.5 m of space for native plants, allowing the experience of conviviality ‘on the move’. This integration of green spaces into the streets not only increases biodiversity, but also reduces the heat island effect.
Sweet City participation and education
All neighbourhood master plans and corridor plans have been developed through participatory processes with local people. Around 1,100 people took part in 400 hours of participatory design workshops in twenty-one communities, deciding on inclusive streets, new green corridors, new parks and urban viewpoints, river-oriented development, new community meeting places, new wetlands to mitigate flood risk and improvements to thirty existing parks.[38]
The municipality has promoted several initiatives to educate people about the Sweet City, including a 132-page Sweet Plant Guide available to the public and containing detailed descriptions of thirty-three trees and shrubs as well as twenty-two herbs and creepers either native to Costa Rica and Central America or naturalized in the region.[39] The guide provides information on the pollinators of each plant, how they disperse their seeds and what benefits they bring to people. This educational tool greatly enhances citizens’ understanding of interdependence and plays an important role in the facilitation of a convivial future.
A very concrete educational strategy of the municipality is the creation of ten community gardens where local people can grow vegetables and where workshops are held on topics such as medicinal plants, vertical gardens, home gardens, fertilisers and compost.[40]
Sweet City horticulture
One of the most recent achievements in Curridabat is the Center of Territorial Intelligence in Biodiversity (CITBIO), built with funding from the United Nations Development Programme. In a greenhouse and open cultivation fields, the municipality can test and produce the plants it recommends in its Sweet Plant Guide.[41] This ensures the availability of indigenous plants that can be difficult to obtain, and these locally produced plants have an advantage in terms of adaptability (Fig. 10). CITBIO includes research into other native species, their native varieties and naturalized plants that can extend the concept of sweet plants, and also offers community workshops on production processes, biodiversity and nature-based solutions.[42]
These three measures document an impressive record of what Curridabat has achieved in just a few years. Two aspects of Curridabat’s approach are crucial for conviviality: first, the decentring of humans in urban planning by putting pollinators first. The second is the choice of an ‘experience-based methodology’.[43] The city does not focus on projects, but on designing experiences for all citizens including the non-humans, where ‘priority is given to the experiences of those who are more vulnerable, and to experiences which are connected to several other experiences, which stimulate more interactions among citizens’.[44] By designing for experiences, Curridabat gives the interdependency narrative a new storyline that could promote biodiversity and happiness at the same time.
Characteristics of convivial landscape architecture
All three case studies presented above express that conviviality is not necessarily something that is already there and just needs to be discovered or interpreted from a new perspective, but that conviviality can be enabled through an active design strategy. In order to respond to the second research question regarding design implications for landscape architecture from the perspective of the interdependency narrative, three design characteristics can be summarized, based on a reflection on the case studies that appear to be central to designing for conviviality in landscape architecture:
1 Convivial landscape architecture is symmetrical
In the context of a design discipline, symmetry is usually a term related to form. This is not the case here. Instead, it refers to an ontological perspective. A convivial design that addresses the principle of common naturality requires an ontological perspective that removes humans from their self-appointed central, dominant position and repositions them as a part of an infinite web of living and non-living beings. Bruno Latour calls this decentred human situation a symmetrical anthropology.[45] A farewell to a cornerstone of Western modernity—the subject/ object dichotomy—it entails a rejection of a subjectivity reserved for humans in relation to which everything else had the status of objects. In a way, the setting aside of an inaccessible nature conservation zone in the St. Louis competition brief is an expression of this traditional Western position. Philippe Descola calls this a-symmetrical relationship of humans to the world ‘naturalism’ in that it builds on the invention of an external nature, ontologically separate from humans. In his research into possible human-world relations, Descola also identified animism, analogism and totemism as alternative ontologies.[46] Of these three world views, animism has the potential to serve as a symmetrical alternative to naturalism in general and specifically in landscape architecture. Animism means seeing other living and non-living beings as subjects. While this might be considered slippery ground, with the danger of getting lost in esoteric debates, there are serious discussions in academia about methodological animism that will hopefully soon develop into a coherent theoretical framework.[47]
In the case studies discussed above, the symmetrical perspective with a respect for the subjectivity of other living and non-living beings can be seen in the way Animal-Aided Design or Mesh’s design for the St. Louis Park aim to understand the whole lifecycle of the species they are considering and takes their needs into account through design measures. This broadening and symmetrization of perspective is, in principle, unlimited, but in design there will always be resource limitations, so a choice must be made. In Animal-Aided Design this is done by focusing on carefully selected target species, and in the Sweet City the focus has been set on pollinators.
2 Convivial landscape architecture is entangled
In order to address the prefix ‘con-’ in conviviality design processes, it is necessary to ‘con-sider’ the ‘con-nections’ between two or more living beings. From the symmetrical perspective mentioned above, there is in principle no categorical difference between these beings. As designers we should first get to know and empathize with the needs of as many living beings as possible in our projects, and second, we should ‘increase the possibilities for life by establishing and intensifying entanglements’ between them.[48] This entangled design approach should address not only relationships but also processes. Truly convivial design considers entanglements throughout the life of projects, including the design phase, the construction phase and the use phase.[49] In the design phase, the actants involved in the design, such as water, soil, humans, plants, things or animals, should be reflected in themselves as well as in their relationship to each other. What symbioses are possible to increase the possibilities for life?[50] The design for St. Louis Park is an example of this, entangling the different soils, plant communities, animals such as grasshoppers and humans. During the construction phase, special attention should be paid to the existing entanglements on the site. Animal-Aided Design addresses this often-forgotten aspect in an exemplary way by including the construction phase as one of four phases in their method scheme. The authors stress that the relatively short construction period can irretrievably destroy many entanglements between the living and non-living beings. This can be avoided by spatially organizing the construction process so that certain habitat structures are replaced/altered in phases and the species can move around the site, or by providing temporary habitats nearby, so that the species can easily return to the project site once construction is complete. The maintenance phase is rarely seen as a part of the designer´s responsibility. In Germany, for example, the landscape architect is only required to oversee two- to three-year ‘completion maintenance’, which already suggests that a project can be completed. In a process-oriented discipline such as landscape architecture, this is a too short-sighted approach and a missed opportunity to intensify the entanglements over the years. Mesh’s design for St. Louis Park expresses the potential, and even the necessity, of addressing maintenance in the design by developing a complex vegetation management plan that describes multiple ways of entangling plants, humans, soil or water for many years to come. To increase conviviality in landscape architecture, it is clear that the highly undervalued issue of maintenance should immediately receive more attention in practice, teaching and research.
3 Convivial landscape architecture is resonant
If symmetrization addresses the ontological position and entangling the spatiotemporal design, resonance as a third characteristic of convivial landscape architecture addresses the experience of the designed space. As mentioned above, the distance between the humans and the other living and non-living beings is a prerequisite for the Western nature-culture dichotomy. This distance has led to enormous scientific progress on the one hand, but to alienation on the other, resulting in sometimes absurd compensatory strategies such as mass tourism in supposedly wild areas. The sociologist Hartmut Rosa has made a comprehensive analysis of this Western phenomenon of distance and concluded that it has not led to a successful or happy relationship with the world. As an alternative, he develops ‘resonance’ as a way of relating to the world. This relationship should allow for an appropriation and adaptation to the world in the sense of a transformative encounter rather than the modernist mode of conquering the world to make it available.[51] Rosa sees himself in the tradition of relational ontologies and is thus a relevant author within the interdependency narrative. For him, the subject and the world are not given a priori, but are already the result of dynamic relations and interdependencies, they are evolving through their relations.[52] Resonance is precisely this condition or mode of a dynamic relationship with the world, in which the subject and the world mutually affect and transform each other.[53]
What role can landscape architecture play in fostering the ability for such a kind of resonance? Rosa provides a first clue here when he speaks of ‘resonance spheres’ as spaces that allow for ‘resonance sensibilities’.[54] Through a mental and eventually even bodily opening to the world in these resonance spheres, it should be possible ‘to change and transform oneself without knowing the result of this transformation’.[55] These spheres are also a matter of spatial design, and the Sweet City project gives good examples of how to create spaces that increase resonance sensibilities on many levels. The Sweet Sidewalks are a simple but effective way of facilitating a mental and bodily resonance among plants, pollinators and humans as they walk. Even more intense is the resonance sphere of the community gardens, where an education on conviviality is combined with practical application. Here, the aspect of self-efficacy is realized through many reciprocal relationships between the human gardeners and the other living and non-living beings. Self-efficacy is a crucial component in Rosa’s theory, because a fully realized resonance relationship requires a response that ‘contains the experience of one’s own self-efficacy, which means that the subject is also able to reach the encountered part of the world and in this way establish a connection in which it can experience itself as self-efficacious’.[56] Mesh’s design proposal for St. Louis Park could also provide for such experiences of self-efficacy. Through targeted information, the human users could quickly understand that their walking or picnicking is necessary for certain plant communities to grow, and over time they could learn to actively manage the park’s entanglements by listening to the ‘responses’ of other species.
Discussion and conclusion
In order to respond to the two research questions posed, the article first identified the potential of conviviality as the ‘art of living together’ for landscape architecture in order to address interdependencies between humans and non-humans, and then proposed three characteristics of convivial landscape architecture after reflecting on three contemporary case studies. These three characteristics, of which symmetrical refers to the ontological perspective from which a project is initiated, entangling describes the aim of the spatiotemporal design, and resonant refers to the experience of the project by humans and other living beings, can serve as a first set of design guidelines for practitioners.[57] They are certainly not an exhaustive list and are only a starting point for further reflection on convivial landscape architecture. Even within the three characteristics, there are open questions and room for further development of the arguments.
In terms of the symmetrical perspective, a big open question is the ability or willingness of Western societies to move from a self-destructive naturalism to a ‘methodological’ or ‘new animism’ that would increase the respect for the other living and non-living beings.[58] Bruno Latour was a forerunner of this movement. For example, in Facing Gaia he wrote: ‘Although the official philosophy of science takes the . . . movement of de-animation as the only important and rational one, the opposite is true: animation is the essential phenomenon; a de-animation is the superficial, auxiliary, polemical and often defensive phenomenon.’[59] Expanding this further, he also claimed that: ‘One of the great enigmas of Western history is not that “there are still people naïve enough to believe in animism”, but that many people still hold the rather naïve belief in a supposedly de-animated “material world”.’[60] There is consequently a lot of new research that can be related to a new animism, and the most promising ones in my view are those experiments in biology that prove the sensitivity of plants.[61] Although they follow the strict rules of scientific experimentation, these researchers have long had extreme difficulties in being accepted and published by their communities, but for a few years now their results have been shaking up scientific discourses. The full realization of this ontological shift towards a new animism would provide landscape architecture with a much stronger argumentation base for a convivialist practice.
The presentation of entangling as the second characteristic of convivial landscape architecture has shown that the discipline is capable of addressing the more-than-human realm in its designs. However, a very open question for me is the aesthetics of such an entangled landscape architecture. The discipline had already integrated a lot of knowledge from ecology about the interconnectedness between living beings in the 1970s and 1980s, but many projects did not last very long and one reason for this may be that their aesthetics were not well received by the public. What needs to be changed? What is a contemporary aesthetic of interconnectedness? Eva Horn recently outlined an aesthetics of the Anthropocene in which entanglements play a central role, concluding with three interrelated challenges for an aesthetics of the Anthropocene: (1) Latency, or how latent processes such as the rise from 200 ppm CO2 ‘can be made manifest, palpable, perceptible, and graspable-beyond the abstract representations offered by science’;[62] (2) Entanglement, which addresses the question: ‘How can we consider humans in transitions and dependencies with other life-forms?’;[63] and (3) the clash of scales in terms of time scales, spatial dimensions and number of protagonists.[64] As a strategy for meeting these challenges to an aesthetics of the Anthropocene, she proposes explication: ‘An analytical, frequently experimental, and very knowledge-based making-explicit of processes, objects and practices of the Anthropocene, which are latent, too big, too small, or too self-evident to be perceived.’[65] All three case studies presented above fall short of such an aesthetic of explication, as do most other contemporary landscape architecture projects. This is truly an open field for future practice and research in the discipline.
By addressing the aspect of experience between humans and other living beings, the resonance characteristic requires a good knowledge of plants and animals on the part of the designer. The factual knowledge is growing rapidly, for example the catalogue of species portraits in Animal-Aided Design, and similar to plant design apps, an Animal-Aided Design app is likely to come soon. Together with the exponential growth of artificial intelligence tools, one might ask what role is left for the human designer? In my view, real experiences with the lifeworld are essential for writing the prompts, judging the results, and constructing and maintaining the project. Thus, a convivial approach would require a change in education and practice, including the need for landscape architects to live longer with their design subjects. Offices such as Le Balto or Wagon Landscaping are successfully practising such a resonance-based approach, and it is no surprise that the founders of both offices are graduates of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure du Paysage in Versailles, where each student takes care of a piece of garden, adjacent to the classrooms on the edge of the beautiful Potager du Roi, for the entire duration of their studies. In my opinion, this integration of the practical care of one’s own design—at least for one vegetation period—is a necessary pedagogical strategy in the future education of landscape architects, in order to intensify the experience of spatiotemporal entanglements; another strategy would be to leave the lecture and seminar rooms as often as possible in order to learn in the living world.
In conclusion, conviviality represents one of many potential narratives within the interdependent discourse of the Anthropocene. It comprises five principles and one imperative, not all of which are directly related to landscape architecture. Nevertheless, the theoretical and practical insights presented in this article suggest that the overall concept—particularly the principle of common naturality—offers valuable touchpoints for the discipline. Additionally, landscape architecture possesses much to contribute to the conviviality movement. I propose that landscape architecture should engage intensively with this concept, as it has the capacity to unify many issues in current theoretical debates and connect the discipline to the extensive interdisciplinary, global network of the conviviality movement. Defined as the ‘art of living together’, conviviality can formulate a positive vision in which the role of landscape architects is to design open spaces that celebrate this art alongside humans and a diverse array of other living and non-living beings. Importantly, this art is not a luxury or a mere aesthetic enhancement, but rather an elementary condition for human survival.[66]
Note:
This article was first published in the Journal of Landscape Architecture, 19(3), 28–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/18626033.2025.2470581
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Andreas Ebert, David Kreis and Josefine Siebenand from my PhD group for our stimulating discussions on conviviality in recent years; my colleague Jochen Hack for his information and photos on the Ciudad Dulce project; and Maria Hellström Reimer for her constructive criticism which greatly improved the article.
References
1 In March 2024, the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS) of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) rejected the proposal for an Anthropocene Epoch as a formal unit of the Geologic Time Scale. The ICS published the following statement on their website after the decision: ‘The voting members of SQS have extensive experience and wide expertise in Quaternary stratigraphy and chronology. Their vote was approved by the ICS executive, and that approval was overwhelmingly supported by the chairs of the ICS subcommissions. Despite its rejection as a formal unit of the Geologic Time Scale, the Anthropocene will nevertheless continue to be used not only by Earth and environmental scientists, but also by social scientists, politicians and economists, as well as by the public at large. It will remain an invaluable descriptor of human impact on the Earth system’, stratigraphy.org/news/152; accessed 24 May 2024.
This statement expresses the value of the Anthropocene notion for the scientific discourse and calls for a further use of the term. It is likely that a change in terminology will happen concerning the Anthropocene as an event rather than an epoch. See, for example: Philip Gibbard et al., ‘The Anthropocene as an Event, not an Epoch’, Journal of Quaternary Science 37/3 (2022), 395–399.
2 Bruno Latour, Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climate Regime (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018), 86 (Italics in the original).
3 Gabriele Dürbeck, ‘Narratives of the Anthropocene in Interdisciplinary Perspective’, in: Gina Comos and Caroline Rosenthal (eds.), Anglophone Literature and Culture in the Anthropocene (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019), 271–288.
5 For example: Paul J. Crutzen, ‘Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections: A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma?’, Climatic Change 77/3–4 (2006), 211–220.
6 Dürbeck, ‘Narratives of the Anthropocene’, op. cit. (note 3), 279.
8 For example: Philippe Descola, Beyond Nature and Culture (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2013).
9 Donna J. Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003).
10 Dürbeck, ‘Narratives of the Anthropocene’, op. cit. (note 3), 275.
11 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Albena Yaneva, Latour for Architects (London/New York: Routledge, 2022), 63–78.
12 Philippe Descola, ‘Who Owns Nature?’, Books and Ideas, 21 January 2008, booksandideas.net/Who-owns-nature, accessed 25 May 2024.
13 See, for example: Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987); and Ignacio Farías, ‘Introduction: Decentering the Object of Urban Studies’, in: Ignacio Farías and Thomas Bender (eds.), Urban Assemblages. How Actor-Network Theory Changes Urban Studies (London/New York: Routledge, 2010), 1–24.
14 Anh-Linh Ngo et al. (eds.), ‘Editorial: Cohabitation’, Arch+ 247 (2022), 4.
15 Debra Solomon, A Multispecies Urbanism Manifesto (2021), whoiswe.nl/manifestos, accessed 25 May 2024.
16 A keyword search using ‘actor-network theory’, ‘relative universalism’, ‘assemblage’, ‘multispecies’ and ‘cohabitation’ in the two leading peer-reviewed landscape architecture journals (JoLA and Landscape Journal) produced only four articles in total: Ted Brown and Bill Brown, ‘Siting Re-assemblage: Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park’, Journal of Landscape Architecture 13/3 (2018), 40–53; Kevan J. Klosterwill, ‘In What Style Should We Terraform? Geoengineering, Planetary Gardening and the Creation of Flourishing Ecologies of Practice’, Journal of Landscape Architecture 16/3 (2021), 66–75; Karl Kullmann, ‘The Landscape of Things’, Journal of Landscape Architecture 13/1 (2018), 58–67; Kevan J. Klosterwill, ‘The Shifting Position of Animals in Landscape Theory’, Landscape Journal 38/1–2 (2019), 129–146.
17 Maike van Stiphout, First Guide to Nature-Inclusive Design (Rotterdam: nextcity, 2020).
18 Convivialist International, ‘The Second Convivialist Manifesto: Towards a Post-Neoliberal World’, Civic Sociology 1 (2020), 1–24.
19 Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 11.
21 Convivialist Manifesto: A Declaration of Interdependence, English translation of French original published in 2013 (Duisburg: Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Centre for Global Cooperation Research, 2014). gcr21.org/fileadmin/website/daten/pdf/Publications/Convivialist_Manifesto_2198-0403-GD-3.pdf, accessed 25 May 2024. See also: Convivialist International, ‘The Second Convivialist Manifesto’, op. cit. (note 18), 3.
28 This is the difference with the parallel, inspiring vision of conviviality conservation introduced in: Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher, ‘Towards Convivial Conservation’, Conservation and Society 17/3 (2019), 283–296. These authors propose five key elements of a convivial conservation vision (from protected to promoted areas, from saving nature to celebrating human and nonhuman nature, from touristic voyeurism to engaged visitation, from spectacular to everyday environmentalisms and from privatized expert technocracy to common democratic engagement), three elements of change (power, time and actors) and four concrete actions (historical reparations, conservation basic income, rethinking (relations with) cooperations and Convivial Conservation Coalition). All of these are inspiring, but they address policy and governance rather than concrete spatial transformations as this article aims to do. However, I see much potential for future dialogues between conviviality conservation and convivial landscape architecture.
29 Wolfgang Weisser and Thomas Hauck, Anwendung von Animal-Aided Design im Wohnungsbau: Ein Beispiel aus München (Munich: Technical University of Munich, 2023).
32 Jon Hoekstra, ‘What Is Conservation 3.0?’ (2013), livescience.com/38481-new-approach-to-conservation.html, accessed 25 May 2024.
33 Sweet City is an urban development vision brought to life by Edgar Mora and Irene García, with the support of Alicia Borja and the Mayor’s Office Innovation Team at the Municipality of Curridabat.
34 Irene García Brenes and Alejandro Muñoz River, ‘Wellbeing in the Time of Cities: The Sweet City Vision’ (24 March 2020), urbanet.info/costa-rica-curridabat-the-sweet-city-vision, accessed 25 May 2024.
35 Tandem Arquitectura ‘Sweet City: Defeating the City-Nature Antagonism. Curridabat, Costa Rica’ (2021), issuu.com/tandemarquitectura/docs/cnu_2018_ed_t_low, accessed 25 May 2024.
37 City of Curridabat (dd.), ‘Curridabat: Sweet City: A City Modelling Approach Based on Pollination’, static1.squarespace.com/static/5bbd32d6e66669016a6af7e2/t/5c757759e2c4835d3cbc174f/1551202139913/Curridabat_Sweet%20_City Magazine.pdf, accessed 25 May 2024.
39 Municipalidad de Curridabat (ed.), ‘Guia de Plantas Dulces’, curridabat.go.cr/inicio/proyectos/catalogoplantasdulces/, accessed 25 May 2024.
40 Centro de Inteligencia Territorial en Biodiversidad, ‘CITBIO’, curridabat.go.cr/inicio/proyectos/citbio/, accessed 25 May 2024.
41 Brenes, ‘Wellbeing in the Time of Cities’, op. cit. (note 34).
42 ‘CITBIO’, op. cit. (note 40).
43 Curridabat, ‘Sweet City’, op. cit. (note 37), 9.
45 Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 101–106.
46 Descola, ‘Who Owns Nature?’, op. cit. (note 12).
47 See: Martin Prominski, ‘Designing Landscapes of Entanglement’, in: Ellen Braae and Henriette Steiner (eds.), Routledge Research Companion to Landscape Architecture (London: Routledge, 2019), 167–179: 176–177; and Alain Caillé et al., ‘Que donne la nature? L’écologie par le don’, Revue du MAUSS semestrielle 42 (2013), 5–23.
48 Andreas Hetzel, Vielfalt achten: Eine Ethik der Biodiversität (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2024), 367 (translation by the author).
49 From the perspective of regenerative design, this could even be extended to the phase of producing the materials (including plants) and the phase of demolishing, but this would go beyond the scope of this article.
50 Frank Adloff uses symbiosis as a term to describe a cooperative coexistence across species. For him, ‘symbiosis forms a subcategory of conviviality as a minimal form of a succeeding sociality, which in turn is based on gift relationships’, Frank Adloff, ‘Ontologie, Konvivialität und Symbiose oder: Gibt es Gaben der Natur?’, Zeitschrift für Theoretische Soziologie 2 (2020), 198–216: 198.
51 Hartmut Rosa, ‘Resonanz als Schlüsselbegriff der Sozialtheorie’, in: Jean-Pierre Wils (ed.), Resonanz: Im interdisziplinären Gespräch mit Hartmut Rosa (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2019), 11–30: 14.
54 Ibid., 26 (translation by the author).
55 Ibid., 27 (translation by the author).
56 Ibid., 18 (translation by the author).
57 Martin Prominski, ‘Using Design Research to Develop Design Guidelines’, in: Adri van den Brink et al. (eds.), Research in Landscape Architecture: Methods and Methodology (London: Routledge, 2016), 194–208.
58 See: Caillé, ‘Que donne la nature?’, op. cit. (note 47); and Graham Harvey, Animism: Respecting the Living World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), xii.
59 Bruno Latour, Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climate Regime (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017), 70.
61 For example: Daniel Chamovitz, What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses (Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012); Monica Gagliano, Thus Spoke the Plant: A Remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries and Personal Encounters with Plants (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2018); Marine Veits et al., ‘Flowers Respond to Pollinator Sound within Minutes by Increasing Nectar Sugar Concentration’, Ecology Letters 22 (2019), 1483–1492.
62 Eva Horn, ‘Aesthetics of the Anthropocene’, in: Pia Goebel et al. (eds.) 1.5 Degrees: Interdependencies between Life, the Cosmos, and Technology (Berlin: Hatje Canz, 2023), 25.
66 ‘By violating the principles of common humanity, common sociality, common naturality, legitimate individuation for all, and creative opposition, they (modern people, MP) endanger the very survival of humanity and expose themselves to legitimate anger and contempt and stigma from all’, Convivialist International, ‘The Second Convivialist Manifesto’, op. cit. (note 18), 9.
Topics in this article
Actor-Network Theory (ANT) — Aesthetics — Animal — Animism / New Animism — Anthropocene — Biodiversity — Bruno Latour — Capitalocene — Co-habitation — Conviviality — Debra Solomon — Donna Haraway — Eva Horn — Fauna — Gilles Deleuze — Hartmut Rosa — Interdependency — Ivan Illich — Landscape Architecture — Martin Prominski — Migrating Species — More-than-human — Nature-Culture Dialectics — Natureculture — Philippe Descola — Philosophy — Planning — Plant Agency — Pluriversalism — Posthumanism — Relative Universalism — Soil — Technocene — Urbanism — Urbanization — World-Ecology —Search other topics:
