The Anthropocene is the proposed geological epoch defined by human activity as a planetary force, leaving stratigraphic traces in earth systems. It names climate change, mass extinction, and industrial extraction as markers of geological time. Yet the concept is contested, for it risks universalizing “humanity” while obscuring differentiated responsibility across class, race, and geography. In design and theory, the Anthropocene unsettles the ground of practice, forcing a confrontation with the entanglement of culture, nature, and geology. It is both a scientific claim and a cultural symptom of ecological crisis.
Landscape architecture should engage intensively with conviviality—it has the capacity to unify many issues in current theoretical debates and connect the discipline to the global network of the conviviality movement.
Growing up on a farm in Tyrol, surrounded by repetitions of natural processes to which rituals and traditions attune, Weinberger developed an understanding of the nature–culture relationship observed from the periphery.
In the U.S., lawns cover nearly 2 percent of the land surface and, as researcher Cristina Milesi revealed using satellite data, “could be considered the single largest irrigated crop in America”—their total area is three times larger than that of irrigated cornfields. The infatuation with lawns runs so deep that, in some cases, failing to […]
Krater includes no landscape architects and follows no formal landscape architecture plan. Yet it is an intervention in landscape that stands as a provocative inquiry into the status of abandoned plots embedded within the urban fabric. The project poses fundamental questions: is a site truly ‘neglected’ if a thriving biotope has already taken hold? Could such a space, in its self-organized vitality, already constitute a form of an urban park? How to organize the social dimension? Krater unfolds as an expedition into landscape itself—an open-ended investigation in which fragmented architectural elements function as instruments of observation, experiment, and reflection. The site operates as a living laboratory, challenging conventional practices of open space production and the disciplinary boundaries of landscape architecture. It addresses relevant uncertainties the Anthropocene entails, engaging critically with issues of multi-species coexistence and the contested notion of environmental harmonization.
At a time when landscape architecture often seeks to simulate nature through aesthetic approximation or even mimicry, Krater seems oblivious to such representational impulses. Its proposition is radical in its restraint: rather than imposing form, it frames this ‘third landscape’ as a space of ecological processes, social encounter and experiment, revealing alternative logics of co-inhabitation, agency and design—logics that may become increasingly relevant as landscape architecture confronts its own ecological, ethical and epistemological limits.
– from the award statements
The Landscape Architecture Europe Foundation (LAE) has published the 7th edition of its book series, titled Full of Life. With each issue released triennially, the editorial board delves into high-quality landscape architecture projects, tracing the evolution of this young profession and highlighting the significance of addressing climate and social issues while crafting beautiful spaces. The […]
The book, Thinking Through Soil: Wastewater Agriculture in the Mezquital Valley, by Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich and Seth Denizen, came out last week, published by Harvard University Design Press. It is an enormous study, partly conducted through the Thinking Through Soil studio course at the GSD, Department of Landscape Architecture, and with the help of the […]
TU Berlin presents its new Chair ‘Entwerfen von Landschaften im Anthropozän/ Designing Landscapes in the Anthropocene’, or ÉLAN for short, headed by Prof. Dr. Lisa Diedrich since April 2025. The name says it all: Rather than seeing the Anthropocene as the antechamber to apocalypse, for the detrimental changes wrought by human activities on all things […]
Exploring the interplay between low-res design and the transience of landscapes, this essay foregrounds the notion of resolution, enquiring about a dynamic interaction with landscapes in flux.
Mnemosyne walks on a Forest Wall What if rural areas took center stage in the movement for resilient, secure communities—getting the same attention as urban environments? What if seawalls and groynes weren’t just lifeless barriers but thriving ecosystems, forests, walking routes for storytelling, art trails and canvases for culture and nature? The growing impact of […]
Collectively, all humans experience 8 billion days in 24 hours. That is about 22 million years lived in one day.
When one starts to think about time in that way, it seems inevitable to envision the collective impact of human life on Earth.
The inaugural lecture, given by Joost Emmerik when he assumed his position as Head of Landscape at the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in 2022. The text particularly excels in embedding doubt into the teaching process. It is the doubt about nature, our entanglement with it, and the values and politics that drive the design process. It is about passing knowledge to others and questioning it meanwhile – a much more pertinent and productive teaching paradigm for times of uncertainties and change.
This article by Kelly Shannon and Donielle Kaufman was first published on 9 January 2018. With the recent fires around Los Angeles, we are bringing it into focus again in early 2025 as it sheds light on processes and hidden corners of the context that brought about California’s ‘wildfire epidemic’.
Domesticated and genetically engineered organisms are usually overlooked by natural museums and institutions for cultural history. There is no space for artifacts such as dogs, chickens and corn. The Center for PostNatural History is the sequel to the natural history museum, and takes agriculture’s evolution as a starting point. CPNH focuses on the deliberate alterations […]
What do we actually know about the ground on which we stand, and how does it relate to our landscape projects Interventions on the surface of the landscape affect the underground as much as they are conditioned by it. Many processes pass through the grade of the ground, relating to water, energy, ecology and vegetation, with trees bridging above- and below grade. Organic matter is created in the ground, carbon is captured and stored there, and it is the habitat of various species. If we, as landscape architects, aim to incorporate ecology and hydrology into project development, the design phase must incorporate a thinking of above- and below grade as one.
Giovanni Aloi is an author, curator, and creator with a PhD from Goldsmiths University, focusing on natural history in art representation. His work examines depictions of flora and fauna to uncover societal values and foster shifts in these through critical reflection. Through publishing, curating exhibitions, delivering talks, and editing Antennae: The Journal of Nature in […]
As we confront the growing ecological crisis, it becomes increasingly difficult to argue that harmonious aesthetics, designed primarily for pleasure and ease, are always the most effective mode of expression. Perhaps there is space to question whether ecological efforts demand a different aesthetic attitude, one less fixated on traditional notions of balance and spatial conformity and more open to dissensus and confrontation.
This summer, throughout Switzerland, you can attend the curated observation of the ongoing phenomenon of glaciers melting. Art installations, performances and exhibitions, scattered about the Alpine landscape, are informed by this exclusive moment in climate history that will forever change our landscapes. The melting progresses with the proportion of the loss of albedo surface. Although […]
In the talk, Lydia Kallipoliti – #architect #educator #researcher #thinker – presents her newly published book Histories of Ecological Design: An Unfinished Cyclopedia, followed by a Q&A where we talk about the intentions of writing the book, about how the “waste speaks of the incomplete perception of the World”, the psychological profile of ecological designers and […]
The Harvard Graduate School of Design organized a two-day conference titled Forest Futures: Will the Forest Save Us All? It is open to the public and available via streaming. Planetary survival in the Anthropocene crucially depends on the stewardship of resilient forest ecosystems worldwide—at the scales of wilderness, planted forests, metropolitan tracts, and the urban […]
In this interview, Zaš Brezar talks to Prof. Dr. Lisa Diedrich, the winner of LILA 2023 Honour Award. She speaks about her professional development throughout the years and specifically about being a ‘straddler’ between professional practice and academia. She references several books and projects that inspire her as a landscape architect, architect, journalist and especially […]
Today’s most urgent topic for all professional groups everywhere must be how to give our planet and its inhabitants possibilities to survive. Never before has the professional field of landscape architects shifted its goals so quickly, as we have seen only over the last few years. The focus for landscape architecture nowadays is clearly sustainability. […]
The production of landscape architecture projects has been in recent years outstanding, and our entire professional community has much to be proud of. But as always, there is a flip side; like in architecture or any design discipline of the globalised and speeding-up world, we are faced with a sea of sameness. Too many buildings […]
Across the world, the risks of wildfires are increasing and expanding. Due to past and current human actions, we dwell in the age of fire – the Pyrocene – and the many challenges and climate adaptation questions it provokes. Exploring our past and current relationships with fire, this book speculates on the pyro futures yet […]
It is exciting to read “Blue Skies”, the new novel by T.C.Boyle, and at the same time to dedicate oneself to the opulent work of Adrian McGregor. While Boyle’s protagonists in Florida and California are at the mercy of the manifold violent effects of climate change and the reader abandons all hope after reading, the […]
Urban biodiversity? Yes, please! Nevertheless … … Due to the transitional phase of our understanding of nature in the light of the Anthropocene, there are still some important notions, contradictions and misunderstandings that need to be addressed. To do so, we will operate with terms like nature, ecology, biodiversity, landscape, and aesthetics, and we’ll focus […]
»Paradigm shift« has been, for at least a decade now, one of the most used phrases in landscape architecture. We use it mainly to address the need to focus on design with natural processes in mind. This is important as it concerns our core values, attitude towards nature, the understanding of natural processes and the […]
In this essay, Zaš Brezar writes about the role of urban roofs in our collective memory. Illustrating the meaning of roofs through a selection of cultural references from films and music. The article is a part of Living Roofs focus on Landezine that is going on in October and November 2022.
Liam Young is together with Kate Davies running the Unknown Fields project. They travel around the world and explore landscapes behind objects we used on a daily basis: materials for our phones, fabrics for clothes, lithium for batteries … We caught Liam in Ljubljana, where he was narrating Unknown Fields film live.
