Urbanism is the study and design of cities and urban processes, from streets and squares to regions and networks. It has been celebrated as progress, feared as overcrowding, and critiqued for reproducing inequality. Urbanism is never just about form but essential political issues. Urbanism is inseparable from practice: every project sits in relation to urban systems, whether resisting, supporting, or re-imagining them. It asks how landscapes shape and are shaped by the urban condition.
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.
Multispecies Urbanism (MU) concept proposes that cities be designed and governed for the multispecies whole. In her manifesto, artist, infrastructure activist, and researcher Debra Solomon argues that healthy urban environments for humans are inseparable from the flourishing of other species and their microbial consortia. MU treats ecological labour—cooling, water buffering, pollination, soil formation—as infrastructural work […]
Tempelhofer Feld, one of Europe’s largest urban open spaces, has long been a focal point of debate, particularly since its closure as an airport in 2008. Over the years, the site has sparked public protests, legal disputes, and heated discussions about its future. Now, after a highly anticipated international competition, the winning proposals have been […]
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 […]
When I walk in the city center, in parks, I feel like I’m in a kind of theater. The fact that these environments have been deliberately designed for me to find them beautiful is, to me, a problem.
But when you walk along an infrastructure, you know you’re in reality. You’re seeing the world as it truly is, as it appears to you. I believe landscape architects shouldn’t focus on cultural aesthetics. Instead, they should work with corporeal aesthetics—something much harder to grasp. Our job is not to create new beauty. Our job is to reveal the beauty that already exists. That’s a completely different approach.
BASE is a France-based studio known for its out-of-the-box thinking and unexpected design choices, often introducing challenges that can be overcome through play. Encountering an obstacle in a public space—one that invites engagement and risk-taking—creates a tension that can lead to moments of joyful liberation. A key aspect of BASE’s approach is putting trust in […]
Converting grey infrastructure into green socialstructure leads to more inclusive, adaptable, and environmentally resilient public spaces that serve both ecological and social functions. The benefits extend beyond aesthetics – these transformations drive economic growth, improve public health, and mitigate the effects of climate change.
So, the real question is not whether cities can do this. The question is: Why aren’t they?
“The tool is trying to counter the friction of power and reposition power as cooperation and co-creation early on to generate mature design briefs from the get-go. And that the process of participating for all parties is not a drudgery of boredom, frustrations and resulting anger or dismissal of feedback loops”
The famous Bartleby quote: “I would prefer not to”, is often the paradoxical silent monologue of a professional working in development. You need the job but you don’t always believe the project’s brief is fully justified, in line with the values and needs of users, sometimes even feels forced to produce revenue which can put […]
The Dutch Landscape, The Ultimate Guide for Study, Professional and Personal Use by Alexandra Tišma[1] and Han Lörzing[2] is a “text-book” and a thorough yet very accessible guide on landscapes in the Netherlands – described from many angles and scales, historical, geographical, geological and biotic layers, cultural landscapes, from development, and planning to conservation – […]
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 […]
Planet City is a worldbuilding project by Liam Young, envisioned as a multilayered city, occupying as little as 0,02 percent of Earth’s surface yet hosting all of the human population. Planet City is testing the Half-Earth idea by Edward O. Wilson, where we put aside half of the planet, to keep biodiversity. We spoke with Liam Young about the idea and the exhibition he curates, Visions of Planet City.
Sara Eichner is a visual artist and designer with a keen interest in data visualisations and cartography. She works with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and programming languages like Python and uses design software to translate data into comprehensible visual stories. Her work is people-centred and she often uses data to represent less-heard voices. Eichner is […]
Gary Hilderbrand has been teaching at Harvard Graduate School of Design since 1990 and is currently the Peter Louis Hornbeck Professor in Practice and Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture. He is also the founding principal of Reed Hilderbrand, a leading landscape architecture firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The firm was established in the […]
Bridges allow the landscape to flow underneath – or as in recent endeavours, in land bridges or ecoducts, nature flows over. In the latter, a bridge adjoins disconnected landscape portions created by cuts in the terrain. In any case, bridges form connections and links when a river or other barrier needs to be crossed. As […]
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 […]
Sh*tscapes is a 160-page book by London-based landscape architects Vladimir Guculak and Paul Bourel. They are also founders of studio gb, landscape architecture and design studio focused on the integration of nature into the city.
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 […]
Günther Vogt probably needs no introduction in our profession; he has been an important practitioner for a couple of decades now, appreciated globally for his rich, non-linear and adventurous design approach. Initially, his education was more in the direction of botany. He later shifted to landscape architecture by studying in Rapperswil, Switzerland. After his study […]
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 […]
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.
During all the media coverage—particularly in the United States—of Hurricanes Harvey (Category 4, 17 August-1 September), Irma (Category 5, 30 August-12 September), Jose (Category 4, 5-22 September) and Maria (Category 5, 16-30 September), the flooding and subsequent trail of destruction in Houston and southeast Texas, South Florida and the Caribbean, there was ceaseless talk of […]
