Philosophy is the discipline of questioning—of thinking about existence, knowledge, ethics, meaning, and perception. It does not provide ready answers but builds the frameworks through which we understand the world and our place in it. Though often seen as abstract, philosophy runs underneath design disciplines like an invisible infrastructure. It decides what we call “nature,” what we value as “beauty,” what counts as knowledge, who is included in “society.” Philosophy is not neutral; it shapes the very ground on which landscape architecture stands.
Branches of Relevance
Aesthetics: the study of beauty, perception, estrangement—directly shaping how we see and experience landscapes.
Ethics: questions of responsibility to humans, nonhumans, and future generations.
Ontology: what exists, and how we define “landscape,” “nature,” or “environment” as beings.
Epistemology: how we know what we know—important when design relies on science, data, or cultural memory.
Political Philosophy: how space organizes power, participation, and justice.
Philosophy is not an external luxury but a toolbox that sharpens perception, expands imagination and can illuminate design action with notions of social justice. It opens doors to see landscapes differently: as aesthetic events, as political terrains, as ontological questions, as ethical obligations. Curiosity here is not distraction but strength—the capacity to see design beyond function, to recognize its deeper stakes in how life is lived. Most of all, philosophy in landscape architecture proves that any design act is essentially a political gesture.
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.
An essay on how we push animals into playing roles — from fables and films to renders of biodiversity and art — tracing how these projections tame, abstract, or estrange, and how synurbists and artists unsettle the human–animal divide.
I have spent the last two weeks conducting field research at a large music festival located in the interior of Portugal. Every day, I would wake up in my tiny tent and walk into a stunning landscape. Walking around the grounds of the festival every morning was my favorite activity, indulging in the lake around […]
As part of the broader philosophical movement of speculative realism, OOO (Object-Oriented Ontology) directly challenges the long-established belief that reality is always determined solely through human perception. Instead, the father of OOO, philosopher Graham Harman, argues that all objects—human and non-human, natural and artificial—exist independently of our subjective conceptualizations. To understand the radical nature and […]
Reports of global warming, biodiversity loss, rising anti-democratic states, heatwaves, wars, and sea-level rise are enough to make anyone discouraged. In these times, hope is crucial—it’s the difference between envisioning a positive future and resigning to the present. Hope drives action, while hopelessness paralyzes. It rejects the status quo and aspires for change, making it vital for progress. Hope can grow and strengthen, but it can also fade.
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.
Today, the possibility arises to define a new design approach to address issues of environmental and social justice in the urban context. Based on an integrated understanding of the interdependencies involving human and environmental relations, the applied-philosophy approach for landscape architectural practices induces a paradigm shift in spatial design. Rather than applying downstream solutions to […]
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 […]
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 […]
Dušan Ogrin (1929-2019) was the pioneer of Slovenian landscape architecture. In 1972, he founded the Landscape Architecture programme at the University of Ljubljana. His seminal work The World Heritage of Gardens was published in 1993, so it was not too far-fetched to dedicate a book in his memory to the topic of gardens. The editors […]
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.
In the current debate about climate change and its disruptive effects on the health of people and ecosystems, the reclamation of the ‘right to the environment’ has gained momentum, both in theoretical accounts and in legal documents. Yet, it is useful to make a first distinction between the right to the environment and the right of the environment.
“Excerpts from a project on Trees and Beasts” Denise Hoffman Brandt© Denise Hoffman What do we actually mean when we talk about nature? As a professor in a discipline that since the early 1970s has, mostly, claimed to practice “design with nature”—referencing Ian McHarg’s book (1969) of that title—that’s a question I have often asked. […]
In the conversation with the landscape architecture professor, artist and writer Denise Hoffman Brandt, we speak about the morality issues attached to “doing good” while debunking Ian McHarg’s problematic position in Design with Nature. In the conversation, Brandt points out how our assumptions about nature shape our actions, why stewardship is problematic and what landscape […]
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 […]
Tim Waterman is Professor of Landscape Theory and Inter-Programme Collaboration Director at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. He is Chair of the Landscape Research Group (LRG), a Non-Executive Director of the digital arts collective Furtherfield, and an advisor to the Centre for Landscape Democracy at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. He is also […]
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 […]
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 […]
The AI services embedded in tools for creative profiles are developing so rapidly that this article will definitely be outdated by 6 pm tomorrow. Last year we featured a piece on Midjourney and similar platforms, and it already reads like Grandpas discussing ‘the internets’ back in the 90s. I suppose enchantment by civilisation’s technological advances […]
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.
Photographs have been taken at the gardens of Versailles, on February 2015. They accompany the Slovenian translation of the tiny but marvellous book Portret srečnega človeka – André le Nôtre 1613–1700 (Portrait d’un home heureux – André le Nôtre 1613–1700), translated from French by Zoja Skušek, *cf., 2016, written by a renown French author Érik Orsenna, who, among other things, for five years presided L’ École nationale supérieure du paysage at Versailles.
