Pleasure gardens are designed landscapes dedicated to leisure, entertainment, and sensory delight. Historically, they ranged from aristocratic retreats to 18th- and 19th-century public amusements, combining spectacle, performance, and social display. They embody the commodification of landscape as entertainment while also staging collective cultural life. Pleasure gardens reveal the politics of pleasure and the aestheticization of social space.
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 […]
The first parks open to the public in Western society date back to the late 18th century, with the Englischer Garten in Munich (1789), named by the renowned Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell, followed by Maksimir Park in Zagreb (1794). Birkenhead Park, described as a “People’s Garden” by Olmsted and designed by Joseph Paxton in Liverpool […]
One would ask what is a motif today to collect such a volume book about one particular garden. One could answer: Because it’s La Gara, one exclusive example of a manor garden in Geneva that has undergone a continuous transformation by 18 generations of owners, and even squatters, with the first mention in 1555, up […]
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 […]
The book by the legendary Danish landscape architect, Carl Theodor Sørensen (1893-1979), originally published in 1966, is for the first time published in English, with a foreword by Joost Emmerik and an Introduction by Lodewijk Wiegersma. Published by Blawdruk Publishers and Sonja Poll, the 39 Unusual Gardens for an Ordinary House is a landmark book […]
We continue with French philosopher Michel Foucault. In his 1967 speech to an architecture audience, he introduced the concept of “heterotopia”. It was published in 1984 as an essay, Des Espaces Autres (Of Other Spaces), and it deals with the nature of space and its relation to society. Heterotopias are unique spatial entities that challenge conventional notions of space and compel reflection on the social, cultural, and ideological matters of our world.
Sarah Cowles of Ruderal presents their design for the Betania Garden near Tbilisi, Georgia, which was awarded LILA 2023 Special Mention in the Garden category. We start the discussion with an update on Arsenal Oasis, another LILA-winning project from 2021 (See the presentation). For the Betania Garden, the LILA 2023 jury wrote: At first glance, […]
»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 […]
We are thrilled to share with you the interview with LILA 2022 Honour Award winner Gilles Clément. The interview was conducted in Paris in November 2022 by Zaš Brezar and Joost Emmerik. The editors wrote in the award statement: Gilles Clément (1943) is a French landscape architect or better ‘paysagiste’, having a more garden design-related […]
Susana Rojas Saviñón and Hortense Blanchard are the driving forces behind Estudio Ome, a young 5-member landscape architecture practice based out of Mexico City. Their first realized project Forest Garden immediately received LILA in the garden category. Besides that, we could easily say that Ome is LILA’s young-talent discovery of 2021. We really look forward […]
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