Nature, often presumed as external reality, is in fact a deeply cultural construct. Across history, it has been imagined as wilderness, resource, divine order, or harmonious backdrop, each framing serving political and aesthetic ends. Raymond Williams called it “perhaps the most complex word in the language,” signaling its shifting, contradictory meanings. In landscape architecture, “nature” is never untouched but always mediated, produced, and represented. To speak of nature is to reveal a discourse of power, not a stable ground.
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.
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.
Scientific research into animal behaviour still rests on many deeply ingrained assumptions about what is deemed to be “natural” human behaviour. For example, men—males—are assumed by nature to be more dominant and aggressive than women—females. And if men are violent, then the violent behaviour of other male animals in the wild can supposedly be explained […]
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
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.
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.
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 […]
Dr. Jevgeniy Bluwstein, a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies at the University of Bern, examines how the reductive Western view of landscapes reinforces colonization through exclusionary conservation practices, focusing on a case study of Tarangire National Park in Tanzania. Introducing the term “landscapism,” meaning the “double movement of colonizing landscapes/landscaping colonies,” Bluwstein offers a critical perspective, advocating for viewing landscapes through a lens of relationality.
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 […]
Caio Reisewitz has created an artistic intervention in the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, titled “Suspendre el Cel”. To Suspend the Sky is the artist’s reference to activists shamans Davi Kopenawa and Ailton Krenak, alluding to Indigenous practices and beliefs of Amazonian people that the earth is made out of the sky, so the sky […]
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 […]
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 […]
When we speak of Nature in cities, the question we want to stress is, is nature in cities natural or in fact an artefact? When we speak of natural processes, they of course take place but apart from spontaneous nature, left to random succession, emerging in spaces that Gilles Clément calls the third landscapes, there […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
