TU Berlin
Faculty VI – Planning, Building, Environment
Institute of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning
ÉLAN :::
Entwerfen von Landschaften
im Anthropozän
Designing Landscapes
in the Anthropocene
Landscape architecture, like urban design and architecture, is an established profession and academic discipline. Landscape architects design planetary futures: they draw, they build, they teach, and they research. The boundary between practice and academia is not important: Landscape architecture students are taught in the studio as well as in the field, and research takes place in libraries as well as in real-world laboratories. Practice, teaching and research intertwine and cross professional and disciplinary boundaries; knowledge becomes transdisciplinary. Moreover, knowledge is generated collectively, in collaboration with other disciplines from the natural and the social sciences, from the humanities and the arts. To serve a globalising world, knowledge is increasingly being created internationally, in collaborations across the hemispheres, with academics and practitioners from Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Most importantly, it travels in many directions, not just from North to South. According to Colombian anthropologist Arturo Escobar, the future of life on this planet requires multidirectional thinking and action, and a ‚pluriversal‘ understanding of design and knowledge. And where else but in the densely built, complex urban landscapes that house fifty percent of the world’s population would professionals and scholars better understand the ‚pluriverse‘ as a world of many worlds, made by many hands, conceived by many souls, together.
At the Chair ‘Designing Landscapes in the Anthropocene’ we believe that landscape architecture has a role to play in an epoch often referred to as the Anthropocene, a term that points at the profound changes that human activity has wrought on all things planetary. Rather than seeing the Anthropocene as a prelude to apocalypse, we propose education, research and civic engagement to mobilise our designerly willpower and creativity to initiate change for the better and more beautiful. We believe that landscape design at all scales is an activity that supports life and its inherent beauty; that the design of space makes a difference in shaping social, environmental and economic realities; and that its aesthetics can inspire concern, critique, engagement, collaboration and change.
The subject area offers teaching and research along the following lines: