In April 2025, the book ‘Woods Go Urban’, co-edited by Lisa Diedrich and international colleagues, authored by researchers of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences SLU Campus Alnarp, received the Critique Award by the Swedish Architects Chamber. This prize has been established to encourage architects, journalists, writers and others to review, debate and analyse Swedish architecture. It is awarded to the author of the best architectural analysis published in the past year or to the person or persons who have made the most remarkable contribution to strengthening an initiated dialogue on architecture and urban planning in recent years.

The jury’s motivation for the 2025 Critique Award

The book Woods Go Urban takes the radical approach of placing the forest in the city. With confidence and research results from landscape laboratories in the Nordic countries, a number of landscape architects give vegetation in general and trees in particular a more natural place in the city – not just in the forest.

Trees are like people – they thrive together. The book’s rich selection of photos and illustrations of the interplay of tree crowns and trunk spaces gives the reader an understanding that, with the right urban planning, trees can become a given space among buildings, streets and parks. Urban planners are given new tools from landscape architecture to create a more climate-proof urban world.

Woods Go Urban is a much-needed shock to casual thinking and an inspiration that helps us see both the trees and the forest. This book challenges and inspires urbanites and urban planners to think in new ways, and to eagerly increase knowledge about the power of trees and vegetation to make the city liveable in the future.

More information (in Swedish):
https://www.arkitekt.se/arkitekturpriser/kritikerpriset/

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