LAE-Landscape Architecture Europe

The mission of the Landscape Architecture Europe - LAE Foundation is to enhance the dialogue in landscape architecture on a European level by publishing a triennial yearbook. LAE started in 2003 and produced so far five yearbooks, and more than 200 beautiful and relevant plans and projects. With these projects and with essays, interviews and portraits LAE explores how landscape architects in Europe work and design: What strategies, tools and methods do they use? What design innovations are taking place? How do they improve the disciplinary domain and effectiveness? These selected projects redefine the scope of a practice where society, politics, ecology and economy meet.

It began with a group of ambitious professionals in the European Foundation for Landscape Architecture (EFLA, today IFLA Europe). Their desire was for landscape architecture to be recognised as an autonomous profession apart from other disciplines – with its own view of the world, its own methodology, its own concepts and expertise – that possesses a distinctively European culture. This aspiration was given shape by a group of kindred spirits, surrounding the Dutch landscape architect Michael van Gessel, who wished to broadcast this message to the world by publishing a book every three years. They took inspiration from the Yearbook for Landscape Architecture and Town Planning in the Netherlands which publishes outstanding projects selected by an independent committee of practitioners.

To realise the European book, the Landscape Architecture Europe Foundation (LAE) was created around a pan-European board of representatives: Meto Vroom (NL, president), Joseph de Gryse (BE), Robert Holden (GB), Annalisa Maniglio Calcagno (IT) and Bet Figueras Ponsa (ES).

The foundation’s first book, Fieldwork, was published in February 2006. Following an open call for entries, the projects featured in the book were selected by an independent jury of practicing landscape architects of different European nationalities. The book was then written by a team of European experts. This process has been repeated three times thus far, resulting in the publication of On Site (2009), In Touch (2012), On The Move (2015) and Care Create Act (2018).

All books are supported by IFLA EUROPE - European Region of International Federation of Landscape Architecture as an increasingly representative showcase for the European profession.

LAE’s books have been distributed by national and international publishers operating in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture and the design disciplines.

LAE has just launched the Call for Landscape Architecture Book #6!

Landscape Architecture Europe (LAE) calls most relevant and exemplary projects for publication in the sixth book on European practice of landscape architecture

Closing date for submissions: 17 April 2020

We are entering the third decade of the 21st century. 2020 is a beautiful date, a double 20 – are we heading for a Twenties revival in creativity, spirit and beauty? At the same time, 2020 is a worrisome date – the planet is on fire, literally in Australia and in Brazil. Will we manage to get tools and techniques in place within this decade which scientists believe is our last chance to undertake action to ensure a habitable environment? Landscape architects cannot turn the planet into a marvel alone, they cannot prevent catastrophe alone. But they can join forces with other actors to take care of, to create and to act for resiliency beauty and survival. Care, create and act are the three design actions we identified as foundational for landscape architecture in the fifth edition of this book series. The sixth edition seeks to build upon this approach.

We are calling for traditional landscape architectural projects as well as for the results of an expanding professional practice within Europe. We are looking for designed and constructed sites of all sizes. We are also interested in receiving strategic projects and research results (i.e. studies and spatial scenarios on climate adaptation, energy transition, urban renewal, heritage development and infrastructure planning) in which the landscape architectural approach is predominant. We are looking for projects that
redefine the playing field and scope of the creative practice, where society, politics, ecology and economy meet, at micro or macro scale, whether long term or ephemeral. LAE wants to explore how landscape architects in Europe are working and designing, on the threshold of a new decade, to sustain our beautiful planet and all life on it.

As always, an independent jury of practising landscape architects from different European countries will select the projects that will be published in the LAE book. The jury for this edition consists of Jandirk Hoekstra (chair) (NL), Daia Stutz, S2L (CH), Varpu Mikola, Nomaji (FIN), Catarina Raposo, BALDIOS (P) and Luka Javornik, Studio AKKA (SLO). The book will be produced in collaboration with a team of professional European design critics.

The selection procedure will be completed in September 2020, after which entrants will be informed. The book will be published mid 2021.

For conditions and data form click here

Previous Editions

landscape architecture europe #5 - Care, create, act

This fifth edition of the book series Landscape Architecture Europe shows and reflects on 48 contemporary projects, selected by a practitioners’ jury out of over 200 entries from all over Europe.The selected projects are groundbreaking: some for their innovative ways of tackling sustainability, others for their political stance concerning concepts such as nature and democracy.

This richly illustrated book offers thought-provoking texts in support of three landscape architectural approaches to the challenges of the 21st century: to care for people,places and what is already there, to create urban landscapes of new kinds, and to act and move the course of things.

In addition to these explorations two portraits were written: one about the young Hungarian landscape architect Dominka Tihany and her experiences with bottom-up projects; and one about Dirk Sijmons, a well known Dutch landscape architect, and recent winner of the Sir Jellicoe Award.

Nature and Democracy are subject of the two essays in the book that consists of 320 richly illustrated pages, all edited by Lisa Diedrich (editor-in-chief, D), Mark Hendriks (NL), Claudia Moll (CH), Mike Friesen (SE) and Christel Lindgren (SE).

landscape architecture europe #4 - On the Move

On the Move is the fourth volume of the Landscape Architecture Europe (LAE) series that presents and discusses contemporary European landscape architectural projects.

On the Move presents projects that were gathered in response to a democratic call for entries, selected by a rigorous and independent jury of European landscape architects and shaped for publication through broadminded editing. As a result, the book showcases the ‘state of the art’ and raises awareness about what and how landscape architecture can contribute to society.

On the Move consists of a selection of 45 projects – 11 features (10 pages each) and 34 icons (2 pages each) – complemented by essays, an introduction and an epilogue. The book is structured into three main themes.

The first theme considers landscape architecture as based on working with processes and practices, leading to a different understanding of design: as transformation of that which already exists on a site. This chapter explores the mindset of transformation and its effects on the European built work. Examples are Berlin’s Gleisdreieck – where the designers took the old materials and traces and structures and interpreted them anew to fit current urban practices – and Guimarães in Portugal where the designers updated a
whole series of urban spaces, but rather than playing out heritage against design, united them in transformation.

The second chapter addresses the theme of curation. To counteract absent public funds and inherited functionalist planning practices,Europe is currently experiencing a trend towards the creation of spaces from the bottom up, imagined and built by amateurs instead of by professionals. This has implications for designers. Instead of retreating to the margins of society, some landscape architects are abandoning their identity as dominant creators and reinventing themselves as co-creators, especially for public and community spaces. These emerging practices typically tackle overlooked spaces, such as the abandoned airport of Tempelhof in Berlin. Or in Budapest where a landscape architect initiated collective engagement through art and community projects and managed to re-activate underused and worn-out public and semi-public courtyards.

The third chapter heavy heritage considers the physical legacy of European heavy industry. Physical solutions often cure symptoms instead of tackling the core of the problem.The physical heritage relies on a mental one: the duality of nature and culture. This chapter reframes the question in order to break down the dualism. The first signs are already in sight: in Amsterdam, a waste dump has become part of a reinvented water ecology. Desolate mining landscapes, such as Carbonia in Sardinia and Lens in Northern
France, have redefined their fossil exploitation economies into self-learning social ecologies.

European landscape architecture builds on a common horizon of understanding and yet produces quality works of very different expression and style. The four books in the Landscape Architecture Europe series – Fieldwork (2006), On Site (2009), In Touch (2012) and On the Move (2015) – provide insight into the fringes of our traditional practice, where ideas and topics can lead to creative projects that are of interest to the profession as a whole.

Enjoy reading, get on the move!

Landscape Architecture Europe is produced in collaboration with IFLA Europe.