Brochure on German Landscape Architecture Prize 2023 competition published
Creating quality awareness for the built environment
Documentation for the German Landscape Architecture Prize 2023 competition published
The current competition brochure was published on September 15, 2023 on the occasion of the ceremony for the awarding of the German Landscape Architecture Prize 2023. The bilingual documentation presents the “Neue Ufer, Überlingen” project, which was honored with the German Landscape Architecture Prize 2023, and presents the award-winning works in the categories “Plant use”, “Public space as a center”, “Living environment”, “Landscape and urban development” , “Young Landscape Architecture”, “Landscape Architecture in Detail”, “Historic Sites”, “Maturity Test” and “Green-Blue Infrastructure”.
In his foreword, bdla board member Franz Reschke summarizes the 16th year of the competition. “A look at the work shows that maximum restraint or minimal invasiveness is not always the answer - landscape architecture is still and will continue to impress with its intense spatial and atmospheric qualities. (…) Each of the projects tries and succeeds to some extent in making the big questions, themes and concepts a reality.” As an example, he singles out the more than 30-year-old Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, which was awarded in the “Maturity Test” category; As a result, it is outstanding “from the concept sketch, from the position and attitude to the design, to the built project, to the habitat for animals and people, to a major milestone in the discussion about the parks of the future.”
bdla President Prof. Stephan Lenzen also draws the line from the past to today in his contribution, entitled “From today onwards they are immortal”. 30 years of the German Landscape Architecture Prize - from the honoring of Prof. Hans Luz, Stuttgart, in 1993 for his life’s work to the “Neue Ufern, Überlingen”, for which relais Landschaftsarchitekten, Berlin, received the Dent Landscape Architecture Prize in 2023. 16 competition years make a “significant contribution to creating an awareness of quality for our built environment: for landscape architecture, architecture, building and living – for green building culture”. And he goes even further: “We need research-based project experiments and courageous pioneering designs to find new ways. Radical designs with a clear stance for climate-friendly landscape architecture. The German Landscape Architecture Prize shines a spotlight on groundbreaking projects and their authors.” And he attaches hope to this: “Hopefully they will change our world sustainably and thus become immortal.”
The “Neues Ufer, Überlingen” has permanently changed a two and a half kilometer long and in parts very narrow section of the Lake Constance town. “Courage for the park” is the motto at one point in Gesa Loschwitz-Himmel’s text about the award-winning project. The planners and the client, the Landesgartenschau Überlingen 2020 GmbH, had this equally. Where asphalt wasteland once predominated, the landscape architects with a great sense of the surroundings and bold and radical interventions created an unspectacular open space on the shores of Lake Constance in the best sense of the word. The jury judged: “It is a facility that credibly promises long-lasting vitality for the future due to its roots in the landscape and its very own dynamics.”
Everything can be read and viewed in the documentation of the German Landscape Architecture Prize 2023 competition, published by bdla, on 84 pages in German and English.
The brochure can be ordered free of charge from bdla .
