New Agenda 3 – Danish Landscape Architecture 2014–2020 Denmark – ‘a landscape architectural superpower’
New Agenda is published every five years or so. Now it’s time for the third installment.
The series follows up on Danmarks Havekunst I-III from 2000-02, which means that the Association of Danish Landscape Architects (DL) here has a – quite exceptional – documented history from the first gardens to the most recent facilities.
Hand-picked by a jury of Nordic landscape architects, the 40 featured projects fall into six categories:
Sea and Beach
Green Heritage
Open Land and Forest
A Greener City
Above Ground
Large-Scale Planning.
Since the climate agenda runs like a common thread through most of the projects, it doesn’t have its own category, like it had in the previous volume.
New Agenda 3 showcases landscape architecture scope and potential to enrich our outdoor environment at a time when the majority of construction projects seem driven by profit, and urban planning’s basic rules are continuously violated. It is therefore up to the landscape architect to ‘counterbalance the modern city’s stone, wood and iron’ – ‘the green’ vs. ‘the grey’, as the legendary G. N. Brandt wrote as early as 1930.
This is how it was – and still is, unfortunately. It is still up to landscape architects to rectify the social and structural mistakes that the ‘proper’ architects and developers excel in making.
The book’s many projects display an impressive diversity, spanning as they do from large infrastructural facilities to small, intimate gardens. The general level of quality is high, and the featured selection might have been much more larger, as many of the ‘discarded’ projects have great potential as well – or as the Norwegian landscape professor Reiner Stange emphasizes: ‘Denmark is a garden and landscape architectural superpower.’
It is still the landscape architect’s job to create works that are useful and beautiful. But that’s not all. In our future sustainable cities, the division between nature and culture needs to be reduced and reimagined. That might be a potential task for landscape architects going forward.
The publication is generously supported by the Bergia Foundation, Margot and Thorvald Dreyer’s Foundation, Havekulturfonden, Karin and Georg Boye’s Foundation and Danish Arts Foundation. The project was initiated by the Association of Danish Landscape Architects, the Danish Association of Architectural Firms and Park and Nature Managers.
New Agenda 3 – Danish Landscape Architecture 2014–2020
Main author: Annemarie Lund
Additional authors: Rainer Stange and Thorbjörn Andersson; 208 pages, large-sized,
paperbound, four colours
ISBN 978-87-92420-66-4
Recommended price: DKK 298
Published by BOGVÆRKET
Eskilstrupvej 34, 4500 Nykøbing Sj.; tel: 21201777; mail: kdh@bogvaerket.dk; www.bogvaerket.dk
