Newsletter #2: In-Between Landscapes
Finally, the new year has broken, and we are setting up new directions in this process towards the future; we understand that - in many things - we are "in-between".
It is not the question if we are the salt in the soup in our profession. But, whether we want it or not, each of us, with our attitude and position, is in between and among multiple things.
You can react differently to such a situation. You can try to be more resistant and become a balloon, or you can absorb this being “in-between” and be permeable. By doing so, we become fertilisers of processes.
As Zygmunt Bauman described in his book “Liquid Modernity”, the liquid world is “fast, permeable and changeable“. In our case, fluidity and liquidity help us work and progress: projects get robust, and we calibrate every aspect with utmost attention to fine-tuning.
Three editions of LANDmagazine
The LANDmagazine
With this premise, the title of the last edition of our LANDmagazine, „In-between“, which we published in December, gains even more depth. We started our editorial adventure in 2021 with my friends and outstanding professionals Henning Kluever as well as Andrea Küpfer.
The first volume, “Leading with LANDscape”, was about how we are #LeadingwithLandscape into a future conditioned by nature, which we cannot foresee but which, step by step, we can shape. In the second magazine, with the beautiful illustrations by Carlo Stanga, we explored the “Joy of LANDscape all around us” more deeply and consciously, acknowledging its diversity and potential. Exploring various terrains, including mountains, cities, or deserts, reveals that our connection with nature influences personal and professional bonds, fostering a stronger sense of unity.
Now, with the third volume, it’s all about the in-between. We are closing our trilogy with art and opening up to a new era that is all about osmosis.
From art to urban strategies (Lucio Fontana – The Ramones – Let’s break it up at Triennale Milano)
The first chapter, ‘Thinking Together’, addresses fundamental questions about the relationship between nature and people and methods for scientifically verifying interactions with the landscape and making developments measurable. In the second chapter, ‘Working Together’, we pursue concrete projects in close dialogue with clients. While in the third chapter, ‘Living Together, ‘ we address every day design issues, particularly in urban spaces.
Learning together
We are learning with our projects and partners thanks to the challenges we accept. Moving between human and artificial intelligence, we work towards our goal, #reconnectingpeoplewithlandscape.
The writer Volker Demuth, whose essay collection “Unruhige Landschaften” was recently published and who is one of the many contributors to our third LANDmagazine, phrased it very well:
“We can no longer get around the need to bring the tense relationship between town and country into the landscape. This task includes using expanded urban areas and the frayed edges of cities to create new hybrid forms of urban-rural life that, aided by digital technologies, can lead to local solutions for organising work and life with a more place-centred lifestyle that can restore our firm sense of responsibility for where we live.“
Thomas Schönauer, Universum Cycle (CT Painting)
Inspirational Art
And here comes art as a cultural expression, connecting the topic of human nature with the urban landscape.
Things are becoming more apparent as we head into the future, with boundaries becoming more permeable and giving rise to new dimensions in our awareness. Aesthetic and ethics-driven thinking is propelling us forward, a sentiment reflected in the art of my friend, Thomas Schönauer. These excerpts mirror the fluidity and permeability of landscapes while also capturing their enduring nature. Art and technology go through a very different process of development. In the rare moments when they start overlapping and coinciding with one another, like the Computer Tomography (CT) paintings of Schönauers inspirational Universum Cycle you can find in our LANDmagazine, and the city heat maps produced by LAND with complex satellite imagery, then the interconnectivity of art and science becomes apparent.
I want to close my second newsletter with a quote from Thomas Schönauer, when we, some time ago, moderated by journalist Andrea Bindemann, met with architect Claudia de Bruyn, the director of Museum Küppersmühle, Walter Smerling, in the artists atelier in Düsseldorf-Ratingen. “When the quality of the artwork and the urban context are in harmony, there is a new identity the people living around experience and cultivate“.
Together, we can drive the epochal paradigm shift we need to shape our future; if we can do it with art, the better.
I am happy to discuss all these topics more in-depth with you; perhaps we can meet at one of the upcoming events in which I’m involved.
My very best wishes for 2024!
