Landscape for Architects

3. diciembre 2020

All images courtesy of Landscape for Architects

Landscape for Architects is an ambitious new book by Gabriele G. Kiefer and Anika Neubauer that provides an introduction to landscape architecture through a series of questions about design, answers in the form of precedents, and hundreds of schematic drawings across five trilingual volumes: Building, Landscape, Park, Use, and Qualities.

Neubauer and Kiefer, illustrated here, were inspired by the late landscape architect Hans Loidl, whose book Open(ing) Spaces (with Stefan Bernard) is a popular introduction to landscape design filled with hundreds of step-by-step diagrams.

Landscape for Architects was designed by Fons Hickmann M23, which has collaborated with TU Braunschweig on other books. The paperback is shown here, followed by the hardcover version.

M23's design is all encompassing, wrapping the contents in green covers and matching green end pages to create an impressive object.

The largest of the five volumes is Building/Haus/Casa, which asks questions about everything from context and typology to green facades and indoor greenery.

Though hardly necessary, reading the books in order means starting with the questions.

In this example, "How did the landscape develop?" is accompanied by a playful illustration, a list of references spanning millennia, and a "link" to an answer/precedent: Peter Joseph Lenné's 19th-century urban plan for Potsdam, Germany.

Answers are provided in three of the volumes (Building, Landscape, Park), coming immediately after the questions.

Maps drawn at increasing scales preface the answers, allowing for fairly easy comparison of context, size, shape, etc.

Each answer/precedent is presented across six pages; like the rest of the book, they are provocations and starting points for students to carry out their own in-depth research.