Landscape as cultural heritage — has it been overlooked?

Read the story here: Byrummonitor

Landscape projects are removed by the roots and turned into biodiversity areas, climate-adapted spaces or something else entirely.

Landscape architect Kjeld Slot has written a wake-up call to the profession in Byrummonitor: It is “a basic condition in Danish landscape architecture that existing garden and landscape architectural works can be radically changed or removed rather than transformed, without any significant professional resistance.”

His point is that existing landscape projects, for example Svend Hansen’s music garden in Aarhus, 1980 are far too rarely recognised as cultural heritage. The profession has accepted a practice in which the works of previous generations are not granted authority. He also points to competition culture as part of the problem.

“All too often, competitions are launched among the profession’s largest studios, where the premise is that an existing landscape constitutes a problem to be solved, rather than a work to be understood. When studios participate in such competitions without setting fundamental professional requirements, they take on shared responsibility for the erasure of the work.”

The piece is clear in its message and invites debate. You can share your perspective via the link at the top.