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21. The Landscapists

Description: The Landscapists explores expanding fields of landscape. It began as a commission for Ed Wall to guest-edit an issue of Architectural Design (Wiley 2020) and was developed further through a series of international seminars and a public exhibition. The Landscapists involved almost 100 leading international landscape researchers, designers, artists, and scientists who have shared their unique landscape practices.

The Landscapists asks who defines the landscapes around us? It sets out that landscapes are made and remade through interrelations between people and the worlds around them – from geographers investigating the lives of urban wastelands to landscape architects projecting future cities, and from migrants navigating border systems to artists working with local residents. In contrast to tendencies to emphasise the physical forms of landscapes, with their potential to be redesigned and represented in drawings, The Landscapists brings to the forefront the social structure of landscapes by focusing on a range of critical practices and daily actions. As conventional frames of landscape are challenged, other ways of measuring, mapping, imagining, designing, building and occupying them are revealed. For centuries, artists and designers have represented landscapes of power in paintings and have transformed them through their design proposals. But in recent years, a number of researchers, designers, artists and activists have explored an expanded field of landscape, investigating populations fleeing conflict zones, reimagining cities facing ecological challenges, questioning territorial claims, and critiquing processes of urbanisation.

The Landscapists: Redefining Landscape Relations, a special issue of Architectural Design, was published by Wiley in 2020. The Landscapists Seminars was a 12-week series of daily conversations with landscape architects from around the world conducted over Zoom from March to May, 2020. The Landscapists Exhibition opened in London’s Stephen Lawrence Gallery in May 2021.

The Landscapists project has been shortlisted for the Innovation Award in the Landscape Institute Awards 2021. Read more about the publication, the seminars, and the exhibition.

Date: 2017 – 2021
Credits:
Publication: Guest Editor: Ed Wall; Commissioning Editors: Helen Castle and Neil Spiller; Managing Editor: Caroline Ellerby; Contributors: Pierre Bélanger, Ghazal Jafari, Pablo Escudero, Hernán Bianchi-Benguria, Tiffany Kaewen, and Alexander S. Arroyo, Harry Bix, Neil Brenner and Nikos Katsikis (Urban Theory Lab), Luis Callejas and Charlotte Hansson (LCLA), James Corner (Field Operations), Gareth Doherty and Pol Fité Matamoros, Matthew Gandy, Christina Leigh Geros, Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy (Design Earth), Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman, Richard Mosse, Kate Orff (SCAPE), Toya Peal, Larissa Fassler, Neil Spiller, Tiago Torres Campos (CNTXT), Ed Wall, and Tim Waterman.
Seminars: Organiser and host: Ed Wall. Speakers: Ken Smith (Ken Smith Workshop, New York City), Martí Franch (Estudi Martí Franch, Girona), Martin Rein-Cano (Topotek1, Berlin), Sara Zewde (Studio Zewde, New York City), Eelco Hooftman (Gross.Max, Edinburgh), Bas Smets, (Bureau Bas Smets, Brussels), Luis Callejas (LCLA, Oslo), Chris Reed (Stoss, Boston), Lara Zureikat (CSBE, Amman), James Fox (FFLO, Kent), Jenn Mui (MRG Studio, London), Donncha O Shea (Gustafson Porter + Bowman, London), Ceylan Belek (Martha Schwartz and Partners, London), Giacomo Guzzon (Gillespies, London), Cesare Cardia (Uncommon Land, London), Loretta and Ben Bosence (Local Works Studio, Kent), JJ Watters (Kinnear Landscape Architects, London), Laura Santin & William Roberts (Nomad Studio, New York City and Madrid), Cannon Ivers (LDA Design, London), Jose Alfredo Ramirez & Clara Ortiz (Groundlab, London), Alexandra Steed (Alexandra Steed Urban, London), Yael Bar-Maor (Yael Bar-Maor Landscape Architecture, Haifa), Aniket Bhagwat (M/s. Prabhakar B Bhagwat, Ahmedabad), Richard Broome (Outerspace, London), Harry Bix (East Anglia Records, London), Neil Swanson (Landscape Projects, Manchester), Ashley Conn (Studio Oslo – Landscape Architects, Oslo), Jo Gibbons (J&L Gibbons, London), Will Sandy (Will Sandy Design, London), Fenella Griffin (Untitled Practice, London), Claire Martin (OCULUS, Melbourne), Tom Smith (Spacehub, London), Suzanne O’Connell (The Decorators, Dublin), Stephen Buckle (Aspect Studios, Shanghai), Nans Voron (SCAPE, New York City), Helena Rivera (A Small Studio, London), Ruth Catlow and Tim Waterman (Furtherfield and UCL, London), Dima Zogheib (Arup, London).
Exhibition: Curators: Ed Wall, Emma Colthurst and Alexis Liu; Gallery Curator: David Waterworth (University of Greenwich); Exhibitors: Harry Bix (East Anglia Records); Luis Callejas and Charlotte Hansson (LCLA); James Corner (Field Operations); Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman (ETCFF); Drawing Architecture Studio (Li Han and Hu Yan); Larissa Fassler; Tiago Torres‐Campos (CNTXT); Kate Orff/SCAPE; Ed Wall, Alexis Liu, Emma Colthurst (Project Studio).