Winners 2016 –

The winner of the 2025 Honour Award is Günther Vogt (LI, CH), recognised for his distinct and enduring position in contemporary landscape architecture. Since establishing his practice 25 years ago—following his departure from the office of Kienast Vogt after the passing of Dieter Kienast—Vogt has consistently shaped an approach that operates beyond disciplinary conventions and resists simple classifications.

His process-oriented practice unfolds through disciplined observation, investigative patience, research-informed inquiry, driven by an eclectic curiosity that draws simultaneously from scientific knowledge and artistic sensibility — an attitude that neither reduces landscape to strictly formal composition nor to merely utilitarian topography, but treats it as a carefully assembled field of fragments, traces, and negotiations. In Vogt’s projects, geology, ecology, climate, cultural traces, and infrastructures are curated as “gestures” — neither fully determined nor finalised. Without collapsing into a single narrative, they form stratified and open-ended spatial constructs that resist closure and spread beyond the visible.

In a time when mainstream landscape architecture often persists in simplified representations of nature and ecological measures in the landscape, Vogt takes a more demanding stance: ecology is invisible and not something to be depicted but rather negotiated through ontologies and agencies that cohabit the site. The projects by Vogt compress territorial complexity into perceivable yet ambiguous and low-res experiences, never through explicit narration but through a choreography of clues — employing abstraction, juxtaposition, objectification, fragmentation, and reappropriation as operative tools.

Vogt’s approach often revolves around the compression and transposition of spatial and temporal scales, reframing or unframing landscape as simultaneously archival, experimental, and projective: recording the past, engaging with the present, and opening into possible futures. This emphasis on the simultaneous presence of multiple non-synchronous temporalities, held together within the evolving ground of the site, echoes Giorgio Agamben’s notion of contemporariness as “that relationship with time that adheres to it through a disconnection”.

Vogt’s projects reflect an understanding of landscape architecture as a cumulative, evolving field of knowledge, where each project expands the studio’s capacity to observe, to collect, and to articulate the complexities of landscape as material for continuous experimentation and discovery.

This year, the LILA Office Award turns its gaze to the center of the profession — not to its margins nor speculation, but to the persistent, complex work of shaping the shared ground of cities. What does urban life require today? How do we inhabit and imagine togetherness in a world marked by ecological precarity, infrastructural stress, and social fragmentation? And what is the role of the landscape architect in holding space — materially, politically, and aesthetically — for emerging forms of coexistence?

The editors of Landezine recognize BOGL for their steadfast and articulate response to these questions. With offices in Copenhagen and Oslo, the practice has developed a distinct capacity to navigate the layered demands of contemporary public space — not through formal overstatement, but through calibrated attentiveness. Their work moves fluently between scales and typologies: stitching together post-industrial voids, infrastructural seams, and residual urban surfaces into sites of both ecological acceleration and collective intimacy. BOGL’s projects offer spatial sequences of quiet intent — where patchwork becomes structure, reuse becomes narrative, and openess becomes invitation. The studio’s strength lies not in aesthetic signature, but in a practiced ethos of responsiveness: to site, to community, to future conditions.

BOGL demonstrates that restraint and ambition need not be opposites. Their projects reuse materials with precision, embed climate adaptation within the texture of everyday life, and foreground the social without forgetting the multispecies. For their consistent and evolving contribution to a grounded, civic, and future-aware landscape architecture, we are pleased to name BOGL the recipient of the 2025 LILA Office Award.

Parco della Pace is a transformation of a former airport into a vast ecological machine that operates simultaneously as water infrastructure, biodiversity habitat, and public space. Parco della Pace offers a complex interplay of geometries—traces of the former runway, the rigid grids of adjacent military grounds, and the superimposed logic of new water systems—generating a distinct spatial language that remains legible at multiple scales.

What distinguishes this project is its unapologetic embrace of scale, engineering, and earthworks, yet without sacrificing ecological subtlety. The site functions as a large-scale detention basin, integrating hydrological processes into a resilient landscape capable of absorbing and slowly releasing floodwaters. Water becomes both technical infrastructure and ecological mediator, generating new habitat edges and transitional ecotones that allow species to recolonize this former infrastructural void.

Beyond its technical accomplishments, Parco della Pace also offers a productive ambiguity between program and process. Today, it offers a base that is generous, extensive, and resolutely territorial in scale. In time, it will negotiate between the formal and the open-ended, between cultural programming and wilderness zones left to self-organisation. The project resists the impulse for total scripting, instead establishing a layered framework that will evolve across ecological time. In this sense, the park presents a form of engineered openness, where large-scale interventions initiate processes whose full resolution remains necessarily incomplete.

Place Flagey presents a thoughtful adaptation of an urban square originally designed by Latz + Partner in 2007, situated above an underground parking facility, and updated in 2025 by Kollektif Landscape. The jury recognized the recent intervention as a model for how existing urban surfaces can be recalibrated in response to the escalating demands of climate resiliency. The insertion of new vegetation is both precise and strategic. Without compromising the square’s existing programmatic flexibility—allowing for fairs, markets, and public events—, and in a constrained setting on top of an underground parking, the designers have introduced biodiversity, microclimatic benefits, and shaded refuges along its periphery.

Although the adaptation subtly shifts the atmosphere of the square, it remains in a respectful dialogue with the original design by Latz + Partner. The result is neither an erasure nor an overstatement, but rather a measured augmentation: a restrained, site-specific calibration that addresses the needs of a changing urban climate without abandoning the integrity of the inherited spatial identity. The jury regarded the project not only as a recognition of the design itself, but also of the progressive stance taken by the commissioning city authorities—an approach that seeks quality in frugal and incremental processes.

The jury recognized the imaginative adaptive reuse of a former wastewater infrastructure, from a discarded concrete object into a lively playscape that engages children in an unusual setting and encourages them to discover new means of play. It is precisely the abstract dimension of the playground, these unique specifics, that separate the playscape from strictly catalogue-based playgrounds and contribute to children’s emancipation and development. In doing so, it affirms play as a creative, cognitive, and social practice—contributing to children’s emancipation from rigid, predefined systems of interaction. The result is an outstanding playscape, both ecological due to adaptive reuse and socially fulfilling.

The jury recognizes the Yanlord atrium for its poetic sculptural qualities, offering a playful answer to a dilemma of sufficient conditions for social interaction and space for vegetation and water in a limited space. White semi-transparent platforms ascend from a lush planting like mist, where one can imagine floating above the garden or experience a sense of lightness. The abstract cloud-staircase also offers a social platform, connecting three floors and inviting neighbours to meet »in the air«.

The park operates as a life-catcher, drawing in both human and non-human agencies. It is conceived as a public space whose primary function is ecological, where human presence is invited yet not prioritized. Through a subtle modulation of topography, the park amplifies the temporal rhythms of tidal fluctuations, transforming a gently graded surface into a dynamic substrate for biodiversity and spontaneous development.

While introducing softness to the pragmatism of an urban harbour environment, the design employs a sober formal language – orthogonal gabions and descending stair-like structures serve as deliberate counterpoints to the unpredictability and apparent disorder of non-human life processes. In this clear interplay between geometric precision and biological contingency, the park stages an ongoing negotiation between control and emergence, order and flux. It becomes not only a site of encounter but also a quiet manifesto on the coexistence of human intention and ecological autonomy.

The jury awarded the LILA Landscape and Architecture Award to the Gulbenkian Foundation Garden Extension by VDLA and Kengo Kuma. The project is remarkable for its interplay between old and new: between existing architecture and new interventions, between the formal garden and the more fluid, confidently shaped new spaces. These new spaces may even subtly reference traditional Portuguese paving, such as the iconic Rossio square, often mistakenly attributed to Burle Marx.

What stands out is how the design engages with its historical context. It compresses over six decades of evolving design attitudes into a layered and ambiguous experience—one that invites theoretical inquiry. The new garden challenges modernist dichotomies: it appears porous, operating as a membrane between the built and the grown, between past metanarratives and emerging ecological uncertainties. The new roof structure plays an important role, complementing the dynamism and lushness of the garden—its lightness challenges the monumentality of the existing museum building. The design is a subtle dialogue machine. Everything is in flux, and the strength of this project lies precisely here—not in resolving tensions, but in sustaining and enhancing them.

The portfolio of Ana Garrido marks the early contours of a versatile and experimental landscape practice, one animated by a palpable joy in making. Trained as a dancer, Garrido brings movement into the space of landscape architecture not only as metaphor but as method — approaching sites as performative terrains, where bodily presence becomes a mode of spatial inquiry. The design process oscillates between disciplines, allowing choreography to leak into drawing, digital into analogue, reflecting a promising and restless creative force that refuses to settle in a singular approach to landscape.

MVVA was established in 1982 in New York City by Michael Van Valkenburgh and today comprises over 100 people in four offices. Their portfolio features an astounding number of dramatically diverse works of all scales, from complex waterfronts, flood infrastructure, parks, plazas, and campuses to tiny courtyards.

A subtle and particular MVVA’s touch is tangible throughout the portfolio. It is a quiet, yet recognizable presence, unconcerned with the passing trendy aesthetic regimes and introduced so diligently, it always positively complements landscape’s performative functions and ultimately deepens the experience. MVVA’s design approach reflects a respectful yet confident and playful conversation between expression, function, and the dynamics of natural processes.

Their projects feel immersive and comfortable, almost as if they aim to embrace the visitor through the outstanding use of topography and vegetation, as is visible in Brooklyn Bridge Park, Chelsea Cove, and others. Another distinguishing feature in MVVA’s work is the use of stone, often in the form of pavement or seating areas, but also in a bolder display, like the beautifully strange ice wall and playscape in Teardrop Park, stone work in Gathering Place in Tulsa or marble slabs in the Boston Children’s Museum Plaza. Such creative translation of everyday material into an uncanny landscape experience is vital for awakening the landscape into public perception.

Wagon Landscaping is a Paris-based practice that has been featured on Landezine for many years now. They gave lectures for our platform, and our enthusiasm for their work has only been growing with time, mainly because we see it as a more and more relevant and interesting for wider use. Although their projects address a narrow niche of small-scale situations, the modes of attention and engagement with landscape that Wagon practices offer pertinent answers to how we could rethink the approach to landscape in other typologies and scales.

Their work is often conceptually intriguing and bold, yet based on minimal transformation, mainly dealing with conditions for growth and studying dynamics of the soil, plants and water. A range of projects address asphalt opening and investigate the aesthetics that emerge from an ethical position of leaving the material in place. Although it could be seen as a reference to artist Lois Weinberger’s work titled Burning and Walking (1992), Wagon took the approach further into research and a range of diverse applications. They build most of their projects by themselves; the office is also well-equipped with shovels, rakes and hoes.

The questions that arise from this position are a discussion we need to have. How much should we change our engagement with landscape, program, transformation, and maintenance to minimize negative environmental impact? Where is the sensible and possible line between emission-heavy constructions and Wagon’s DIY reuse approach?

Through their clever landscape ideas and the masterful Versailles School-educated practice, Wagon addresses big issues on a small scale and establishes itself as a unique voice that should be heard widely in our global professional community.

The jury recognises a sensible uncovering of the palimpsest and handling the ‘objects trouves’ from various layers of time. Specifically, the jury appreciated the use of waste and rubble found on site and the different creative transformations into very distinct and unconventional landscape features that spark thoughts and reflection, such as the retaining walls or the objects found in the paths and lapidarium. The rubble was used as an aggregate for the concrete, perhaps abstracting the strata and suggesting that an essential layer of history is buried underneath. The jury appreciates that even with the park’s most monumental features, the designers introduced a sense of playfulness and dynamism that eases the heaviness this memorial could otherwise embody.

Besides the site’s sensitive historical aspects, the designers established new access to park spaces for as wide a group of visitors as possible. Natural processes are invited to develop in the park, rendering the rubble mound a ruin taken over by life, establishing itself as Fourth Nature. It invites multi-species populations into the same space, a public space that, by definition, is a shared space.
The jury found the park’s design to be a coherent and well-set attitude that can elegantly overcome intricate complexities of memory. This approach enhances a landscape project as a living memory of several temporalities, anthropic, mineral and plant, without one overhanging the other in a context still relevant today.

With the expansion of the newly built and fairly dense urban fabric, Airlie offers a platform for a healthy life, both human and non-human. In spatial terms, it features a variety of scales, from cosy small spaces under the trees to a vast circle-shaped clearing. It seems like a contemporary interpretation of the previously existing agricultural fields with the relatively large open spaces and more shaded spaces under trees, which will develop over time and establish a tangible relationship with the surrounding cultural landscape, mainly through plant selection, distribution and creatively situated mowing regimes.

We applaud the team’s perseverance in meeting the landscape requirements over a long period of time, adapting to the programmatic constraints and reinforcing the conceptual qualities, even though the landscape is all too often sacrificed for the sake of the performance.

This landfill transformation is a low-budget effort to establish a welcoming landscape for Brooklynites. The MVVA team, limited by a small budget, excels in precision, focusing only on what truly matters in designing an escape from the dense city, a space that is more open to the sky and sea and not burdened by many programs, shapes and features. In Shirley Chisholm State Park, MVVA exposes the very core of landscape architecture as a discipline that is able to transform tight budgets into flourishing and kind landscape gestures, improving human and non-human lives. It shows how important it is to have a truly open space that is undetermined, less specified, a space that breaths and leaves one to simply be in the landscape.

The Passage and The Smithy is about how to think and transform small towns, how to connect small patches of common space in a useful, coherent and meaningful public space. The new connection is not just well-structured, robust, and resistant enough for public use, but it also exudes a warm and inviting aura.
The atmosphere is defined by the comfortable shade of local limestone, which is, through a range of different treatments, a complex design layer on its own. The space is flexible, unobtrusive, meticulously designed, and rich in storytelling. The interaction and articulated level of definition between landscape and architecture offer a delicate balance between design determination and the sense of a liberating, usable area for an active urban social life.

Science Courtyard finds an outstanding way to introduce a small-scale layer to a previously unexceptional campus landscape. It introduces a masterfully articulated gradient in the material palette and plant species. It contributes to biodiversity and invites processes of growth and spontaneous change, all spiced with creatively designed elements, such as a seating area made of logs and play of mineral pavement, topography, planting, etc. The project reveals and brings into focus the processual nature of the landscape and favours a more relaxed and experimental approach to design. The garden is also a landscape laboratory for the designers as they intend to monitor and learn from it.

Feyssine Park in Lyon is a gentle intervention in a well-established alluvial forest, executed on-site more than 20 years ago. The distinctively formal design language of the 90’s does not seem to obstruct the qualities of the park in any way. Moreover, the park turned out to be visionary and prophetic for its time, as nowadays, there is a widespread tendency to keep more of the untamed natural succession in city centres. The main part of the design is a system of paths that transverse the area or wrap it, as is the case of the circular path that surrounds a grove of poplar trees and orchids. With its strong axes, the park offers spacious vistas, clearings, views of the river Rhone and plenty of soft green tissue to escape the ‘too-muchness’ of urbanity.

The jury appreciated Feyssine’s reluctance to impress as its goal is to offer a simple, no-nonsense, yet high-quality open space on a very tight budget of 10 euros/m2 (early 2000s, app $1/ft2). It’s also worth noting the long-term relationship between the large-scale projects of several generations of contemporary landscape architects on large areas of land, reflecting the interpretive spirit of l’Ecole de Versailles, influenced by one of the founders, Michel Corajoud.

Tatiana Nozaki’s portfolio showcases several elaborate political statements questioning complex social and environmental situations. Tatiana fearlessly addresses those issues with a visionary approach, committed to finding an appropriate ethical position, as well as spatial response. Her projects confidently tackle visible and invisible forces that take part in the production of space. Precise and poetic visual communication effectively complements project objectives. Diversity in graphics reflects the ability to approach projects with an open mind and readiness for a more nonlinear design process and provocative outcome.

Prof. Dr Lisa Diedrich (b. 1965, Minden, Germany) studied landscape architecture, architecture, urbanism and has a certificate in journalism. She held several academic positions as a professor of landscape architecture; the more recent include the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and, since this year, she has been a professor at the Walter Gropius Chair, University of Buenos Aires, Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urbanism, Argentina. Her teaching record spans over two decades and comprises various landscape architecture programmes at universities in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, Argentina and Australia.

Besides the plethora of remarkable positions and achievements in the academic sphere, the editors of Landezine specifically recognise Diedrich’s outstanding contribution to the professional discussion on topics concerning landscape architecture. Through her work as editor-in-chief of LAE – Landscape Architecture Europe and co-editor-in-chief of ‘scape, the International Magazine for Landscape Architecture and Urbanism, she has continuously taken leadership in bringing in focus topics and notions relevant to our time. Both publications significantly impacted how we think about European landscape architecture and with ‘scape also internationally.

The editors of Landezine further recognise Diedrich’s profound ability to voice her thoughts on practice. Her writings beautifully balance the professional, grounded, objective critique with more personal, often poetic notions and comparisons. Her soberly precise and methodological yet at the same time abstract, ‘full-bodied’ vocabulary reflects the very contrasts embedded in the design process of landscape architects.

LILA Honour Award 2023 celebrates Diedrich’s already outstanding career that will hopefully inspire many landscape architects to participate in reflection, to be curious and continuously challenge their work.

Battleiroig is a multidisciplinary firm celebrated for its innovative and sustainable designs that have made a significant impact on the field of landscape architecture both within Spain and Europe. Founded in Barcelona, Spain, by Enric Batlle and Joan Roig in 1981, the firm has gained international recognition for its progressive approach to design. They have been at the forefront of the ‘Catalan wave’ of the nineties, pushed by Oriol Bohigas’ plans for The Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games, which made spectacular never seen before projects possible. The ‘wave’ included names such as EMBT, RCR Arquitectes, Arriola & Fiol arquitectes, Manuel Ruisánchez, MICHELE & MIQUEL, Bet Figueras, Beth Gali, Teresa Galí-Izard, later EMF and others. Already in that time, the work of Batlleiroig helped bring contemporary design attitudes from the region into an international focus and also influence.

The editors of Landezine recognize Batlleiroig’s multidisciplinary approach that has been continuously bringing projects that challenge their briefs, find smart answers and materialize in aesthetically convincing creations fit to their time and context. There is an evident omnipresent quality in the design language of their work – a mix of subtle but still joyful play and, at the same time, calm sobriety that often supports witty solutions.

The project for Garraf Landfill, also awarded LILA 2023 in Revisited Projects category, was based on a landscape idea that served as the main guideline for this very technical transformation. The Forest Path cemetery questions the very structure of symbolic particularities of landscape in terms of our relationship to life and death and proposes a shift of the spiritual to the immediate nature. The Scenic Path Along Igualada’s Old Gypsum Mines was awarded LILA 2019 in Public Category for its unique blend of subtle design that explores existing landscape qualities and a new layer of playfulness that gives the project a new frame. In Esplugues de Llobregat’s modification of the General Metropolitan Plan, they questioned how a productive landscape could be made fit for public use in an innovative way.

The editors of Landezine appreciate the office’s fitness to conquer complex problems and come up with solutions that can move visitors rather than entertain them.

The Dark Line is a former railway that, for most of the 20th century, served as the main transport route for coal to nearby ports. After the closure of the mines, the area, due to its scenic qualities, became increasingly popular with visitors. Now the Dark Line is a part of the tourism infrastructure emphasising the area’s industrial heritage.

The Dark Line is a generous, confident and yet careful intervention that materialises through a sequence of uniquely moulded rebars. The choice of the material fits the postindustrial site and handles all topographical anatomies, the site’s historical charge and its purpose seemingly effortlessly. Complementing the lush green vegetation, the dark brown steel carries a dense atmosphere along the former railway and beautifully balances the transitional character of this space with a sequence of ambiences where one can stop, rest and observe.

From a phenomenological perspective, the rebars are, essentially, materialised cross-sections that outline the elements such as fences, benches, and pavement. Elements are described by shaping the rebars as if they exist only through a series of descriptions.

Besides the well-crafted material, the jury appreciates how masterfully the designers embraced and responded to simple spatial facts that often go ignored in landscape architecture, those concerning the shifting conditions of light, surrounding vegetation, morphology and cultural memory.

The jury finds the Dark Line project as a sublime intervention that respects the local ecology and greatly enriches the site’s functional, historical and aesthetical dimensions with incredible charisma and grace.

Bridgefoot Street Park is a story about public space, community participation, circular economy, and ecological measures, and, above all, it is a project that well reflects our growing care for social and environmental issues of urban open space in the 21st century.

DFLA carefully embedded particular design approaches that have been occurring in the landscape architecture community in the past decade into a successful whole. The ‘beautiful messiness’ of the design language of the concrete surfaces reminds us of Catherine Mosbach’s approach to shape-finding. They suggest free use and are a platform for the community to get together and play. The ‘curiosity’ of the hill composed of demolition debris reminds us of Governor’s Island in NYC.

But it is not only the debris that forms the play of topography; other elements found on site were catalogued and were given a second life, a new meaning and a new purpose in a creative way. This is one of the most important challenges for landscape architects, namely recycling, upcycling and reducing the shipment of material to its minimum.

Bridgefoot Street Park is an extremely well designed hectare of urban land. The jury also praises the universal value of Bridgefoot Street Park; cities of various latitudes will hopefully learn from this approach and will have a benchmark for a reference.

C21 is a small, almost left-over space by the Atelierhaus, a building where creative freelancers and artists live and work. Despite the scale of the site, rajek barosch landscape architecture managed to design a complex but comfortable space that takes into account the surroundings, water management, the residents and biodiversity.

It is a densely planted small piece of urban wilderness, wedged in between a road, an entrance in the underground garage, air-ventilation infrastructure, the building and the train tracks. The jury appreciated how these site-specific conditions were allowed to co-exist with the design. Similar to Bridgefoot Street Park, the C21 garden well represents the future of compact cities where small spaces will need to take on such elaborate designs in order to improve the quality of living for all living beings.

Although this urban landscape is intended for a relatively slim layer of the local social strata, one can easily imagine such a design attitude can cater for the needs of more diverse profiles and age groups. The jury applauded the incredibly effective use of space and, above all, the open dialogue between the garden and the surroundings – contribution to the genius loci that well reflects living in the Anthropocene.

The landscape for Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture is a multidisciplinary effort to establish a diverse and healthy working, studying and dwelling environment.

From the design perspective, MASS Design Group found a delicate balance between complementing architecture with very subtle beautification, empowering campus spaces, immediate agricultural land fields embedded in the campus, the rural landscape outside the campus and nature.

The design for the campus is based on the health and well-being of people, animals and the environment. The plan extends to protecting two savannah zones, a wetland buffer, and corridors for biodiversity. It implements wastewater systems and on-site waste management and is overall a highly ecological plan. It achieves many goals relevant to the site, programme and challenges of today whilst considering localities, carefully interwoven in the design and building of architecture and landscape.

Carve’s work in the historic Tophane Park is largely based on a curious object made of stone. It seems that with its contemporary appearance it questions its historic surroundings. It is a complex morphology that offers many different types of play. In Carve’s words, it comprises stimulating challenges for ‘sliding, stepping, climbing, lounging, crawling, performing, balancing’ and also invites other unforeseen means of interaction. All in one excellent exercise in shape and material. The jury praised the use of local craftsmanship. The shaping of the stone wouldn’t be possible in many other countries due to high expenses, which, essentially, makes it site-specific.

Furthermore, due to its sculptural quality, it doesn’t necessarily look like a playground. The design of the playground holds many situations with an abstract charge; there is a hole that can act as a door, and there is a clear distinction between being inside and outside, up and down, so children may see it as a fortress, a space-ship, a creature from another world …

The object’s context, everlasting material, contemporary shape, and its relation to the park and the trees offer enough contrasts and use interpretations that engage the imagination of children much more than conventional, catalogue-based playgrounds.

Garraf is a long-term infrastructure project that transformed a vast amount of waste into agricultural land in its final step. The jury appreciated the role of design in this complex infrastructural landscape rehabilitation project since the entire programme for the closure of the Garraf Landfill was based on an initial landscape idea. The result is an interesting morphology that tells the story of its past with a beautiful surface fit for future use.

Ruby Zielinski is currently finishing her masters in landscape architecture at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. She has a bachelor degree (BFA) in Graphic Design from the Memphis College of Art, studied mathematics in Arkansas and also describes herself as a musician, storyteller and explorer. Her background, the diversity of skills and interests perhaps contributed to her visibly colourful approach to problem solving. Her portfolio reflects remarkable understanding of spatial complexities concerning function, heritage, ecology, and community engagement. The editors of Landezine also appreciate the clear and aesthetically sound visual communication and experimental approach.

Gilles Clément (1943) is a French landscape architect or better ‘paysagiste’, having a more garden design-related background. He is also a botanist, entomologist, and writer. His most important achievements are both in theory and practice. Through his work, Clément shows many paths to a more biodiverse future as he focuses on what truly matters to the well-being of all species. His approach is about effortlessness, working with natural forces and always celebrating diversity. It is a treasure of knowledge and a showcase of attitudes fit for the future, hence of great importance to our global professional community.

Bureau B+B has been around for more than 40 years. In The Netherlands it is righteously considered a cradle of successful landscape architects. Despite the vast portfolio and the inseparable heritage of B+B, the editors of Landezine were convinced and impressed by the latest projects that were designed by a team of young designers.

We recognize the work of Bureau B+B, mainly for their ability of combining innovative engineering approaches with context based design. They master a diverse span of attitudes; from being subtle and quiet, to making radical changes, or being playful. B+B’s recent designs reflect all the needed skills for handling complex tasks; from a busy urban train station to residential landscapes fit for the future, to wetlands.

But it is the work that tackles heritage sites that really separates B+B from an already remarkable crowd of Dutch landscape architects. The precision that is found in Tempel and Nieuw Rhodenrijs Estates or the conceptual clarity of the LILA 2019 winning project Objets Trouvés reflects the ability to untangle time-related complexities, to curate and to offer new, meaningful experiences.

Cycling Through is an ongoing project in Limburg, Belgium, where three stages of the project are realised (Cycling Through Heathland, Cycling Through Trees, and Cycling Through Water) with further ‘Cycling Through the Underground’ still underway.

The project deals with the restructuring of the Limburg area, where coal mining was closed throughout the 1980s and 1990s. A new identity and strategy for the province were envisioned, namely cycling tourism, that would take visitors out in the landscape and emphasise both the natural and cultural/industrial heritage. The team at Tourism Limburg was inspired by the Norway Tourist Routes, specifically how they connect scenic places and design.

This tiny urban backyard was transformed into a rich and dense layering of atmospheres and uses. The design recycles already extracted but discarded granite blocks from a local quarry – a sustainable attitude of working with the land. The charcoal grey, or ‘Graveyard’ granite, as central feature, pays homage to the depths of the local strata. The design explores the conventional concept of extending the interior spaces into the garden, yet done by an interweaving and shifting of wild landscape, threshholds and architectural planes. So, the tiny garden space is experienced as much larger than it is. The sunken garden ‘quarry’ is embedded in a dense thicket of birches and hemlocks, creating a mysterious atmosphere which neither the body, mind nor spirit can tire of.

For an American context, the Quarry garden is surprisingly modest, effortlessly disconnecting from the more traditional codes where a garden would often be dominated by an abundance of features, shapes and things.

The project by Kotsiuba offers a rich experience for the IT community on the campus. It responds to the blend of the post-industrial and corporate character of the site by the subtle play of pavement and establishing garden-like ambiences. There are two main open areas for events that reflect the urban scale of the project. A thick woodland band that includes playgrounds and sports areas buffers the campus space from a busy road. The uncluttered detailing provides an open and flowing space and contrasts with the articulated and diverse facades of the buildings.

The 129 km long, 900 hectare restoration of Erhai Lake greatly improves the quality of the “iconic yet filthy water” while connecting it to the surrounding towns. The lake has spiritual value for many communities, such as the Shuanglang and Xizhou, and serves as a place of worship for the Bai people, an ethnic minority of over 50% of Dali. The beautiful aquatic, blooming Ottelia acuminata is an indicator species and its significant return demonstrates the new sustainability of the lake.

The developed masterplan uses dynamic measures and methods in diverse scales to limit poor development practices and respond to social challenges, achieving maximal ecological benefit with minimal human intervention. With a multitude of government and local players, the project reinvigorates and monitors the entire watershed with waterscape management. The included slow traffic ways and facilities have created a boom in daily usage of the lake.

The project well addresses the dialogue between different scales – the well articulated and complex general layout of the park and the ‘touch and feel’ scale, sensitive and rich in detail. It establishes simple and unpretentious spaces with care and sincerity to its visitors.

It presents a courageous and intelligent use of color and proposes an ambience that, managing to constitute an excellent playground for children, escapes the banality of the usual catalogue-based playgrounds It also succeeds in involving a great diversity of uses to all ages of visitors, demonstrating the significant advantages of less determined spaces.

No site is ‘tabula rasa’, but sometimes, sites demand more creation than translation. This is the case with The Unbound, an imaginative design for a tourist resort based on being with the landscape, observing nature, and participating in food production. Despite the non-site-specific design language that unnecessarily neglects this area’s history as a characteristic dutch polder, the design for this high-end tourist resort adds to the bigger picture of a new, more natural green recreational wedge in the city of Amsterdam that brings tourists and inhabitants closer to the landscape and nature. Resort guests are invited to take part in the outside world, by which The Unbound gives new meaning to recreation in a city like Amsterdam.

Complex pathways together with strong low vegetation allow for the space to feel mysterious, a space that needs to be explored. Once the trees grow, another layer of complexity will reveal itself and add additional dynamics to the site.

H+N+S yet again conquered the infrastructure category! N69 is a story on how to make roads more green. It is also about how people driving these roads can experience the essence of the surrounding landscape much better. In large part, it concerns the profile/section of the road where the quantity of the asphalt is reduced to the minimum and where the road is stripped of other elements. The animals are welcome to cross the road through a sequence of underpasses but also on the road, as, due to the fence-free profile, the visibility is much improved.

More or less linear masses of trees try to remain as uninterrupted as possible when crossing the road so birds can be protected while flying back and forth. A part of the road is lifted on the bridge so the animals can move seamlessly on the grounds.
This is how we should do roads.

Buro Harro envisioned an entirely artificial little piece of landscape with subtle humour and incredible craftsmanship. The landscape of the dutch dunes, with its vegetation, essentially acts as a small biodiversity generator. Water retention is hidden under the sand on the roof, and all the necessary technicalities are nicely put out of sight. The wooden hut gives it a relaxed, ‘holiday-ish’ mood. It is a ‘fragment’, a pocket landscape that offers more than enough clues that will transport you to a beach. The wind comes as the magic dust that makes this sandy roof garden come to life as one can be drawn into the feeling of being in the dunes … while taking a swim! Witty and smart!

Marcel Tröger (Germany, 1991) is a young German landscape architect who already has several years of experiences of working in several landscape architecture offices. His work proves remarkable understanding of the changes and challenges happening to environement and consequently also our shifting perspectives. His projects are conscious of trans-scale complexities and spatial conditions, but also poetic and playful. His portfolio reflects a remarkably mature conceptual thinking meeting pure joy of designing.

Farinoosh Hadian Jazy (Iran, 1996) is a Landscape architecture student (postgraduate) in UCL, Bartlett School of Architecture with Bachelors of Architecture. We recognize her ability to communicate graphically, her portfolio is full of interesting drawings that are somehow specific to the Bartlett school, but also unique and beautifully strange, approaching the intersection of illustration and data visualisation.

The LILA Honour Award 2021 celebrates Snøhetta for its trans-disciplinary approach to the design process and specifically the ability to merge thinking about landscape and architecture. The results are often precious urban moments that host and inspire. Their designs appear as fitting consequences of advanced and multi-layered narratives.

From ancient myths to the latest cutting edge technology, Snøhetta’s creations radiate a unique and always different blend of knowledge, craftsmanship, generosity and passion.

The editors of Landezine were charmed by the portfolio of simple and well-thought-out spaces. But what made us fall for the office completely were their writings that reveal a liberating spirit and refreshing attitude behind their actions. TERREMOTO has the power to effortlessly challenge the old certainties and recipes our profession is based on. The result are spaces that are simply generous and look incredibly comfortable. This is everyday landscape architecture at its best. Every community needs a TERREMOTO. And our global professional community needs TERREMOTO even more – in their manifesto they write:
“TERREMOTO mines the omnipotence of intentional inexactitude, and flirts openly with illegibility. We strive, in many cases, to do as little as possible. We revere the history of landscape architecture, but also kind of want to destroy it.”
and:
“TERREMOTO believes that physical form is reason made visible, and thus philosophical subtexts and exploratory dialogues will eternally guide our work. Material daydreams, scientific walkabouts and the musical anarchy of horticulture, ecology, and art inform and inspire us.”
Epic! TERREMOTO 4ever!

Whereas the project consists of various programmes, in essence, it is divided into a green part, where park-like structures meet the street and adjacent buildings. The outstanding part of it is a paved dike that protects the city from the river when it floods. The dike is entirely designed as an open public space, built of cobblestone. A playful folding of polygons ensures a vast open space and a unique landscape experience. In times of high waters, the visitors will be able to observe the flooding of the riverbank and the consequent frolics between the river and the newly established topography.

The project is a poetic response to a palimpsest of natural and human-driven processes that shaped the site. One physical corpus was made by two different forces. The narrative states that the general perception of the artificial hill and the surrounding forest is a natural environment. They call it pseudo-nature.
Abstractly, it works because of the contrast between open and closed spaces, namely, an artificial forest with a forest ring and a clearing. The top of the hill is a small circular viewing platform made of polished concrete which references the geological structure of the moraine below the top of the hill. The viewing disc features fog-jets that produce an artificial cloud which acts as a poetic reference to flying, to being in the sky, to touching the sky. Entering the artificial cloud acts as a reference to moving through clouds when travelling by plane.
Beside the forest ring, the remaining forest area appears almost untouched, as it is under a nature conservation plan. Hence, maintenance is used as means of design. The project exposes many contradictions in our understanding of what is natural and what is artificial. It also provides a series of poetic ambiences and playful experiences on the hilltop.

Arsenal Oasis is an experimental project that in deals with found objects, most visibly, with the phenomenon of a broken pipe that provides water. The surface is reshaped to invite water and makes the planting of trees possible. Because the debris is left in place, the process of change is visible and readable. This newfound and unique roughness reflects a relevant dialogue between what was, what is, and the suggestion of what ought to be. The project addresses wider spatial issues in Tbilisi and will hopefully act as a catalyst to spark positive change regarding neglected areas in the city.

H+N+S have, in their very own Dutch way, invented a new dike typology – innovative terrain modelling for more efficient and sustainable land use and simpler maintenance.

With its lush vegetation, Forest Garden approaches the site as hybridization between the ecosystem of plants, animals and humans. It is a delicate way of setting up clearings in the forest to take advantage of resources (productive gardens, natural pools, tree regeneration) without disturbing it. Studio Ome effectively used all topographical facts, existing plants, sunlight, and other natural forces to empower a variety of programmes, needs, and, above all, experiential richness. They obviously appreciate randomness and a more relaxed approach to planting. The decision to leave the paths in the garden as informal compacted earth paths, shows a humble approach to landscaping work, which the members of the jury felt demonstrated a truly sensitive understanding of providing ‘just enough’ to meet the brief. In essence, the project emphasizes how we can leave space for nature, which is an important message going forward. Forest Garden offers a wonderfully dense atmosphere and infinite possibilities for exploration and observation.

Hylla Cloufall succeeds beautifully in creating a unique landscape on a roof. The design intent shows a more relaxed approach which our profession should be more aware of. They write: »the traditional buildings in Yunnan are also built with great freedom: the old craftsmen had no specific design for strict planning. They might suddenly pile a stone mill into the wall, and they didn’t care whether the edges and surfaces were properly handled … It’s all about randomness, imagination, and carelessness.«
The way the design uses a limited material pallet in different ways for different areas is remarkable. The jury also recognized its sense of craftsmanship, an approach that is always more sustainable than the ‘fast’ solutions that are detrimental to our planet.

As any engaging playscape, Brettspiel welcomes young and old it can be many things at once. As both open and abstract, it encourages young explorers to make up games and invent rules. At the same time, visitors can find themselves in previously undiscovered situations and interacting with each other in new ways.

The power of this project lies in the rich sequence of diverse ambiences it presents within a highly contrasting and difficult existing conditions. The design approach is contemporary, yet references to a more traditional Chinese garden design are seamlessly interwoven into a new experience. Although the park seems detached from the residential buildings due to topographical constraints, it is placed alongside dense housing, offering residents easy access to quiet contemplative niches. With its strongly artificial appearance, it juxtaposes a rougher and more natural surrounding valley that had been damaged by a series of infrastructural interventions. The use of materials is impressive and works well with the various native plant choices – a more ‘foresty’ style outside the pavilion, and mosses within it. Offering such an experience is truly a generous gift to the residents.

The project questions the restoration of the exterior spaces of a campus that has suffered from the degradation of time and the roots of large banyan trees. The design explores several modalities of porosity and hybridity between the inert and the living.

Landezine team recognizes Berlin based landscape architecture and architecture office Topotek 1 as the winner of the LILA 2020 Office Award. The portfolio of Topotek 1 reflects a unique conceptual approach that is dedicated to solving social issues and practicing landscape architecture as a multilayered and creative cultural discipline. Besides their landscape projects, the editors of Landezine acknowledge their exhibition and book Creative Infidelities, which is a playful yet sober reflection on both their own work and landscape architecture as an open-ended design profession. A quote from Jorge Luis Borges featured in the exhibition perfectly illustrates Topotek 1’s approach to the notions of identity, honesty, and context in terms of landscape design: “The original is unfaithful to the translation”.

LILA Office Award 2020 goes to Topotek 1 for their ability to design layered projects and above all for their refreshing and daring colorfulness in conceptual thinking, which the Landezine team would truly wish to see more of in landscape architecture offices around the world.

The Landezine team recognizes the work of Charles A. Birnbaum as an outstanding contribution to the global community of landscape architects. His work has been focused on advocating for the cultural value of landscape heritage in the US. In 1998, Birnbaum founded TCLF – The Cultural Landscape Foundation – which acts as a bridge between American cultural landscapes and the public. Through the various complex programmes and initiatives of TCLF, Birnbaum has shown an ambitious and innovative vision, executed with great precision, enthusiasm and perseverance.

The condition for the landscape architecture community to thrive in a society lies in an understanding of the work we do. Birnbaum has been continuously working on deepening this understanding and communicating the values of the American landscape heritage, both for the places and the people that shaped them.

This transformation of an airport into landscape works to balance the extreme climate, the design interlocks three scales: geographical, urban and local. The design meshes precisely formulated climatic and poetic goals in an inextricable way. The reflections of the office are at once complex and simple, of enormous depth, yet with childlike wonder. The design works well on all scales, from the park as a whole to a pedestrian perspective. The jury recognized the relaxed design language of the park that makes it look undetermined, as if it can change at any point. The design shows a powerful mix of a personal design language which doesn’t celebrate itself, but serves the adventures of the visitor through differentiated landscapes, climatic spaces and atmospheres.

This on-going project was self-initiated by landscape architecture office EMF – Estudi Marti Franch – in the midst of the global financial crisis. The goal was to make it “big and cheap”, so that the model can be repeated and adapted to many sites. It began by using vegetation maintenance to design public spaces in Girona. In this case, the landscape architect is not just the designer, but also a social catalyst who enables positive change. The jury recognized not only the process, but especially the result, which is a system of low-cost, modest, poetic and above all useful spaces that greatly enrich the quality of life for the people of Girona.

Folds works above all as sculpture-play-scape. While the design tools are simple, they offer a layered complexity within this simplicity, so as to cater for various uses. The play of shapes, levels and morphology makes it interesting to the various age groups of the nearby kindergarten as well as children from the area. The project is about the play between two materials which reflects geological processes that formed the Jura Mountains. In this way it establishes a unique and strong visual language and an engaging playground. On a larger scale it enriches the well-known modernist design approach of the surrounding residential area; the contrast between the orthogonal housing and more nature-inspired landscape forms.

The jury recognized a very different approach to the typology of residential landscape, where one would usually find very determined structures, designed to the very last square meter. Instead, Juul Frost Architects explored how a surrounding landscape can be brought into the residential area and how the buildings fit into the surrounding landscape. In the ‘inner’ area, small patches of what looks like local vegetation are placed in a very relaxed design language, emphasizing the qualities of the surrounding landscape and translating it excellently to a smaller scale.

Using simple and graceful design language, the project succeeds in creating a new interpretation of local traditional craftsmanship and history. It is in the combination of strong spatial and material uses and detailing with fulfilling sustainable goals that sets the project apart.

The jury recognized the tension and the atmospheric density that was achieved by well-known tools of garden design. The use of historic structures successfully establishes different ambiences and opens views that change the perception of the space, orientation and the scale of this relatively small plot. The garden was designed to catch changing seasons and light and synthesize them into a dramatic display of change. Ellipse garden is also a gardener’s laboratory, and reflects the joy in cultivating, playing and experimenting with plants and their characteristics.

The garden successfully builds on the relation between the surrounding landscape and the site. On one side of the house, it uses the approach of borrowed landscapes, establishing a connection between the garden and the pastorality of the adjacent agricultural land. On the other side of the plot it makes a clear differentiation, a contrast between the meadow and the lush woods. The garden also offers a sequence of various interesting ambiences.

The work of Michael van Gessel (b. 1948) spans over several decades and is comprised of landscape architecture, urban planning, and supervision of large scale developments. After his studies at Wageningen University in 1978, he was employed in Bureau B+B for 18 years, the last seven as its director. He presided over many juries, among others for the Rosa Barba Prize and Landscape Architecture Europe editions. He retired in 2015 and lives in Amsterdam.

His landscape projects are all about silent change. In his book Invisible Work, van Gessel states his objective is to design spaces in a way that they feel as if they’ve been there since always. While his approach is about mastering restraint and subtle creativity, he was never afraid to chop down some trees in order to make the view. His works are precise, subtle, minimal, timeless, but at the same time bold, playful and always interesting!

His approach is the perfect antidote to formalism and to projects wanting too much. His body of work is a library many can learn from now and in the times to come.

Studio Vulkan is a Zürich based landscape architecture practice. They are not bound to finding a formula for their projects, but rather seem to be more interested in re-questioning everything a project might bring: context, ambience and all available tools for solving problems and making an experience. They are not committed to finding a style, although there is a notion of ‘relaxed aesthetics’ present in most of their projects that is well-anchored in the project narrative.

Toni Areal, for example, is a roof garden, an urban oasis that uses only time to make itself more defined by natural forces, and one in particular – decay. Exposing the beauty of decay, or decay itself, is still a taboo across our profession; oddly enough, in an age when nature is in focus. Similarly, Park Naturmuseum St. Gallen is dealing with ‘artificial naturalness’. It aims to question the occurrence of nature in an entirely artificial/urban context. Studio Vulkan seem to enjoy introducing intentional imperfections, knowing that in this way, their works are far more interesting. For Park Naturmuseum they wrote in the project narrative: “In addition to the predominantly native plants, exotic hydrangeas stand for the paradox of the place.”

In times, when our profession still produces a monoculture of ideas resulting in sameness, Studio Vulkan is showing the way to keep landscape architecture interesting. Their work provokes an endless curiosity while also featuring a catalogue of solutions to a range of relevant issues.

The project Objets Trouvés convinces with outstanding artistic quality and visible historical awareness. Moving the bunker from its ancestral place and letting it re-appear in a new one is both astonishing and effective. This blunt dislocation, which first reacts to infrastructural requirements and finally turns the bunker into a ready-made, creates a whole new quality of visual perception. It is in this aesthetic space of resonance, where contemporary infrastructure development ultimately becomes conceivable as a possible instalment of the European warfare history. Consequently, the actual traces of history are kept visible with a genuine purpose – although this required such an action as moving a bunker. As a bold and even radical gesture, the project inscribes itself in the infusible tension between past, present, and future on the one hand, and between absence and presence on the other. In doing so, it formulates a notable reference point for the contemporary discipline of landscape architecture as an artistically informed cultural practice.

A beautiful and extremely subtle design, Scenic Path is a gesture drawn so as to offer a discovery of ‘what is already there’ and ‘what has been there’ a long time ago. A clever, precise design of a path, with a sophisticated geometrical set of shifting positions, where platforms, seats or walls organize the views far away, and with the same movements build a very strong sense of place. The materiality of the realization continues and reinforces the design with a great coherence, forming this precise architectonic play with a restrained number of materials. A presence arises – a collision of space and time – and you experience a landscape at the same time very old and very new.

The Noordwaard project is a new 4450-hectare flow area that will prepare The Netherlands for the rising waters in the ‘Room for The River’ project. With its 12 pumping stations, hydraulic structures, and a large number of bridges, it is a bold but also humble design that respects the water landscape. The bridges have many different functions such as dikes, resting areas for birds, and introduces water in a spectacular way. They also facilitate public access and provide new opportunities for recreation in the de-poldered area. This is a clear statement that design matters because it adds value for people, birds, and water landscape.

Coteau Saint Barbe is a smart and beautiful ‘stitch’ of the urban and the natural. It offers the link between the two and also effectively uses water dynamics from higher up the slope. With a simple gesture it adds an immense value to the living outdoors at Coteau Saint Barbe.

Often landscape designs for hotels and resorts are too full of everything and enclosed, gated, disconnected from the outside world. There is a pressure that landscape needs to be perfect all the time. The Hospitality award was introduced to promote a project that can welcome visitors, tourists, and temporary residents differently. ‘Clouds’ establish the experience not by looking into its own created pocket arcadia, but by absorbing and framing the surroundings. It creates a space of confrontation between visitors and landscape.

If we can say that a private garden is an experimental place for domestic life, Rooted in Clay is just that. As the name suggests, the project is about taming a very dynamic topological context and at the same time keeping the feeling of the place wild. Considering the ordinary Canadian suburb, this garden is a surprise. Furthermore, the project reuses city’s leftovers, mainly wooden slabs. Rooted in Clay is about engineering, recycling, and, above all, experience. It accomplishes its goals effectively and gracefully through a sequence of shifting situations. Nature is an ambiguous term, but in a context of suburban residential gardens full of order, Rooted in Clay introduces a relaxed, more natural atmosphere. As such it is a poetic statement and a convivial critique.

Jury members recognized Catherine Mosbach as an outstanding and talented creative force who pushes the profession beyond excellence, revealing hidden layers of designing and also thinking about landscape. The result is a portfolio of unique and strong conceptual works. They remind us that there will always be infinite opportunities to find and express an original personal vocation whilst practicing environmentally and socially responsible work.

The project answers questions related to reintroducing nature into artificial landscape and dealing with landscape in rural-urban fringes. It reactivates the old river channel for visitors, masterfully combining new modest elements and simple structures into a powerful experience. The most poetic element is the grid of sand – a platform for the river – a natural force that expresses itself through decomposition. Designed as a ruin, the project is the process; full of play between the grid and the river, man and nature. Renaturalisation is not brought in by force; it occurs. One can imagine the river entering the grid for the first time, like an animal released from captivity, figuring out which way to go and where to settle. The power of this work lies in its honesty, taking us to a much deeper thinking about the relation between man and nature in the age of the Anthropocene.

Jury members acknowledged this garden as an outstanding way of bringing residents to nature, due to its simplicity and the way it allows for exploration. An ordinary site was curated and transformed by Coen+Partners into a dramatic landscape comprising various ambiences with a unique character. The jury noticed the presentation of the project, focusing away from the house into the garden as the place of dwelling and coexisting with the site.

Urbanisation has been a major global trend since 1950s and UN’s statistic predicts that 66% of world population will be urban by 2050. City as a product of capitalism has to perform to mainly sustain the economy which results in a typical compact hi-density living coupled with well-connected transportation system. This model might works well […]

H+N+S has through an engineering approach successfully developed large scale thinking about landscape, integrating aspects concerning energy, environment, well-being and aesthetics. They feature a consistent opus of brave interventions in landscape, often with ingenious and innovative solutions. H+N+S is a relevant force in our common task to find and develop new tools for overcoming the challenges concerning landscape today and in the future.

Saint Ouen – Park at The Docks is a complex landscape system that offers optimistic answers to questions concerning social equity and water resilience. Agence Ter demonstrated excellent skills to design a multifunctional, generous and inclusive social platform that offers various uses (including growing food). At the same time, it works as a sponge, providing space for water during heavy rains and floods. Jury members agreed passionately that this project will send the right message to the professional community on how to design liveable urban spaces for the future as well as to everyone else on how we should all be able to use open spaces in the times ahead of us.

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Marti Franch is in his projects not only successfully solving spatial, environmental and physical problems concerning the sites he works on but with very respectful interventions manages to nurture landscape architecture also as a cultural discipline. His landscapes offer educational and experiential richness, often in fragile environments.

EMF designed landscapes are a result of a curious design approach that emphasises the curiosity also in the visitor by leaving landscape features and stories hidden enough to be discovered rather than just put on display. The narrative in Cap de Creus projects awaits the user in suggestion and not in the direct message. This way the user interacts with the meaning, making the experience far more intense and memorable.

La Tancada Salt Fields and Cap de Creus, are blending ecology, natural and cultural memory into harmonious and at the same time very powerful experience. The grounds of Can Framis museum illustrate EMF’s ability to intervene in dense urban fabric. A green, almost forest like ambience in the middle of Barcelona, again with a direct connection to the site’s past and ecological measures for cooling down the site with dense planting.

With Les Echasses project Marti Franch is effectively using natural processes to create a lake for a nature like resort. Instead of just creating a lake the landscape is proposed that first creates natural conditions for a lake to take place as a consequence.

EMF is practicing excellent scientific and technical work, but most importantly also proves well manifested paradigm that visiting landscapes must mean a culturally fulfilling experience. In the times when ecosystems are constantly being challenged by the consequences of human activity preservation and restoration of nature are vital for the wellbeing of all species. Marti Franch is aware that promoting subtle change in order to emphasise overwhelming natural forces and features left ‘as they are’ in nature plays a very important role in establishing a bond between the user and the landscape – people and environment.