Artscapes and beyond: Landscape architects exhibit their creative thinking
CARLO RATTI CURATES THE BIENNALE ARCHITETTURA 2025
Venice is in the midst of hosting the Biennale Architettura 2025 -the 19th International Architecture Exhibition, as curated by Carlo Ratti under the theme title of Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.
Landscape architecture dynamos such as Bureau Bas Smets (‘Building Biospheres’), SCAPE (‘Cool Forest’), and numerous firms listed for the German Pavilion are participating in the Biennale with projects focusing on climate adaptation, urban ecology, and the integration of plants into architecture as a form of living infrastructure. Their work explores how landscape can function as a natural climate control system, monitoring data and adapting to environmental changes to create more sustainable and livable cities.
The wide angle focus being given to landscapes includes: The Shifting Alpine Landscape, Cultivating Shallow Waters- The Messolonghi saltworks, Mobile Ecosystems for Future Climates, Landscape of Regenerative Voices: Socio-Ecological Corridor, Digital Cultural Landscapes of the US National Park Service.
If you’re on Instagram you could check out @theworldaround and have a listen to Bas Smets.
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS AT THE DESIGN BIENNALE ZURICH
For the Design Biennale Zurich, finishing on Sunday 14 September, Landscape architects Lara Mehling and Nicole de Lalouvière (pictured at left above) built an installation called "Ephemeral Enclosures, Perennial Commons", intended to challenge the garden as a symbol of settled life and to invite reflection on new meanings of commons and their boundaries.
Located in the Old Botanical Garden at the University of Zurich their mobile, lightweight structure offered a contemporary interpretation of the «sarāparda» - a Persian term that combines saray (palace) and parda (curtain). It refers to a relic of Central Asian nomadic herders, who used it to enclose a portion of a blooming meadow and create a temporary ceremonial space.
Lara and Nicole were inspired by their respective doctoral research projects, both completed at the Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich. Wildflower meadows have long drawn nomadic peoples to the mountain steppes of Western and Central Asia. These lands belonged to no one but those who temporarily inhabited them during seasonal migrations. Among the first spring vegetation were fire-red wild tulips. The beauty of these red-flowering fields was widely celebrated, their imagery woven into the art and iconography of tribal and courtly cultures—particularly in textiles crafted by women. The installation consists of a multi-part screen. The designs have been reinterpreted in a style reminiscent of European chintz fabrics, also known as Indiennes. Through the reclamation of this medium, the textile panels aim to honour the heritage of the red flowers.
… AND FROM BIENNALES TO AN ARTISTS’ RESIDENCY IN IRELAND
Located on Ireland’s south coast at Roaringwater Bay in West Cork is a landscape park of 10 hectares called Glenkeen Garden. Thanks to the Crespo Foundation founded by photographer, psychologist and philanthropist Ulrike Crespo (1950-2019), the garden that Ulrike created runs an artists’ residency, supported by an exhibition series hosted by the Goethe-Institut Irland.
Landscape architects Lorenzo Rebediani and Vera Scaccabarozzi (see RSL) are the first landscape architects to participate in the series. Their residency, in collaboration with Luca Trevisani and Francesca Verga, drew from the “fragile in-betweenness of the coast” at Roaringwater Bay, and a “shared curiosity for this edge-world”. Seaweed was collected, dried, photographed and printed onto large fabric pieces “like specimens in a herbarium, in an ironic and counter-intuitive gesture”. Called ‘Abécédaire of Fringes’ a compilation of their work is available as a book produced in Italy by publishing house bruno.
Transitional Terrains is on display in Dublin until 24 October. It was preceded by four other residency events: Disquieting Frequencies, Composing Landscapes, With Or Without You and Sedimented Tactilities.
DID YOU KNOW…
… there’s a website directory of international art biennales, triennales, and recurring exhibitions? See: https://biennale.com/overview.html