Annemarie Bucher is a landscape historian, curator, and researcher based in Zürich, where she teaches Landscape Theory and History at ETH Zürich. What began as a series of questions evolved into something more expansive: a critical examination of landscape as a colonial instrument, and as a potential site of resistance. We are glad to share it here in full.

How do you see landscape architecture: as a practice that could contribute to the decolonizing process, or does it reinforce colonial structures?

That’s not a simple question, and it has been at the center of research and theory for decades. I would have to go into more detail to answer it. In my opinion, landscape architecture is much more than just “designed nature”; I see it as a complex, multifaceted, interconnected process that is deeply embedded in a society’s value system and worldview.

Thus, how landscape design relates to colonization or decolonization is an important question situated at the intersection of many disciplines (environmental history, cultural studies, landscape studies, culture, political ecology, land use, and much more). So far, it has been studied primarily from a new, non-established perspective, similar to decolonization debates, which were initiated from the perspective of thinkers and artists from the Global South^[1].

Colonialism is the practice in which one state extends control over another territory, often involving political domination, economic exploitation, settlement, and cultural transformation. Colonial ways of thinking run deep on both sides, among the colonizers and the colonized. There are different forms of colonialism and colonization, depending on whether we look at the goals, methods, or level of control colonizers exert over the colonized. Historians have identified the various types of colonialism^[2], such as settler colonialism, extractive colonialism, and plantation colonialism, which have a direct and far-reaching impact on the physical landscapes. Awareness of the various forms of colonialism, including ecological or green imperialism^[3], and of how profoundly they have altered existing cultural landscapes, is essential to equitable landscape design. As Dolores Hayden^[4] points out, the design of places is always also a shaping of memory and power. Those who are visible in the urban landscape help determine what story a society tells. The invisible ones are only just beginning to be recognized.

Colonized lands and soils

To understand the natural and cultural foundations of the landscape, we must see the bigger picture and think beyond the confines of a single landscape. The history of slavery in the Americas has left obvious traces in the physical landscape, which is now being reinterpreted and recognized as cultural heritage.

In Brazil, we find a prime example of a networked landscape of slavery. In 2011, during excavations as part of redevelopment work in the harbor area of Rio de Janeiro, the two superimposed landing wharves, Valongo and Imperatriz, were discovered, along with a large number of human bones, amulets, and ritual objects from Congo, Angola, and Mozambique. These excavation sites were transformed into a memorial park^[5]. Such hubs of the slave trade are inevitably connected to the vast extractive plantation landscapes and the quilombos^[6] and maroon settlements. Across many regions in Brazil, quilombos —fortified settlements established by people who escaped enslavement—symbolize resistance and reflect African settlement traditions.^[7] Another prominent example is the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape in Australia, a 6,000-year-old aquaculture landscape of the Gunditjmara people that European settlers perceived as wilderness. These landscapes remained invisible for a long time. Just recently, they were recognized as cultural heritage sites by UNESCO.

The influence of the colonial power structure on the landscape is mutual. In Europe, too, colonization has shaped the physical landscape. New cash crops from the colonies, such as cotton, sugar cane, corn, and potato, replaced the local cash crops and not only changed the agricultural landscape but also influenced agricultural policy. In the colonial context, sugar production using sugarcane was cheaper than that using sugar beets (as the caricature by Honoré Daumier shows). The potato arrived in Europe around 1570, but it was not until the 18th century that it was cultivated on a large scale and became an important food source. Particularly well known is the promotion of potato cultivation through Frederick the Great’s “Potato Decree,” with which Frederick II of Prussia drove the expansion of potato farming in Prussia during the 18th century.

Also, internal colonialism with different forms of domination has fundamentally reshaped landscapes. In Switzerland, internal colonization reveals the unequal balance of power between urban and rural areas (and, more specifically, the Alps). However, there was also a form of settler colonialism, for example, in the Safiental, where Walser immigrants settled on the mountain slopes while the indigenous Romansh people inhabited the valley. These settlement patterns had a significant impact on the alpine landscape.

Later, tourism and electricity production for cities have transformed the alpine landscape massively. Examples include the development of dominant tourism infrastructure and the flooding of alpine valleys to create water reservoirs. A good example is Lake Sihl near Einsiedeln, a reservoir dating from the 1930s, at the bottom of which lies an entire agricultural landscape. After the landscape was taken over by a distant municipal power plant, the local peat cutters and farmers were forced to migrate: some as new settlers to America, others to nearby cities. The flooding of the landscape also called for design, and the Zürich-based landscape architects Gebrüder Mertens were invited to design the new shores. The urban-rural divide led to an exodus from the alpine valleys, leaving land fallow and eroding its meaning. What should become of the Alps? A new factor of transformation, one that, while mostly originating from outside, can also revive local discussions, is art in the landscape.

Exclusionary concepts

To approach this question, one would first and foremost need to examine the common concepts and practices of landscape^[8]. At least two trends can be identified in contemporary landscape architecture: on the one hand, the dominance and spread of Western practices and values in landscape architecture; on the other hand, the incorporation of regional and indigenous knowledge as well as regional resources. The first entails that, in the wake of globalization, professionals trained in the West are designing parks in the world’s major cities, thereby continuing, in a sense, the classic heroic narrative of the outstanding, godlike designer. When professionals shape landscapes according to globally dominant aesthetic and economic ideals while pushing local ecologies, cultures, and power dynamics into the background, they perpetuate colonial values and belief systems. The second—the incorporation of regional and indigenous knowledge—is often praised as a solution to climate change and a way to heal environmental damage. However, it also risks exploiting and cannibalizing such knowledge; in some cases, this can be described as biopiracy. This is evident in the exploitation of traditional plant knowledge by global pharmaceutical companies. One case worth discussing is “terra preta,” a fertile, dark soil in the Amazon created through long-term indigenous land management. Its history dates back around 2,000 years and is closely linked to the indigenous cultural landscapes that are only now being “discovered.” It is an example of how indigenous societies were able to transform their environment sustainably, and it is a role model for modern soil science. Researchers are interested in terra preta not only because it offers insights into sustainable agriculture, but also because it has been developed as a commercial product for the horticultural sector. The imbalance of power established by colonization is still evident. In many cases, however, this masks a new form of colonization: namely, the appropriation and exploitation of shared traditional knowledge. There is no simple solution or formula to deal fairly with this colonial power structure, which has long been taken for granted. Instead, we find ourselves in an uncomfortable space in which we must find our bearings and develop fair courses of action.

Lost in translation

The insight that landscape is neither neutral nor innocent, but rather a cultural interpretation, is evident in both theory and practice. Listening to people describe their environments in Java, Indonesia, and Kerala, India, I noticed that the local languages had no direct equivalent of the Western concept of “landscape” as a picturesque object. For example, local villagers in West Java relate to their environment much more through practices of cohabitation and reciprocal exchange. “Gotong royong” is an Indonesian concept that refers to people voluntarily working together, e.g., when building a house, maintaining village infrastructure, or cultivating fields. Using collaborative strategies, Jatiwangi Art Factory (JaF)^[9] is implementing a program to revitalize local agriculture and village life in a developing area of the Majalengka region in West Java that was once a landscape of rice paddies. During Dutch colonial rule, the region was reshaped by roof tile production. Now, twenty-first-century global industrialization once again threatens to erode the local population, their knowledge, and their traditional land use. JaF has launched various programs to counteract colonial structures: of particular note is the new clay culture (Kota Terakota) that speaks of the clay-rich soil not only as a material but also as a territory and idea. The collective forest (Perhutana), which establishes a new form of shared territorial ownership, and the “New Rural Agenda,” which adapts the format of global conferences to reach out and involve local stakeholders, likewise encourage local people to engage with the land in their own ways. For landscape architecture, “gotong royong” can offer an alternative to Western-influenced top-down planning models by fostering collaborative planning that incorporates local knowledge and respects social and ecological relationships. This practice demonstrates that local communities possess their own forms of spatial design and resource management. Nevertheless, the Indonesian word “lanskap”, derived from the Dutch “landschap,” became established as a linguistic sign of colonial acculturation and subjugation.

On the one hand, we lack a cultural background to find a common understanding of land and landscape. On the other hand, we face the same global environmental crises, such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, etc. How can we take meaningful action? The problem of differing interpretations is an issue in landscape architecture. How can we recognize something as the same when it is basically different? This paradoxical question challenges our everyday understanding of the landscape, particularly to perceive land and its components primarily as objects, or as property belonging to a human subject rather than as living entities. How can we design a more-than-human world with corresponding responsibilities?

Colonial and decolonial naming

Landscape is not only a physical archive but also a linguistic one. Landscapes influence languages, and languages preserve a society’s experiences of its places.

Naming often preserves traces of the people who lived there. A private 19th-century villa and park in Zürich bears the name Patumbah^[10], which means “the good life.” It was named after a tobacco plantation on Sumatra that belonged to a Zürich industrialist who made his fortune in Indonesia and expressed this wealth through a stately villa with a park in his hometown, Zürich. Plants, architectural details, and the name all make a clear reference to the colonial economic system. It is important to consider this big picture and not just focus on the landscape garden style.

Another example is the naming of the Swiss mountains. Physically, a mountain is simply a mass of rock, but through language, it becomes a symbol of how people used and understood it. In many cases, the names of mountains speak a different language, as they are named after the climbers and explorers who first scaled or discovered them. For example, the Agassizhorn, a mountain in the Berner Oberland, was named after Louis Agassiz^[11], a renowned 19th-century naturalist and glaciologist. However, Agassiz also played a role in the development of racist theories and, among other things, had enslaved people photographed, including the Congolese man Renty, to support his ideas about human “races.” The artist Sasha Huber^[12] explored this power gap through her artwork Rentyhorn and posed the question: Who has the right to name places, and whose history is made visible or invisible as a result? Her intervention demonstrates how closely language, landscape, history, and collective memory are intertwined. In 2008, Sasha Huber climbed the Agassizhorn and symbolically installed a plaque there, renaming the mountain after Renty, an enslaved man whose image was used in Agassiz’s efforts to support racist ideas. This was not an official renaming, because the three municipalities sharing the summit declined to approve it. Rather, it was an artistic and political gesture commemorating a specific enslaved person whose story long remained invisible.

These examples show that a name on a map is never just a word: it is a decision about which stories a society chooses to make visible. And it is time to create counter-narratives to the existing landscape naming that still supports colonial power structures.

Landscape as a contact zone

According to Mary Louise Pratt, colonization is a multifaceted process that produces so-called contact zones: social spaces in which cultures encounter one another under unequal power relations, interact, and often clash. Landscape is such a contact zone in which power structures are reflected. The colonial era has also affected how the landscape is conceptualized. Scholars such as Denis Cosgrove, W. J. T. Mitchell, and Mary Louise Pratt have argued that the modern European landscape concept and related practices developed within broader systems of colonial knowledge and power. These systems have shaped the modern European concept of landscape and endorsed the idea that nature is separated from culture. The critical examination of the colonial past has fueled the decolonization debate, which focuses both on critical analysis and on political action to recognize and transform systems shaped by colonial power. Applied to landscape architecture, this means that landscape must also be interpreted in light of its colonial entanglements. This covers a variety of things and scales, such as the occupation of new territories, cultivation of new crops, botanical gardens as spectacular plant exhibitions, plantations as new forms of productive landscapes, and acts of decolonization such as quilombos. All this has consequences for landscape architecture: for how rural and urban open spaces are constructed and developed, how plants are used, and how landscape architecture is theoretically framed and taught.

How is landscape architecture embedded in the nature-culture debate?

Whether landscape architecture contributes to colonization or decolonization depends on how we interpret nature, its forms of cultivation, land, history, ownership, ecology, participation, justice, and more. The current nature-culture debate is challenging the assumption that “nature” and “culture” are separate, universal categories. The “nature-culture divide” is rather a historically produced Western concept and therefore linked to colonial ways of thinking. In many indigenous cosmologies, humans and non-human beings are understood as deeply interconnected, even as relatives. Acknowledging non-Western cultural landscapes and weaving them into a more inclusive landscape narrative requires a frame of thought in which humans are embedded within ecological relationships. To look beyond the boundaries of one’s discipline allows one to integrate other ways of seeing the environment.

Insights from other disciplines, as well as indigenous cosmologies and local traditions, are valuable. The work of environmental ethnologists, anthropologists, and indigenous researchers clearly demonstrates this, including that of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro^[13], who examines Amazonian perspectivism, and Robin Wall Kimmerer^[14], who combines botanical science and indigenous knowledge.

In breaking down this long-standing separation of nature and culture, scholars, especially Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing, have described new plausibel perspectives^[15]. Donna Haraway uses the term “Plantationocene” as a theoretical framework for understanding how capitalist systems of land use established through colonial plantation economies continue to shape the world. The Plantationocene understands today’s environmental crises as products of the historical plantation system, where land, labor, and ecosystems were reorganized for large-scale profit under colonial and capitalist power on a global scale. And Anna Tsing describes the world system from the perspective of a mushroom

How can one weave these hidden and often unwelcome aspects into landscape design practice and theory? The situation is ambiguous and complex and raises questions of methodology and responsibility.

Which approaches work? Questions of methodology

How can we find a reliable and meaningful method, or an adequate setting for reflection and theory-building in such a multi-perspectival and transdisciplinary field, where narrowly defined disciplinary boundaries are being broken down? There are currently many promising methods of landscape research in use. One of the best known is strollology (the science of walking), which can be traced back to Luzius Burckhardt and is perception-oriented, focusing on the cultural lens through which we perceive the landscape. Another common way of understanding and structuring space is mapping, which means linking or matching one thing or landscape feature to another according to a rule. Various counter-maps have shown that value-based assumptions play a role here as well.

Maybe we should also take a closer look at the way we ask questions. Contemporary landscape theory views landscape as a dynamic, complex human-environment system in which ecological processes, economic uses, and cultural perceptions are intertwined. Rather than asking “What is this landscape?” it focuses more on the questions “How does landscape emerge/change?” and “Who is involved in what ways?” When applied specifically to colonial landscapes, the question becomes: “How did colonialism reshape landscapes and cultural relationships between people and the land?” One possible approach is to trace the history of a particular landscape or landscape feature.^[16]

The banana as a method (mediating between real and symbolic objects)

During my studies in ethnobotany, I conducted research on the banana as a multilayered global thing or agent that has a life of its own.^[17] The banana is simultaneously a colonial object, a plant, a crop, a commodity, and a cultural symbol that brought about transformative change on many levels. But it was a challenge to study the banana as an object from multiple perspectives; the banana was seen only as one thing or the other, and never as all of these at the same time. I started with a jumble of questions, such as: How did the banana migrate from its gene centers in Asia and Africa to the Americas? How was land reorganized for monoculture? How did global trading infrastructures reshape landscapes and establish plantation systems? How were bananas and other colonial goods displayed in world fairs, colonial exhibitions, botanical gardens, and museums? And how did the banana become the No. 1 fruit in Western supermarkets? What kinds of labor, violence, and land dispossession were hidden behind picturesque imagery? How were ecological and social costs displaced? What kind of plant knowledge was extracted and circulated? Why did Andy Warhol use the banana for the cover image of the Velvet Underground? Working on these questions simultaneously also allowed me to shift between different scales and combine a variety of data and observations to develop a new theory, not based on a preconceived hypothesis, but on a complex backdrop of different realities. Tracing a seemingly simple object can illustrate how colonial power operated simultaneously through ecological change, commodity trade, exhibition practices, and aesthetic representation.

The banana became a method for investigating the depths of colonial entanglements on land, landscape, and the intentional and unintentional migration of flora and fauna through the Columbian Exchange. By tracing the banana through gardens and fields, multinational plantations, world fairs, visual cultures, and cuisines of the world, I came to understand landscape as an active medium through which colonial relations were produced, naturalized, and made visible. Through this, I learned to better read landscapes as archives of extraction, displacement, resistance, as well as alternative ways of relating to land.

The edelweiss and the alpine garden

Another example of how power structures affect landscapes is the alpinum, a garden or collection of alpine plants where plants from alpine regions are cultivated and studied. The history of the alpinum is closely linked to the development of botany, nature conservation, and landscape architecture. The fact that we can find alpine plants outside their natural habitats, and buy them in supermarket nurseries, is also part of this complex history. Interest in alpine flora rose when botanists and naturalists began collecting and identifying plants from alpine regions, and grew significantly with the rise of mass tourism. A good example is the edelweiss (Leontopodium alpinum)^[18], a small mountain flower that has become one of the most famous symbols of the Alps. For centuries, the plant was admired by people living in alpine regions for its beauty and rarity. Because it grows in difficult and dangerous mountain environments, collecting the flower was considered a challenge that required courage and determination. In some alpine cultures, young men would climb steep slopes to find the flower as a gift for someone they loved, as a symbol of devotion and bravery. During the 19th century, as alpine tourism became popular, the edelweiss gained wider recognition. Travelers and mountaineers saw the flower as a representation of the purity and strength of the mountains and thus picked it and planted it in their home gardens as a souvenir. However, nature lovers and mountaineers, including Henry Correvon, also recognized that tourist exploitation of alpine meadows was leading to the extinction of the plants in their natural habitat. They began by acclimatizing alpine plants to lowland conditions, eventually turning their cultivation into a thriving business. Throughout the 20th century, the edelweiss became more than just an alpine plant. It became a powerful symbol of the true and beautiful alpine spirit, especially important in Switzerland and Austria, where it appeared on traditional clothing, souvenirs, and tourism promotion. Unlike the spread of so-called invasive neophytes, the relocation of edelweiss beyond its native habitat is rarely viewed critically.

Contemporary arts as a testing ground and the pluriversal approach

I have taught artists at the Zürich University of the Arts for over 30 years and have tracked the changing art contexts sparked by globalization. Around the world, artists are no longer dedicated to creating art, but are instead committed to addressing climate change, biodiversity, and social processes, and they have crossed the boundaries of what was seen as “autonomous” art.

The role of contemporary art practices in decolonizing processes can serve as a role model for other entangled problem situations, as the projects of FOA-FLUX^[19] might show. Founded in 2009 with the artist and philosopher Dominique Lämmli, FOA-FLUX combines local embeddedness, translocal connections, and close cooperation. It focuses on long-term, process-based work rather than object-centered production. The “artwork” is no longer primarily an object; it functions as a platform for exchange, collective inquiry, or the activation of local knowledge. Its success is measured not solely by the aesthetic outcome but also by relationships, capacities, and forms of common understanding that emerge through the process. Space and time devoted to sharing knowledge are invaluable resources and guides for action. The notion of “glocal art” suggests that local contexts are not treated as isolated or authentic containers of identity but as places that are already connected to broader histories of migration, extraction, trade, and cultural exchange. For me, FOA-FLUX has been an important testing ground for experimenting with new approaches and methodologies that are also transforming landscape theory and practice.

In this context, I came across the concept of the pluriverse by Arturo Escobar. It emerges from decolonial thought and challenges the assumption that there is a single universal model of development, knowledge, or human-nature relations. Instead, it proposes a world in which many worlds coexist: multiple ontologies, forms of knowledge, and ways of inhabiting territory. For the arts and landscape practices, this is not simply a matter of representation or inclusion; it requires rethinking how projects are conceived, produced, and maintained. A pluriversal methodology acknowledges these entanglements while resisting the tendency to flatten differences into a single global narrative. In practical terms, a pluriversal approach to landscape design shifts attention away from designing for communities toward creating conditions for knowledge to emerge with communities and places. It questions who defines a problem, whose expertise is recognized, and what kinds of relationships a project seeks to cultivate. Rather than beginning with universal design principles, it often starts from situated forms of knowledge, local ecologies, cultural practices, and existing networks of care. A pluriversal approach challenges the idea that a site should be understood primarily through ecological metrics or visual qualities, since a river, a forest, or an agricultural landscape may simultaneously be a cultural archive, a spiritual entity, a source of livelihood, and a living ecological system. Design then becomes less about imposing a singular plan or vision and more about negotiating among multiple understandings of place. The goal is not necessarily consensus but the productive coexistence of different ways of understanding and relating to the world.

The significance of the pluriverse lies in its methodological implications. It shifts art and landscape practice from producing objects toward facilitating relationships, from applying universal models toward engaging situated knowledges, and from representing diversity toward creating conditions in which different worlds can meaningfully coexist. The challenge is not simply to design landscapes differently, but to rethink who participates in their production and what kinds of futures those landscapes are intended to support.

Is there a need to rewrite the history and theory of landscape architecture?

My answer is a clear yes, for several reasons: One decisive point is that the production of history (historiography) is a continuous process of negotiating a particular past within a particular present. It determines what will be preserved for the future, and what will disappear. Historical interpretation is therefore subject to change and depends on the available sources. A well-founded historical narrative depends on critical source reading and related archives. The sources of landscape change are diverse, and archiving them requires an appropriate archival structure. This is addressed in a wide variety of ways. In some places, landscape architecture education is recognized as an academic discipline, and curricula are structured accordingly. Elsewhere, a solution-oriented, craft-based approach still prevails, and contextual knowledge necessary for a forward-looking approach falls by the wayside.

Archives are important context creators. As various research projects have shown, primary sources and archival materials are fundamental tools in postcolonial discourse. These studies have profoundly changed the way we interpret the colonial era. The problem in landscape architecture is its own archives. What do they contain? How are they managed? In Switzerland, sources on landscape architecture have only recently begun to be collected and researched more systematically. ASLA (Archiv für Schweizer Landschaftsarchitektur in Rapperswil)^[20] fulfills this role. The archive was founded in 1982 by forward-thinking experts to ensure that the estates of landscape architects did not end up in the trash, since they were not given the same consideration as architectural plans. But simply collecting is not enough. When I worked as curator of the archive (1995–2001), I began writing a history of Swiss landscape architecture^[21] based on these source materials. However, history must continue to be written. Unfortunately, there are hardly any resources available for this. This is because service-related tasks take precedence over work on the fundamentals of landscape architecture. That is also why the state of research in landscape architecture cannot be measured against that of architecture or urban planning. Even when it comes to research funding, unequal yardsticks are evident. There is a need to level the playing field here.

These critical remarks do not reject the histories of landscape and landscape architecture; rather, they indicate that these histories need to be critically examined and expanded. The aim is not to replace one canon with another, nor to judge historical figures solely by contemporary standards. Rather, it is to understand how particular narratives became dominant and what they have obscured. The historiography of landscape architecture has undergone several significant shifts. Early historiographies were often concerned with representation, aesthetics, and composition, drawing heavily on traditions of painting, gardening, and the picturesque. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the discipline became increasingly connected to urbanization, public health, ecology, and regional planning. By the late twentieth century, theoretical debates expanded beyond design form to address landscape as a cultural, political, and ecological construct. Scholars from cultural geography, environmental history, and critical theory challenged the idea of landscape as a neutral or purely visual category. Landscape came to be understood as something produced through social relations, power structures, economic systems, and environmental processes. In recent years, landscape architecture has also managed to break free from its role as a mere appendage of architecture and urban planning. It has successfully claimed its own space for reflection, grounded in its multidisciplinarity. An important development was the emergence of landscape urbanism, which repositioned landscape as a primary medium for understanding and organizing urbanization.

Another reason to revisit the history of landscape architecture is that landscape architecture cannot simply ride on the coattails of other disciplines, such as architectural history or environmental history. The discipline has been strong at analyzing sites, ecosystems, and visual and spatial features, but weak at critically questioning postcolonial, racial, political, and economic assumptions. A critical reading of landscape today combines environmental history, political ecology, historical archival research, indigenous methodologies, discourse analysis, and more. Many of the most powerful tools for reading landscapes closely come from outside the discipline and have only recently been incorporated into landscape architecture. Expanding the field means paying attention to local, vernacular, and indigenous landscape practices and environmental knowledge, histories of colonialism and related territorial transformations, environmental justice movements, and more. This is not simply a matter of adding missing aspects or names. It also requires rethinking the categories through which history and landscapes are organized. Landscape architecture needs to develop its own tools for critical reading of landscapes, to claim its own space for discourse, and to demonstrate the validity of its projects.

Teaching critical landscape awareness: what should students know?

Students’ knowledge is an investment in the future, and there is currently great demand for landscape architects in the job market. What students should learn about landscape at university is not merely a matter for intellectual debate; it concerns how they engage with complexity and develop a broader understanding of landscape. Complexity should play a greater role in the curriculum and help to move away from a purely service-oriented approach. In the Swiss educational sector, there are too many incompatible landscape programs that prioritize either individual service orientation or dominant disciplinary canons. There is a lack of long-term direction and collaboration between universities, universities of applied sciences, and vocational training programs, and little hope that this will change. How are students supposed to learn to collaborate if even their universities are not willing to do so?

I currently teach the history and theory of landscape architecture at ETH Zürich at the bachelor’s and master’s levels. This is a unique opportunity to explore the complex and broad concept of landscape. My goal is to equip students with critical tools that enable them to interpret contemporary landscapes beyond their immediate appearance and to move beyond a simplified chronological understanding of ideas and projects. Students should be able to recognize not only a site’s physical conditions—ecological, geological, climatological, and hydrological—but also the cultural histories and values, social ecologies, labor systems, and forms of governance that produced it and continue to shape it. A park, plantation, river corridor, landslide site, or agricultural landscape should be understood not only in terms of its form and materials, but also through the processes and relationships from which it emerged.

I want students to develop their own sense of the diverse ways in which landscape can be perceived and experienced. This includes scientific, historical, artistic, and local forms of knowledge, as well as perspectives that have often been marginalized in canonical historical narratives. It is not simply about learning established concepts, but about developing the ability to question assumptions, recognize hidden narratives, and engage responsibly with the social and ecological complexities of the present.

Ultimately, my goal is for students to leave the university with an understanding that landscape is both a physical reality and a cultural construct, something that must constantly be reshaped, interpreted, questioned, and transformed. This awareness is becoming increasingly important as landscape architects face challenges that go far beyond aesthetic considerations and require them to engage simultaneously with ecological, social, and political changes at various levels. This is evident in the growing number of projects that take a broad-based approach and only address the design of the final form as the very last step. The vision for the future is the process.

I am aware that there are many questions and no practical solutions. Yet in this time of great transformation, asking critical questions will allow us to work more effectively for a fair and sustainable future. Landscape architecture is not always trapped by the system; its position is also a matter of choice and responsibility. In relation to our topic, it can do both: it can continue colonial patterns under a different aesthetic, or it can contribute to decolonization and challenge colonial power structures and territorial claims.

References