We speak with Jürgen Weidinger, director of Weidinger Landschaftsarchitekten and head of the Chair for Landscape Architecture at TU Berlin, about his thoughts on what landscape architecture actually is, and what happens when a discipline mistakes its ground condition for its subject matter.

This conversation began with a brief phone call about innovative landscape architecture in Germany and why design seems so restrained in recent decades. Weidinger traces how more expressive design approaches have been limited by an overwhelming set of rules. We also explore the influence of climate adaptation and the shrinking public budgets on landscape architecture. He offers thoughts on the future of the profession and shares what he thinks is missing.

Given that ecological thinking has become a necessary and widely integrated foundation of landscape architecture, where do you see it producing unintended consequences for the discipline?

Landscape Architecture in the cities (in discourses today, landscape architecture is often confused with landscape and urban planning) is a cultural discipline about meaning. Sometimes, meaning is not direct; it can be atmosphere, a relation to context. Spatial context, yes, but also historical context and the contemporary attitudes to life in a given society. Without that, it becomes something else: horticulture, forestry, engineering or applied biology. All legitimate, but not landscape architecture. What I find interesting is that the moment you remove meaning, you move into another field. If you only deal with ethics, you become perhaps a preacher or a therapist. If you only deal with functions, you become an engineer; if only with the aesthetic dimension, you are an artist. Landscape architecture has to hold all three simultaneously — what the German idealist tradition called the good, the true, and the beautiful (das Gute, Wahre und Schöne).

What is also curious, and which is another peculiarity of the discipline, is that the materials, earth, plants, stone, water and the related principles of physics and biology barely change. It was like this in the Renaissance; it is like this now. So I am not so sure modernity, post-modernity and current multicrisis-modernity brought any fundamental change. Of course, the concepts of humans, society, technology and nature change, and we will see how the new understandings influence landscape architecture. But structurally, materially, it keeps returning to the same ground.

Where does ecology sit in that structure? It seems to be claimed by both sides — as science on the rational end, and as aesthetic on the expressive end. 

That is exactly the confusion, and a distinction needs to be made. For landscape architecture, ecology is not a design position. It is the base condition — always already there, like the climate. Landscape architecture has always operated within ecological systems. You cannot not. The question is only what you do with that fact.

In recent decades, Klima-Angst installed a new, nature-like formalism. I’m afraid much of the ecological design is symbolic. We rarely know whether a project is actually performing ecologically.

Now, the designerly Zeitgeist undulates. Minimalism gives way to abundance overkill, suppressed ideas resurface, and older formal design languages get reactivated to express contemporary values. In literature, these cycles move slowly; in pop culture, they are quick to change; landscape architecture sits somewhere in the middle, with medium to long wavelengths. Anything can come back, including the expression of an apparently untouched nature. What has happened in recent decades is that Klima-Angst (a real threat, but one whose apocalyptic framing often produces numbness) replaced first the formalism of postmodern eclecticism, then the rigour of the minimalist era in the 2000s, and installed in their place a new nature-like formalism.

The earliest eco-influenced designs can be regarded as avant-garde. Rather than making bold formal statements in the old sense, they directed attention toward different values and introduced new meanings. What followed was the flood of nature-like shapes, lush planting schemes, and green patches spreading across cities, becoming a thoughtless mainstream standard. Projects working from that source lose their connection to the urban context and historical meaning. And we know the city is not, and cannot be, a natural ecosystem. We have to admit that much of ecological design is symbolic. Beneath the organic forms, the lush planting, the staged successional growth — we rarely know whether a project is actually performing ecologically.

So the axis of landscape architecture runs from reason to expression — and ecology sits outside that axis entirely?

Yes, roughly. The axis runs from the very rational, functional, measurable end (in German called “Leistungsform” – a term denoting a form that performs best possible) to the more expressive, contextually charged, formally ambitious end. As the image of the undulating Zeitgeist suggests, nature-like design can, at certain moments, make a genuine contribution to aesthetics and meaning. But in general, ecology is the envelope within which that axis operates. You cannot ignore it, but it does not say where you stand.
For example, a project can be ecologically extensive yet formally poor. A project can also be, and this would be far more interesting, ecologically extensive and formally bold. Ecology alone does not determine design position, and it certainly does not determine quality.

Ecology is the envelope you cannot ignore, but it does not say where you stand. The problem is that the ecological envelope gets confused with the content. The ground condition becomes the design statement.

The problem is that the ecological envelope gets confused with the content. The ground condition becomes the design statement. And when that happens, meaning disappears because the framework has been mistaken for the argument. Of course, there is a chance that designers keep a more “naïve” approach, and some unexpected designs happen.

What do you mean by a naïve approach?

Not naivety as ignorance but as freedom from obligation, the freedom of not being fully in the system. When you do not feel compelled to follow every rule, you can play more freely with ideas and combinations. Like a child starting out. I think mature designers can hold onto this. They learn to control it rather than lose it. They build walls around where they want to go, protecting that space rather than surrendering it.

In Germany, that space gets closed very quickly. There are simply too many layers of rules, standards, and institutional expectations. It begins at the entry point: competitions today require specific references, certifications, proven track records. Young offices cannot get in. And if they do get in, they are expected to propose work that fits the mainstream demand. The result is that competition entries increasingly look alike — in content and in graphic language — which is amplified by the competition platforms’ selection.

Hence, the young designers are losing the appetite to start their own practices. They join corporate firms instead, climb slowly, or retreat into “academic-ish” work to avoid the pressure of reality. Which brings its own problems.

Why do you think landscape architecture in Germany sits so far toward the rational end?

I am not a sociologist, but several things converged. Germany industrialised early and deeply — several million refrigerators, twenty million Volkswagen Beetles, all identical, affordable, built to last. That logic shaped society. Industrial standardisation became a cultural default. Then there is the Protestant ethic: austerity, presentable reason, a deep suspicion of excess. Then there is the welfare state logic: there are not enough resources to give everybody equally, so you reduce the public services and fancy things.

Some degree of standardisation is useful, but when discussions about a project revolve around whether standards are met and not about the creative response, something has gone wrong. Designing becomes, in effect, industrial production. And the effect is visible: many places start to look the same.

The people who govern public space today were almost entirely trained in law, administrative economics, or engineering at best. They govern by numbers. To get a sense of the scale, take a minute to look at the sheer number of rules presented in the legal framework for public landscape architecture projects: ABau — Allgemeine Anweisung für die Vorbereitung und Durchführung von Bauaufgaben Berlins für Garten- und Landschaftsbau. Then consider that the handbook Gute Pflege assigns a budget code to every element of public space — cut hedges are prohibited by norm.

Some degree of standardisation is useful for cost control and consistent implementation. But when discussions about a project revolve around whether standards are met and not about the creative response, something has gone wrong. Designing becomes management and planning. It becomes, in effect, industrial production. And the effect is visible: many places start to look the same.

I notice this in competition results too. Besides what I mentioned earlier, I am often struck by how formally thin some winning proposals are, but they are designed by the rules, and that is what counts. One might reasonably ask what role the designer plays at all. They might as well be substituted with AI.

The jury dynamic has shifted, too. In one case, I argued that a proposal was simply inappropriate for the site. However, the municipal representatives chose the project only for its title, Climate-Oasis, regardless of its weaknesses, to show citizens they are doing something to combat climate change.

The places that escape this logic of sameness are ones with genuine spatial singularity. In Berlin, for example, there is Südgelände, or Tegel Airport. It must be emphasised that the well-known and innovative references of pioneering post-industrial German landscape architecture were designed in a time before most of the current regulations were introduced.

Teaching at TU Berlin, what do you observe with the younger generation, design-wise? Is there a new AI-inflected, formally adventurous aesthetic emerging?

No, or not yet. Students are drawn to a generation of academics who encourage them to draw plant roots, bacteria and fungi, rain and wind patterns. Some of them are concerned about the
Anthropocene, the climate crisis, overpopulation — a dark future in general and speculate about
cohabitation, non-human agency, in things we are not certain about and cannot fully control. Anyway, they do not express strong formal design ambitions. They are interested in cohabitation, in non-human agency, in things we are not certain about and cannot fully control. Their tutors, most of whom work primarily in universities rather than in practice, have come to understand themselves as scientists-designers. The students inherit that concern.

“Academic landscape architecture” tends to avoid resolution. Extensive analysis without design conclusions, without form. Diagrams, images, and narration instead of a designed space. But at a certain point, you have to stop and do something, such as drawing a path.

What follows is a distancing from realism, from the particularity of actual sites, and from individual formal gesture, in favour of systematic approaches. There is still an experimental impulse in this kind of “academic landscape architecture”, but it tends to avoid resolution. Extensive analysis without design conclusions, without form. Diagrams, images, and narration instead of a designed space. But at a certain point, you have to stop and do something. Design something — even something seemingly simple, a path, a topography. A design act that transforms an idea into real space. And that act needs to be done excellently. I think this is what is being lost, not only at TU Berlin, but at other universities where the same scientific orientation has taken hold. But I am quite hopeful that a sort of “post-post-modernist” design turn will happen with the generation after next.

Can you describe projects which achieved the goal of expression and mastery?

Of course, I am thrilled by older projects such as Olympiapark München, Messepark Munich Riem, Planten und Blomen in Hamburg, the Aarhus University Campus, Pildammsparken in Malmö, the seafront promenade in Saint-Valery-en-Caux, the Gulbenkian Foundation Park in Lisbon, and many others.

Closer to my own generation, designers like Mosbach, Vogt, and Kiefer have produced some peculiar projects in public space. Palmisano Park in Chicago struck me — a public park in a libertarian country, engaging seriously with ecological processes and exactly the kind of questions the Anthropocene discourse claims to care about.

What is the limit of design in public space?

Most of the “fancy projects”, meaning formally highly pitched, happen on private land. There, almost anything is possible, depending on the investor’s budget and corporate “naivety”. But that is closer to garden art than to landscape architecture in the full sense. The real question for landscape architecture is public space, open to everybody, and what can be done for all the roofless spaces of cities: from the centre to the outskirts to the residential edges, where most people move and live every day. That work depends on public funding, and here standardisation interferes.

“Ecotech standard” could make designs measurable. If that happens, landscape architecture will effectively become applied ecology. What would be an innovative use of ecological design is a combination of technology, meaning and craft.

The higher the level of organisation of public administration, such as in Germany, the less surprising the designs and the less experimentation. And I do fear that the next twenty years will make this worse for the majority of landscape architects who intend to work in the public realm — the combination of standardisation and the mounting pressure to demonstrate a response to the ecological crisis. The worst case would be a globally applied “ecotech standard”, driven by political urgency and the need for measurable, controllable outcomes, with planning officials reaching for best practices they can audit and replicate. If that happens, landscape architecture will effectively become applied ecology.

Do you see a version of ecological design that is actually innovative?

Yes. But it requires bringing at least two spheres together. The technological innovation: natural science knowledge combined with evidence-based tools, parametric approaches to hydraulics, vegetation dynamics, material performance, etc. But if it stops there, it remains Leistungsform. What makes it designerly innovative is when it also carries meaning: a relation to context, a cultural reading of the place and the state of mind of the people, echoing Zeitgeist.

Doing that means designing against the mainstream, or underneath it. Provoking it slightly. Integrating deliberate deviations from the rule, or what you might call intentional mistakes — disruptions that draw attention to something unexpected, that make the familiar strange for a moment. And of course, you have to master your craft, for which “academic-ish” work like drawing roots is not enough.

This combination — technology, meaning and craft — has real potential. But in addition, you need a client willing to hold that space, a designer with the freedom and the maturity to work in it, and a regulatory environment that does not flatten it before it is built. I hope the design of our project for the former airfield at Berlin Tegel will be successful in achieving this goal, despite hundreds of rules and, sorry to say, a bureaucratic and overstrained administration. I tried to criticise and change this trend of “designing by rules”.

You mean by Designing Atmospheres, the book you edited?

Yes. As part of my work at TU Berlin, we were trying to answer a specific question: how do you describe immeasurable spatial qualities by inviting a more phenomenological approach into a discipline drifting steadily toward the scientific and the measurable? 

Any space, and especially a well-designed space, has an aesthetic impact on us in the form of expression, presence, intensity, character, and similar. We describe that as atmosphere. And atmosphere, as we understand it, is a meaning that is sensed immediately and directly, before it is rationally processed or designated. The framework we developed is built as a systematic model; it is applicable to any place, any jury situation, any design process, regardless of the design preferences. It draws on theoretical sources but is grounded in the experience of the design practice. I would call it design-based theory.

I will be honest: I wish the ideas we presented in Designing Atmospheres and elsewhere had more traction. But in an era of global multicrises — climate change, the pressures on democracy and military conflict — the disciplines that deliver quantifiable results are preferred. The Senate of Berlin decided to plant one million trees instead of creating more surprising, interesting public spaces. One million trees is a measurable number; the atmospheres are not.

Are there ways forward?

Of course. There always are. What I would wish for is a recognition that aesthetic difference itself has value — that a city worth living in needs spaces of different character, different intensities, different affordances. Not pseudo-democratic, scientifically approved lookalike projects. This argument is not undemocratic, and it is not unecological. But it is very difficult to come through in a society where every decision arrives with a spreadsheet.

My prediction is that the current approach will eventually exhaust itself. And when it does, urban societies will rediscover cultural and spatial quality as the primary measure for the “human habitat”.