Dieter Kienast (1945-1998), the Swiss landscape architect who won almost every major landscape architecture competition in Switzerland and Germany in the late 1980s and 1990s, and who coined a new generation of landscape architects in encouraging them to adhere to form driven concepts after the environmental movement, would have celebrated his 80th birthday on October 30th. He passed away far too early in 1998 at the age of just 53, at the peak of his career.

What remains from this inspiring figure?

Following the iconoclasm associated with the environmental movement of the 1970s and 1980s, he inspired a new generation of designers by reintroducing form-based concepts into landscape architecture. This followed his deep influence by landscape architects such as Fred Eicher, Ernst Cramer, Sven-Ingvar Andersson, Carl Theodor Sørensen and his passion for garden plans of the Late Baroque. In the 1990s, he imbued the discipline with a renewed sense of confidence: he was a recognized partner of a new generation of rising Swiss architecture firms such as Diener & Diener, Herzog & de Meuron, as well as Burkhalter Sumi und Gigon & Guyer, and won prestigious competitions across Europe. Due to his influence, a Chair for Landscape Architecture was initiated by the ORL, Spatial Planning Department of the ETH Zurich and then established at the Department of Architecture. Shortly before his untimely death, Dieter Kienast was appointed its first professor.

Kienast was a gifted draftsman and designer, and is to this day regarded as a master of fine detail. He came from a Zurich gardening family and trained under the eminent Swiss landscape architect Fred Eicher before moving to Kassel. There, he became associated with the so-called Kassel School, as he completed an interdisciplinary degree in architecture, urban design and landscape planning at the Gesamthochschule Kassel in 1975, earning the title Diplom-Ingenieur in landscape planning.

In Kassel, Kienast discovered the beauty of weeds in the war-torn urban wastelands. His unwavering love for spontaneous vegetation, combined with an in-depth engagement with the methods of phytosociology, led him to develop a new aesthetic for working with nature in the city. He was not dogmatic; he was able to oscillate between interpretation and study of spontaneous vegetation and framing his design using symbolic plant material. Similarly, the use of ‘urban’ and ‘ordinary’ materials such as concrete, cement and steel played an important role in his developed aesthetics for landscape design. Kienast did not seek to imitate rural imagery en miniature within the urban environment, nor to beautify the city with horticultural lushness. Having earned a doctorate in 1978 with a dissertation on Spontaneous Vegetation in the City of Kassel, he oriented his work towards launching succession processes in urban public spaces to enhance biodiversity, reduce cost, and introduce a new image of nature into the Swiss urban landscapes. At the same time, he worked on the effectiveness of designed open spaces, for which he drew inspiration from studying children’s play and considering the needs of teenagers and families at large. Accordingly, his approach to naturalness and artificiality was pragmatic: these spaces were not to become gardenesque idylls, but places of social and aesthetic experience.

In an interview about the courtyard project for the firm Ernst Basler + Partner in Zurich, Kienast stated in 1997:

“We are trying… to achieve a coherence of meaning, form, and material. … We have to accept that there are ever more buildings, and then design on the scarce space in an urban way and break free of the rural model.“

It is important to note that to complete his dissertation, Kienast mapped the spontaneous vegetation of the city of Kassel for a period of five years of his life, learning—like a detective interpreting clues—why certain plant families appeared where and when they did. This deepened his understanding of the coexistence of plant, human, and material, and moved him from learning to read the city to making it legible. This, in turn, aligned with his principle of “site-appropriateness,” which embraced the artificiality of the urban context.

His deliberate reduction of form, material, and planting choices was never to come at the expense of sensuality. In his Ten Theses on Landscape Architecture (1992), Kienast made a plea for a renewed understanding of planting design—a statement that resonates even more strongly today, in an era where landscapes and open spaces are constantly evaluated functionally for their ecosystem services:

“The essential thing is to rediscover the plant as an urban element and not to consider it simply as an ecological or dendrological factor, as an architectural filling element. We should learn that there are different shades of green, that plants rustle differently in the wind, that not just flowers but also fallen leaves have a fragrance. We should include shadow, take account of the impressions of the bare branches in winter, express the symbolism of plants, and feel their sensuousness.”

Kienast followed these principles consistently in all three professional partnerships in which he worked throughout his life:

Kienast + Stöckli (1980–1986)
Kienast, Stöckli & Koeppel (1987–1994)
Kienast Vogt Partner (1995–1999, Kienast † 1998)

Günther Vogt, a student of Kienast, had entered the firm in 1987, soon becoming his closest collaborator. Vogt Landscape Architects was founded in 2000, completing all projects they had started together. The firm now belongs to the most creative and successful landscape architecture firms worldwide.

Whether in the Brühlwiese Municipal Park in Wettingen (1979–1984), the grounds of the École cantonale de langue française in Bern (1983/84 competition, 1987–1991 implementation), or the courtyard gardens for Swiss Re (1994–1995, now Bank Vontobel) and Ernst Basler + Partner (1995–1996) in Zurich—Kienast always began the design process with hours-long site observation and analysis of existing conditions.

In design, he employed distinctly postmodern methods: incorporating local traces, referencing classical models of garden design, integrating written quotations, collage and designing according to the “transparent organization of space,” which came from Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky in the early 1980s. Regardless, he remained committed to the Modern, in his vision of the reforming potential of open spaces. Hence, he is difficult to stereotype. He consummated a modification of the emancipatory design paradigm of the Kassel School in his later works – from practical to contemplative use, from daily life to aesthetic experience – while the subject-related focus remained constant. He selected plants and materials according to a zoning principle based on how spaces would be used, always driven by the question:

“How can a person experience this most fully?”

The large earth pyramids in Wettingen’s Municipal Park Brühlwiese are emblematic: initially planned as naturalistic mounds for play and sledging, the geometrically shaped elements designed for children reflect both Kienast’s rigorous formal language and his vision of experiencing architectural form anew. Planted with a nutrient-poor meadow, the pyramids’ edges appear to fray—blurring the boundaries between designed geometry and spontaneous growth.

Kienast’s work is marked by contrast—light/dark, wet/dry, organic/inorganic, mass/void—and especially by the interplay between geometric forms and natural growth that resists them. He always sought to pair appropriate “images of nature” with specific uses, and delighted in exploring different manifestations of “urban nature.”

For Kienast, making the city legible was through the selection and placement of plants and materials, initiating a choreography of use—guiding where people feel free to move and where not, through intuitive, spatial cues.

In the courtyard garden of Ernst Basler + Partner, a tufa stone wall is constantly damped by rainwater and was populated first by algae, then lichens and mosses, until the wall transformed it into a hanging garden of sorts, with ferns and geranium, set against the strict geometry of the courtyard design. An oversized concrete pot serves as a cistern, collecting rainwater from the rooftops. Occasionally, this water spills into the courtyard, which is covered in grey gravel.

The first of Kienast’s Ten Theses on Landscape Architecture begins with a now-legendary sentence:

“Our work is the search for the Nature of the City whose color is not solely green, but also gray. The Nature of the City rests in its elements: the tree, hedge, lawn; but equally the water-permeable hard surface, broad squares, rigid street gutter line, high wall; and the unobstructed fresh-air of visual axis, the center and the edge.”

With this, Kienast made it clear: landscape architects are not simply tasked with inserting “green” into the city. Rather, landscape design encompasses the full spatial fabric of the urban environment—and landscape architects must always also be urbanists.

At the Swiss Re courtyard, swamp irises were planted directly into the open drainage channels for rainwater in the asphalt. They seem to signal: “It’s damp here.” The iris motif also appears as a silkscreen print on the courtyard windows, linking the garden space to the urban surroundings. Five katsura trees, whose fallen leaves carry a scent reminiscent of gingerbread, provide shade for employees in the canteen courtyard.

As well as the courtyard and front garden of Ernst Basler+Partner is conserved, as dramatically the Swiss Re courtyard, now Vontobel Bank, has been neglected and destroyed by the Holding. During the pandemic, two platforms for outdoor eating have been placed into the courtyard, one covering the pool, and the drainage channels are completely overgrown with little left of the irises. This shows how urgently we should care for the legacy of Postmodern design such as Kienast’s works.

Kienast’s extensive plant knowledge and systemic understanding helped legitimize the idea that ecology and design need not be in opposition. He also challenged prevailing notions of what ecological design should look like. As he once quipped, a frog may be perfectly content in a rectangular Corten steel basin.
Kienast’s work was profoundly shaped by the interdisciplinary ethos, as well as by the ambivalence between aesthetics and activism that permeated the “documenta city” during the 1970s and 1980s. At that time, prominent artists—most notably Joseph Beuys—merged political statements with creative expression. Like his contemporaries, Kienast approached reality inductively, both as a researcher and a designer.

Kienast’s deep interest in perception is also reflected in the changing presentations of his work. Alongside his own presentation plans—first meticulously hand-drawn, then layered with montage and collage techniques—the black-and-white photography of Christian Vogt shaped the reception of his oeuvre. The exhibition series Zwischen Arkadien und Restfläche (“Between Arcadia and Vacant Lot”), conceived by Kienast, demonstrated his preference for experimentation over musealization. Visitors were led through choreographed circuits that offered ever-new zones for contemplation—seemingly in an effort to create an analogy to how garden spaces function experientially.

With his pluralistic understanding of the creative process, Kienast emerges as a seismograph and osmotic thinker—absorbing contemporary theoretical debates and media developments into his work. It was this orientation that allowed him to move beyond the “gray aesthetic” that at times threatened to envelop his work.

His design-oriented open spaces were sometimes disparaged as the work of a “corrupted formalist” [sic], and critics questioned the everyday usability of his 1990s-era landscapes. His shift toward designing private gardens and outdoor spaces for large corporations even drew accusations of escapism.

But Kienast never abandoned the emancipatory content of his open spaces. Instead, he embarked on a series of redefinitions. In response to the call for new forms of housing, he created spaces that enabled new forms of seeing. He shifted the focus of spatial experience onto cognition, integrating aesthetic experience into his gardens and landscapes as a specific form of coping with everyday life—offering, for example, comfort through beauty.

Today, as we face the urgency of measures required to address the climate crisis, we find ourselves slipping into a new iconoclasm and functionalism. There is a widespread consensus: cities need more “green”—on rooftops and façades, through new trees and green spaces—a network of nature to support the equally endangered biodiversity. Yet hardly anyone talks about form—about what this green should look like, and about the spatial and social consequences of planting a tree or a shrub. And that such interventions require design. One potentially utopian idea—one that Kienast likely would have embraced—is that emotional connection to nature, through the personal experience of designed environments, might do more to foster climate-conscious behavior than all the alarming data sets combined.

*

Anette Freytag is the author of The Landscapes of Dieter Kienast, Zurich: gta publishers, 2021 (German edition 2016 Dieter Kienast: Stadt und Landschaft lesbar machen) which provides the first critical monography of this unorthodox thinker and explores his attitudes toward design, his theoretical positions, and his sensitivity to the use of material and plants and to the experience of spaces that connect him with the art of his time. The books have won numerous prizes.