FIELD STUDIES The New Aesthetics of Urban Agriculture

Description

Agricultural areas in industrial and urban regions will in the future no longer be seen merely as functional space but rather as “islands of the beautiful and the useful.” In the extremely densely built Ruhr region, two projects explore the space between postindustrial forest landscape and useful agricultural landscape: the Industrial Forest of Rhine-Elbe and the Ornamental Farm of Mechtenberg. In Mechtenberg, Paolo Bürgi, the renowned landscape architect from the Ticino, has designed sequential interventions to accompany the seasonal cycle of land on the grain fields. Starting from these fascinating examples, the book presents exemplary concepts for the cooperation of landscape architecture, agriculture, and Land Art.

CONTENTS

• Beauty from Function and as Function / Udo Weilacher

Horizons of Experience

• Post-Industrial Cultural Landscapes / Wolfgang Haber
• From the Ornamented Farm to Landscape Beautification Historical Models for Joining Beauty with Usefulness / Michael Rohde
• Landscape Art. On the Change of Perspective while Walking / Martin Köttering
• Agriculture – Using and Managing Cultural Landscapes / Lothar Hövelmann

Experimental Ground Mechtenberg

• Cultural Landscape in the Ruhr Area / Roland Günter
• The Power of Aesthetic Impression as a Social Utopia / Thomas Neiss
• Ferme Ornée Mechtenberg. Field Experiments between Post-Industrial Wilderness and New Usefulness / Udo Weilacher
• Venustas et Utilitas / Paolo Bürgi

Viewpoints

120 pages / 22 x 28,5 cm