Greenwashing designates the strategic use of ecological rhetoric or imagery to disguise environmentally destructive practices. It is a mode of representation where sustainability is performed as branding rather than enacted as material change. In landscape architecture and urbanism, greenwashing often appears through token plantings, ecological metaphors, or superficial certifications. The term exposes the gap between ecological aesthetics and ecological ethics. Greenwashing is thus less a design error than a political tactic within neoliberal capitalism.
The essay argues that climate collapse pushes ownership into public responsibility and aesthetics into a medium of obligation. Landscape architecture can cultivate perceptual resilience, an ethics of design attuned to disorder, shared accountability, and the mutable nature of life.
An essay on how we push animals into playing roles — from fables and films to renders of biodiversity and art — tracing how these projections tame, abstract, or estrange, and how synurbists and artists unsettle the human–animal divide.
The book reads like a crime novel for landscape architects. It contains much of the stuff we don’t dare to look into, true – mostly because forests fall under the domain of forestry. Designed Forests: A Cultural History uncovers human entanglements with forests as a design metaphor through a series of gripping stories Dan Handel researched in serious depth, not leaving room for much romance. Taking us on a global journey through projects that involve forests as a point of departure, Handel catches us in our preconceived ways of thinking, traversing the undergirding ideas, cutting to the stem of those lines of thought. The book is not an answer to what a forest is, yet we might get an idea of how forest metaphor gets instrumentalized in discourse in spatial design practices and what this metaphor lacks.
Forests are ecosystems, usually acknowledged as spaces with the least human intervention, however, not many of us have been in touch with a virgin forest and its feralness. For most, forest means recreational or urban woods in the vicinity where we stroll and unwind or a mountain forest where we hike or climb. People growing […]
As we confront the growing ecological crisis, it becomes increasingly difficult to argue that harmonious aesthetics, designed primarily for pleasure and ease, are always the most effective mode of expression. Perhaps there is space to question whether ecological efforts demand a different aesthetic attitude, one less fixated on traditional notions of balance and spatial conformity and more open to dissensus and confrontation.
Tim Waterman is Professor of Landscape Theory and Inter-Programme Collaboration Director at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. He is Chair of the Landscape Research Group (LRG), a Non-Executive Director of the digital arts collective Furtherfield, and an advisor to the Centre for Landscape Democracy at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. He is also […]
Urban biodiversity? Yes, please! Nevertheless … … Due to the transitional phase of our understanding of nature in the light of the Anthropocene, there are still some important notions, contradictions and misunderstandings that need to be addressed. To do so, we will operate with terms like nature, ecology, biodiversity, landscape, and aesthetics, and we’ll focus […]
Travelling? See projects nearby!
Get Landezine’s Weekly Newsletter and keep in touch!
Subscribe and receive news, articles, opportunities, projects and profiles from the community, once per week! Subscribe
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
