Book coming soon:
Troubled! Architecture of Ruinous Landscapes
The landscapes we inhabit are ruinous. Dominant forms of spatial planning that have significantly contributed to the destruction of our environments are in crisis. In order to develop different forms of spatial planning, it is necessary to trace architecture’s involvement in creating and upholding the dominance of these destructive relationships. Building on a critical analysis of ecological simplification as a driving force of capitalist spatial planning deeply rooted in architecture, this book aims to grasp space in its relational complexity to join a more-than-human search for more inclusive and sustainable spatial practices. By examining the ruinous character of four different landscapes in Berlin – a forest, a river, wetlands, and fallow land – the authors both question prevailing forms of spatial planning and explore other ways of reading, representing, and constructing space that can help us sustain our shared environments as socio- and biodiverse spaces. Rather than jumping to supposedly definite solutions this book tries to embrace conflict, fluidity, and ambivalence as a ground for cultivating different modes of relating, planning, and taking care.

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Titel:
Troubled! Architecture of Ruinous Landscapes

Editorship:
space for relational research

Authors:
Barbara Herschel,
Kaspar Jamme,
Felix Künkel,
Justus Schweer

Publishing House:
adocs Verlag

Date of release:
5/2025

Format:
Softcover, 23x17cm, 230 Pages

Language:
English

ISBN:
978-3-943253-89-4

The book addresses people, groups and disciplines that research, think and plan in space-related ways. It can be of interest to you in different ways: as a transdisciplinary project that raises questions of what a collaborative and more-than-human apporach to shaping our environments could look like. As a scientific and artistic exploration of topics relating to urban ecology, the right to the city and urban planning. As an engagement with concrete phenomena, landscapes and histories in and around Berlin. And as an attempt to reflect on and to overcome the conditions that bind architecture to an extractive, exploitative and destructive production of space. The book is intended to be a contribution to architectural, scientific and urban political discourses that address the challenges of a socio-ecological transformation.

Spatial and discursive context:

Despite its focus on local phenomena, the underlying issues the book is concerned with are relevant to a wider discourse. Water shortages, contamination, forest diebacks and the displacement of biological and social diversity are topics that affect many other cities. The Ruinous Landscapes this book focuses on are not specific to Berlin but an expression of a capitalist production of space more broadly. Nonetheless, there are differences between particular landscapes that need to be identified in order to initiate targeted changes. In this sense, the book aims to raise structural questions without losing sight of the specific.

Authors:

Barbara Herschel, Kaspar Jamme, Felix Künkel and Justus Schweer bring together experiences in spatial practices such as architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, academic teaching, cooperation with civil society actors and public administration. Relational Research is a way for them to explore space as a network of relationships, dynamics and processes. By founding the Space for Relational Research, they attempt to establish a critical research practice that uncovers relations of power, challenges the boundaries of architecture and explores new fields of engagement and cooperation.

Keywords:

Constructed Ecosystems
Geographies of Power
Property Issue
More-than-human Commoning
Life Sustaining Assemblages

Nature-Cultural History
Re-ecologising
Niche Construction
Blurring Boundaries
Careful Planning

space for relational research

Troubled! Architecture of Ruinous Landscapes

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