The IMLA starts with an internship semester in a landscape architecture office in October 2013. Two theoretical semesters will be organised at the campus in Freising (nearby Munich) from March 2014 to February 2015. The 4th semester is dedicaded to the Master‘s thesis. In addition, an international project of four weeks duration will be done.

International applicants should submit their documents as early as possible because during this peak time processing may take 4-6 weeks.

The IMLA team supports applicants in finding internship placements. We therefore recommend handing in your papers at UniAssist as soon as possible.

Further information on the application requirements and the online application system can be found here.

Drawing on this theme, Ion Mincu University for Architecture and Urbanism hosted an intensive design studio from March 23 to April 7. Teachers and students from universities in Belgium, Estonia and Germany (IMLA) stayed at the Bucharest Faculty during this period. The participants had different academic backgrounds ranging from landscape planning to urban design and architecture. This programme aimed to explore the urban periphery from various perspectives and to draw up sustainable future scenarios. The design studio was funded by the European Union under the Lifelong Learning Programme (Erasmus Intensive Programmes).

Urban and peri-urban areas are Europe’s key to economic growth, social wealth and political stability. However, this urban productivity is highly threatened if its ecological foundation is destroyed. The objective of this workshop was to find perspectives for the urban periphery that are combining the needs of economy, ecology and society. Furthermore, the spatial qualities of dispersed and ill-defined were to be enhanced.

Bucharest has seen a very compact urban development until 1989. The dramatic shift from state-controlled planning to a free marked economy let to dynamic developments in housing and commerce in the urban fringe. This dynamic has slowed down significantly with the financial collapse of 2008. Therefore, the design studio on urban peripheries was held in the right moment: the difficulties caused by the previous developments have been recognized and there is time to think about alternative visions. The south-eastern fringe of the city was chosen as a case study area for this studio starting from the so-called Văcăreşti lake eastwards along the canalised river Dîmboviţa up to the periphery ring road and the adjacent former villages. Being complex and large the area posed a big challenge. But it was also full of potentials with regard to the ecological and recreational functions of the urban periphery. However, competing interests of housing, agriculture, industry, traffic, nature protection, water management, recreation and various other sectors had to be balanced.

60 students and 18 teachers attended the course from four different study programmes. The students worked in international and interdisciplinary teams joining the competences of architects, urban planners and landscape architects. Their work started with a site visit followed by a short and intense analysis. The teams worked in parallel on ten different themes (such as water, landmarks, settlements) and brought the findings together again in a joint presentation. The second step was to draw up a scenario for describing a possible set of future visions. For this, the students were forced to move their viewpoint from the site up to the macro-level. Which major trends in economy, society, environment, policy and technology can be assumed and how will these influence the development of the area? The scenarios were presented at the end of the first week. The visions ranged from positive foresights such as ‘Green Revolution’ and ‘High Technology’ to negative perspectives considering for example a severe economic downturn, disintegration of the European Union or an environmental catastrophe such as an earthquake. However, mostly the positive
scenarios were selected for the further development. In addition, several thematic lectures took place in the first week as well as two panel discussions with international and local experts and stakeholders. The first roundtable reviewed the concept of landscape in Romania while the second looked at the role of scenarios in the Romanian planning system. A wider public and professional local audience attended lectures and panels of both weeks.

The students’ task for the second week was even more demanding. The lines of thoughts were expected to go in parallel on four levels: space, participation, finance and governance. Again, different lectures on governance, land management and landscape design complemented the theoretical input. In addition, two further roundtable discussions were held on the themes of participation and the European dimension. After another week of highly intensive work, intercultural communication and interdisciplinary alignment the student groups presented colourful future pictures for an area full of hidden potentials.

The aspect of urban agriculture played an important role in many of the concepts presented. The general interest of planning in urban agriculture has increased significantly in the last years. Agricultural areas in the urban fringe can play a strategic role at the interface of economy, ecology and recreation. Raising this issue in the context of Bucharest together with the aspects of participation and governance has surely created important research questions that hopefully will be taken up further.

Everyone involved perceived this intensive design studio as an important professional and cultural experience. Plans have already been made for continuing the model in 2014 on a different site. All lectures and project outputs will be made available to the interested public through the project website.


Participating Universities:

• Belgium: Université Libre de Bruxelles, Faculté d’Architecture Lacambre-Horta
• Estonia: Estonian University of Life Sciences, Department of Landscape Architecture
• Germany: Nürtingen-Geislingen University (coordinating institution), Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University of Applied Sciences (Department of Landscape Architecture)
• Romania: University of Architecture and Urbanism Ion Mincu Bucharest (host institution)

Please visit the seminar wiki for more details.

During the first week of November 2012 a group of IMLA students stayed at the University of Antalya to work with local students under the supervision of Veli Ortacesme (Akdeniz University), Harlind Libbrecht (University College Ghent), Fritz Auweck and Stefanie Gruber (both HSWT). The project site is the historical city of Sillyon. This monument is located nearby Antalya and dates from Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Seljuk eras. The students were asked to develop a landscape development concept for the historical site and its surroundings.

Download Sillyon Broschure (pdf-file, 29 MB)

The project is supervised by Clinton Hindes and his team together with IMLA programme director Roman Lenz and Christoph Dankers. The students work on an urban redevelopment concept for the area between the urban centre and the harbour of Cape Town. The project takes up the theme of ‘landscapes in transition’. This is also the topic of this year’s IFLA world congress which is going to take place in Cape Town later this year in September. The students enjoy very good working conditions at the UCT. After the final presentation scheduled for the end of May the group will go on a field trip in South Africa to explore its extraordinary landscapes.

The GIS-based animation of the group ‚Moving Landscape‘
can be watched here.

Download project report

Programme

Friday, 30.03.12 

13 30  Reception

14 00  Welcome

14 30   Prof. Dr. Diedrich Bruns  ECLAS, Universität Kassel 

Perspectives and Challenges of Landscape Architecture Education in Europe

15 00    Pascal Gysin BSLA President

Professional Challenges for Landscape Architecture - The Swiss Perspective

15 20   Prof. Dr. Jörg Schaller Prof. Schaller UmweltConsult GmbH

Geodesign: a new Approach for Landscape Planning and Decision Support

• to understand and apply different landscape assessment approaches
• to discuss the concept of ‘Everyday Landscapes’.

Background, theory, purpose and application of different landscape assessment approaches will be presented by taking a variety of international perspectives. Student participants will, parallel to a lecture series, apply assessment methods by performing small assessment projects (train and test in practice).

Please contact the seminar coordinator if you wish to attend as a guest listener.

Professor Ingrid Schegk has taken over the role of the IMLA programme director at HSWT Weihenstephan-Triesdorf. The programme was let successfully until then by Prof. Dr. Ulrich Kias who is now dean of the faculty.