RESEARCH GROUP

Landscape Architecture - Design

Updated: June 2025

Landscape Architecture – Design is the field in which design-related questions in landscape architecture are central. We work from three complementary perspectives, where research, education, and collaboration generate knowledge ABOUT, FOR, and THROUGH design.

ABOUT design: involves studies of the cultural and social signifiance of landscape design, as well as the professional practices of landscape architects.

FOR design: includes studies of how places and their design function, are experienced, and are used in different contexts and by different user groups.

THROUGH design: encompasses studies that use artistic and design-based methods to explore and shape landscapes, while reflecting on how different scenarios affect both the landscape and its inhabitants.

What unites these three perspectives is a shared interest in the design of the landscape itself, as well as in the processes surrounding landscape design and the tools, materials, and methods used by landscape architects. They also share an interest in design in relation to time, where places and academic discourses are studied from cultural-historical perspectives as well as contemporary and forward-looking, speculative approaches.

Research, education and collaboration bedrivs inom följande teman:

  • Architectural critique: research-based critique of both built projects and current discourses within academia and professional practice.
  • Aesthetics of landscape architecture: studies of the aesthetic values of landscapes and landscape architecture, and of the role that aesthetic values, experiences, and taste play in design processes.
  • Landscape experiences: explorations of how people understand, interpret, and are affected by landscapes, including research on how places contribute to identity, meaning, and significance in people’s lives.
  • Landscape history and cultural heritage: studies of the temporal depth of landscapes, as well as their development and cultural history. Central themes include landscape change, cultural-historical values, and landscapes of memory.
  • Representation: explorations of how design proposals and analyses are communicated through text, images, and a range of techniques, both digital and analogue.
  • Materials and technology: investigations into how technical solutions and materials both constrain and enable landscape architectural design.
  • Design-based and artistic research: explorations of a wide range of artistic and design-based methods, as well as the development of theory in relation to these approaches..