How can an abstract term like “Topology” become pertinent and effective to landscape thinking today? There is a schism between the way landscape is understood scientifically, either as a normative network or an environmental system, and the way the same place exists emotionally for people. This disparity which prevails in today’s landscape calls for a change of approach, both in terms of action and perception. Topology, in this instance, is not confined to the science of continuous surfaces in mathematics, it can pay greater attention to deeper spatial, physical, poetic and philosophical values embedded in a long tradition of designed nature. The strength of landscape topology is that it can weave together and integrate heterogeneous fields of action into a single meaningful whole. It brings disciplines together on a common topological “vellum” capable of improving our understanding of landscape as a cultural construct with all its inherent beauty and strength.

With contributions by: Annemarie Bucher, Gion A. Caminada, Stefan Körner, Wilhelm Krull, Norbert Kühn, Hansjörg Küster, Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, Lothar Schäfer, Joseph Schwartz, Martin Seelis, Michael Seiler, Antje Stokman, Wulf Tessin.

Nature is not simply “green” or the “opposite of culture.” Essentially, it is an intellectual construct. The relationship between man and Nature, for instance, articulates itself architectonically. Now what could one see as the possible role of Nature in projects of architects representative of the International Style (including successive echoes in postwar modernity), and how does Nature itself only become “visible” through the built environment? Based on key architecture projects, this fourth volume of the Landscript series attempts to instigate a change of perspective. In series of investigations, renowned researchers analyse architecture through the lens of its own inherent understanding of Nature. Their essays try to gain insights both into concepts of Nature in modernity, whose entire range of characteristics have yet to be explored, and into an architecture, whose relationship to Nature is usually only negotiated in disciplines like garden history. How does this finally relate to our present condition?