The Collective Landscape Futures symposium on 18-19 May 2023 will explore the “collective” nature of landscapes. It will investigate the common, shared, and public endeavours that produce the worlds of which we are part.

Attendance is free but spaces are limited and must be reserved in advance here.

Symposium rationale: Landscapes have always been defined through their collective relationships – between people and other living things, material objects and ephemeral entities, and situated actions and grounded processes. These are worlds produced through socio-material entanglements that can be read as common practices, shared experiences, and public concerns. Landscapes are only possible through the combined contribution of humans and non-humans, interacting, sharing between, providing for, and making with. However, in recognising prevailing contradictions in many landscape practices; across contemporary art, architecture, and film; we see the potential of landscapes being undermined through the perpetual claiming and reframing by and of individuals. Whether in god-like views from above^[1] or the mirror and mirage^[2] that landscapes can create, landscape practices too often foreground hegemony and embolden individuals with power, while simultaneously concealing the actions from which they are produced.

This symposium critically reflects on dominant landscape techniques, discusses landscapes that are marginalised through globalising market forces, and focusses on the collective nature of landscapes – from planetary climates to intimate private spaces. It investigates the common, shared, and public endeavours that produce the world of which we are part.

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The Collective Landscape Futures symposium follows three years of critical roundtable conversations – hosted in London with colleagues from around the world – exploring the future of landscape and urban practices. From here we draw into focus the “collective” nature of future landscapes through a 2-day interdisciplinary symposium of conversations, speculations, and debate.  

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The symposium is organised by the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Greenwich, with support from the Institute of Inclusive Communities and Environments.

Landscape Architecture and Urbanism programmes are focused on the speculative design of future landscapes and cities informed by site-focused research. They encourage design invention and experimentation from within one of the oldest centres of landscape teaching in the UK, with notable lecturers such as Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe and renowned graduates such as Marti Franch Batllori. The school is based in the award-winning Stockwell Street building within the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Maritime Greenwich. It is the only institution in London offering Landscape Institute [LI] accredited education from BA to Masters.

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^[1] Haraway, D. 1988. Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. In: Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 575-599

^[2] Lefebvre, H. 1991. The Production of Space (trans.). Oxford: Basil Blackwell

[Photo credit: Altan Dervish]