Table Of ContentSyntax of Landscape
The Landscape Architecture
of Peter Latz and Partners
Udo Weilacher
Syntax of Landscape
The Landscape Architecture
of Peter Latz and Partners
Birkhäuser
Basel •Boston •Berlin
Layout and cover design: Peter Willberg, London
Translation: Michael Robinson, London
Translation of Preface: Julian Reisenberger, Weimar
Copyediting of the English edition: Jessica Read, Lindenberg
This book is also available in a German edition:
ISBN 978-3-7643-7614-7
Bibliographic information published by
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
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Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007932819
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Contents
Preface
7
Landscape architecture as cultural valorization
9
Layers of information. How does landscape work?
33
University of Marburg on Lahnberge
34
Ulm Science City on Eselsberg
46
Plateau de Kirchberg, Luxembourg
56
Dealing with “bad places”
79
Saarbrücken Harbour Island
82
Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park
102
Parco Dora, Turin
134
Hiriya Mountain, Tel Aviv
148
Design as experimental invention
167
Notes
186
Project data
188
Illustration credits
191
Further selected projects and competitions
192
Selected publications
195
Exhitions and catalogues
197
On Peter Latz and Partners
198
Preface
The right degree of closeness is the right amount of detachment...
... this is what one repeats to oneself as an author when trying to establish the best
possible relation to one’s subject, whilst in actual fact oscillating between that enthu-
siastic curiosity that fuels writing, and the necessary critical reflection. In the end,
the hope is to infect the reader with the same joy of discovery and understanding of
gardens and of landscapes that ultimately moved me to put pen to paper. I say “ulti-
mately” because, more so than ever before, in this book it has been particularly diffi-
cult to find the right degree of closeness through the right amount of detachment –
this is not just a book on contemporary landscape architecture written by a teacher,
but also a book written by a student about his teacher.
For almost seven years, from 1986 to 1993, I studied landscape architecture at the
Technische Universität München-Weihenstephan in Freising and I was inevitably
influenced in my professional thinking and actions by Peter Latz’s conceptual
approaches. The search for critical distance, for an individual standpoint and new
perspectives in landscape architecture was already prevalent some 20 years ago, as
I wanted to push beyond the know-how I had been invested with. That said, it would
be wrong to deny that my studies at Weihenstephan, and Peter Latz in particular,
have had a lasting influence on my work.
The awareness of one’s own partiality and the knowledge of how difficult it would
be to bring together the richness of Peter Latz’s work and the complexity of his
thinking in a single publication has for years held me back from responding to
Anneliese and Peter Latz’s willingness for me to write this book. Why then now, just
when Peter Latz is preparing to relinquish his teaching and research at the TU
2008
München in spring , and at a time when a new generation, in particular Tilman
Latz, is gaining influence in the office of Latz + Partner?
To this day I have no truly plausible answers to these questions. It seems that,
over the years, so much of the aforementioned ‘fuel’ has accumulated that it would
no longer be prudent to delay ignition any longer, to stick with the metaphor. New
generations of landscape architecture students (not only at the TU München and
the Leibniz Universität Hannover) have discovered the work of Peter Latz and
20
bemoan, quite rightly, and just as we did years earlier, the lack of a comprehensive
publication on the work of Latz + Partner from which one can learn more of their
visionary design and planning approaches, and of the theoretical and conceptual
background to the projects undertaken at the office in Ampertshausen.
The Syntax of Landscapeaims to contribute to an understanding of important
developments in international landscape architecture. The objective was not to
7
compile a comprehensive, annotated and illustrated catalogue of projects but to
discuss some of Peter Latz’s work and theoretical approaches with respect to their
manifold interrelationships with other positions in landscape and architectural
design. As such, the reader will also find works by the landscape architects Bernard
Lassus and Richard Haag or the artist Lois Weinberger in this book, as well as short
discussions of important principles of landscape and design theory from Lucius
Burckhardt, Horst Rittel or the Structuralists from the realm of architecture. I am
most grateful to all those who so willingly provided me with information and image
material in this respect, in particular Richard Haag, Bernard Lassus, Mary Randlett,
Franziska and Lois Weinberger as well as Dr. Martin Weyl.
From the very beginning Anneliese and Peter Latz have trusted and supported me
in this broader thematic approach. With great patience and concentration, Peter
Latz assisted me in long and detailed interviews. Many passages, short in comparison
to the full-length discussions, are drawn from these, the “voice of the designer”
speaking directly, printed in italics.
In addition, Latz + Partner supported me with great organisational assistance,
in particular their colleague Karin Graßl. This cooperation also clearly showed the
immense contribution made over decades by Anneliese Latz to the international
success of the office in her role as an experienced and meticulous project partner.
This book cannot fully reflect the extent and importance of her input.
For decades, the landscape architect Dr. Gunter Bartholmai, Peter Latz’s colleague
at the TU München, has accompanied Peter’s teaching and research activities
with extraordinary dedication. I am thankful to him not only for his valuable infor-
mation on the conceptual thought behind Peter Latz’s work, but also for a whole
series of essential images which he provided for this book, as I am to many others
who provided illustrations including Manfred Balg, Michael Latz, Peter Liedtke,
Sara Cedar Miller, Monika Nikolic, Christa Panick, Jane Sebire, Susanne Wamsler,
André Weisgerber and Harf Zimmermann. To Hanno Dutt I am grateful for the
insights he provided into Peter Latz’s biographical background.
Last but not least, I would like to thank the book’s designer Peter Willberg and the
translator of the English edition, Michael Robinson, for their excellent work, and –
once again – “my” long-standing editor and friend Andreas Müller, who over many
years has contributed with level-headedness and great personal commitment to the
Syntax of Landscape. Without the ever loving and patient professional as well as
organisational support of my wife, the landscape architect Rita Weilacher, I would
nothavebeenabletorealisethisextraordinaryproject.HowcanIthankherenough?
2007
Udo Weilacher, August
8
Landscape architecture
as cultural valorization
Central Park in New York is an
ideal symbol for the new type of
open space that had been
invented, adapting to a changing
social background. It is a model of
flexibility and usefulness, but does
the same apply to its images of
nature?
10
given the massive
inner city planning problems he had had to struggle with
for over two decades, he didn’t think it was appropriate to talk about “landscape
gardening” or “garden art” any more, but from then on used the term “landscape
architecture” for his letterhead, for correspondence and on countless plans:
Frederick Law Olmsted was apparently the person who coined the term “landscape
19 340
architecture” in the mid th century while working on the hectare site of New
York’s Central Park. This democratic “Volkspark” (people’s park), created as a result
of profound changes in the social structure of metropolitan life, was one of the
most progressive and farsighted concepts in the world in its day. It is still cited as a
model for modern landscape architecture. The creation of the park marked a radical
change in the way landscape architecture perceived itself. Until then, it had been
defined more as a discipline relating to arts and crafts than to engineering, social
science and environmental science.
It was not until just under a hundred years after Olmsted’s epoch-making work
was completed, as technical progress and industrialized civilization started to re-
shape the Central European landscape more vigorously, that the term landscape
architecture also gradually started to be accepted in the German-speaking countries
as the term for a profession that some people still now classify as art and others as
science. Over the last five decades the word “landscape” has been greatly extended
both conceptually and in scope, but few people have fully understood how to
respond appropriately to the considerable increase in complex problems that land-
scape architecture faces, or indeed how to develop – as Olmsted did in his day – new
expressive forms of contemporary environmental design that suit the prevailing
social conditions.
Peter Latz is one of the few people who obviously succeeded in making this
cultural breakthrough with his skilful transformation and cultural revaluation of
post-industrial landscapes. He is now one of the internationally significant landscape
architects acclaimed for his expertise both as a professional practitioner and also for
his university research and teaching at institutions including the Technical University
in Munich and the Universities of Harvard and Pennsylvania. There is no template
for his work. His projects are many and various, and all steeped in his commitment
to crafted precision and a sound theoretical and scientific basis drawn from his
awareness of the complex range of effects likely to be triggered and characterizing
the reality of each project as he finds it.
In order to understand how he works and his almost stubborn determination to
face up to complex problems, it is helpful to know that Peter Latz grew up during
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AS CULTURAL VALORIZATION 11
