METAMORPHOSIS. LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE FOR A CHANGING WORLD

This paper discusses the evolving role of landscape architecture in addressing modern global crises—environmental, climatic, health, and socioeconomic. It highlights how this discipline adapts to the inherent unpredictability and fragility of contemporary challenges, transforming them into opportunities for redefining objectives, tools, and aesthetics. Key points include: 1. Performance and Transformation: Modern landscape architecture embraces impermanence, aligning more with performative arts than static structures. It interacts dynamically with both human and non-human agents, welcoming continuous change as integral to its essence. 2. Ethical and Aesthetic Shifts: Designers like Gilles Clément and Catherine Mosbach reinterpret landscape transformations—aging, decay, and regeneration—as opportunities rather than deterioration, fostering coexistence of creation and deconstruction within their projects. 3. Knowledge and Mastery: Contemporary practitioners view mastery as an intimate understanding of natural processes, not control. This approach emphasizes dialogue and collaboration with environmental agents rather than rigid domination. 4. Methodological Evolution: Landscape architecture now builds flexible frameworks to support emergent possibilities, favoring openness and resilience over permanence and predictability. It aims to foster conditions for ongoing evolution rather than dictate final forms. 5. Future Trajectory: The discipline is increasingly seen as a foundational methodology influencing broader design practices, essential for navigating and shaping the transformations of the modern world. The document is enriched with examples of transformative projects and underscores the urgency of adopting this adaptive, collaborative approach for sustainable futures.