Adriaan Geuze Invited to Speak at the International and Interdisciplinary Symposium on Landscape

Archizoom and the Laboratory of Urbanism (lab-U/ENAC faculty EPFL), in partnership with the association Grands Paysages and Topos magazine is organising an international and interdisciplinary symposium on narratives that influence our relationship to the landscape and the soil. This singular meeting seeks to reveal the arguments that are used today to enable radical transformations of our terra firma.

The objective of the symposium is to use narrative to question landscape architecture and its potential for preserving the future of fertile soils. Urbanization consumes vastly more resources than can ever possibly be generated within cities, and currently industrial agriculture and conventional practices result in the displacement of over 24 billion tons of topsoil per year – many times the rate of soil formation – leaving vast uninhabitable regions, accelerating the exodus of rural inhabitants, and fragmenting rural lifestyles and cultures. This expulsion from land ultimately results in fewer lifestyle options for entire populations. 

‘Biotechnology’ in our era has largely been interpreted as a business initiative, leading to proprietary research in DNA and industrial chemistry that is immensely aggressive toward its own foundational contexts – environmental, social, and economic. Landscape architecture can provide a viable alternative to these high-risk technical manipulations, pointing towards the low risk notion of the chronobiological city, cultivating the ecology and biology of soils – the terra firma of civilizations.

The symposium will present the different views of a wide range of specialists, including those of Adriaan Geuze and others with expertise in geology, landscape, urban design, sociology and architecture. Discussions will be open to the public at large – professional, academic or amateur – anyone who is keen to hear more about the threats and hopes suspended over our landscapes and facilitate the sharing of experiences.

The three day symposium will take place, from the 7th till the 9th of October at the Rolex Learning Center in Geneva, Switzerland. To find out more information visit: The Narrative of the Landscape Symposium

The report of the symopsium by TOPOS magazine here.