This course aims to give an overview of the history of European park design including contemporary tendencies ranging from artistic objects in the inner city to the re-cultivation of devastated areas. In the context of the integration of historical, aesthetical, and ecological aspects, the topics of the course are designed to appeal to students of different backgrounds.
Humankind has changed the surface of our planet for thousands of years in order to serve common and private needs, often with disastrous consequences. Now these consequences have reached a new global significance. To deal competently with the subject of remodeling a landscape we need to look at how these problems were dealt with in the past.
Parks are paradigmatic places, which are shaped for beautification, recreation, and amusement, but also reflecting different concepts of nature and its relevance for human society. At the same time, they were a background for the social life, interwoven with the current concepts of farming, urbanism, and architecture. The territories of Berlin, the state of Brandenburg, and the adjoining former princedom of Anhalt-Dessau form a unique agglomeration of man-made landscapes that illustrate the conflict between total control and liberation, sensual quality and economic benefit.
Starting with an introduction of medieval gardening traditions in Central Europe, the course will explore the impact Absolutism and Enlightenment had on French- and English-style gardens, represented by some of the most famous parks on the continent. Influences of romantic and nationalist thinking, which emerged during the 19th century were adopted by the "Lebensreform" movement around 1900, ecological aspects being added.
In opposition to the process of industrialization these ideas shifted to a reconstructive doctrine integrated into highway-building and the cultivation of open-cast mining sites in the 1930s. Highway planning during the 1930s was highly shaped by aesthetic ambitions: Greening the edges of this monumental project was a way to embed it into the concept of a "national landscape." Garden design became large-scale and part of political propaganda. Nevertheless, most of the projects to develop the devastated canyon-land south of Berlin into a green lake area did not start until the end of WW II under new political and conceptual parameters, in the utilitarian spirit of modernism – and they are still going on. In this course we will discuss these issues against the background of American practices, especially those during the New Deal era.
The comparative aspect in this course is inherent: The "French" and "English" park can be understood only in the context of the traditions rooted in these countries. When talking about the period after 1920, inspiration from and reception in America belongs inevitably to every design discourse.
Berlin, a divided city for forty years, can demonstrate common ground as well as differences between East and West, in the reshaping of the destroyed former "Reichshauptstadt" into a greened modern city.
Planning philosophies of 19th/20th century implemented aspects of garden design into urban planning more and more: from the first parks within the city (about 1830) to the "garden city" (1900) and the concept of an organic "Stadtlandschaft" (1950). Today’s Berlin is an international metropolis where contrarian trends of highly artistic-artificial environmental design and counter-cultural guerilla gardening are flourishing side by side.
Prerequisites:
Basic knowledge in European history
Learning outcomes:
At the end of the course, the student will be able to
Participate in the conceptual process of evaluation and preservation of historical green spaces.
Summarize the most important historical trends of European garden design.
Explain the relation between space and individual in the context of the history of ideas and politics.
Determine the different dimensions of creating gardens, parks, cities, and landscapes.
Explain the similarities with the past as well as new elements in modern landscape architecture.
Apply interdisciplinary insights regarding Urban Studies, Cultural History, and Ecology.
Assess different concepts of "nature" and their ideological instrumentalization
Method of presentation:
Lectures with slides, video, field study: tours to relevant locations in Berlin and wider surroundings with short student presentations
Required work and form of assessment:
Students must complete the assigned readings and attend all field trips. Additional independent field trips within the Berlin-Potsdam area are useful. The final grade is determined by:
Active participation in class discussion (25%)
Short presentation on field trips (10%)
Written midterm exam (10%)
Written final exam (25%)
Term paper (essay, 6-10 pages) or visual project with a concise written introduction (drawings, photos, videos) (30%)
content:
In-class sessions last for 90 minutes, while field trip sessions last approximately 4-1/2 hrs.
Session 1
In class: The idea of "Landscape" between the perception as a natural fact and a social construction. Beginnings: From Medieval herb gardens to Renaissance and Baroque-Parks.
• Michel Conan: Baroque Garden Cultures: Emulation, Sublimation, Subversion (Dumbarton Oaks History of Landscape Architecture), Cambridge 2005, p. 1-36
Session 2/3
Field trip (double): Potsdam: Sanssouci (Rokoko park, 1744-68), related to session 1
• Sanssouci (Guide Books on the Heritage of Bavaria & Berlin), Munich 2003, p. 3-9
• Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg: Sanscoussi Garden, München 2012, p. 7-28
Session 4
In class: The Space of Enlightenment – English Parks and their reception in Central Europe (Eyserbeck, Lenné, Pückler-Muskau)
• John Dixon Hunt/Peter Willis (ed.): The Genius of the Place: The English Landscape Garden, 1620-1820, Cumberland RI 1988, p. 1-42
Session 5/6
Field trip (day trip): Woerlitz near Dessau: Woerlitzer Park (first English park on the continent, 1770-1800), related to session 4
• Thomas Weiss: Infinitely Beautiful: The Dessau-Worlitz Garden Realm, Berlin 2005, p. 160-197
Session 7
In class: Parade of the well dressed: 19th century city parks. Raw vegetables and sun worship: Gardens of the Reform Movement
• William H. Rollins: A Greener Vision of Home. Cultural Politics and Environmental Reform in the German Heimatschutz Movement, 1904-1918, p. 155-216
Session 8/9
Field trip: Berlin: Viktoria-Luise-Platz and Viktoriapark Kreuzberg (late 19th century), related to session 8
Session 10
Midterm Exam
Session 11/12
Field trip (double): Oranienburg: Kolonie Eden (1900), related to session 8
Session 13
In Class: Berlin Post-War-"Stadtlandschaft" in Cold War context: Reshaping the Tiergarten and integration of the "Hansaviertel". WWII memorials. Two Zoological Gardens in Berlin: Zoologischer Garten (West) – Tierpark Friedrichsfelde Berlin (East)
• Jeffrey Hyson: Jungles of Eden: The Design of American Zoos, in: Environmentalism in Landscape Architecture, ed. by Michel Conan, Cambridge 2001, p. 23-44
• Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier/Eric Baratay: A History of Zoological Gardens in the West, London 2003, p. 247-254, 265-272
Session 14
Field trip: Berlin: Volkspark Friedrichshain (artificial hill with a park covering a WWII bunker), related to session 13
Session 15
In class: Highways and Big Holes: Modern landscape design in a comparative perspective
• Bryan Black: Organic Planning: Ecology in the Landscape of the Tennessee Valley Authority, 1933-45, in: Environmentalism in Landscape Architecture, ed. by Michel Conan, Cambridge 2001, p. 71-96
• Gregory T. Cushman: Environmental Therapy for Soil and Social Erosion. Landscape Architecture and Depression-Era Highway construction in Texas, in: Environmentalism in Landscape Architecture, ed. by Michel Conan, Cambridge 2001, p. 45-70
• William H. Rollins: Whose Landscape? Technology, Fascism, and Environmentalism on the National Socialist Autobahn, in: Annals of the Association of American Geographers 3, p. 494-520, published online: 23 Feb 2005
Session 16/17
Field trip (day trip): Senftenberg/Großraeschen: Exhausted open cast workings under recultivation (tour on location), related to session 15
• Internationale Bauausstellung IBA Fuerst-Pueckler-Land (ed): New Landscape Lusatia, Grossraeschen 2010, p. 22-29, 74-84
Session 18
In class: A new urban identity: Changing wastelands into Green Belts: "Gärten der Welt", Berlin-Hellersdorf. "Guerilla gardens" in Friedrichshain neighbourhood
• Marco Amati: Green Belts. A Twentieth-century Planning Experiment, in: M. Amati (ed.): Urban Green Belts in the twenty-first century, Aldershot-Burlington 2008, p. 1-17
• David Tracey: Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto, Gabriola Island (Canada) 2007, pp. 1-15, 24-35, 185-186, 202-203
• Philipp Meuser/Erik-Jan Ouwerkerk: New Garden Design in Berlin, Berlin 2001, p. 9, 11, 13, 15
Session 19
Field trip: Berlin: Mauerpark (Berlin wall strip), related to session 18
• Brian Ladd, The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Land¬scape (Chicago:The University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 7-39
Session 20
Final Exam
Required readings:
Marco Amati: “Green Belts. A Twentieth-century Planning Experiment” in: M. Amati (ed.): Urban Green Belts in the twenty-first century, Aldershot-Burlington 2008.
Michel Conan: Baroque Garden Cultures: Emulation, Sublimation, Subversion (Dumbarton Oaks History of Landscape Architecture), Cambridge 2005.
Michel Conan: Environmentalism in Landscape Architecture, Cambridge 2001.
Gregory T. Cushman: “Environmental Therapy for Soil and Social Erosion. Landscape Architecture and Depression-Era Highway construction in Texas” in: Environmentalism in Landscape Architecture, ed. by Michel Conan, Cambridge 2001.
Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier/Eric Baratay: A History of Zoological Gardens in the West, London 2003.
John Dixon Hunt/Peter Willis (ed.): The Genius of the Place: The English Landscape Garden, 1620-1820, Cumberland RI 1988.
Internationale Bauausstellung IBA Fuerst-Pueckler-Land (ed): New Landscape Lusatia, Grossraeschen 2010.
Brian Ladd, The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Land¬scape, Chicago 1997.
Philipp Meuser/Erik-Jan Ouwerkerk: New Garden Design in Berlin, Berlin 2001.
William H. Rollins: A Greener Vision of Home. Cultural Politics and Environmental Reform in the German Heimatschutz Movement, 1904-1918, USA 2000.
William H. Rollins: “Whose Landscape? Technology, Fascism, and Environmentalism on the National Socialist Autobahn” in: Annals of the Association of American Geographers 3, published online: 23 Feb 2005
Sanssouci (Guide Books on the Heritage of Bavaria & Berlin), Munich 2003.
Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg: Sanscoussi Garden, München 2012.
David Tracey: Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto, Gabriola Island, Canada 2007.
Thomas Weiss: Infinitely Beautiful: The Dessau-Worlitz Garden Realm, Berlin 2005.
Recommended readings:
Walter Creese: TVA's Public Planning: The Vision, The Reality, Washington DC 1990. (sess. 15)
Penelope Hill: Contemporary History of Garden Design: European Gardens between Art and Architecture, Basel 2004. (sess. 18)
Barbara Miller Lane: Architecture and Politics in Germany, 1918-1945, Cambridge 1985. (sess. 13-15)
Richard Reynolds: On Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening Without Boundaries, London 2008. (sess. 18)
Udo Weilacher: In Gardens. Profiles of Contemporary European Landscape Architecture, Basel 2005. (sess. 18)
Brief Biography of Instructor:
Andreas Butter was born and raised in Dessau. In preparation for his studies, he worked for two years as a museum guide at the 18th century palace Mosigkau. In 1992 he graduated from Humboldt University in Berlin in Art History. In 2003 he received his doctorate about post WWII Modernism in East Germany from the Technical University Berlin. In the following year he curated with Ulrich Hartung the traveling Werkbund-exhibition "Ostmoderne". He works as free author and independent expert for the Berlin Monument Preservation Administration. In 2008 he was involved in the conversion of the former military area Kummersdorf into an historical park. The following year he was co-curator of the exhibition "Bauhausstadt" for the Bauhaus Dessau foundation. Currently he manages on behalf of the IRS (Institute for Regional Development and Structural Planning) the digitalization project of their historical map collection. Since 2007 he has been teaching at IES Abroad Berlin.
This course aims to give an overview of the history of European park design including contemporary tendencies ranging from artistic objects in the inner city to the re-cultivation of devastated areas. In the context of the integration of historical, aesthetical, and ecological aspects, the topics of the course are designed to appeal to students of different backgrounds.
Humankind has changed the surface of our planet for thousands of years in order to serve common and private needs, often with disastrous consequences. Now these consequences have reached a new global significance. To deal competently with the subject of remodeling a landscape we need to look at how these problems were dealt with in the past.
Parks are paradigmatic places, which are shaped for beautification, recreation, and amusement, but also reflecting different concepts of nature and its relevance for human society. At the same time, they were a background for the social life, interwoven with the current concepts of farming, urbanism, and architecture. The territories of Berlin, the state of Brandenburg, and the adjoining former princedom of Anhalt-Dessau form a unique agglomeration of man-made landscapes that illustrate the conflict between total control and liberation, sensual quality and economic benefit.
Starting with an introduction of medieval gardening traditions in Central Europe, the course will explore the impact Absolutism and Enlightenment had on French- and English-style gardens, represented by some of the most famous parks on the continent. Influences of romantic and nationalist thinking, which emerged during the 19th century were adopted by the "Lebensreform" movement around 1900, ecological aspects being added.
In opposition to the process of industrialization these ideas shifted to a reconstructive doctrine integrated into highway-building and the cultivation of open-cast mining sites in the 1930s. Highway planning during the 1930s was highly shaped by aesthetic ambitions: Greening the edges of this monumental project was a way to embed it into the concept of a "national landscape." Garden design became large-scale and part of political propaganda. Nevertheless, most of the projects to develop the devastated canyon-land south of Berlin into a green lake area did not start until the end of WW II under new political and conceptual parameters, in the utilitarian spirit of modernism – and they are still going on. In this course we will discuss these issues against the background of American practices, especially those during the New Deal era.
The comparative aspect in this course is inherent: The "French" and "English" park can be understood only in the context of the traditions rooted in these countries. When talking about the period after 1920, inspiration from and reception in America belongs inevitably to every design discourse.
Berlin, a divided city for forty years, can demonstrate common ground as well as differences between East and West, in the reshaping of the destroyed former "Reichshauptstadt" into a greened modern city.
Planning philosophies of 19th/20th century implemented aspects of garden design into urban planning more and more: from the first parks within the city (about 1830) to the "garden city" (1900) and the concept of an organic "Stadtlandschaft" (1950). Today’s Berlin is an international metropolis where contrarian trends of highly artistic-artificial environmental design and counter-cultural guerilla gardening are flourishing side by side.
Basic knowledge in European history
At the end of the course, the student will be able to
Lectures with slides, video, field study: tours to relevant locations in Berlin and wider surroundings with short student presentations
Students must complete the assigned readings and attend all field trips. Additional independent field trips within the Berlin-Potsdam area are useful. The final grade is determined by:
In-class sessions last for 90 minutes, while field trip sessions last approximately 4-1/2 hrs.
Session 1
In class: The idea of "Landscape" between the perception as a natural fact and a social construction. Beginnings: From Medieval herb gardens to Renaissance and Baroque-Parks.
• Michel Conan: Baroque Garden Cultures: Emulation, Sublimation, Subversion (Dumbarton Oaks History of Landscape Architecture), Cambridge 2005, p. 1-36
Session 2/3
Field trip (double): Potsdam: Sanssouci (Rokoko park, 1744-68), related to session 1
• Sanssouci (Guide Books on the Heritage of Bavaria & Berlin), Munich 2003, p. 3-9
• Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg: Sanscoussi Garden, München 2012, p. 7-28
Session 4
In class: The Space of Enlightenment – English Parks and their reception in Central Europe (Eyserbeck, Lenné, Pückler-Muskau)
• John Dixon Hunt/Peter Willis (ed.): The Genius of the Place: The English Landscape Garden, 1620-1820, Cumberland RI 1988, p. 1-42
Session 5/6
Field trip (day trip): Woerlitz near Dessau: Woerlitzer Park (first English park on the continent, 1770-1800), related to session 4
• Thomas Weiss: Infinitely Beautiful: The Dessau-Worlitz Garden Realm, Berlin 2005, p. 160-197
Session 7
In class: Parade of the well dressed: 19th century city parks. Raw vegetables and sun worship: Gardens of the Reform Movement
• William H. Rollins: A Greener Vision of Home. Cultural Politics and Environmental Reform in the German Heimatschutz Movement, 1904-1918, p. 155-216
Session 8/9
Field trip: Berlin: Viktoria-Luise-Platz and Viktoriapark Kreuzberg (late 19th century), related to session 8
Session 10
Midterm Exam
Session 11/12
Field trip (double): Oranienburg: Kolonie Eden (1900), related to session 8
Session 13
In Class: Berlin Post-War-"Stadtlandschaft" in Cold War context: Reshaping the Tiergarten and integration of the "Hansaviertel". WWII memorials. Two Zoological Gardens in Berlin: Zoologischer Garten (West) – Tierpark Friedrichsfelde Berlin (East)
• Jeffrey Hyson: Jungles of Eden: The Design of American Zoos, in: Environmentalism in Landscape Architecture, ed. by Michel Conan, Cambridge 2001, p. 23-44
• Elisabeth Hardouin-Fugier/Eric Baratay: A History of Zoological Gardens in the West, London 2003, p. 247-254, 265-272
Session 14
Field trip: Berlin: Volkspark Friedrichshain (artificial hill with a park covering a WWII bunker), related to session 13
Session 15
In class: Highways and Big Holes: Modern landscape design in a comparative perspective
• Bryan Black: Organic Planning: Ecology in the Landscape of the Tennessee Valley Authority, 1933-45, in: Environmentalism in Landscape Architecture, ed. by Michel Conan, Cambridge 2001, p. 71-96
• Gregory T. Cushman: Environmental Therapy for Soil and Social Erosion. Landscape Architecture and Depression-Era Highway construction in Texas, in: Environmentalism in Landscape Architecture, ed. by Michel Conan, Cambridge 2001, p. 45-70
• William H. Rollins: Whose Landscape? Technology, Fascism, and Environmentalism on the National Socialist Autobahn, in: Annals of the Association of American Geographers 3, p. 494-520, published online: 23 Feb 2005
Session 16/17
Field trip (day trip): Senftenberg/Großraeschen: Exhausted open cast workings under recultivation (tour on location), related to session 15
• Internationale Bauausstellung IBA Fuerst-Pueckler-Land (ed): New Landscape Lusatia, Grossraeschen 2010, p. 22-29, 74-84
Session 18
In class: A new urban identity: Changing wastelands into Green Belts: "Gärten der Welt", Berlin-Hellersdorf. "Guerilla gardens" in Friedrichshain neighbourhood
• Marco Amati: Green Belts. A Twentieth-century Planning Experiment, in: M. Amati (ed.): Urban Green Belts in the twenty-first century, Aldershot-Burlington 2008, p. 1-17
• David Tracey: Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto, Gabriola Island (Canada) 2007, pp. 1-15, 24-35, 185-186, 202-203
• Philipp Meuser/Erik-Jan Ouwerkerk: New Garden Design in Berlin, Berlin 2001, p. 9, 11, 13, 15
Session 19
Field trip: Berlin: Mauerpark (Berlin wall strip), related to session 18
• Brian Ladd, The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Land¬scape (Chicago:The University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 7-39
Session 20
Final Exam
Andreas Butter was born and raised in Dessau. In preparation for his studies, he worked for two years as a museum guide at the 18th century palace Mosigkau. In 1992 he graduated from Humboldt University in Berlin in Art History. In 2003 he received his doctorate about post WWII Modernism in East Germany from the Technical University Berlin. In the following year he curated with Ulrich Hartung the traveling Werkbund-exhibition "Ostmoderne". He works as free author and independent expert for the Berlin Monument Preservation Administration. In 2008 he was involved in the conversion of the former military area Kummersdorf into an historical park. The following year he was co-curator of the exhibition "Bauhausstadt" for the Bauhaus Dessau foundation. Currently he manages on behalf of the IRS (Institute for Regional Development and Structural Planning) the digitalization project of their historical map collection. Since 2007 he has been teaching at IES Abroad Berlin.