ADRIAAN GEUZE NIEUWE ONTWERPHOOGLERAAR LANDSCHAPSARCHITECTUUR BIJ DE FACULTEIT BOUWKUNDE AAN DE TU DELFT

“Landscape architecture is an engineering tradition”
“Landscape architecture is more than designing parks and squares, it is an engineering tradition”, argues Adriaan Geuze, landscape architect and founder of West 8. As the new design professor of Landscape Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture at TU Delft, he sees opportunities to use landscape architecture in a crossover with the other Delft domains. “This way, we can work on complex and urgent long-term tasks such as climate adaptation, housing construction, the energy transition and the recalibration of agriculture,” says Geuze.

Systemic view
The challenges facing the Netherlands are large and complex. For example, we are struggling with the energy transition and the housing shortage. But do we really want to fill the entire country with solar cells and wind turbines, at the expense of fertile agricultural land and beautiful views? And where should those homes be built – in the existing city or in new locations with new infrastructure? “These kinds of stubborn questions cannot simply be answered without looking at them systematically,” says Geuze. “The TU Delft and the Faculty of Architecture are the ideal place to work on these kinds of issues. Not from procedures, but from the engineering tradition based on knowledge and facts, with interesting, feasible proposals for the future.”

Landscape architecture is the field par excellence where syntheses for these complex issues can be made. Geuze: “Landscape architecture always revolves around interventions in an existing landscape. That requires broad substantive knowledge and craftsmanship.” This broad view of the field is reflected in the varied oeuvre that Geuze has built up over the past 35 years. In 1987, he graduated as an agricultural engineer from Wageningen University and founded West 8. He still heads this design agency for urban design, landscape architecture and infrastructure.