Landscape Logic by Steffen Nijhuis
Landscape Logic is an essay on the need for a landscape-based approach to designing sustainable urban environments.
Urbanisation is one of the biggest challenges of this century. Urban development comes at the expense of fragile ecosystems that protect and provide us with food and water, not to mention the associated increasing vulnerability to flooding, drought and social inequality. We therefore need a landscape-based approach to urban planning that considers the biosphere as the context for social and economic development and takes the landscape as its foundation.
Landscape-based urbanism uses the understanding of the landscape system and its ecological and socio-cultural processes and relationships – landscape logic – as a basis for designing sustainable urban environments at different scales. Designing with nature, people and history are at the heart of the approach. With landscape logic, we can build nature inclusively and climate-adaptively and ensure a healthy and safe living environment for all.
Steffen Nijhuis is professor of landscape urbanism and head of the landscape architecture section at the Faculty of Architecture at Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands.
Landscape Logic was published on the occasion of the appointment of Prof Dr Ing Steffen Nijhuis as professor of Landscape Based Urbanism at Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture, on 28 March 2023. The text is an adaptation of his oration, delivered on 2 February 2024 in the Aula of Delft University of Technology.
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Published by Jap Sam Books in cooperation with Delft University of Technology