Everything Flows, Everything Grows: The Perception and Design of Ecological Processes in Landscape Architecture

Abstract

Due to the pressing environmental challenges of the Anthropocene, contemporary landscape architecture is increasingly confronted with the design task of facilitating meaningful aesthetic experiences of ecological processes, including those that occur at spatial or temporal scales outside our directly perceptible realm. Therefore, designers need to explore and consider a new range of possibilities through which bodily and cognitive experiences of vital ecological dynamics can aesthetically impact people. The present study seeks to contribute to addressing this design challenge. It aims to expand the understanding of how the aesthetic quality of the ecological context is perceived and how it can be revealed and strengthened through the design of urban landscapes. The research-by-design methodology was applied as empirical part of the dissertation 'Bajc, Katarina (2026). Ecological Processes in Landscape Architecture: Everything Flows, Everything Grows. Birkhäuser' to test individual modes of experiencing ecological processes in real-life settings. The large-scale municipal nature conservation project ‘Natürlich Hamburg!’ and the three selected landscapes within it served as case sites and ongoing planning processes. The current sectoral organization of institutionalized top-down planning poses a challenge when designing dynamic ecological parameters that extend beyond professional and jurisdictional boundaries. The research-by-design methodology was applied to examine perceptions of ecological processes among people from different professional backgrounds and to observe its potential for interdisciplinary communication among planning experts, leading to integrated design solutions for urban green spaces.