Guest: Johannes Böttger from the architecture and landscape architecture firm urbanegestalt, Cologne.

As a firm with expertise in architecture, urban planning, and landscape architecture, urbanegestalt focuses on the urban landscape. Its goal is to ensure that every project achieves a sense of place, in the sense that a “newly built piece of the world” fits perfectly into its location and, ideally, stands out. This involves interpreting landscape contexts and treating existing elements with respect—usage patterns, topography, materials, trees. It also entails reimagining the spatial situation and implementing construction in a sustainable manner—creating atmospheres, establishing proportions, and shaping the built framework within which people live together.

How do we cultivate the urban landscape? Urban developments unfold against the backdrop of complex existing characteristics and parallel processes. Open space possesses strong functionality but must not be reduced to a functional system. Despite the multitude of requirements for new construction, every design by the firm incorporates a reference to the surrounding, existing character and beauty of the environment. The focus is on the search for open spaces that are both highly usable and visually striking. All urban typologies should generate added value by allowing people to engage with the landscape within them.

Transforming the strong functional systems of modernism is a task for generations. Landscape architect Johannes Böttger’s lecture uses project examples to illustrate the search for solutions to this challenge.

A reasonable contribution to the donation box at the bar in the building is requested as admission.