SLU news

From the SLU Super Landscape Days in Alnarp, October 17-18, 2018

Published: 19 November 2018

The first SLU Super Landscape Days took place during a two-day meeting in Alnarp, on 17-18 October 2018. The “Super” days offered more workshops and activities than in the past, integrating sessions organized by the recently formed Teaching Synergy Forum, and a launch meeting of the newly established PhD’s Forum. We also used the “Super” days as an the opportunity to celebrate that SLU Landscape now have existed for three years.

The meeting included two specially organized panels exploring how SLU Landscape best can evolve to serve its staff, students, SLU, society and the landscape field as a whole. The recently introduced concept of keynote speakers continued at this meeting. Glenn Albrecht from Sydney University talked about The Psychoterratic, Solastalgia and Wild Fire: The Emotions of Fire and Smoke, and Monica von Schmalensee, Chair of Council on Sustainable Cities, talked about Desirable, democratic architecture that empowers people. The SLU Super Landscape Days also consisted of presentations from last year’s Call for Ideas (CFI) projects and Breakout Workshops on different topics.

The meeting included two specially organized panels exploring how SLU Landscape best can evolve to serve its staff, students, SLU, society and the landscape field as a whole. The recently introduced concept of keynote speakers continued with Glenn Albrecht, from Sydney University, who talked about The Psychoterratic, Solastalgia and Wild Fire: The Emotions of Fire and Smoke, and Monica von Schmalensee, Chair of Council on Sustainable Cities, who talked about Desirable, democratic architecture that empowers people. The SLU Super Landscape Days also consisted of presentations from last year’s Call for Ideas (CFI) projects and Breakout Workshops on different topics.

Keynote speaker Glen Albrecht, honorary fellow in the School of Geosciences at Sydney University, talked about The Psychoterratic, Solastalgia and Wild Fire: The Emotions of Fire and Smoke. Glenn Albrecht is an environmental philosopher with both theoretical and applied interests in the relationship between ecosystem and human health, broadly defined. He has pioneered the research domain of 'psychoterratic' or earth related mental health and emotional conditions with his concept of 'solastalgia' or the lived experience of negative environmental change. Solastalgia has become accepted worldwide as a key concept in understanding the impact of environmental change in academic, creative arts, social impact assessment and legal contexts.

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Panel Discussion #1 SLU Landscape – Panel Discussion Past, Present, Future (Moderator: Tiina Sarap) SLU hosts a great amount of landscape competency in research, education and societal outreach, compared to other similar European institutions. Over the past twenty years, the increasing number of landscape students has also translated into a widening of landscape roles and positions in professional life. The demand for landscape competence to contribute to the development of society, in a broad sense, still seems to be growing. The panelists reflected on what counts as landscape knowledge/competence, how such knowledge gets developed and disseminated, drawing upon their own professional experience. Panelists: Johan Folkesson (landscape architect, private practice), Sabina Jallow (senior lecturer, Urban Studies, Malmö University), Anna Krook (Process leader, sustainable development, White Architects), Håkan Schroeder (Dean at the LTV faculty).

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Workshop – Professional Gaming as an activity for stimulating learning. SLU Urban Futures & GoM theme group offered a session on professional gaming as an activity for stimulating learning, innovation, reflection and possibly new encounters to tackle our urban futures. The workshop presented a so-called ‘serious gaming’ and provided an opportunity to test the Green Surge game. Organized by: Nina Vogel, SLU Urban Futures & Thomas Randrup, GoM theme group

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Workshop – Means for interdisciplinary teaching: Handmade models and maps in a planning course. In the master course “Planning Project: Driving Forces and Contemporary Tendencies”, we work with integrative methods, to foster field- and representation-studies, theoretical and practical thinking, use of artistic and scientific findings, all serving to merge the understanding of planning-, design-, and management knowledge in landscape architecture. In this workshop, the students displayed models and printed maps of their coming project area – this year being the Campus Alnarp! Mapping inspired by Alexander von Humboldt. Organized by: Marie Andersson & Gunilla Lindholm

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Workshop – Progression of digital tools within our landscape programs. SLU Landscape Teaching Synergy Forum continues to create a space for cross campus discussion and collaboration. This time the discussions focused on the progression of three chosen themes; we got to discuss how, when and what we do in the landscape programs. The themes of our workshops have been chosen from suggestions collected in previous workshops. Participants could bring material from their own courses to be used as examples. Organized by: Åsa Bensch (Lapf) and Marina Queiroz (SOL)

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Workshop – Oral feedback within our education at our Landscape programs SLU Landscape Teaching Synergy Forum continues to create a space for cross campus discussion and collaboration. This time the discussions focused on the progression of three chosen themes; we got to discuss how, when and what we do in the landscape programs. The themes of our workshops have been chosen from suggestions collected in previous workshops. Participants could bring material from their own courses to be used as examples. Organized by: Åsa Bensch (Lapf) and Marina Queiroz (SOL)

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Call for Ideas (CFI) Presentation – “PhD Get Together” A strong PhD community within SLU Landscape is beneficial for many reasons. PhD students are offered an informal space for exchanging everything from disciplinary to practical questions. A PhD community also builds network for future collaborations within SLU as well as with colleagues getting future position at other universities and it offers visibility to SLU as an attractive university to pursue a dissertation from. The outcome of the project was presented by Andrea Conti (SOL), Amalia Engström (SOL) and Johan Wirdelöv (LAPF).

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Panel Discussion #2. SLU School of Landscape – Seeding sustainable cultures (Moderator: Lisa Diedrich) In 2017 SLU Landscape staff developed the idea for a “School of Landscape” to understand the opportunities of gathering all SLU landscape programs under one label. Could it strengthen collaboration within SLU and improve external visibility of SLU as a key player in landscape research, education and collaboration arenas, nationally and internationally? This panel collects diverse group of voices to open a discussion with SLU Landscape staff about what a School of Landscape could offer. Panelists: Lars Johansson (Head of SOL), Monica von Schmalensee (Chair of the Council of Sustainable Cities), Ylva Hilbur (Pro Vice-Chancellor for international relations), Alexander Henriksson (SLU graduate, landscape architect White), Burcu Yigit-Turan (Associate senior lecturer, SOL).

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Keynote speaker Monica von Schmalensee is an experienced architect and partner at White Architects. She is also the Chair of the Council of Sustainable Cities (regeringens Råd för hållbara städer). Monica von Schmalensees keynote speech was on the topic Desirable, democratic architecture that empowers people in which she presented, and reflected over, examples of architecture and sustainability in different scales.

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Break/Coffee Since SLU Landscape operates as a cross-institutional network for collaboration in the landscape subject area at SLU, the opportunity to socialize with colleagues during the SLU Landscape Days is important.

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Students participating in SLU Landscape Days. It is important to welcome students to SLU Landscape, and during both Keynote presentations students were present. Here some students with their teacher Gunilla Lindholm at a coffee break.

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