Against Technical Innocence: Reclaiming Aesthetics in a Time of Crisis
Aesthetics in landscape architecture is often treated as secondary, even indulgent, in the face of ecological collapse and social urgency. Yet this demotion conceals a deeper problem. By appoaching environmental and social crises with technical solutionism, the discipline risks reducing itself to an engineering service provider, while leaving its aesthetic operations unexamined.
This lecture argues that aesthetics is not an ornamental supplement to ecological performance but a primary political and epistemological force. Perception is never neutral. The ways landscapes with all their issues are composed, framed, and rendered legible, condition what can be seen, valued, and acted upon. When aesthetics retreats behind metrics and technical compliance, hidden transgressions may emerge: comfort instead of confrontation, harmony masks conflict, and design may become an accomplice to greenwashing rather than a site of critical mediation.
Through this lens, the lecture reframes a wide range of well-used notions relevant to the profession in the past decade: well-being, biodiversity, multispecies co-habitation, public and private space, harmony, identity, genius loci, heritage, and adaptive reuse. Rather than rejecting these terms, it interrogates the perceptual regimes they install. It speculates about the role of landscape architecture in society, specifically in reforming perception of the troubled world around us.
Zaš Brezar (b. 1984, SFR Yugoslavia) is a landscape architect and the founder of Landezine. Since 2009, he has served as its editor-in-chief, documenting the development of landscape architecture and its relationship to public space. His work focuses on the production of space and the role of aesthetics in the profession. In 2025, he received the Plečnik Medal in Slovenia for his work with the Landezine platform.
Föreläsningen börjar kl 18:00 på Konstakademien. Mingel med dryck från 17.30. Evenemanget är kostnadsfritt och ingen föranmälan krävs. Arrangör Stockholms Arkitektförening genom Anders Kling.
Välkomna!