Maria Frölich-Kulik

Landscapes as net spaces. Architectural Voids in Landscape Events.

Humans construct landscape through actions, perceptions, and memories (Lefebvre 1991). In the process, networks of a material, social, and cultural nature emerge. In this sense and in distinction to the Arcadian understanding of landscape, I understand landscape (etymologically: worked land) as network space.

The built environment is the materialized history of this network space. It creates identity and is the starting point for future developments. The narratives of this must be read and understood in order to be able to continue to tell them in the design process. Vacant public buildings, for example, tell of the dwindling importance of a region, especially when it comes to central nodes such as train station buildings.

Following on from current debates about rural, so-called structurally weak regions, the potential of functional revitalization for sustainable regional development will be discussed using the example of vacant train stations and alternative approaches to landscape planning will be tested. The research work is being carried out within the framework of the interdisciplinary research project “Experimentierfeld Dorf” (funded by the Volkswagen Foundation) in close exchange with literary scholars.