A multispecies design approach in the Eure valley. Three lessons from a design studio in landscape architecture.

The current state of our planet gives rise to a range of new perspectives in the environmental humanities that take “multispecies” viewpoints into account. These voices are often framed as “more-than-human” research, as they criticize the deeply anthropocentric worldviews that fuel environmental degradation and acknowledge the imbricated nature of humans and nonhumans. This article reflects on a design studio as an attempt to translate often complex and abstract conversations in more-than-human literature into concrete methods, plans and approaches for landscape architecture. The design studio at the École nationale supérieure de Paysage in Versailles (ENSP Versailles) exploring the Eure valley can be understood as a case study within a larger research interest area, as it tries to understand the role of landscape design in (re)shaping human-nature relations and to connect landscape architecture practices to ongoing conversations in more-than-human literature. In this paper, we describe three different lessons drawn from the student design studio as possible directions for multispecies approaches in landscape architecture.

Publication year:2022

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