Professor Kelly Shannon
As the newly appointed Professor of Landscape Architecture
at the Institute of Urbanism and Landscape, I consider myself
very fortunate to be in such a privileged context; privileged in
many complex senses of the word – with a great legacy to build
upon and exciting opportunities, but also with deep, important
and serious responsibilities.
The Institute of Urbanism and Landscape, already in name,
wisely places under one umbrella two disciplines that are
inseparable from one another, yet which for many decades have
eluded each other through senseless sectorial divides. AHO
is among a handful of leading design schools that boldly sets
itself apart from themainstreamand links the territorial realms
of urbanism and landscape. Urbanism (the word appearing in
France as
urbanisme
in 1910), the undisciplined discipline –
according to French historian Daniel Pinson – is both the sci-
ence of the city, with the challenge of addressing knowledge as
an object, and the act of intervening in the city, with the chal-
lenge of addressing knowledge as a project [Pinson 2004: 511].
Yet, over the past decades, urbanism as a discipline has suf-
fered both a more inflexible technocratic planning process that
is overtaking administrative bureaucracies and a politically-
correct branding of cities that is, as it is in essence neoliberal,
primarily imagining skin-deep facades for populist mayors’ and
developers’ short-term objectives and profits. Worldwide, cities
and smaller settlements alike are visibly and invisibly suffering
the consequences – socio-economically, politically, culturally,
environmentally, spatially and so forth. When the globalisation
processes of the export of star-architecture and the environ-
mental greenwash leitmotif is added to the mix, there is little
wonder that cities, at least on their surface, begin to resemble
one another.
Legacy, Opportunity, Responsibility
Kelly Shannon
