Hidden meanings, obvious messages: landscape architecture as a reflection of a city’s self-conception and image strategy

Abstract

This article interprets landscape architecture as an expression of a city’s self-conception. It examines the relationship between the overall strategies to reposition a city at national and international levels and the way the city gives shape to those centrally located spaces that become available in the course of de-industrialisation. To this end, three approaches to waterfront redevelopment in Germany will be contrasted, devoting special attention to public open spaces. The cases are the Hafen-City in Hamburg, the Main promenade and Westhafen quarter in Frankfurt am Main and the Spree promenade in Berlin. The question is how landscape architecture contributes to the production of ‘symbolic capital’ on the scale of the whole city while designing a single but exposed place. Unlike architecture and public art, which generate symbolic capital for cities as objects of high culture, open space design offers a wider range of messages. Depending on the context, these messages vary from the expression of ‘exceptionality’ through artistic elaboration to the ‘place for all’, featuring symbols of heterogeneity and social integration. The images in question are not only the product of design but also emerge from the interplay between the built environment and its users. As results of hegemonic struggles over aesthetic preferences, they always reflect power relationships. The story they tell is, therefore, multi-layered.

Keywords:

• Landscape architecture
• urban design
• public open space
• symbolic economy
• waterfront