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Landscapes
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public
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privateInterview with Martin Rein-Cano
Photo: Torben Eskerod
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For a landscape architect’s perspective on the popularity and growth of community gardens, who better to speak to than Martin Rein-Cano, founding partner of Berlin-based landscape architects Topotek 1? His practice is recognised internationally for their new types of usable and visually arresting urban landscapes in public places. Rein-Cano is sceptical about the growing interest in DIY gardens, guerrilla gardening and urban interventions, Florian Heilmeyer asked him why.
How relevant are community garden projects and ad hoc appropriations of public spaces by citizens for you as a landscape architect?
I’m generally not a big fan of this trend towards the private shaping of public spaces.
Why not?
I think public spaces should be designed and maintained using public funds. But there are major shifts in this area, with the authorities withdrawing further and further, citizens are being used inappropriately to run their own public spaces.
Isn’t this due to a wish on the part of more and more citizens for increased participation in the running of public spaces?
Such commitment is welcome, of course. But in the long term it becomes a problem when private interests become entrenched and spaces are no longer accessible to the public at large. I deliberately put that in general terms. I have no objection to positive isolated cases, but this option should be used only in very specific situations and equal opportunities should always be maintained for the use of such spaces. Not all interest groups are heard to the same extent and I get the impression that this trend is being driven by a specific and relatively homogeneous group. This brings with it a risk of narrow-mindedness and intolerance, of staking a claim – and that is dangerous. Public space must remain accessible to everyone, for different uses, over generations, it must be generous and neutral. There should be no creeping privatisation of public space.
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Topotek 1 is perhaps best-known for its design of this public park in Copenhagen called Superkilen. (Photo: Iwan Baan)
Photo: Jens Lindhe
»There should be no creeping privatisation of public space.«
Photo: Iwan Baan
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Martin Rein-Cano is principal and founder of Berlin-based landscape architects Topotek 1. The award-winning practice has a broad portfolio of German and international projects – from squares to sports grounds, courtyards and gardens. A native of Buenos Aires, Rein-Cano studied art history at Frankfurt University and landscape architecture at the Technical Universities of Hanover and Karlsruhe. He trained in the office of Peter Walker and Martha Schwartz in San Francisco, and has worked with the office of Gabi Kiefer in Berlin. Rein-Cano has taught as a guest professor in both Europe and North America and gives lectures at numerous universities and cultural institutions around the world.
A different zone of Superkilen, where white lines run north-south, curving around street furniture, sourced from around the world, that forms part of an urban living room. (Photo: Torben Eskerod)To what extent is this increased private interest in public space changing the practice of landscape architecture?
We certainly need answers to this shifting between private and public space. Paradoxically privacy is receding everywhere, the protective walls of the private sphere are being broken down, particularly by new technologies: becoming more transparent. And the dividing line between work and private life is also increasingly fluid. Conversely, this results in a new significance for public space which is actively appropriated or even used for production and work. In this context, I am interested in the question of which infrastructures our parks need today. First we installed benches, then electric light, now we’re talking about WiFi. These changes offer huge opportunities for public space. Perhaps the renaissance of community gardens and these informal spatial redesigns do herald a new occupation of our public spaces – but only as part of a bigger picture. p
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