Stig L. Andersson, “After Nature”

We live in the Anthropocene Era where the world’s ecosystems and geological processes have been profoundly altered by human activities. It is a state where the nature that was here before us, has irreversibly changed into a nature that has its form and expression, as a result of our way of consuming natural resources. We have interfered in nature’s processes so that they are no longer the nature we once knew. Our nature is a new nature; a nature that we are the co-creators of. In this condition, what is the role and the meaning of landscape architecture? For one, the traditional distinction between nature and culture can no longer be preserved. What is needed is a new approach to landscape architecture, where landscape architecture is that which can bring a new order into our built environment; which can establish the grown environment as equal and complementary to the built environment; and which can reestablish our aesthetic sense of nature and make us aware that nature is not a threat we must fight against, but the central aspect of what creates a fully livable community. That we have to model our new world After Nature.

Stig L. Andersson founded SLA Architects in 1994. Having studied nuclear physics, Japanese culture and chemistry before becoming an architect, Andersson graduated from The Royal Danish School of Architecture in 1986. From 1986-1989 Andersson moved to Japan with Japanese ministerial research funds. Andersson was particularly interested in Japanese culture’s relationship with substance, space and changeability – fields he has integrated and developed in his own practice since 1994.

Stig L. Andersson is SLA’s founding partner. Beginning as a (purely) landscape architectural practice, SLA has developed into an international interdisciplinary organization working with city nature, urban design and nature-based solutions. Renowned for his sensuous and poetic work, Andersson combines unique amenity values based on the aesthetics of nature with cutting-edge sustainable city solutions and ecosystem services.

Stig L. Andersson is a professor in aesthetic design at the University of Copenhagen and is a much sought-after lecturer and teacher at universities and architecture schools in Europe, Asia and the United States.

Stig L. Andersson has received numerous national and international awards for his work, including The European Landscape Award, The RIBA Award, The World Landscape Architecture Award, and in 2014 the C.F. Hansen Medal – the highest national honour given to a Danish architect awarded by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark.