A Tree, is about vegetal agency, plant knowledge, and the interaction between plants and people, with a specific focus on trees. Like all plants, trees make the world; they literally create soil, shape landscapes, and affect the climate. They produce oxygen. They provide fuel, food, building materials, and shelter, and form ecologies where a myriad of species come together to enter into various symbiotic partnerships. Trees are wonderful to think with, and humans have been doing so—through meditation, in all kinds of storytelling, and as partners in problem-solving—probably for as long as they have walked the earth. Trees are also time tellers, rather than following industrial time, clock time, or any time defined by human activity, trees relate to their own experience of time.

The team led by SERA (Studio Esch Rickenbacher Architektur) wins first prize for the construction of a mixed-use high-rise by Zürich-Oerlikon train station. The landscape project consists of two layers: an urban plaza on the upper street level and a logistic hub connecting with the ruderal landscape of the train tracks below.

The team of Studio Céline Baumann and Weyell Zipse together with Martin Frei and Knopp+Kiel wins first prize for the open spaces of the Rosental Mitte site in Basel. The proposal “Singing Spring” guides the transformation process over the next decade of Rosental Mitte site in Basel. It consists of a concept scheme securing the qualities of the newly created open space and a set of activating measures involving vegetative and human pioneers.

During the autumn semester 2023, we are investigating how rhizomatic structures may allow us to act upon broad territories in order to shape ecological and climatic corridors for humans and non-humans alike.

“ Many of the ornamental plant species with which we share the domestic space, taking care of them daily without wondering too much about their origin, were imported to Europe from exotic climes, generating what Céline Baumann defines as a “cognitive dissonance between the decorative aspect of potted plants and a brutal colonial history”. The artist and landscape architect sheds light on the origins of those species and the journeys they have had to make to intertwine with our lives.

„Plant sexual life becomes the subject of intense discussions in early modern botany. How does France, with its legacy of materialist libertine thought, become a hub for botanically-informed critique of human sexual norms and practices? How is early modern botany enmeshed with desire?

The creation of dynamic and living open spaces based on the iterative ecology between communities and their environment is guiding the approach of this landscape architecture project. The studio investigates the metaphor of ramification; a tool allowing to compose and qualify a territory through the quality of its void as well as the density of its mass.

In 2022, Manifesta 14, the European Nomadic Biennial, takes place in Prishtina, Kosovo. Under the title „ It matters what worlds world worlds: how to tell stories otherwise “, Creative Mediator Catherine Nichols takes up the challenge of exploring and generating new practices and ways of collective storytelling. We have the pleasure to present the Queer Nature project in the Grand Hotel, a key venue of the festival.

The team led by Lukas Manz, Barbara Thüler and Farquet Architectes wins first prize for the construction of the new Walkeweg school. The project offers playscape amenities for pupils as well as ecological corridors for an urban flora and fauna.

The team led by Donet Schäfer Reimer Architekten wins first prize for the housing project of the plot 2.3 in the new district of Volta in Basel. Our contribution to the project concentrates on the roof terraces and green walls.

With a combination of essays, memoirs, guided imagery, and speculative story-telling, this book reenacts Roadside Picnic, a sci-fi story addressing the problem of humanity’s contact with another intelligence through the environmental effects and wreckage left behind by the visitors.

The essay is part of the special report on “écologies déviantes” and comes along with drawings from Pauline Barzilaï and scientific illustrations from Ève Barlier.