Lecture. Anette Freytag (Rutgers University). Walking, Writing, Designing: Peter Handke’s Influence on Postmodern Landscape Architecture
Three Swiss landscape architects of international renown claim that Peter Handke (b. 1942) has crucially influenced their design work: George Descombes (b. c.a. 1948), Dieter Kienast (1945–1998) and Günther Vogt (b. 1957). Movement in space is a central motif in Handke’s work, whereby his observations and descriptions focus especially on the margins of urban space. Walking in the city, out into the periphery, crisscrossing and passing through nature are frequently recurring motifs. At such moments, Handke finds a “legibility” and “experienceability” of landscape that corresponds to his poetic ideal, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2019. Freytag’s lecture shows how Handke, who found his way to a phenomenological aesthetic in the late 1970s and the three landscape architects aimed to uncover an experience of an existing landscape that is, however, only manifested through form.
Anette Freytag is an award-winning scholar, educator and critic. She is a graduate of the University of Vienna and the ETH Zurich. Her research focuses on 19th- and 20th-century landscape architecture. Her quest is to bridge the gap between landscape history and contemporary practice. Before joining the Department of Landscape Architecture at Rutgers as Associate Professor in the Fall of 2016, Anette Freytag taught undergraduate and graduate students at various universities including the ETH Zurich, the University of Basel, the University of Innsbruck, and the KU Leuven.
She holds the ETH Medal for Outstanding Scientific Research and was awarded the Theodor Fischer Prize 2012 for Outstanding Research on the Architecture of the 19th and 20th Centuries, the DAM Architectural Book Award 2016, the German Garden Book Award 2016 and the European Garden Book Award 2019.
Apart from her work in academia, Anette Freytag founded the research bureau ville.jardin.paysage in 2001 and delivered a highly regarded study on the garden of Stoclet House (1905-1911), created by Josef Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte. Her study resulted in the garden being classified and later inscribed into the UNESCO World Heritage Site list in 2009.
