Political Landscape [Politische Landschaften] is the publication of the results of the workshop of the same name (0054 Politische Landschaft) and of 0051 Gründung der Akademie, which are supplemented by several essays that deal with the possibilities of political action. The chapters of the book are to be understood as a loose arrangement of independent buildings of various scales, backgrounds, and formats, which are placed in relation to each other. The conceptual circuit of the chapters begins with the acting individual and “techniques” of social positioning, turns the view into the built environment and, through the consideration of forms of use of public spaces, ultimately ends up with strategies for socially relevant design.
The resulting “landscape,” heterogeneous and incomplete in its history of origin, aims to sketch a cohesive intention: The question of the possibilities of political, socially relevant action under the conditions of a present that is situated somewhere between neoliberalism, disenchantment with politics, and a backlog of reforms. While institutional political practice is described in these conceptual patterns as largely frozen or perhaps even stigmatized, Political Landscape [Politische Landschaften] wants to start from the other end of the constitution of “society”—where social responsibility and competence have to reinvent and prove themselves on a daily basis: in the individual and the necessity to imagine possible futures.