Less is future: landscape as the key element for the “milieux” renaissance in the former East Germany

Abstract

Twenty-two years ago, Germany was reunified as a single state. Waste land, pollution and empty buildings are some of the problems that the people had to face, along with radical and painful political reorganization. The strong collective reaction to these environmental and social disasters was heart-warming. Hundreds of coordinated and collective actions of renovation in open spaces were carried out. People were involved in each level of the design process in order to decide the best way to improve and promote the heritage and identity of their landscape. Halle, Dessau, Leipzig, and Berlin are some examples explained in this paper which demonstrate that these successful massive actions are the outcome of a deeply rooted knowledge of landscape as an ethical awareness to be transmitted to the next generation.