5–2025

Garden and House

Urban gardening has been a trend for a considerable time already, leading to the development of an allotment garden hype. In Zurich, the waiting time for an allotment is now around two years. Historical parks such as the Englische Anlagen in Bern are being assiduously renovated and numerous private initiatives like “mein Baum dein Baum” in Basel, are sprouting up. All of which goes show that gardens are being appreciated more again. Might this have something to do with sensual experiences one has there?

If one believes Hans von Trotha’s thesis the garden has always been a medium. In his new book Der Garten: Seine Geschichte in 333 Bildern (Hatje Cantz, 2024) Trotha takes a stroll through gardens, bringing with him wonderful historical illustrations. Gardens make you happy, he promises. His path leads from the origins in the Garden of Paradise, through the villa gardens of the Renaissance, French and English landscape gardens, and Claude Monet’s Luncheon on the Grass to the territory of the lawn mower.

To follow Trotha’s path, today, too, the garden illustrates our relationship to nature. And, given the threats to biodiversity and the problems caused by summertime heat the garden has much to offer. It creates an agreeable microclimate around the house, plants provide shade and lower the temperature through evaporation. As a place to withdraw to the garden creates a sense of wellbeing, even just a view of a green planted space can calm the nerves and lower the blood pressure. And we have not even arrived at the magical moment when plants sprout out of the earth in spring. The garden, or the balcony as its reduced form, creates a connection between inside and outside and is therefore a cen- tral element for architecture. Typologies such as the villa are inconceivable without a garden.

In this issue we explore the periphery of the discipline of architecture: the interface to landscape architecture. In our issue “Building and Tree” we have already shown how architecture can benefit when it takes plants into account. Now, in our spring issue, we are continuing this process of growing together and we show how the garden can benefit a house: as a front garden, roof garden, garden courtyard, terraced garden and, in a private garden, as a laboratory for experiments.