President Prof. Stephan Lenzen strengthens the advisory board with two further members

Against the backdrop of the profession’s growing responsibilities and the constant presence of the profession and its representatives in discussions with politicians and society, the Advisory Board decided at its meeting on 17 April 2026 in Darmstadt to expand the Executive Committee by three members. Bdla President Prof. Stephan Lenzen appointed Doris Grabner, a landscape architect from Freising, and Prof. Sebastian Sowa, a landscape architect from Bochum, to the committee. 

After completing her school-leaving qualifications in Vienna-Schönbrunn, Doris Grabner, born in 1973, graduated in landscape architecture from the Technical University of Munich in 1999. She subsequently set up her own practice and worked on a part-time basis at landscape architecture firms in the Munich area. She is currently a partner and managing director of grabner huber lipp landscape architects in Freising, with a branch office in Hamburg. From 2006 to 2016, she was a part-time academic counsellor at the Technical University of Munich, in the Chair of Landscape Architecture and Public Space under Prof. Regine Keller. Her portfolio includes serving as a judge and acting in an advisory capacity on design advisory boards for various cities.

In 2016, she joined the bdla and was elected to the Representatives’ Assembly of the Bavarian Chamber of Architects, where she currently volunteers in the ‘Vergabekompass’ project group, amongst other roles. From 2019 to 2025, she was a member of the Executive Board of bdla Bavaria; in 2023, she was appointed to the bdla’s Economics Working Group, and she has recently taken on the interim leadership of the Competitions Working Group. She has also been a member of the DASL since 2025.
Her professional practice focuses on landscape architecture at both the urban planning and site-specific scales. As part of her role managing a practice with 20 staff members, she increasingly took on responsibility for economic matters, public procurement law and human resources – areas in which she has since been actively involved in a voluntary capacity at state, professional association and federal levels. She regards championing a thriving and diverse professional landscape and making full use of the existing network to this end as her core competencies.

Sebastian Sowa, born in 1981, studied landscape architecture and art at the Technical University of Munich and the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen following his apprenticeship as a landscape gardener. A native of Bochum, he worked in practices in Basel and Zurich; since 2016, he has been working alongside Gianluca Torini as ‘SOWATORINI Landschaft’, with offices in Bochum and Berlin. Their design work focuses on gardens, public spaces and temporary installations at the intersection with art. In an interview with the AK North Rhine-Westphalia, he said: “Sowatorini is a small practice, but we’re really into landscape!

The landscape architect has received numerous awards and has been teaching at universities and colleges for many years. Among other things, he served as a visiting professor at the Faculty of Architecture in Rome. Together with his practice partner, he was a fellow at the German Academy Villa Massimo in Rome for ten months in 2023/2024. In the winter semester of 2024, a professorship in ‘Landscape Architecture, Design and Experimental Spaces’ was established for Sebastian Sowa at the Institute for Open Space Development at Geisenheim University. His teaching focuses on expanding landscape architectural designs – based on a respectful interpretation and understanding of landscapes – through experimental design approaches such as installations and spatial art. In 2025, Sebastian Sowa joined the bdla.

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