Documentation for the 2025 German Landscape Architecture Prize competition published

On 12 September 2025, the latest competition brochure was published to mark the ceremonial presentation of the German Landscape Architecture Prize 2025. The bilingual documentation showcases the project ‘Höxter State Garden Show 2023’, which was honoured with the German Landscape Architecture Prize 2025, and presents the winning entries in the categories ‘Use of Plants’, ‘Public Space’, ‘Concepts for Nature and the City’, ‘Infrastructure and Mobility’, ‘Renovation of Existing Buildings’, ‘Climate Protection/Climate Adaptation’, ‘Final Examination’, ‘Play, Sport and Exercise’ and ‘Residential Environment’, as well as all the nominated entries.

In his foreword, bdla President Prof. Stephan Lenzen pays tribute to the achievements of the profession. “Our expertise, combined with our imagination and design skills, is fundamental and of great significance.” The question of how people will live in the future depends to a large extent on the design of the built environment. Concepts for cities, rural areas, transport infrastructure, parks and gardens, public spaces, and residential and working environments play a key role in enabling sustainable ways of life. Green-blue and diverse infrastructure also plays a crucial role in promoting a way of life that is more in harmony with the environment. “Planning professionals are called upon to take a leading role in creating and preserving resilient living spaces in a way that is both climate-just and climate-adapted. Alongside the ecological consequences, the social impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly apparent. Climate justice is thus becoming an imperative even in our temperate latitudes,” summarises Prof. Lenzen.

Urban spaces are also the subject of an essay by art educator Ursula Seeger. She sees them as more than just concrete and traffic – for her, they are a habitat for nightingales, a refuge for biodiversity and a stage for new forms of coexistence between humans and nature. Historic marshes, restored former mining sites and projects such as the ‘Floating University’ illustrate the close interconnection between urban space and ecology. Looking at such ‘counter-landscapes’ opens up new perspectives on sustainable ways of life. In this way, cities can become places where nature and culture shape the future together. At the end of her reflection, she quotes the US author and professor of botany Robin Wall Kimmerer, saying: ‘When we listen to nature, we hear conversations in a language that is not our own.’ Building on this, she urges: “A necessary task for us all could therefore be to practise, wherever we find ourselves, listening to conversations in languages that are not our own, in order to broaden our own perception and language. Through different ways of speaking and storytelling, we can open ourselves up to non-human beings, their needs and our interactions with them.”

The project ‘Höxter State Garden Show 2023’, winner of the 2025 German Landscape Architecture Prize and designed by Franz Reschke Landschaftsarchitektur GmbH, Berlin, exemplifies how landscape architecture can be used to comprehensively enhance open-space elements that define the city – in Höxter, the historic ramparts, the Weser promenade and the gardens of the Corvey Abbey World Heritage Site – and to develop them, through new components, into a city-wide framework of open spaces. The jury’s verdict states: “For each location, an individual, natural and unpretentious solution has been developed which responds precisely to anticipated levels of use, whilst at the same time harmoniously enhancing historical and ecological qualities and ensuring high-quality craftsmanship down to the last detail: a fine art in our world, which is inundated with stimuli and trends.”

All of this can be read and viewed in the documentation for the 2025 German Landscape Architecture Prize competition, published by the bdla, comprising 84 pages in German and English.

The brochure can be ordered free of charge from the bdla.

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