Architecture of Territory | Prof. Milica Topalovic: The Right to The Landscape

The research proposes the term Community-led Landscape Restoration Initiatives (CLRI) to describe instances of this phenomenon and examines their struggle to appropriate and transform their immediate landscape for the long-term benefit of the community. These struggles are on-going projects of socio-environmental transition shifting power relations, generating a diversity of practices, and capable of producing transformative change in their environment. The research examines the role of landscape as an interface for generating communally oriented projects and conflicts within current socio-environmental regimes. The research highlights CLRIs as pluriversal projects of inhabitation of place in response to peripheralisation and in an evolving dialogue with socio-environmental regimes.

Stefan is a Doctoral Fellow at the Landscape and Urban Studies Institute (LUS) at ETH Zurich where he is researching community-led landscape restoration initiatives in Europe. Previously, he was a project leader at Forensic Architecture (FA) where he led numerous projects, including the Ayotzinapa Case, developed methodologies for analysing airstrikes in the Middle East and modelling sites of human rights abuse from witness testimony. As an educator, Stefan was a Unit Master at the Architectural Association in London and co-founded educational forums such as Pantopia.xyz and AA Visiting School Iceland.

Image: Brigadas Deseucaliptizadoras’ volunteers’ clear eucalyptus from a parcel of Froxán’s common woodland. Still from Learning from the commons by Stefan Laxness, 2020.

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