The choreographies
landscape choreographies is a landscape architecture practice focused on natural processes and the action of transforming: restoring, re-using, repurposing, rearranging, renewing, rewilding. Using the lens of choreography allows for viewing landscapes as constantly transforming and ever changing spaces.
To what extend does the landscape create itself, and how much are landscape architectes collaborators, instead of creators? Nature creates things. I facilitate the opportunities for plants and animals to do their job and create, having a right conditions to do so. This way I invite participants (animals, time, people, objects) to become forces that shape my projects. Every project instead of being a final, fixed result, is a starting point and the rest is allowed to develop by its own according to unexpcted character of nature itself.
landscape choreographies evolve around imagining futures which untame landscape processes and look for social adaptations that give space to natural processes, helping communities adapt to the natural forces, such as rain, floods, erosion, wind or changing climate. The focus point of the practice lays inrestoration of lost natural and cultural heritage, through the means of choreographed movements of diverse actors, such as: people, rivers, rain, materials, animals.
The choreographer
Justyna Chmielewska (1991)- a landscape architect, based in Amsterdam. After 10 years of experience as a designer at leading Dutch landscape architecture offices (Karres en Brands, DS landschapsarchitecten), and graduating as a landscape architect from the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam in 2021, she decided to pursue new challenges as a freelancer. Her approach to landscape design focuses on transforming existing spaces by first thoroughly understanding them. This includes exploring the layers of: history, ecology, materials, infrastructure, social connections, and landscape dynamics.
The co-choreographers
Krzysztof Popinski (APA CAD architecture: https://www.apacad.pl)
Magdalena Popinska (artist, interior and furtniture designer: https://studionove.pl)
DS landschapsarchitecten
Anna Zan (architect and researcher: https://studioannazan.nl)
Malgorzata Chmielewska (animator, artist, photographer: https://chmielart.tumblr.com)
Zuzana Jancovicova (landscape architect: https://www.behance.net/ZuzanaJancovicova)
Elena Dobretsova (landscape architect and scientist)
Marieke Berkers (architectural historian)
Hyeisoo Kim (artist)
Zipped Studio (animation and filmmaking studio: https://zippedstudio.nl)
Trude Cone (dancer, choreographer, educator: http://www.movingthought.eu/Trude/)
Jean Francois Gauthier https://sylva.la/het-langste-park
Amsterdam Academy of Architecture