BUILD February 2017

, Rainer Schmidt, a well-known name in the landscape architecture industry, tells us more about his design philosophy and how it has shaped the way for his firm’s success. Nature by Culture Rainer Schmidt has founded his international offices for landscape architecture and urban development in 1991. Since then, he and his team have successfully developed an international reputation in both the fields: landscape design and urban planning. The reputation is a reflection on the very strong concepts of Rainer Schmidt, creating worldwide a high-end quality profile by open space design and implementation. The concepts are based on new offers for identification arising from landmark-like spaces which are responded to by clients and users and, thus, generate the respective add-on-value in time and place. The company has three locations in Germany: the main office is in Munich, the others are in Berlin and in Bernburg. Rainer Schmidt’s long term professional and academic career and his handling of complex design challenges have gained a wide expertise for his offices: from grand scale city master plan to innovative park and garden designs. According to his philosophy of working ‘from place’, landscape architecture in the 21st century needs to reflect the relationship between humans and nature. As his projects express this philosophy clearly, Rainer Schmidt Landscape Architects and Urban Planners are one of the most successful offices in Germany. Rainer Schmidt conceptualises each project holistically. From approach to idea, to concept and to concept for implementation, he considers process and product and communicates this with his employees. The final outcome is supposed to be the quality for which his name holds. “This quality is about making a project, an area, a place ‘radiate’,” Rainer explains. “In order to achieve this quality, a situation needs to be structurally understood and to be structurally transformed by design intervention.” “Our work of producing space is a challenge, from project to project, from implementation to implementation. Landscape and the urban condition need to be looked at as complementary factors and equally as products. Only the understanding of the necessary syntheses of ecology and of the overall “healthy living conditions” - for the human and for nature - can help us to survive on this planet. Nature only exists so long as civilisation has not damaged it. Nature can therefore only be dealt with by culture.” Rainer works with a systematic approach to concept-finding “from place”. “Accordingly, landscape architecture and design are understood as concepts and not as decoration,” he states. “The concepts are structures for building space three- dimensionally, texturally and materially. They tell the story of place in an innovative way and apply contemporary ideas for continuing the tradition of culture in place. They generate atmosphere and change the human perception of space and of nature. Each task definition is taken through a process of design consideration which enfolds options and determines a finally optimised decision as result of a strict cooperation with client, user and cost management.” Rainer lectures regularly in terms of his professorship for Landscape Architecture at the Technical Beuth-University, Berlin, with a profound experience in lecturing as a guest-professor in the United States (Berkeley, California) and in China (Beijing) too. He exhibits his work yearly at MIPIM, the International Real Estate Fair in Cannes, at the German Pavilion, together with architects and engineers, building collectively a community for the brand ‘made in Germany’. The firm’s overall aims are to renew continuously the human scale and to bring nature close to people. This is bound to strong concepts for planting design, to an innovative selection of plants and material and to a vision for the aimed to atmosphere of the space to be created - which will make the user become active in feeling and occupying the space. Thus, Rainer foresees changes for the future of the industry and plans to adapt his firm’s strategies accordingly to meet new trends and continuously ensures, he stays one step ahead of the competition. “The future accords to an increasing demand for high quality spaces in inner and outer urban areas,” he states. “Living conditions and lifestyles are more and more dependent on this quality as a factor of locational value. The changes on the market which represent this tendency refer to inner urban open spaces and to public parks. “New markets are arising in Arabic countries, where we are already working on regional urban planning and on-site planning for urban settlements, for hospitals and university campus areas. We are looking forward to the completion of construction at the Financial Center in Shanghai and at the Grand Mosque in Algiers. But we are also committed to the urban transformation processes in Germany, especially in Berlin and Munich with needs for more quality in increasingly densified urban areas. “Rainer Schmidt Landscape Architects and Urban Planners would like to enrich the concepts of design and planning in the United Kingdom, in the United States, including Canada, by the specific quality-profiles of our holistic approaches. The specific desire is to conceptualise and build the next large public park, if necessary as a temporary park, preparing for urban development, urban gardening and ecological biodiversity, integrating the ‘third landscape’ and counter- balancing the damages left from industrialisation processes.” K Company: Rainer Schmidt Landscape Architects and Urban Planners GmbH Name: Rainer Schmidt Email: [email protected] Web Address: www.rainerschmidt.com Address: Von der Tann Str. 7, D-80539 München Telephone: +49-89-202535 0 1702BU18 Architecture & Design