"it's the landscape, stupid!"

It is a great honour to accept the invitations from Tsinghua University and the Central Academy of the Arts in Beijing. For my work with students at these landscape design institutes, I have devised a series of projects. They reflect
the spirit in which we have approached the challenges of landscape design at the University of Applied Arts Vienna for over two decades.

Our artistic explorations, which we were able to develop with great academic freedom, led us to the very heart of
the social and economic issues represented by "landscape" today.

Looking at our surroundings through the eyes of an artist can alter and enrich the land transporting information.
This aspect meets resistance from architects, curators and local politicians. At the same time it brought us recognition as pioneers of a new quality of landscape and as "avant-gardeners".

Our design process is based on decoding the legend of a specific place, developing a core idea and pursuing that initiated change persistently. For landscape design does not end with completing a "site", just as the farmer was never "finished" on the land.

The series IT'S THE LANDSCAPE, STUPID! addresses topics that hold lasting interest for us – historical gardens,
rural regions, urban spaces and waste land as well as sports grounds.

Mario Terzic, Vienna 2014

	Vineyard Garden Nussberg, Vienna, Austria
	The rows of vines in this rough agrarian nature are staggered in terraces. There are dry-stone walls, wayside shrines, rosebushes. Can art cultivate the land and transform the Nussberg into a garden? Scattered across the whole hillside, benches have been dragged in from other environments. There is a wide variety ranging from the elegant look of the city park to the functional, railway-station bench. A bench can mark the juncture between agrarian culture and urban garden design. It is a piece of garden furniture, a visual tool and a sculpture. Placed in selected spots, it invites you to take a rest and look around. Benches structure the walks of city dwellers through the vineyards, and thus transform these into a garden. A minimal intervention, the design of new benches, changes the “spirit of the place”!
	PROJECT LIST