Observatory/Laboratory: Reflexive Practice in Landscape Education

The European Landscape Convention insists on the need of training and education. However, it doesn't adress the issue of design. Yet planning without an awareness of landscape quality - of the actual, formal, spatial, characteristics of a landscape at several scales - might lead to results that forego the essence of the ELC, that is, the recognition of the value of landscapes as a cultural heritage. Thus the teaching of planning should be combined with the scale of the actual lives-in, experienced landscape. We will present a teaching and research experiment led at the University of Liège, wich aims at monitoring the evolution of the enjured landscape of Meuse Valley around Liège. The methodology combines various appoaches to landscape, working both as "an observatory" (following the recommendations of the ELC) and as a "laboratory" ("Living Lab"). The goal is to monitor the evolution of the landscape and to propose small scale "in situ" landscape experiments that reflect on large scale while proposing new landscapes at a small scale. The landscape project here becomes an effective lever in teaching and research, to read the land and propose a future grounded in the permanence of the territory.