Interviewed in Ljubljana on 30 August 2016

Ana Kučan is an internationally recognized and respected Slovenian landscape architect, professor and journalist, co-founder and head of the design office Studio AKKA. With her extensive oeuvre of landscape architectural projects, for which she received numerous international and national awards, she has significantly contributed to the quality of Slovenian space and the recognition of the profession. She has distinguished herself by her in-depth, expert-based and responsible, and at the same time creative, innovative, artistically sophisticated but often poetic approach, which she also showed at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. She has been continuously co-shaping the development of landscape architecture with her educational work and professional-theoretical publications. In interviews, columns, and articles she proves to be a witty challenger of modern society and its relation to space.

ORIS — Do you believe that landscape architects can do much, or that perhaps they are primarily active in addressing environmental degradation resulting from various causes; is that role of a landscape architect particularly important here?

Ana Kučan — A landscape architect is certainly a key player in the rehabilitation of the environment. He has complex interdisciplinary knowledge that allows him to also understand the space through natural processes and requirements, not only through social aspects or formal reading. He knows how to deal with processes and variability. Degraded spaces are also systems, they consist of a variety of habitats. He is even more effective if it is possible to act preventively, within the framework of spatial planning.