Research

M.A. Friederike Meyer-Roscher:
The representation of landscape in science fiction films

Dipl.-Ing. Isabella Haidle (Ella von der Haide):
Queer - feminist ecology in participatory open space development. An investigation into forms of design and use in urban gardens.

Dipl.-Ing. Robert Zollinger:
Establishment of urban seed systems.
Open Space Planning for the establishment of sovereign seed systems for the subsistence cultivation of vegetables via the reception of plant genetic resources and their adaptation through developmental breeding.

Dr. Flavia Alice Mameli:

Online publication about the University of Kassel in October 2022

Shaping appropriation? Paradoxes of Open Space Planning
An analysis of the planning debate surrounding the Park am Gleisdreieck Berlin

Who owns the city? Who is allowed to shape it? What constitutes successful cooperation between civil society and planning space production? The self-determined design of urban open spaces is discussed in landscape architecture, design and planning theory under the concept of appropriation. The present work is dedicated to the paradoxical relationship between the planning and design professions and appropriation practices: despite a variety of possible procedures, it seems difficult to integrate a civil society willing to participate productively and creatively in design and planning processes. A theoretical discussion section first deals with the concept of appropriation in the context of relational spatial theories and classifies them as emancipative spatial practices within the collective production of (open) spaces in the city. Within the framework of a qualitative case study inspired by the "toolbox" of discourse analysis, the debate on the planning and design of the Gleisdreieck Park in Berlin from 2005 onwards is then analyzed. Based on the interpretation of a detailed source corpus of text fragments, image and map material as well as interviews with participating actors, the work discusses the creative and democratic potentials of an appropriation-friendly design culture.

Dr. Gisela Kangler:

Publication - transcript Bielefeld, October 2018

The discourse on wilderness
Of mythical forests, picturesque places and dynamic nature.
An analysis of the current discourse on the conservation idea of 'wilderness' with Cassirer's theory of space.

What role can 'wilderness' play in a modern society? The
controversial debates currently taking place in Central Europe demonstrate the virulence of this question. The acceptance of the administrative designation of wilderness areas by the population plays a special role here.

Gisela Kangler provides a new approach to classifying and understanding existing misunderstandings and conflicts in relation to the nature conservation idea of 'wilderness'. Three fundamentally different understandings are analyzed: 'unknown wilderness', 'certain wilderness' and 'ecosystem wilderness'. The rediscovered progressive cultural philosophy of Ernst Cassirer makes it possible to focus on social plurality in all its diversity.

Dr. Anne Haß:

Online publication about the University of Kassel in May 2017

The living metropolis
- The contribution of American transcendentalism and the vegetation-ecological monoclimate theory to the discovery of urban culture by the sociologists of the Chicago School.

This dissertation develops a methodological approach that enables planners and sociologists to identify and discuss the implicit political content of social science objects and theories in a differentiated way. The particular interest here is to enable an assessment of approaches such as the human ecology approach of the Chicago School, which emerged from the transfer of a scientific theory into the sphere of society.
The basis for the constructivist approach is formed by insights from scientific theory that were gained following Kuhn's investigations into the paradigmatic conditionality of scientific objects and theories. According to the discussion following Kuhn, it is assumed that the objects of all sciences can only become empirically real on the basis of certain mental pre-judgement structures. These pre-judgement structures applied to reality are understood as culturally conditioned, complex ideas or cultural patterns of interpretation and identified with political philosophies. Based on three different conceptions of individuality and systems that emerged in Western Christian thought, the work reconstructs three fundamental political philosophies and condenses them into competing worldviews in the modern age. The ideal-typical reconstruction of the liberal worldview, the worldview of the democratic Enlightenment and the conservative worldview not only illustrates the essential differences between the worldviews, it also shows that, for reasons of logical consistency, the binding of a political philosophy to a certain conception of individuality and system can only permit a certain definition of the content of ideas such as reason, nature, history, etc.
The confrontation of the human-ecological approach, constructed along the lines of the vegetation-ecological monoclimax theory, with the ideal-typically reconstructed worldviews shows that the community of the metropolis could only become empirically real against the background of a conservative worldview shaped by American transcendentalism. The consequences of anchoring the human-ecological approach in this worldview and of committing scientific theories to logical consistency with regard to the political thrust are revealed.