Professorship for Open Space and Ecological Urban Design

The Professorship for Open Space and Ecological Urban Design focuses on green and open spaces in the context of sustainable urban transitions. Central to this work are questions concerning the planning and designing of urban nature as part of a multifunctional and resilient green infrastructure that delivers a wide range of benefits, including improved health and quality of life, social cohesion, environmental justice, climate change adaptation, and biodiversity enhancement. Addressing these challenges requires planning and design approaches grounded in robust knowledge base derived from assessment and monitoring. At the same time, the involvement of local stakeholders is essential to ensure that their needs are reflected and that governance processes effectively support just and sustainable urban transitions.

For this reason, the research is interdisciplinary, emphasizing knowledge exchange between science and practice. Research is conducted on, for, and with practitioners involved in the planning, designing, and governing sustainable urban spaces. Particular attention is given to innovative concepts that integrate both spatial–physical and process-related dimensions of open space planning and design, bridging scientific insights with practical application. 

In teaching, the ecological foundations of open space planning are conveyed across multiple spatial scales – from the street level to the neighbourhood, the city, and the metropolitan region. A key objective is to equip students with the ability to understand and critically reflect on knowledge from the natural and social sciences. They are trained to collect and apply information at different spatial scales, and to integrate it into the context-specific design and planning of biologically diverse, climate‑resilient, and inclusive open spaces. To support this, ecological and planning approaches are introduced that help manage the complexity of these tasks involved, along with design and communication methods that foster acceptance and understanding of ecological urban design.