Blut und Boden: Development, Influence and Decline of a Design approach

 

Gianluca Drigo

Landscape scholarships – edition 2022/2023

subject area: Theories and policies for landscape

tutors: Simonetta Zanon, head of Landscape projects area; Luigi Latini, chairman of the Scientific Committee of Fondazione Benetton

 

The research focused on investigating the cultural assumptions, development, influence and decline of a design thought that characterized early 20th century Germany: the “Blut und Boden.” More specifically, the research, through the analysis of figures such as Lange, Seifert and Wiepking-Juergensmann, focused first and foremost on defining the specific idea of Nature that characterized the controversial design thinking of these authors and the national-identitarian political mission that characterized this movement. It also focused on the influence that this design doctrine exerted in contexts outside the space-time of early twentieth-century Germany (focusing on the United States, Scandinavia, and Italy) and on the radical divergences between the design codes of “blood and soil” and those characterizing recent German landscape practice. Finally, the influence of “Blut und Boden” on the contemporary debate on the concept of the “native” in landscape design was analyzed. The results of the research, far from rehabilitating an extremely problematic theory on the ethical-political level, point to “blut und boden” as a design thought capable of exerting a silent but decisive influence on the development of 20th century landscape design, while pointing out the inadequacy of these theories to deal with landscape design in the age of climate crisis.

 

Gianluca Drigo, in March 2022 received his degree in Architecture from the Iuav University of Venice, obtaining the dignity of publication for his thesis entitled “Project and Empire. The spatial grammar of power”. The experience of the thesis, which questions the ways in which strategies of power governance are spatialized, allowed him to engage with design experiences and literature mainly from early 20th century Germany, the USSR, America and Italy. In the post-graduation period, in parallel with collaborative teaching activities at the IUAV in Venice in architectural design and design theory workshops, he focused his research mainly on the landscape design of early 20th century Germany, a topic that he later deepened thanks to the Benetton Foundation 2023 Landscape Scholarship, of which he was the winner.