Sommersemester, März — Juni 2025
Semestre estivo, marzo — giugno 2025
Verantwortlich / Responsabile: Waltraud Kofler Engl

Historische Gärten, Parkanlagen und gestaltete Grünräume sind Zeugnisse einer jahrhundertealten Kulturform und vielschichtige Bedeutungsträger.

Die Vorlesungsreihe mit Gastbeiträgen im Wintersemester 2024/25 führt in die Kulturgeschichte der europäischen Gartenkunst und ihre weitreichenden Vernetzungen mit Architektur, Städtebau, Pflanzenkulturen, technischen, gesellschaftlichen und ökologischen Themen ein. Sie eröffnet zudem einen Überblick zu den Gestaltungsmerkmalen und Nutzungen von der Antike bis ins 20. Jahrhundert.

Die für das Sommersemester 2025 geplanten Begehungen und Erkundungen von Gartenanlagen in Südtirol und Umgebung bieten eine Plattform für die Beobachtung der vielschichtigen Veränderungen des grünen Kulturerbes, für Gespräche mit Nutzern und für eigene Reflexionen.

I giardini storici, i parchi e gli spazi verdi paesaggistici sono testimonianze di una forma culturale secolare e portatori di significati a più livelli.

Il ciclo di conferenze con contributi di ospiti nel semestre invernale 2024/25 fornisce un'introduzione alla storia culturale dell'arte dei giardini europei e alle sue estese interconnessioni con l'architettura, l'urbanistica, le culture vegetali, i temi tecnici, sociali ed ecologici. Fornisce inoltre una panoramica delle caratteristiche e degli usi del design dall'antichità al XX secolo.

Le gite guidate e le esplorazioni di giardini in Alto Adige e dintorni previste per il semestre estivo 2025 offrono l'occasione per contemplare i complessi cambiamenti del patrimonio culturale verde, per discutere con gli frequentanti e per rifletterci anche personalmente.

With the kind support of the Architekturstiftung Südtirol. Accredited events of the Chamber of Architects: 01.04.25, 06.05.25, 13.05.25. Registration required for credits at this LINK. Registration will be possible soon.

Flyer Studium Generale summer semester 2025 (forthcoming) / Poster Studium Generale summer semester 2025 (forthcoming)

25. 03. 2025 18.00—20.00, DE, UNIBZ, XXX

Grüne Schatzkammern - Pflanzensammlungen als Bestandteil historischer Gärten

Claudia Gröschel

Studied art history and German language and literature. Doctorate on "Wilhelm Hentze, a garden artist of the 19th century". A scientific traineeship in the garden department of the administration of the State Palaces and Gardens of Hesse cemented the interest in garden history awakened during his studies. Early contact with the working group on orangeries in Germany led to a scientific study of historical plant collections. She worked for many years as a freelance curator of exhibitions on garden history topics and as a research assistant at the Austrian Horticultural Society. As a research assistant at the Austrian Federal Gardens, she conducts research at the Institute of Botanical Collections, curates special exhibitions and looks after the library, archive and plan collection.

Abstract

From the mid-16th century onwards, with the establishment of the first botanical gardens in Italy, a completely new form of garden emerged. For the first time, plants were systematically cultivated in gardens based on their potential uses as medicinal remedies. Initially, native plants were used for research and teaching, but over time, more and more non-native plants from increasingly distant countries were introduced. Sources documenting the emergence of the first plant collections in courtly gardens can be traced back to a hundred years earlier. These collections were initially part of princely collections, prestige objects that enhanced the fame of their owners. One of the few still existing former princely plant collections is cultivated to this day in the parks and greenhouses of the Austrian Federal Gardens in Vienna and Innsbruck. Created by the emperors of the House of Habsburg, it has been the botanical collection of the Republic of Austria since 1918. The history of this plant collection is a story of a passion for collecting, adventurous expeditions and courageous research travellers, diligent and talented court gardeners, plants as symbols of power and decorative objects, economic interests and political supremacy, colonialism and slavery, but also about the preservation of gardening craftsmanship, public inclusion, modern species protection, and scientific networks.

01. 04. 2025 18.00—20.00 IT, UNIBZ, xxx, 2 CFP

Giardini storici in Trentino tra castelli e ville, palazzi e Kurorte

Alessandro Pasetti Medin

Alessandro Pasetti Medin (Rome, 1961) studied art history at the universities of Padua, Bologna and Berkeley. His study interests and publications focus on the history of architecture, gardens, decoration and decorative arts in the 18th-20th centuries. He has been a lecturer at the chair of history of architecture and town planning at the Politecnico di Milano, a consultant to the Fondazione Benetton in Treviso for the sector of historical gardens and landscape and a collaborator of the Gruppo Giardino Storico at the University of Padua for the annual didactic refresher course on the historical garden. He is an official art historian at the Superintendence for Cultural Heritage and Activities of the Autonomous Province of Trento and edited the first volume of Parks and Historic Gardens in Trentino: tra arte, natura e memoria (Trento, 2016). He is a member of the Accademia degli Agiati in Rovereto and the Società di Studi Trentini.

Abstract

Until a few years ago, the historic gardens of Trentino were practically unknown, even believed to be non-existent, unlike the numerous examples in Veneto and Lombardy. In view of the research carried out over the last two decades, an overview is given of the various existing typologies, which are the subject of publications, exhibitions and restorations.

With the kind support of the Architekturstiftung Südtirol. Registration required for credits at this LINK. Registration will be possible soon.

11. 04. 2025 15.00—19.00 DE, Brixen

Die Gärten der fürstbischhöflichen Hofburg in Brixen und der Stiftgarten von Neustift - Geführte Exkursion

Registration required [email protected]

Waltraud Kofler Engl

Waltraud Kofler Engl (born 1959) studied art history and history at the Universities of Innsbruck and Florence. She received her doctorate in 1985. After teaching art history for two years, she worked from 1986 as an inspector of the Office for the Preservation of Monuments of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, South Tyrol and from 1994 in the function of director. During this time, she not only dealt intensively with the restoration, conservation and conversion of architectural and artistic monuments, but also with issues of cultural heritage education and mediation in the form of conferences, lectures, guided tours, radio broadcasts and publications. Since September 2018, she has been director of the newly established Cultural Heritage Cultural Production Platform at the Faculty of Design and Art of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. Her publications deal with the history, reception and restoration of buildings and works of art in Tyrol, medieval murals, historical gardens, in particular the gardens of the Prince-Bishop’s Hofburg in Brixen/Bressanone and the controversial heritage of fascist architecture and art in Bolzano. Her current research focuses on architecture and art of the interwar period and fascism, testimonies of the First World War and the militarisation of the landscape (Ortles and Dolomites fronts, bunkers, Vallo Alpino), conflicts and controversial cultural heritage as well as the historical gardens in South Tyrol. In 2022 she was guest professor at the University of Innsbruck. She is current member of the Working Group for Theory and Teaching of Monument Conservation in Germany and of ICOMOS Germany.

Abstract

Like buildings, gardens and landscaped open spaces have different functions, designs and uses. The importance of the former prince-bishop's palace in Brixen as a representative seat of power is revealed in the interplay between the north-facing ornamental and kitchen garden and the south-facing orchard (pomarium). Both date back to the Middle Ages, were redesigned in the Renaissance and have been carried forward in this form to the present day. The garden architecture has changed according to the style of the time. The baroque garden of the Neustift monastery combines useful and ornamental plantings as well as garden architecture, which provide information about the culture of representation and the monastery's supply of vegetables, fruit and herbs. The garden tours combine historical and art-historical information with the history of garden culture and present the current uses of the gardens.

06. 05. 2025 19.30—21.30 DE, Landesbibliothek Tessmann, 2 BFC

Urban Gardening und der Garten als gesellschaftliche Projektionsfläche

In collaboration with Landesbibliothek Tessmann / Biblioteca Provinciale Tessmann

Ingrid Greisenegger

Author and journalist, e.g. Profil and ORF business magazine ECO. Pioneer of environmental education, co-founder of the "Umweltspürnasen" movement. Currently: Editor-in-chief of Grüne Welt Journal in KURIER Freizeit, author in the weekly magazine Falter, co-manager of City Farm Augarten in Vienna.

Abstract

How much garden do people need? That's the title of a book by Ingrid Greisenegger from the early 2000s. As much as possible, is the answer, which she substantiates with concrete examples, starting after the Second World War, when people switched from potato cultivation to the Hollywood-style representative garden with a thuja hedge. With the urban gardening movement, which she has accompanied as a journalist since the 1990s, the garden - both private and public - became a projection screen for socio-political developments (‘politics on a plate’). One example of active implementation is the City Farm Augarten in Vienna, a garden education centre where alternative, climate-compatible forms of agriculture are practised and taught in workshops, including "snow food", fresh winter vegetables that can be harvested in winter without wasting heating and light energy.

With the kind support of the Architekturstiftung Südtirol. Registration required for credits at this LINK. Registration will be possible soon.

13. 05. 2025 18.00—20.00 DE, UNIBZ, XXX, 2 BFC

Gartenkunst als Städtebau – zur fast vergessenen Vorgeschichte urbaner Landschaftsarchitektur

Stefan Schweizer

1992 to 1997 studied art history, history and sociology at the universities of Kassel, Göttingen and Verona. 1998 to 2000 scholarship holder of the Gerda Henkel Foundation. 2001 Doctorate at the University of Kassel. 2000 to 2005 research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for History in Göttingen. 2005-2012 Junior Professor of Art History specialising in European Garden Art History at the Institute of Art History at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. Habilitation in 2011. 2014 appointment as honorary professor at the HHU. Since 2012 Scientific Director of the Benrath Castle and Bark Foundation, Director of the Museums. President of the DGGL since 2020, member of the Scientific Commission of the German Foundation for Monument Protection since 2024

Abstract

When the architectural historian Siegfried Giedion published his study "Space, Time and Architecure" (first edition 1941), which soon became a classic, he used the book cover to draw attention to the prehistory of modernism, which was then as now often ignored. For this, he chose a modern highway cross that superimposes a bird's eye view of the palace grounds of Versailles at an angle. Giedion thus visually emphasised that modernism was not without preconditions. The same can be said of urban landscape architecture and urban planning in particular: both have precursors and their models owe a great deal to early modern garden art. The lecture looks at specific role models, such as the boulevards, presents significant achievements in urban planning by garden artists and examines the interaction between garden art and urban planning. Repercussions are also discussed, for example when urban development around 1900 adapted older architectural garden forms.

With the kind support of the Architekturstiftung Südtirol. Registration required for credits at this LINK. Registration will be possible soon.

16. 05. 2025 15.00—19.00 IT, Lavis

Il giardino dei Ciucioi a Lavis - giuded excursion (IT)

Registration required [email protected]

Andrea Brugnara & Franco Castellan

On a steep rock face above Lavis, Tommaso Bortolotti - from the Bortolotti family, who ran an important spinning mill in the village - created a terraced garden between 1840 and 1860. The garden stretches along a steep slope on the Colle del Paion, in the Valle dei Mocheni on the River Avisio. Its significance goes far beyond the abundance of rare and exotic plants. The complex develops from the bottom upwards and follows a precise ideological programme in its spatial design. This has an initiatory character and serves the inner development of man as we know it from the rites of the Masonic lodge. Eclectic façade architecture - from antique inspiration to rococo elements - alternates with the terraces to form various stations of self-knowledge and serve garden-specific requirements. After the death of its founder Tommaso Bortolotti in 1872, the estate changed hands several times until it was acquired by the municipality of Lavis in 1999. The garden was particularly badly damaged during the First World War, as parts were repeatedly removed for war purposes. Extensive restoration and reconstruction work was carried out between 1999 and 2019. The garden has been open to the public again since 2019.

21. 05. 2025 18.00—20.00 DE, UNIBZ, xxx

Historische Küchengärten - Geschichte, Nutzung, Pflege

Jost Albert

Jost Albert studied landscape conservation at the University of Hanover, specialising in garden history. Since 1995, he has worked in the Gardens Department of the Bavarian Palace Administration as a garden monument conservator. From 1995 to 2012, he was initially in charge of the historic gardens in Lower and Middle Franconia. Since 2012, he has headed the Gardens Department of the Bavarian Palace Administration as garden director. He is a founding member of the working group of the German Kitchen Garden Network and its director. Various specialist publications, lectures and exhibitions on garden history and garden conservation topics.

Abstract

For centuries, historical kitchen gardens were an indispensable source of produce for the kitchens of manorial or monastic kitchens, confectioneries and pharmacies. Today, this traditional garden culture has often been forgotten. The German KÜCHENGARTEN network has dedicated itself to researching and revitalising such gardens. This association of experts and committed amateurs from all over Germany is also endeavouring to replant historical useful and medicinal plants. The old kitchen gardens appear today as ‘magical places’ with their own synthesis of utility and ornament. Where they still exist or have been restored to cultivation, they enchant visitors with a wide variety of plants and historical cultivation techniques. The 18th-century court garden at the summer residence in Veitshöchheim (Franconia) is a fine example of the integration of useful plant cultures into a formal, representative "Lustgarten", while the famous Potager du Roi in Versailles stands for the separate, classical kitchen garden, which is separated from the "Lustgarten" by walls. The layout and equipment of kitchen gardens generally result from the requirements that are essential for the successful cultivation of crops. This is reflected, among other things, in their location in the terrain, their mostly regular layout and various types of enclosures. All facilities are designed for simple, systematic and effective cultivation of the gardens and at the same time the traditionally regular structure of the kitchen gardens also fulfils the requirements of beauty and ornamentation. The variety of equipment and water supply elements, the glasshouses or cold frames, the trellises and usually also a gardener's house as well as sheds and cellars for storage show the complexity of the facilities and how closely everything interlocked. Not all of the facilities have survived everywhere, which is why the lecture will draw on numerous examples from European countries and historical sources in order to convey as vivid a picture as possible of historical kitchen gardens and the crops cultivated in them.