Abstract
The following paper is the result of a research project developed within the Phd program in Landscape and Environment of Sapienza, Università di Roma. The starting point for the research is the idea of Landscape design as a complex medium, able to metabolize the emerging problems connected to the upheaval of the twentieth century city, such as the ecological crisis, the growing social inequalities and the resurgence of the direct agency of citizens in contemporary city public spaces. The main hypothesis of this work is that these different issues are finding common ground, in terms of new possible designs, thanks to feedbacks between a new ecological awareness and new forms of participation. This supports the development of new ways of design that seem to unhinge contrapositions and antinomies inherited from the past and deeply engrained in the collective design imagination such as: scientific vs. creative, temporary vs. permanent, strategic vs. tac-
tic. The research structure is an abductive one: it moves from an interpretative review of contemporary landscape designs to debate the reasons of their success. To this end, a series of interpretative arguments are outlined to support the possible explanation of this evidence and interpretative hypotheses are traced to connect them to the ongoing evolution of the Landscape design itself.
