Models without numbers: the landscapes of Günther Vogt

In the 1990s, prior to the ubiquity of the internet and with few built “design” projects in Australia as exemplars, being interested in design was a lonely affair. In drawings and physical collages – literally, a virtual reality – one projected qualities of landscapes that required one to imagine what might be from a re-presentation of what was in the real landscape. Books and magazines that made it to Oz (in boutique bookshops, now long gone) were voraciously sought and shared, then photographed for slides to use in university lectures. Publications from Europe were most sought after. After the Catalan journal Quaderns d’arquitectura i urbanisme and the French journal, Pages Paysages, my most valued book of the time, as both a new studio teacher and landscape architect, was Kienast: Gärten = gardens (Birkhäuser, 1997) about the work of Swiss landscape architect Dieter Kienast. I was fascinated by undefinable qualities that I felt, as much as saw, in the work of Zurich-based practice Kienast Vogt Partner – work that was produced by Kienast in collaboration with another Swiss landscape architect, Gunther Vogt.