ROMY HECHT

Following my training as an architect at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, I decided to pursue my Ph.D. at Princeton University to study landscape from an interdisciplinary perspective: I left behind studios and a design method mostly based on composition rules, in order to engage in the approaches provided by environmental studies, the history of science and art, ecology and the like.

 

Despite my degree’s title (History and Theory of Architecture), my dissertation, entitled “The attack on greenery: Critical perceptions of the American man-made landscape, 1955-1969,” delivered a historical and critical look at the trajectories of Ian McHarg, John Brinckerhoff Jackson and Rachel Carson, who proposed a change in the relationship between Americans and their environment at the apex of the Cold War.

 

Once relocated in Santiago, I continued my academic career at my alma mater, where I am a professor on the history and theory of landscape, devoted to explore the idea of landscape as an entity in which human expectations, design propositions and socio-cultural processes intersect.

 

In addition to being a scholar (and my current position as Dean of College UC), I have been engaged in doing important foundational work on landscape advocacy and activism to nurture, disseminate and, ultimately, ingrain a culture of landscape in Chile, a long-term effort that takes several forms.

 

First, I decided to translate from English to Spanish key disciplinary texts, such as J.B. Jackson’s The Necessity for Ruins and other Essays published by Ediciones ARQ (Santiago, 2012, and awaitng a 2nd edition in Guadalajara, Mexico) and selected essays by Frederick Law Olmsted, Paisajes para el Pueblo (Orjikh Editores, Santiago, 2022).

 

Second, I have received national grants and research fellowships and extensively published on issues regarding Santiago’s public realms and civic landscapes, working to implant in the public imagination how landscape strategies have been shaped by a dynamic relationship between botanical practices, political decisions and economic circumstances. I also co-founded LOFscapes, an online platform for critical discussion about the transformations of the Chilean landscape, and Improbable, a community offering workshops and outdoor experiences to live and breathe the Chilean landscape. Nowadays I am a columnist in VD, saturday's magazine oficina Chilean newspaper El Mercurio.

 

Although I have pioneered work that has received international attention and recognition, much needs to be done, as is the case with a number of Latin American landscapes. As such, for the past few years I have committed to researching and writing  Santiago's Green Soul, a first-ever inquiry into the nature of Santiago’s landscape, examining how it came to be and chronicling the actors responsible for its development.

 

As a non-practicing architect who approaches landscape history with the caution and irrepressible hope of a fully committed illicit lover, my personal desire is to ignite the yearning to relearn and understand our close surroundings, so as to spark a lively debate with my fellow colleagues, urban designers, landscape architects, aspiring designers and the general public regarding the making of the landscape that surrounds us.