The hot summer of 2018 showed us once again: our cities are definitely not fit to deal with climate change! In cooler times the enormous storage mass of stone, concrete and asphalt was still something practical, today it is more of a burden. But evolutionary adaptation to meet changing environmental conditions is always possible - and necessary! In recent years an intensive debate has developed about open space planning, about the climate-modifying function of vegetation, cooling water and the planting of facades and roofs. At the same time, publicly accessible open space in our increasingly dense cities is become more and more valuable. And last but not least the design of open space is also a question of the quality of urban life - today we are unwilling tomake do with a few pieces of thoughtlessly positioned street furniture. This issue aims to place the enormously important contributions of our landscape architects in the right light - they make an important contribution to ensuring that our cities are good places to live in. And outside the big cities they see to it that increasingly scarce natural resources are accessed and used in a way that is responsible and satisfactory in aesthetic, didactic and social term. In an interview with leading architects in this area the opportunities and problems of this planning practice are examined and four exemplary realised projects in urban and rural areas are presented. And the two current project reports about a school in East Tyrol that resembles a treehouse and an office building that forms a landscape on a former industrial site prove that today, sensibly, one no longer designs and builds against the natural environment but only with it. It seems that the oldest lesson in the history of humankind was forgotten for a long lime - in the post-industrial age plagued by crises we are now remembering it once again.
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