Urban Gardens: Berlin’s Ecologies through Transdisciplinary Lenses

Humboldt International Campus: Humboldt Perspectives Study Abroad & Berlin Perspectives Programs, 2019-2023

This course situates questions of planetary change through the city of Berlin as a diverse complex ecosystem, focusing on several urban gardens. Asking “what can a garden be?” the course proposes ecological thinking to engage with multiple disciplines informing the field of ecology, including environmental, economic, social, political, artistic and spiritual perspectives, to study relations between human and nonhuman communities that compose each garden. Sites will be introduced through tours created in collaboration with local organizers from each of the projects, elaborating on their practices and contextualized with multi-media materials. Students will be supported to work autonomously and collaboratively in creative, critical, and reflective ways, embracing transdisciplinarity, concluding the course by designing a speculative garden.

This course has been included in the Berlin Perspectives and Humboldt Perspectives Study Abroad programs of the Humboldt International Campus since 2019. It is attended by local and international students from a range of disciplines including international relations, sociology, anthropology, sciences, sustainability studies, horticulture, education, law, and more.

Photo by Ludger Storcks