MsSophie Von Maltzan
Design Fellow
School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy
- Design FellowSchool of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy
- 0857034201
- University College Dublin, School of Architecture Planning and Environmental Policy
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Sophie von Maltzan’s socially engaged environmental projects present a paradigm shift in the use of marginal open spaces in our cities. They explore how citizens can be involved in the shaping of public spaces, creating platforms that encourage communities of place to develop around them and improve biodiversity.
Von Maltzan’s projects aim to provoke a shift of cultural values and aesthetic norms. Currently the “normal” for urban private and public open space is a tidy-looking and biodiversity-poor landscape that does not allow for vegetational natural processes. It is Von Maltzan’s view that such settings do little to expand understanding of climate change and our capacity to mitigate those changes, and even perpetuate alienation from nature. Her investigative projects set out to promote and democratise nature-filled green infrastructure in urban settings, thereby providing ‘stepping stones’ to more sustainable towns and cities.
Sophie von Maltzan is an artist, academic, landscape architect and farmer. Her predominant focus is that of environmental, socially engaged and collaborative practice. Her artistic and educational endeavours also serve as research projects: interrogating and working to change humanity’s relationship with the environment. To this end, she has developed a variety of collaborative approaches that weave together ecology, participatory and site specific design. Place making and creating communal narratives are foundational to her practice. Through her environmental socially engaged art practice she has delivered an extensive array of participatory design projects with communities.
She has 15 years of experience developing nature-based creative installations in the public realm with various communities and has worked with a broad variety of stakeholders as an artist as well as as a landscape architect on urban and rural projects at all stages from feasibility to construction.
Von Maltzan is the recipient of a multitude of awards, including the Irish Landscape Institute Awards. Through her stakeholder engagement process she explores, recognises and values the specific cultural identity of a place within the community.
She is a part time tutor at the school of Landscape Architecture in UCD and has lectured at many other universities in Ireland and abroad over the last 16 years. Her research and teaching there is concerned with community collaborative design, green infrastructure in the urban and rural context and querying aesthetic norms in the landscape context.
Von Maltzan has a strong track record of initiating, coordinating, developing and delivering creative environmental work with multiple communities and stakeholders. She has been commissioned by local authorities, institutions, private business and community groups and has managed stakeholder consultations, participatory and collaborative projects, procurement processes in the public and private sector, exhibition-making, curatorial management, project management, arts administration, the writing of briefs and reports and academic and educational work. She has vast experience initiating, consulting, producing and coordinating collaborative projects with young people and schools. Since being awarded the Arts Council Young People and Education project award in 2011, work with children on their involvement in the creation and improvement of their environment has been a key focus of her practice.
Von Maltzan’s projects aim to provoke a shift of cultural values and aesthetic norms. Currently the “normal” for urban private and public open space is a tidy-looking and biodiversity-poor landscape that does not allow for vegetational natural processes. It is Von Maltzan’s view that such settings do little to expand understanding of climate change and our capacity to mitigate those changes, and even perpetuate alienation from nature. Her investigative projects set out to promote and democratise nature-filled green infrastructure in urban settings, thereby providing ‘stepping stones’ to more sustainable towns and cities.
Sophie von Maltzan is an artist, academic, landscape architect and farmer. Her predominant focus is that of environmental, socially engaged and collaborative practice. Her artistic and educational endeavours also serve as research projects: interrogating and working to change humanity’s relationship with the environment. To this end, she has developed a variety of collaborative approaches that weave together ecology, participatory and site specific design. Place making and creating communal narratives are foundational to her practice. Through her environmental socially engaged art practice she has delivered an extensive array of participatory design projects with communities.
She has 15 years of experience developing nature-based creative installations in the public realm with various communities and has worked with a broad variety of stakeholders as an artist as well as as a landscape architect on urban and rural projects at all stages from feasibility to construction.
Von Maltzan is the recipient of a multitude of awards, including the Irish Landscape Institute Awards. Through her stakeholder engagement process she explores, recognises and values the specific cultural identity of a place within the community.
She is a part time tutor at the school of Landscape Architecture in UCD and has lectured at many other universities in Ireland and abroad over the last 16 years. Her research and teaching there is concerned with community collaborative design, green infrastructure in the urban and rural context and querying aesthetic norms in the landscape context.
Von Maltzan has a strong track record of initiating, coordinating, developing and delivering creative environmental work with multiple communities and stakeholders. She has been commissioned by local authorities, institutions, private business and community groups and has managed stakeholder consultations, participatory and collaborative projects, procurement processes in the public and private sector, exhibition-making, curatorial management, project management, arts administration, the writing of briefs and reports and academic and educational work. She has vast experience initiating, consulting, producing and coordinating collaborative projects with young people and schools. Since being awarded the Arts Council Young People and Education project award in 2011, work with children on their involvement in the creation and improvement of their environment has been a key focus of her practice.