European landscape architecture builds on a common horizon of understanding and yet produces quality works of very different expression and style. In Touch explores outstanding projects created within the European mindset, diving below the surface in an attempt to uncover the common values that bind European design work. The book presents 11 in-depth project 'features', which include thematically related essays, and 28 concise project 'icons'. The features focus both on big and small scale urban and rural situations. On the one hand, the newly installed and subtly designed railway line of the Glattalbahn in the Zurich metropolitan region, on the other the small scale urban spaces the privately developed and publicly used City Dune exterior spaces of the SEB Bank in Copenhagen. On the one hand French Sermange's redesigned heart of the village, focusing on a meadow, on the other and the far reaching site installations referring to local legends in Norway's Lake Seljord region.
The essays include debates about landscape policies as well as about how to design with history, about the role of art and nature as well as about pioneer landscape architects across the European countries. In Touch is the third volume in the triennial Landscape Architecture Europe series, following On Site (2009) and Fieldwork (2006). Produced for the Landscape Architecture Europe Foundation (LAE), situated in the Netherlands, it aims to set standards, in design and design critique, by presenting an overview of carefully selected and edited projects and topics of contemporary European landscape architecture. The series is endorsed by the European Federation for Landscape Architecture (EFLA) within the International Federation for Landscape Architecture (IFLA). It is produced under the auspices of Meto Vroom (chairman), Fritz Auweck, Maria Goula, Alastair McCapra and Kathryn Moore, members of the board of the Landscape Architecture Europe Foundation (LAE). The jury of In Touch has been composed by Michael van Gessel (chairman), Antonio Angelillo, Lilli Lička, Tone Lindheim, João Ferreira Nunes. The book has been edited by Lisa Diedrich (editor-in-chief), Mark Hendriks, Thierry Kandjee, Claudia Moll, and produced by Harry Harsema.