Rainer Schmidt (landscape architect)
Rainer Schmidt (born 1954) is a German landscape architect, urban designer, and professor of landscape architecture at the Beuth University of Applied Sciences Berlin. He operates out of three German offices located in Munich, Berlin, and Bernburg. His international work specializes in large scale projects in landscape architecture, environmental planning and urban design. To date, his projects are found in Germany, Austria, China, Algeria and the Middle East. Life and career. Rainer Schmidt was born in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, and had practiced in gardening and landscaping from 1972 to 1975. This inspired him to pursue an education  in landscape architecture from 1975 to 1980 at the Hochschule Weihenstephan in Freising, Germany. After graduating in 1980, Rainer Schmidt began his career as a landscape architect in the office of Gottfried Hansjakob where he progressed towards Senior Landscape Architect and line manager. Since 1986, he has been registered as a Landscape Architect by the Bavarian Chamber of Architects. In 1991, Schmidt started his own office "Rainer Schmidt Landscape Architects and Urban Planners" and followed the call for professorship in "Landscape Architecture" at the Beuth University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany. Schmidt has also taught under Guest Professorship at the  University of California Berkeley, USA, in 2007 and the University of Beijing, China, in 2004. Since 2005, Rainer Schmidt is a member of the Advisory Board of the German Society of Garden Architecture and Landscape Culture, Berlin, Germany (DGGL). Since 2008, Schmidt has been registered by the Bavarian Chamber of Architects as an urban planner. Office profile of Rainer Schmidt Landscape Architects. Philosophy. According to his philosophy of ‘working from place’, landscape architecture in the 21st century is supposed to reflect the relationship between humans and nature. Rainer Schmidt conceptualizes each project holistically. From idea to concept to implementation …, he  considers process and product and communicates this with his employees. The final outcome is about making a project, an area, a place ‘radiate’. In order to achieve this quality, a situation is to be structurally understood and structurally transformed during the working process. According to this systematic approach, landscape architecture and design are worked on as concepts and not as decoration. The necessary syntheses of ecology and of “healthy living conditions” - for the human and for nature – are integrated parts of these spatial concept-findings, considered as the basis for intervening into ‘nature by culture’. Concept-finding. The concepts are  structures for building space three- dimensionally, texturally and materially. They tell the story of place in an innovative way and apply contemporary ideas for continuing the tradition of culture in place. They generate atmosphere and change the human perception of space and of nature. Each task definition is taken through a process of design consideration which enfolds options and determines a finally optimized decision as result of a strict cooperation with client, user and cost management. The firm’s overall aims are to renew continuously the human scale and to bring nature close to people. This is bound to strong  concepts for planting design, to an innovative selection of plants and material and to a vision for the aimed to atmosphere of the space to be created – which will make the user become active in feeling and occupying the space. The specific desire is to conceptualise and build the next large public park, if necessary as a temporary park, preparing for urban development, urban gardening and biodiversity, integrating the ‘third landscape’ and counter- balancing the damages left from industrialisation processes. Projects. Rainer Schmidt's work has been showcased in a number of publications, displaying a wide variety of built projects  of residential gardens, historic museum landscapes, temporary garden exhibitions, parks, and open public spaces. Rainer Schmidt has been in collaboration with Architect Helmut Jahn on many projects over the previous years, including the landscapes of Munich Airport, Weser Tower, and Highlight Towers. Built (by ... the year) Under Construction