Ines, you grew up in the city of Lübeck in Northern Germany and became an architect. Lübeck is a small city with a lot of historic buil-dings and a rich cultural heritage. How did that influence you personal-ly? The richness and quality of archi-tecture and urban space in Lübeck have always fascinated me. I first became aware of the iconic expres-siveness of the Holstentor (Holsten Gate) in school. Later, in university, I carried out typological investigati-ons of the characteristic merchant’s house. For my diploma, I traveled to Riga to explore the Baltic region, especially the eastern part. I believe that becoming aware of the simila-rity of architectonic characteristics in this area made me realize the va-lue of regionally anchored cultural landscape. But the most impressing occurrences that I can remember and that influenced me in becoming an architect were the many visits to the Louisiana museum near Co-penhagen during my childhood and looking at New York City from the Empire State Building when I was 16 – which is interesting, because the latter represents ultimate urbanity, while the former is an example of connecting buildings with landsca-pes. How would you describe the interrelation of architecture and ter-ritorial character in rural regions (in Northern Germany)?The built environment – buildings and infrastructures – is a relevant part of territories and landscapes. I believe that cultural landscape should not be understood as sce-nery, but as a productive and lively environment. For a longer time than in cities, cultural landscapes in ru-ral areas have been characterized by vernacular structures, but this has radically changed in the past decades. We can observe new terri-torial logics as well as more hybrid, complex, and more generically built structures, overlaying each other without much linkage. This transfor-mation has not been planned, it just happened, and it poses a lot of new challenges to rural areas. In your research, you descri-be historical rural buildings as a ter-ritorial resource. What do you mean by that?I believe that it is worth discussing the relevance of historical settle-ment structures and their buildings for present and future regional cha-racteristics. Even if these structures seem outdated today, they should be looked at as a resource. The past 18
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