Professor Frank Sleegers has been on sabbatical in Germany since his promotion from Associate to Full Professor in the summer. One of his main focuses has been walking along the traces of a public art project he co-founded in Hamburg's port area in 2003. The project invited for discovery tours around site-specific art and performances in the wilderness of the overlooked urban fringe of Hamburg’s port area. Some portions of the port have transformed in the last 20 years as part of the Hafencity or the IBA Hamburg and made place for new living and working. Other places still contain the wild magic of abandonment. Can we learn something about the role of unplanned and undesigned areas in landscape architecture?
On October 17-18, Sleegers attended the 35th IFLA Europe Regional Conference, hosted by the Hungarian Association of Landscape Architects (HALA). Together, UMass LARP and the Department of Landscape Planning and Regional Development at the Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences will hold the 8th Fábos Conference on Landscape and Greenway Planning with UMass LARP on April 11-13, 2025 at UMass Amherst.
Between research and conferences, Professor Sleegers enjoyed daylong expeditions in the wilderness of Hamburg's port area with the company of his tenacious Australian Shepherd, Captain Holly.
In November, Sleegers presented "Playing or Planning? Urban Voids, Wilderness and City Planning" at the Politecnico di Milano Department of Architecture and Urban Studies.
As the year comes to a close, Sleegers looks forward to the publication of two journal articles in 2025: “Gustav Lange and the Role of Design Composition at Mauerpark Berlin” and a book review of “Postindustrial DIY: Recovering American Rust Belt Icons” by Daniel Campo.