I iNTERVIEW
Rasmus Astrup
Design Principal and Partner in SLA
Rasmus Astrup Abu Dhabi Desert
An urban forest in a desert city Rasmus Astrup of SLA architects tells us how his team built the ‘coolest place in the UAE’ using a city nature approach.
SLA is a multidisciplinary internationally renowned architecture practice with its roots in Scandinavia. As it approaches its 30th year in business, its focus remains on nature-based design. “We call it SLADNA internally,” says Rasmus Astrup, Design Principal for international projects at SLA. How has SLA evolved as a practice over the past three decades? The only thing that has changed are the cities we work in, and the challenges they are facing. Besides our aesthetic design language, which always starts with inspiration from - and understanding of - nature we also bring a strong interdisciplinarity to our projects. We believe that an interdisciplinary approach is necessary to solve the clients’ demands and cities’ complexity. When I started in SLA, we were more or less
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all landscape architects or designers, but now I work closely with biologists, anthropologists, planting experts, master planners, and forest engineers – all of which we have in-house in SLA. We need the anthropologists because of our strong focus on social values in our designs, and because all our projects fundamentally are about improving the life of people. We are currently experiencing a global demand from our clients towards more urban space and city nature. Basically, we see the urban space is the “social glue”, or the democratic fundament for cities and societies. We always use City Nature as a broad term for our approach to urban design, with focus on creating sustainable, resilient and healthy designs; but we also believe that the urban public realm is the most democratic place. It is the place where everyone can meet equally and engage - despite gender, age, social status and religious background.
