Gunter Wehmeyer
Gunter Wehmeyer (1972) is a Netherland based German urbanist and innovation strategist fuelled by solving complex challenges in the fields of Urbanism, Landscape_s and Future Ecologies. Gunter worked extensively on a variety of international locations (China, HK, UAE, UK), fields and mediums with a strong desire to effect, create and impact positive sustainability change for cities, nature and landscapes. He received his Masters from the University of Kassel/Tongji Shanghai in Landscape Urbanism (2003) and a Post-graduate program on Creative Leadership from THNK Amsterdam (2013).
As designer Gunter works with a variety of stakeholders across multiple siloed sectors to deliver both systemic and local change using strategic thinking, collaborative co-creation and design thinking. In recent years, Gunter has worked in both corporate, educational and entrepreneurial roles investigating how to apply urbanism to ecosystems, specializing on designing urban and educational innovation spaces with new services/business models to scale.
Gunter is currently starting his Practice by Design PhD at the Manchester Metropolitan University on the investigative Future Practices within Landscapes and placing agency in urban design practice and education.
Through the LiFE ‘Living in Future Ecologies' cross-faculty research group he is developing an landscape led academic incubator/innovation lab that inspires and implements new ways of thinking about land, wilderness and agency in global cities. Our vision is to stop thinking in terms of binary opposites - centre vs edge, cities vs rural, compact vs decentralized - but using landscapes as circular continuum to be the new soil of the future.
Through this “Landlab” we explore a wide range of projects on the positive role of physical and metaphysical Re-Wilding of our cities, undoing environmental damage to the land and pioneering new integrations of natural and cultural systems. Believing in Landscapes as solution for urgent urban challenges such as pollution, drought, flooding, health and wellbeing - the Incubator is visioning and prototyping new scenarios, forms and services for radical nature in global cities.
Developing and supporting a feral breed of change makers, we are hosting masterclasses, summer schools and residencies designing speculations, experiments and wilder frameworks for the Future Frontier!
We LANDCUBATE tested services and products at scale for providing voice, encounter and expertise for city leaders and businesses towards ecologically, aesthetically and economically rewarding solutions!
The Incubator will be hosted by the Manchester Metropolitan University and led by a diverse group of leaders and activists from the Built Environment, Design, Academia, Ecology and Technology. By marrying design thinking, system thinking and entrepreneurial leadership we catalyze Landscape_s as a new mindset for thinking, making and living nature within our cities and beyond. (website coming summer 2017)
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