DELUS - Journal for Landscape and Urban Studies

DELUS is the new magazine of the Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies at ETH Zurich. Focused on expanding the disciplinary boundaries of landscape architecture and urban studies, the magazine presents questions, practices and stories that interrogate the entanglements between ecology, landscape history, environmental and critical humanities, and digital arts. Trying to bring academic knowledge and rigour to a broader and diverse audience, DELUS engages with contributors from a variety of disciplines and geographies, while providing a generous space for visual narratives. Its format allows for extensive flexibility in layout and the possibility to present a large variety of visual media in detail.

The magazine is one element within a broader assembly of editorial typologies (an ecosystem of periodicals), meant to document and record the activities of the Institute throughout the years. Reflecting the diversity and transdisciplinary nature of the Institute’s work, the publication operates more as a stack for content than a traditional magazine, usually intended as a self-contained printed artefact. All of the components of the publication are collected on a yearly basis through a rubber band housed in a die-cut inlet within the Journal. The latter is both a functional and a formal element of the publication’s design: a strong iconic presence alongside the masthead, the inlet also visually recalls the cross section of a water stream. Its design can change from year to year in order to characterise the different issues.

The pilot issue of DELUS Journal (issue 00) was published in Autumn 2023, while issue 01, "Chasing Water," came out in Autumn 2024.