Georges Descombes (b. 1939, Geneva) is a pioneering landscape architect whose work explores the layered relationship between place, time, and memory. Educated in architecture and shaped by early experiences with Pier Luigi Nervi and Marc-Joseph Saugey, Descombes developed a distinct practice that blends design, teaching, and critical reflection. He has taught at institutions including Harvard GSD and the University of Virginia, and was a founding figure of the CREX (Centre de Réalisation Expérimentale) at the former École d’Architecture de Genève.
Descombes is known for his sensitive and conceptual approach to landscape, treating it as a palimpsest—an evolving record of visible and invisible traces. His early projects, such as the Parc de Lancy, the Bijlmer Monument in Amsterdam, and the Swiss Path in Lucerne, reflect a deep engagement with historical context without succumbing to nostalgia. His designs evoke presence and possibility, grounding the past in the contemporary moment while opening pathways to the future.
From the early 2000s, Descombes worked on major urban landscape projects in Lyon, Brussels, and Antwerp, employing participatory methods to question the making of landscape in urban contexts. His most emblematic work, the renaturation of the River Aire in Geneva (2000–2015), is a manifesto for an "urbanism of revelation"—a profound meditation on the entangled forces of nature, artifice, and human agency in the age of the Anthropocene.
