| Summary: | Major public works to combat disasters are very often designed from a strictly technical point of view radically transforming landscapes in response to a maximum level of risk without consideration for their potential social value and their importance in the socialisation of the local populations they are intended to protect. This article puts forward the hypothesis that a landscape approach makes it possible to design alternative developments addressing more complex issues than purely technical questions. At a time in the Anthropocene era when humanity’s impact on terrestrial ecosystems has become the driving force behind environmental change, it is important that development projects proposed by public authorities should be used as a support for (re)building new relationships between environments and society. This implies nurturing a crucial sensitivity towards nature and an awareness of "what is sustainable". To do this, the landscape architect must shift the theoretical foundations of his or her approach by putting forward the notion of the "aesthetics of engagement" as opposed to the "aesthetics of detachment". Two projects the author participated in as a landscape architect, and which were intended to combat flooding on the island of Kyūshū in Japan, serve as starting points in this reflection.
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