Studio Flair is an innovative office for garden design and landscape architecture in Fribourg, led by Livie Weidkuhn and Dylan Torri. Based amidst the linguistic border ("Röstigraben"), we work on projects in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, in the Romandie, as well as internationally. We design gardens and landscapes that are more than lawns framed by thuja hedges.
With academic credentials and experience in both architecture and landscape architecture, we always think of open space in relation to the built environment. The close cooperation of these two disciplines from the start of a project enables solutions that elegantly unite technical, functional, and aesthetic aspects — optimal integration of built elements into terrain modelling, skilful management of water on all surfaces, as well as concepts for using rainwater in favour of vegetation and for a pleasant ambient climate. We are always in search of holistic solutions, with a deep understanding of natural processes and systemic connections, and hold ourselves to the standard of creating high-quality spaces.
Today's garden designs are often implanted without context into existing settings — detached from soil type, local climatic conditions and the history of the site. The place is transformed by bringing in generic soils, installing artificial irrigation, and planting the same plant canon everywhere. The result is species-poor, disease-prone, maintenance- and resource-intensive and bears little relation to the local history.
We believe in a different way: with sensitivity and passion we listen to the site's story and spin it forward into contemporary designs that speak of the culture of the place. Whether a dry slope or a damp hollow — we see the given conditions as a foundation for creative solutions. Accordingly, we are guided by the following principles and convictions in our work:
- Soil: lifeless substrate becomes a living system
- Water: problem becomes resource
- Plants: passive decor becomes active actor
- Maintenance: effort and pesticide use become a means to guide natural processes
- Aesthetic: uniformity becomes individual expression
We understand drawing up maintenance concepts and accompanying projects even after construction is completed as an integral part of our work. Especially in the first years, a garden needs attention until it has filled out and found its own rhythm. Afterwards it is steered with few interventions — by dividing, weeding, selective pruning. Thus over the years the unique character of each individually designed garden emerges and unfolds.
Variety instead of monoculture, change instead of stagnation: this is how gardens are born that sustain themselves yet can be experienced anew again and again.
Livie has a special interest in plants, their influence and potential to shape landscapes. With sketch paper in the office and rubber boots in the field — it is exactly this connection of conceptual creativity and pragmatic practice that shapes her approach. Her designs are characterized by a deep understanding of existing soil types and plant ecology, and she creates spaces that flourish and bloom naturally over time.
Equipped with a spade, she dedicates herself to the analysis and regeneration of soil, which she sees as the foundation for healthy and sustainable landscapes. Together with her life partner she manages a farming operation aimed at regenerative agriculture. This activity deepens her knowledge about the demands and impacts of different plants, ecological relationships, economic farming practices and current challenges such as heavy rainfall, heat waves and soil degradation.
Livie is an architect and landscape architect from Basel. Her educational path led her from landscape architecture at the University of Applied Sciences in Rapperswil, then to a Bachelor in Architecture and finally to a Master in Landscape Architecture at ETH Zurich.
Her professional experience is broad: she has worked in horticultural enterprises, as well as in renowned planning offices — among others with the office for urban intervention Bryum in Basel, ProPaysage Gartenbau in Fribourg, and the internationally known garden design studio of Luciano Giubbilei in London.
Always dressed up, though his leather shoes should not disguise that they have left numerous altitude metres and streams behind. Dylan begins concept designs with what already exists. He reads places like maps — observing how the terrain slopes, where water flows, what disturbs and what contributes quality.
His approach is efficient, precise and always close to reality. He is particularly interested in the element of water: he seeks to stage it and shows sensitivity toward its often dichotomous nature: as a welcome gift in dry fields, as a feared danger beyond riverbanks, as a sought-after refreshment in hot summers and as a shunned receptacle for our industrial and household waste. Uniting all this into poetic landscapes guides Dylan in his office designs.
Raised in Alsace and Solothurn, Dylan now lives in Zurich and studied Architecture (Bachelor) and Landscape Architecture (Master) at ETH Zurich. Since autumn 2024 he has also worked as a scientific assistant at the Chair of Landscape Architecture under Professor Martina Voser at ETH. During his work at noa Landschaftsarchitektur and planikum in Zurich he learned to translate designs into reality not just in terms of aesthetics but also cost- and maintenance-oriented. In the office he brings a calm, precise way of working — and the firm will to plan things so that they really function later on.