Transformative Ground: A Field Guide to the Post-Industrial Landscape [1 ed.] 1138308293, 9781138308299

Table of contents :
Contents
List of figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: transformative ground
1 Relinquishing control
2 The agency of the wild
3 A menacing dragon
4 The entanglement
5 Everyday aesthetics
6 Transitional urbanism
7 The mesh and the matrix
8 Relational scales
9 Enlivened temporality
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Transformative Ground

Aimed at students and instructors, alongside practitioners and researchers, in landscape architecture and its allied disciplinary fields, this book provides the reader with a clear framework of theoretical and practical considerations for interpreting and designing post-industrial landscapes. One of the biggest contemporary challenges currently faced in the profession is how to effectively understand and work with the transformational possibilities of post-industrial landscapes, while negotiating significant spatial challenges, such as degradation and fragmentation. Transformative Ground: A  Field Guide to the Post-Industrial Landscape presents a range of theoretical perspectives and practical approaches, offering a broad scope of contemporary design strategies that deal with post-industrial landscapes. Through a series of thematic chapters, allied with precedents from leading design offices, this book identifies how the context of post-industrial landscapes has compelled shifts in fundamental ideas that underpin landscape design. As a richly illustrated account of this transformative ground, this book provides a must-have guide to help you reimagine the post-industrial landscape. Ross Mclean is a Lecturer in Landscape Architecture at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

Transformative Ground A Field Guide to the Post-Industrial Landscape

ROSS MCLEAN

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Ross Mclean The right of Ross Mclean to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Mclean, Ross (Landscape architect), author. Title: Transformative ground: a field guide to the post-industrial landscape / Ross Mclean. Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019016482 (print) | LCCN 2019021628 (ebook) | ISBN 9781315142944 (eBook) | ISBN 9781138308299 (hbk) | ISBN 9781138308312 (pbk) | ISBN 9781315142944 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Industrial buildings—Landscape architecture. | Industrial sites—Landscape architecture. | Urban renewal. Classification: LCC TS190.5 (ebook) | LCC TS190.5. M35 2020 (print) | DDC 712/.7—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019016482 ISBN: 978-1-138-30829-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-30831-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-14294-4 (ebk) Typeset in Univers LT Std by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of figures Acknowledgements

vii xi



Introduction: transformative ground

1

1

Relinquishing control

8

2

The agency of the wild

29

3

A menacing dragon

50

4

The entanglement

67

5

Everyday aesthetics

89

6

Transitional urbanism

107

7

The mesh and the matrix

138

8

Relational scales

159

9

Enlivened temporality

179

Bibliography

203

Index

219

v

Figures

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5

Candlestick Point, San Francisco, United States  11 Candlestick Point, San Francisco, United States  11 Candlestick Point, San Francisco, United States  13 Candlestick Point, San Francisco, United States  14 Ørnesvingen Viewpoint, Geiranger, Norway  18 Ørnesvingen Viewpoint, Geiranger, Norway 19 Kvalhausen, Eggum, Norway 20 Schouwburgplein, Rotterdam, The Netherlands  21 Schouwburgplein, Rotterdam, The Netherlands  22 Houtan Park, Shanghai, China  24 Houtan Park, Shanghai, China  25 Houtan Park, Shanghai, China  26 Houtan Park, Shanghai, China  27 Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany  35 Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany  36 Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany  37 Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany  38 Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany  39 Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany  40 Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany  41 Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany  42 Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany  42 Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany  43 Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany  44 Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany  45 Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany  46 Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – Blast Furnace Viewing Tower 51 Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – Elevated Walkway over Bunkers 52 Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – Water Park Canal 54 Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – Emscher Promenade 55 Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – Bunker Climbing Garden55

vii

Figures

3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10 3.11 3.12 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8

viii

Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – Railway Park Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – the Cowper Plaza Cherry Orchard Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – Sinter Box Garden Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – Meadow Sage on Recycled Substrate Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – Bunker Gallery Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – Public Events Space Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – View West to Operational Industry Seattle Gas Works Park, United States  Seattle Gas Works Park, United States  The New York High Line, United States  The New York High Line, United States  The New York High Line, United States  Gardens on the Bay, Singapore  Gardens on the Bay, Singapore Gardens on the Bay, Singapore Gardens on the Bay, Singapore Gardens on the Bay, Singapore  Gardens on the Bay, Singapore  Gardens on the Bay, Singapore  Hylozoic Ground  Park Saint-Ouen, Paris, France Park Saint-Ouen, Paris, France Park Saint-Ouen, Paris, France  Park Saint-Ouen, Paris, France  Evergreen Brickworks, Toronto, Canada  Evergreen Brickworks, Toronto, Canada Evergreen Brickworks, Toronto, Canada Evergreen Brickworks, Toronto, Canada Evergreen Brickworks, Toronto, Canada Kings Cross Pond Club, London, United Kingdom  Kings Cross Pond Club, London, United Kingdom Tempelhof Freedom Park, Berlin, Germany  Tempelhof Freedom Park, Berlin, Germany  Terra Nova Biosphere Belt, Rhein-Erft, Germany Terra Nova Biosphere Belt, Rhein-Erft, Germany  Terra Nova Biosphere Belt, Rhein-Erft, Germany  Alcântara Wastewater Treatment Plant, Lisbon, Portugal  Alcântara Wastewater Treatment Plant, Lisbon, Portugal  Buitenschot Park, Amsterdam, The Netherlands – Noise Reduction Diagram  Buitenschot Park, Amsterdam, The Netherlands  Buitenschot Park, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 

56 57 58 59 61 62 66 72 72 74 76 77 79 81 82 83 84 85 87 88 90 91 92 93 94 94 95 96 96 101 102 104 105 110 111 112 114 114 115 116 117

Figures

6.9 6.10 6.11 6.12 6.13 6.14 6.15 6.16 6.17 6.18 6.19 6.20 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9 7.10 7.11 7.12 7.13 7.14 7.15 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9 8.10 8.11 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5

TGV Avignon, France 118 Bordeaux Parc aux angéliques, France  120 Bordeaux Parc aux angéliques, France  120 Channeling (Energy) Waste: Heat Hubs, Rotterdam, The Netherlands 123 Channeling (Energy) Waste: Carbon Dioxide, Rotterdam, The Netherlands124 Almere Oosterwold Freeland, The Netherlands 126 Almere Oosterwold Freeland, The Netherlands 127 Rotterdam, The Netherlands – Urban Scale: Flows of Biota 129 Copenhagen Cloudburst, Denmark 131 Copenhagen Cloudburst, Denmark 132 Seachange City, Perth, Australia  136 River Road City, Perth, Australia  137 The Ecological Energy Network, The Netherlands 143 The Ecological Energy Network, The Netherlands 143 The Ecological Energy Network, The Netherlands 144 The Ecological Energy Network, The Netherlands 144 The Allianz Arena, Munich, Germany  146 The Allianz Arena, Munich, Germany 146 The Allianz Arena, Munich, Germany 147 Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, Germany 151 Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, Germany 152 Eastern Scheldt Storm Surge Barrier, The Netherlands 154 Eastern Scheldt Storm Surge Barrier, The Netherlands 154 Riverpark Nijmegen, The Netherlands 156 Riverpark Nijmegen, The Netherlands  157 Riverpark Nijmegen, The Netherlands 157 Riverpark Nijmegen, The Netherlands  158 Freshkills Park, New York, United States 163 Freshkills Park, New York, United States 164 Freshkills Park, New York, United States  165 Yanweizhou Park, Jinhua, China  166 Yanweizhou Park, Jinhua, China  167 Freshkills Park, New York, United States 169 Freshkills Park, New York, United States 170 Oyster-tecture, New York, United States 172 Oyster-tecture, New York, United States 173 Anchoring Terrain, Philadelphia, United States 175 Dynamic Coalition, Freshkills Park, New York, United States 178 Downsview Park, Toronto, Canada 181 Reconsidering a Mountain, Cardada, Switzerland 184 Reconsidering a Mountain, Cardada, Switzerland 185 Reconsidering a Mountain, Cardada, Switzerland 186 Reconsidering a Mountain, Cardada, Switzerland 187

ix

Figures

9.6 9.7 9.8 9.9 9.10 9.11 9.12 9.13 9.14 9.15 9.16 9.17 9.18

x

Salines de la Tancada, Tarragona, Catalunya, Spain  Salines de la Tancada, Tarragona, Catalunya, Spain  Salines de la Tancada, Tarragona, Catalunya, Spain  Salines de la Tancada, Tarragona, Catalunya, Spain  The Seven New Netherlands The Seven New Netherlands: Delta Land The Seven New Netherlands Freshkills Park, New York, United States Freshkills Park, New York, United States Fredericia C, Denmark Fredericia C, Denmark Fredericia C, Denmark Fredericia C, Denmark

187 188 189 189 191 192 193 195 196 199 199 200 200

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following offices and people for their assistance in making this book possible (in alphabetical order): 3RW architects (Jerome), Agence Ter (Béatrice), bbz Landscape Architecture (Anja and Amina), DTAH (Stephanie), Estudi Marti Franch (Marti and Gemma), Fabric (Luca), Grant Associates (Tori), Grün Berlin (Bettina), Haag Collection (Thaisa), Hargreaves Associates (Casey), H+N+S Landscape Architecture (Hank and Brecht), Iwan Baan Studio (Suzanne), James Corner Field Operations (Caroline and Brooke), Karres+Brands (Eva), Latz+Partner (Anneliese, Silke, and Michael), LOLA (Loes), Mathur and da Cunha, MDP Landscape Architecture (Martin), MVRDV (Isabel), The Norwegian Scenic Routes (Per), NYC Parks (Megan), Ooze Architects (Sylvain), Philip Beesley Architect Inc. (Melanie), Planland (Andreas), Proap (Cristina and Inaki), Ramboll + Ramboll Studio Dreiseitl (Christian and Ulrike), SCAPE (Will), SLA Landscape Architecture (Cecilie), Snøhetta (Therese), Studio Bürgi (Chiara), Turenscape (Kongjian and Huimin), UWA Press (Kate), Vogt Landscape Architecture (Jonas), Richard Weller, West 8 (Winnie and Jeroen), plus Elinor, Fraser, Hazel, Jordi, and Tiago.

xi

Introduction Transformative ground

Proposing a transformative ground implies that there has been a shift in thinking that brings about a qualitatively different field of concern for landscape architecture. As the range of theory and design precedents covered in this book indicates, there has been a transformative shift in fundamental ideas that underpin landscape architecture, amounting to a significant shift in aesthetic theory. This transformational period, spanning over the last 30 years, has seen conventional ideas and key thematic areas giving way or changing emphasis as new conceptualisations and shifts in aesthetic appreciation have progressively opened up, generally advancing in response to the emergent territory of the post-industrial landscape. This book offers considerable scope, drawing on the rich conceptualisation of landscape in the contemporary field, to capture a sense of how this period of radical rethinking has challenged long standing conventions, as new theoretical and strategic frameworks have emerged. Transformative ground also refers to the convergence between site, as the physical ground of the landscape, and reasoning, of how we ground abstract theoretical or cultural sensibilities as a progressive field of concern, where the means and the imagination of our culture intersect with the dynamic combinatorial potential of the real world. For several decades now, the increasing presence of post-industrial sites have opened up a new territorial ground for landscape architecture, disrupting conventional ideas and aesthetics of space making that have been deemed inadequate for dealing with the structural complexities, toxic histories, and cultural ambiguities of abandoned sites. There is a highly contested quality to many post-industrial sites, where abandonment and opportunity, decay and growth, history and erasure, create a compelling entanglement between seemingly contradictory conditions. These contextual realities are challenging, requiring new conceptualisations and spatial tactics to negotiate issues that are often complex, temporal, beyond perception, and in extreme cases, irresolvable. In current thinking the common designation of post-industrial sites as “wasteland” has been challenged, where many theorists have questioned the derogatory emphasis of this term, to instead bring emphasis to how abandoned sites are places of latent potential. Each site has a unique set of conditions and qualities that requires an engaged, responsive, and revelatory approach, to work with the potential of these spaces as transformative grounds for society and nature, where they can be robust structural complexes that offer a myriad

1

Introduction

of spatial experiences and structural re-appropriations; imbued with a sense of open-endedness, vibrancy, and opportunity that traditional public space often lacks; containers of rich ecological habitats and exotic species, as a spontaneous nature that evokes a sense of the wild; and places of social appropriation and participation, for communities to emerge with shared values and aims. While post-industrial sites, especially those of former heavy industry, were complicit in bringing about the environmental problems we now face, including climate change, environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity, economic decline, and social marginalisation, they are also recognised as offering the grounds for positive transformation into accessible and valued public space. In this way the transformative potential of abandoned sites has catalysed a progressive movement in landscape architecture, compelled by the challenges of re-integrating sites, largely structured for utilitarian purposes, back into the urban fabric. This book provides considerable scope on how new expressive forms and design sensibilities, based on distinct societal and environmental issues, have emerged in response to this context, providing a sense of how post-industrial sites not only offer a transformative ground for society and nature, but also a progressive field of concern for landscape architecture.

Urban transformation While post-industrial sites are associated with urban decline and degeneration, they are increasingly seen as part of the broad scale transformation of cities, which has seen the disappearance of a range of heavy industries that once dominated city skylines, such as factories, shipyards, and steelworks, providing a sense that we are in a post-industrial era. However, this could better be described as a process of urban succession, where abandonment is seen as part of the progression from a production to consumption society, which started around the 1950s and has significantly accelerated in recent decades. This broader sense of transformation implies that understanding and dealing with the post-industrial landscape involves more than the re-integration of abandoned sites, but appreciating that these are components set within the expansive reorganisation of cities and their urban regions, which encompasses a broad range of socio-spatial concerns related to urban transformation. Urban transformation is underpinned by large-scale infrastructural design, as an increasingly extensive sociotechnical network that supplies the demand for energy, food, goods, and other services or resources to sustain a growing urban population, calling for urban strategies, such as network, metabolic, or circular studies, which engage the systematised dimensions of landscapes. Other characteristics of urban transformation involve spatial shifts, such as the increasing presence of edge city and network developments, which require strategic frameworks to integrate the interspersed, transitional, and fragmented structure of expanding urbanisation. Urban transformation also involves culture change, including increased concern for social mobility and tourism; nature conservation and ecological restoration; climate control and resilience to flooding; mitigation of noise pollution; smart cities and living technology; and productive landscapes and the social rights to the city, amongst other cultural interests.

2

Introduction

What emerges in this conceptualisation is that urban transformation is as much cultural and system based as spatial. This indicates that the urban can no longer be understood through prior conventions that placed emphasis on spatial form, proportion and enclosure, requiring a shift from emphasis on spatial structure as fixed and stable, to instead grapple with conceptualisations of the urban landscape as a dynamic process, of ongoing spatial transformations underpinned by social activities and environmental systems. As evidenced in this book, landscape architecture plays a key role in providing strategic frameworks that respond to urban transformation on spatial, cultural, and system based levels, to engage the expansive territory of transitional urbanism and infrastructural design, alongside fresh thinking about scale and temporality.

The ecological lens The increasing emphasis on process and systems based thinking has brought closer alignment between landscape architecture and the ecological sciences. The discipline of ecology has informed the appreciation of landscape as an environment of relational interactions, which embodies a process oriented approach that brings the design of landscapes closer to their living, dynamic qualities. Landscapes are increasingly seen as composites of ecological systems, social activities, and their interactions, as a progressive shift from thinking of ecology in cities to considering the ecology of cities and their urban regions, which reflects the essence of the recently established fields of urban ecology and ecological urbanism. This shift in understanding challenges conceptualisations of urban landscapes, where the indivisible associations between environmental and human factors includes an assemblage of components, such as the complex and dynamic interplay between people and society, society and the environment, and non-human components, including technology, materials, objects, and biota, working in dynamic combinations, with varied reach and extent, flow, and stasis. While the formative influence of ecology largely involved the use of liberating metaphors that allowed landscape architecture to move beyond outdated aesthetic conventions, both disciplinary fields have evolved to view the urban landscape as a complex system, requiring a more enlivened appreciation of scale and temporality. This has led to the emergence of operative terms in design that aim to conceptualise the landscape as an arena of enactment, as a progressive shift in theory, where older conceptions, such as stability, harmony, equilibrium, and balance, have been replaced by terms that reflect the generative capacity and distributed structure of living systems. As explored across the chapters of this book, current ideas that bridge understanding between ecological science and landscape architecture offer an array of operative terms to engage the dynamic qualities of landscapes, such as flow, flux, duration, emergence, distribution, self-organisation, contingency, resilience, and adaptation, amongst others. As post-industrial landscapes have opened up a new territorial ground for landscape architecture, this has coincided with the rise of environmental awareness and the formation of the distinct movement of environmental philosophy. Ideas stemming from this movement have largely challenged the traditional

3

Introduction

aesthetic conventions of an (art) object-centred appreciation, which involved a delimiting, constrained, and directed aesthetic appreciation of the environment. Instead, environmental philosophers bring emphasis to the ecological vitality of messy “unscenic” systems, the “everyday aesthetics” of human activity, and the value of “more-than-human” actants in shaping landscapes, none of which were part of traditional landscape aesthetics, in particular the scenic fixation of “the picturesque.” Environmental philosophy calls for a cultured sensibility, to move beyond outmoded traditional values that place emphasis on appreciating environments as formalised objects or composed scenes, to align our appreciation with current imperatives to engage socio-ecological dynamics. Underlying this shift is a progressive aim to better align aesthetic appreciation with the living world, emphasising the unbound and subjective qualities of open-ended, indeterminate, immersive, and relational systems, which are experienced as multi-sensorial and participatory encounters. This perspective challenges landscape architects to view landscapes as complex, multi-dimensional systems, where interaction and entanglement, emergence and becoming, come forth as operative terms to appreciate the interconnected fabric of the living world. Such philosophically driven conceptualisations of the environment challenge the fundamental ground of landscape architecture, especially for a discipline responsive to an industry that favours product over process, while ideas stemming from outdated bucolic traditions remain stubbornly entrenched. Yet, as this book seeks to illuminate, many practices have progressively shifted towards the engagement of environmental dynamics, to work pragmatically and creatively with the potential of sites as transformative grounds, where spatiality is interrelated with socio-ecological dynamics. This implies a culture shift in landscape architecture, of new ways of thinking and methods of design, while informing how environment is mediated by our direct experience and the development of a cultured sensibility that informs our appreciation of it.

A field guide The book is structured to follow the general logic of a field guide, in that it aims to provide a useful, informational guide to improve the state of knowledge for entering and making sense of a particular environmental field. However, while conventional field guides provide descriptive accounts of the various characteristic species that make up an environment, this study explores how our understanding of landscape is largely shaped by its conceptualisation. Following this logic, the book provides critical purchase on operative terms that shape current thinking and practice, based on a constructive evaluation of design concepts and comparative theory. Another convention of field guides is that while they involve gathering together a comprehensive range of informational material, as useful guides there has to be a clear sense of how this information is organised, most usually presented as a scheme of classification that takes on a homogenous structure of content, with characteristic components isolated through abstract classification.

4

Introduction

As a homogenous structure would not align with the ethos and subject matter of this book, this field guide takes on an asymmetrical and heterogeneous structure that in part corresponds to the aforementioned qualities of the environment, as complex, open-ended, and relational. This structure also reflects the contemporary field, as characterised by an inherently heterogeneous spread of practice and theory, which defies easy categorisation and instead invites the reader into an entanglement of illustrative projects and theoretical perspectives. Adding to this heterogeneity, the book includes a broad range of transdisciplinary viewpoints, drawing on ideas from across philosophy, ecology, urban theory, and geography, which reflects how landscape architecture has always synthetically recharged itself by drawing insight and inspiration from allied fields of environmental concern. The field guide is structured through nine thematic chapters that explore shifts in fundamental themes that underpin landscape architecture, including 1) nature and the picturesque; 2) wilderness; 3) the sublime; 4) technology; 5) social space; 6) the city and urbanism; 7) infrastructure; 8) scale; and 9) temporality. Each theme is expanded upon through a range of interrelated concepts, to provide a critical evaluation of operative terms derived from the current field of landscape architecture, summarised in the following sections. Chapter 1, Relinquishing control, explores shifting attitudes to nature, drawing reference to the emergence of an environmental philosophy that aimed at “de-objectifying the landscape,” as a concern to shift from an (art) object-centred aesthetic to better align aesthetic appreciation with the qualities of nature. A parallel shift in landscape architecture is illustrated through the example of Candlestick Point in San Francisco, which was predicated on the comparative concept of “relinquishing control.” This case study highlights how concepts of the relational, open-ended, indeterminate, and immersive became operative terms for landscape architecture, informing a progressive shift in aesthetic appreciation that challenges the traditional idea of “the picturesque” and its delimiting of nature and society. Further concepts of staged landscapes, symbolic landscapes, and unscenic landscapes are identified as operative terms that place value on the immersive and experiential quality of landscape. Chapter  2, The agency of the wild, continues the exploration into how nature is valued with regard to shifting ideas about wilderness and “the agency of the wild,” exploring how post-industrial sites have opened up new territory for spontaneous nature, which has been classified as “new wilderness.” This form of spontaneous nature was not part of conventional city planning, resulting in levels of ambivalence about its value and presence in the city. Using Nature Park Südgelände in Berlin as a case study offers an example of design that embraces wilderness and natural succession as experiential qualities. This includes conceptual approaches that view succession as narrative, while outlining how this establishes a “wasteland aesthetic” that works on the interplay and tension between spontaneous nature, industrial artefacts, and designed elements. Chapter 3, A menacing dragon, uses the renowned precedent of DuisburgNord to evaluate how the spatial conditioning of post-industrial sites can be interrelated with conceptual shifts in the meaning of the sublime. This evaluation highlights that ideas about the sublime have been revived in response to

5

Introduction

post-industrial landscapes related to their extensive scale and complexity of structure, which is pronounced in the design of Duisburg-Nord. Conceptual qualities of the imposing, unsettling, ambivalent, and irresolvable indicate the uncomfortable dimensions of post-industrial sites, such as the tension between growth and decay, the presence of contamination, and the dispersal and complexity of structural artefacts, which contribute to a contemporary sense of the sublime. Chapter  4, The entanglement, explores the role of technology and how processes of remediation, bioengineering, and fabricated ecology have altered sensibilities about natural systems, which are increasingly evaluated in terms of performance and seen as “technological layers.” This chapter uses the precedent of Gas Works Park in Seattle to illustrate how remediation processes can be creatively integrated with site design, leading into the example of the New York High Line to explore the idea of “hypernature” as an intensified form of ecological performance. The exploration uses Gardens on the Bay in Singapore as an example of “techno-nature,” which is embedded, optimised, responsive, and performative, while demonstrating the potential for the hybridisation of technological and ecological systems and the future prospect of a fully synthetic “living technology.” Chapter 5, Everyday aesthetics, focuses on the engagement of social space and the formation of a “social aesthetic,” outlining how the concepts of flux and flow were used as operative terms to catalyse the social occupation of former industrial sites at Saint-Ouen Park in Paris and Evergreen Brickworks in Toronto. These projects indicate a shift from the conventional focus on spatial form to foreground design for social participation, interwoven with natural systems, while being related to the idea of “everyday aesthetics” that place value on social dynamics. This is further explored through ideas of transgressive space, loose space, and commons space, which have emerged in response to peoples “rights to the city,” resulting in tensions between forms of social appropriation and regulatory planning systems. The Kings Cross Pond Club in London and Tempelhof in Berlin provide examples of design strategies that identify with the potential for a “participatory aesthetic” that engages people in the production of space. Chapter 6, Transitional urbanism, focuses on how traditional conceptualisations of the city have shifted to the idea of “extended urbanisation” as a dispersed and expansive form of urbanisation that is influencing change across urban and rural landscapes. This chapter explores “peri-urban” areas as urban edge landscapes conceptualised as interfacial, transitional, and interspersed, using Terra Nova in the Rhein-Erft district, Alcantara Wastewater Treatment Plant in Lisbon, Buitenschot Land Art Park in Amsterdam, and TGV Station in Avignon as examples of landscape frameworks that respond to and absorb processes of transitional urbanism. Processes of urban transformation are further explored through the concepts of metabolic, interdependent, hydraulic, and circular landscapes, illustrated through projects including Rotterdam Urban Metabolism, Copenhagen Cloudburst, and Almere Oosterweld. Chapter 7, The mesh and the matrix, further explores “extended urbanisation” in relation to the increasing role of infrastructural design and its growing presence in the landscape. This chapter differentiates between the sociotechnical mesh and the socioecological matrix to explore comparative distinctions

6

Introduction

evaluated through the operative terms of flow, traction, anchoring, flexibility, and integration. The examples of the Ecological Energy Network in the Netherlands, the Allianz Arena in Berlin, TGV Station in Avignon, Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, Easter Scheldt Storm Surge Barrier in Zeeland, and Room for the River in Nijmegen highlight how landscape architects can elevate infrastructural design beyond concerns for utilitarian efficiency, to engage social and ecological dimensions with the capacity to generate imaginative effects, while working to enhance the quality of the landscape. Chapter  8, Relational scales, explores the fundamental aspect of scale in landscape interpretation and design, tracing a shift from the use of strict hierarchical orders to an enlivened sense and dynamic use of scaler tactics. This chapter identifies the concepts of nesting, scoping, layering, enacting, anchoring, and selecting as operative terms that engage the relationships between site, context, and extended systems, illustrated through the examples of Yanweizhou Park in Jinhua, Freshkills Park in New York, Oyster-tecture in New York, and Anchoring Terrain in Philadelphia. These concepts and illustrative examples highlight that rather than being abstract and predetermined, the use of scale can be selective and relational, requiring an advanced appreciation of scaler tactics to engage the multidimensional and interactive qualities of a landscape. Chapter  9, Enlivened temporality, further explores scale in relation to the recovery of post-industrial sites, where the challenges of contamination, spatial fragmentation, abandonment, and social exclusion require an enriched appreciation of temporality. This chapter outlines operative terms that engage the temporal dimensions of landscapes, including differentiating, aligning, anticipating, phasing, and embedding, illustrated through examples that include Downsview Park in Toronto, reconsidering a mountain in Cardada, Switzerland, Salines de la Tancada in Catalunya, the Landscape Challenge study in the Netherlands, Freshkills Park in New York, and Fredericia C in Denmark. The exploration draws on recent ideas from ecology, such as “multiequilibria” and “complex adaptive systems,” to evaluate how working with an appreciation of temporality can connect site design with the dynamic, living qualities of a landscape. Following the logic that field guides include a high level of illustrative material, while being useful by interlinking knowledge with applied practice, the selection of case studies is largely focused on realised projects, providing fresh insights into how abstract concepts have informed practical outcomes, being reified through built projects or applied planning strategies. Notably, projects included in the study are spread over the last 30 years, indicating that urban transformation and shifts in aesthetic appreciation have occurred incrementally over a duration of several decades. The study is both retrospective, in taking account of formative ideas and projects that helped to catalyse new modes of practice and aesthetic thinking, while being prospective by placing the presence of post-industrial sites within the broader processes of urban transformation, which indicates that concern for post-industrial landscapes will remain relevant to landscape architectural discourse well into the future.

7

Chapter 1

Relinquishing control

The French philosopher Jacques Rancière has proposed that aesthetics involves “the dismantling of a certain body of experience that was deemed appropriate to a specific ethos” (Rancière 2009, pp. 7–8). This implies that aesthetic appreciation is not a passive process of appreciation, but an active process of making sense of the world, of “proposing alternatives” (Salomon 2016, p.  56). For instance, the idea of aesthetics as an active and critical process is evident in a number of shifts in the appreciation of landscapes, such as the introduction of pastoral parklands that revolutionised city living (Shoard 2000), or the development of the National Park movement as a philosophically led shift in appreciating wilderness (Jorgensen  & Tylecote 2007). This indicates that shifts in aesthetic sensibilities come about when conventional ideas give way to fresh cultural perspectives or when environmental territories open up that compel new understanding and design sensibilities. In philosophy contemporary theories about the aesthetic engagement of the environment can be traced back to the formative influence of philosopher Ronald Hepburn, in particular his 1966 essay “Contemporary Aesthetics and the Neglect of Natural Beauty.” Hepburn questioned the authority of an art-centred aesthetic in relation to the appreciation of nature, arguing that nature should be appreciated as nature. He proposed that our experiences of nature differ from our experiences of art in crucial ways; that when appreciating the arts the viewer is detached from the object, while in a natural setting people are immersed in the environment; while in contrast to arts constraint by frames, the natural world is unframed and unbounded (Hepburn 1966). Hepburn’s concern was that the art-institutional dominant model was fixated on object-centred experience, which was not aligned with the dynamic qualities of natural environments or the complex interplay of imagination, emotion, and thought that inform our subjective aesthetic appreciation of it. He identified qualities of the transient, ephemeral, relational, contingent, and dynamic as being characteristic of natural environments, which, in contrast to the more constrained and directed aesthetic appreciation of art object-centred experience, provided an indeterminate experience that was “always provisional” to our position within a dynamic environment, while allowing us to experience surprises in perception as “sudden expansions of the imagination” (Hepburn 1966, p. 47). While Hepburn placed emphasis on subjective appreciation, philosopher Allen Carlson suggested that the aesthetic appreciation of nature is “informed

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Relinquishing control

and enriched” by advances in scientific knowledge (Carlson 1995, p. 393). Carlson’s point is that there is a synergy between scientific and aesthetic understanding that heightens our appreciation of nature, which can not only enlighten aesthetic perceptions of nature but endow them with a measure of objectivity, as a necessary shift from aesthetic appreciation predicated on phenomenological or subjective experience (Brady 2009). Carlson’s concern was to remove the aesthetic appreciation of nature from arbitrary or subjectively based judgements to encourage a more rigorously scientific and objectified appreciation that avoided individualistic criteria. His idea has logical grounds in positioning aesthetic appreciation more closely to scientific knowledge, where aesthetic thinking is more closely linked, updated, and adapted to new scientific understanding of the world. Carlson’s aim was to establish greater rigour and objective understanding of the intricacies of the living world; however, his shift to a predominantly scientific objectivism became a contentious issue for others. For instance, philosopher Yuriko Saito contended that aesthetic experience and the appreciation of nature involved much more than the analytical perspective favoured by Carlson. While she recognised that science could inform our appreciation of nature, her concern was that it removes us to an analytical perspective that effectively reduces nature to an objectified phenomena (Saito 1998b). Saito argues that in the same way science could inform our understanding of nature, other forms of knowledge, including folklore and mythology, were also significant. This is not to deny the importance of scientific knowledge but to challenge Carlson’s promotion of its centrality in informing knowledge, while proposing that greater appreciation is based on a plurality of appreciative frameworks. Saito’s argument is that aesthetic appreciation is equally informed by non-scientific cultural modes of understanding. She proposes that “our attempts to make sense of nature, such as science, mythology, and folklore, is appropriate because it guides our experience toward understanding natures own story embodied in its sensuous surface,” while our aesthetic experience begins and ends with the sensuous surface, in other words, the reactions to what we initially encounter, which can be modified and revised with additional information informed by these varied forms of knowledge (Saito 1998b, p. 135). Saito extends non-scientific modes of understanding with the subjective aspects of multi-­ sensory engagement, imagination, and emotion, to reinvest the idea of aesthetics with something truer to its origins, as the transliteration of the Greek aistthesis, which means perception by the senses. Based on this premise we can describe the aesthetic experience of environment as an inclusive encounter, guided by a person’s knowledge but involving all the sensory modalities synaesthetically, as an intense perceptual engagement of multifaceted qualities, including amongst others, colour, shapes, smells, textures, tactility, sound, space, mass, and volume, where the visual bias of outdated aesthetic conventions are reconciled with the fact that “experience involves all the senses” (Bourassa 1991, p. 21). Philosopher Arnold Berleant has taken this premise further, suggesting that aesthetic engagement “is not an object-centred response that requires a psychological remove and a disinterested attitude,” but involves “a complex multi-sensory perceptual engagement by means of a cultured sensibility” (Berleant 2015, p. 4).

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By this he implies that perceptual awareness is developed, guided, and focused, that it is more than simple sensation, more than sense perception; “it requires the perceptual knowledge and skills that we are continually enhancing in and through our encounters and activities,” where “aesthetics is, at its base, a theory of sensibility.” Berleant’s idea is that we inhabit a field of sensate activity that rests on sensation but as “sensible perception” is “infused by and related to all the conditions that affect and qualify human experience” (Berleant 2015, p.  4), which he eloquently describes as “being in process with the environment” (Berleant 1992). One project that personifies the idea of de-objectifying the landscape in favour of a process-based aesthetic is Candlestick Point by Hargreaves Associates. Located on the edge of San Francisco Bay, Candlestick Point’s original environment would have been dominated by wetlands, which were drastically changed to act as a major landfill for the city of San Francisco. In 1985 Hargreaves Associates were tasked with designing a new park on the site, which resonated with the idea of de-objectifying the landscape through the central design concept of “relinquishing control” (Hargreaves 2007, p. 152). Hargreaves’ intention was to move away from design qualities based on the predominant picturesque ethos, of designing towards a fixed final form, to instead adopt an approach that brings expression to natural processes, such as successional planting and tidal patterns, to create an aesthetic experience which Rowe describes as a “poetics of process” (Rowe 1996). Hargreaves’ approach at Candlestick Point reflects a broader shift in landscape architecture, largely taking root in the 1980s, marked by a concern to engage processes and living qualities over visual display, while being informed by progressive ideas in art, ecology, and philosophy. Sanford Kwinter describes this as “a turning away from the simple structure of end-products and toward the active, ever-changing processes that bring them into being” (Kwinter 2003, p. 99). In this shift, scenic conventions are displaced by processes that condition an actively changing composition, while being informed by an appreciation of ecological systems that aim for a more organic condition of open-endedness, as opposed to specifically designed outcomes, indicating a significant shift in design sensibilities. To explore ideas underpinning the primary concept of relinquishing control, Hargreaves’ approach at Candlestick Point can be framed through comparative evaluation of ideas emerging in environmental philosophy, as operative terms of the relational, open-ended, indeterminate, and immersive. The relational: The boldest move on the site is the formal insertion of a grass plane that transects the park, strategically interconnecting park and bay (Figure 1.1). While this structure is relatively minimalist in form, it opens up a series of interactive tensions in the landscape, which are particularly expressed around the natural recesses of tidal channels, creating relational interplay between the formal composition of the grass plane and the rugged tidal edge. The tension is live, as the two counterpoint each other and the structural grass plane amplifies the natural qualities and dynamics of the intertidal zone, as a spatial armature that brings attention to natural dynamics (Figure  1.2). This reflects Hargreaves’ idea that “variety and success arises from the layering and juxtaposition of the made and unmade, or

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Figure 1.1  Candlestick Point, San Francisco, United States Source: Image courtesy of Hargreaves Associates

Figure 1.2  Candlestick Point, San Francisco, United States Source: Image courtesy of Hargreaves Associates

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designed and undesigned” (Hargreaves 2007, p.  128), while working with what Corner describes as the “transformative agency of water in actually shaping, diversifying, and bringing life” to the landscape over time (Corner 1996, p. 46). Corner sees this as a shift from the use of water as “less something to be channelled for contemplative or aesthetic delight, as if an object of attention, and more, a charged and active aqueous agent” with qualities of being indeterminate and open-ended in shaping both the “land and the human imagination” (Corner 1996, p. 48). Hargreaves embraces temporal characteristics in other ways, such as allowing trees, grasses, and wildflowers freedom to freely colonise and establish communities around the site. This allows the planting to develop naturally, as a diffused pattern that counterpoints the stricter geometries of landform and built elements, creating tension between the natural and built elements of the site. While this approach brings expression to the idea of relinquishing control, it is through the interplay with spatially anchored structures that an overall effect arises; as the relational tension between the made and unmade dimensions of the park. The open-ended: The idea of open-endedness takes on two dimensions in the design of Candlestick Point and many of Hargreaves Associates’ subsequent projects. On one hand, the idea of open-endedness relates to bringing emphasis to natural phenomena and their effect in generating a dynamic and shifting landscape composition, which Beardsley describes as an “openness to chance and acceptance of transformation.” He suggests that this approach creates encounters that are “less things-in-themselves than expressions of ongoing relationships in a physical realm” (Beardsley 1996, p. 25), re-emphasising the idea of relinquishing control to create a relational composition, where change is ongoing and there is no desired endpoint. At the same time, the idea of being open-ended informs Hargreaves’ idea of keeping the park open to its surrounding setting, where the outer landscape becomes an active backdrop to the site. Rowe points out that this breaks with the tradition of the picturesque and its concern for a contained and closed sequence of scenes, to instead open the site as an “experience of a place and its natural setting” (Rowe 1996, p. 71). The experience of the park includes extensive views out across the bay and surrounding urban areas, while the various ephemeral qualities of natural or urban life become part of the animate quality of the landscape, as a constantly active and changing landscape that envelopes the site. The indeterminate: Corner describes Hargreaves’ approach as resulting in landscapes that “do not stabilise, orient or centre, but instead provoke, unsettle and challenge” those who engage them (Corner 1996, p. 48). This can be related to Hepburn’s idea of working with the unframed and unbound characteristic of the natural environment, which conditions an indeterminate experience. Rademacher describes this as a “narrative of immanence” based on the interplay of compositional elements that change through time and movement (Rademacher 1996, p.  11). While this is closely aligned with relational and open-ended qualities, it brings emphasis to how people experience the landscape; as a process of encounter that is not fixed or directed but openly negotiated, inviting people to make their own connections.

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This indeterminate quality shifts away from the traditional aesthetic idea of landscape as a scenic composition that is passively perceived, which Langhorst describes “as a tightly controlled, predominantly visual experience” (Langhorst 2014, p.  1126), to one that embraces change in its composition and the provisional experience of people moving through the landscape. The experience is one of gravitating around the site, as opposed to being directed along specific axie or points of encounter, where particular areas, such as the spatial armature of the tidal recess, offer more intensified encounters (Figure 1.3). To some extent the insertion of the geometric plane influences people’s movement through the strong axial connection across the site, however, the shifting composition that encapsulates this open platform of movement offers an indefinite structure (Figure 1.4). In this way, people are directed to particular areas of the site, such as viewing platforms on the bay edge, but the experience of the landscape is an indeterminate, open scene rather than being predicated on any fixed scenic compositions or visual axis. The immersive: The cumulative effect of the relational, open-ended, and indeterminate qualities of Candlestick Point create a landscape that requires more intense perceptual engagement. In this sense, relinquishing control is about enlivening human perception through encounters with a dynamically changing and relationally intense set of encounters, which Rainey describes as consisting of a “pleasurable and invigorating sensation of the sensual qualities of the site, an experience which is contemplative, intense, immediate, non-verbal and

Figure 1.3  Candlestick Point, San Francisco, United States Source: Image courtesy of Hargreaves Associates

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Figure 1.4  Candlestick Point, San Francisco, United States Source: Image courtesy of Hargreaves Associates

non-analytical” (Rainey 1996, p. 29). This can be seen as an immersive form of aesthetic engagement, as the experience of a charged environment that brings emphasis to the temporal qualities of the site and its surrounding landscape. By relinquishing control and foregrounding dynamic qualities, the spatial tactics deployed at Candlestick Point reflect Hepburn’s idea of a unified aesthetic experience, where landscape and people seem to change together, to compel an aesthetic appreciation that brings forth the sensual, imaginative, and emotional capacities of subjective experience. As a process of aesthetic engagement this is not based on traditional ideas of an object-centred response that requires a psychological remove and a disinterested attitude, but works closer to Berleant’s idea of “sensible perception,” which involves sensory immersion, active participation, and embodied appreciation, where the experience of the landscape works through our senses and alters our consciousness (Czerniak 2001). This reflects Meyer’s idea that “the act of experiencing designed landscapes poly-sensually, over time, through and with the body, is not simply an act of pleasure, but possibly, one of transformation” (Meyer 2008, p. 8).

Shifting points of view As illustrated in the case of Candlestick Point, the idea of de-objectifying the landscape does not forego the importance of structural or spatial form, but instead

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sees these as relational structures, or spatial armatures that bring focus to and accentuate the living qualities of a site. This implies an approach that seeks to animate the environment as opposed to creating fixed scenes, while situating humans within its dynamic, as an aesthetic experience we are immersed in, as opposed to looking at. Meyer suggests that this immersive quality has the potential to transform people’s “priorities and values,” as an engaged aesthetic experience with the potential to change people’s environmental ethics, where the designed landscape is a cultural product with “distinct forms and experiences that evoke attitudes and feelings through space, sequence and form” (Meyer 2008, p.  10). By seeing aesthetics as an engaged process of value and judgement, designed landscapes can reflect shifting cultural attitudes toward nature and society, with the power to communicate those values through design. This engaged process reflects Berleant’s idea of a “cultured sensibility,” requiring a critical response through design, not only to a site and its context, but the cultural imperatives and progressive ideas that inform environmental thinking. This sense of progressive thinking is evident in relation to one of landscape architecture’s most pervasive aesthetic traditions: the picturesque. Stemming from the influence of the eighteenth-century English garden movement the picturesque landscape is essentially a compositional approach, largely informed by scenic landscape painters, such as Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain, and Salvator Rosa. They promoted an “appreciation of nature only as it appears through the lens of art and appreciated in the same way as a painting  – standing back and beholding the design, forms and colours of the picture.” In describing the movement’s objective to compose landscape as idealised and romanticised scenes, Brady points out that they “even had a special device – Claude Glass – a tinted convex mirror that framed and reflected the view like a miniature painting” (Brady 2009, p. 4). The picturesque movement treated landscapes as engineered compositions intended to stimulate the eye, usually from a select point of perspective and along fixed axes or vistas, to present the landscape in much the same way as appreciating a painting. For Saito, the “exclusive attention to its pictorial surface falsifies natures aesthetic value” (Saito 1998a, p. 137), where “the picturesque emphasis on vision as the vehicle for appreciating the natural environment has led us to regard nature as a series of scenes consisting of two-dimensional designs” (Saito 1998a, p. 101). Brady sees that on ethical grounds “the scenery models roots in the picturesque make it anthropocentric, viewing nature as if it were a work of art rather as an organic, living, evolving environment” (Brady 2009, p. 6). She identifies that the main problem in the picturesque approach is that it conditions a narrow, static, and two-dimensional perspective, while ignoring the richness of three-dimensional environmental qualities that envelope the observer in dynamic and shifting milieus, within “the variations of the time of day, tides, weather conditions, and seasons” (Brady 2009, p. 6). Cresswell suggests that “landscape paintings are seen as part of the control of nature – the taming of chaos,” where the “use of perspective arrests the temporal and makes a moment stand forever” (Cresswell 2003, p. 6). He suggests that not only does the picturesque approach delimit nature but also those people

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in the landscape, who are effectively “frozen out,” while relating this to J. B. Jackson’s concern that the pictorialisation of landscapes ignores the lived and temporal character of those people that live and work within it, instead creating an idealised impression, which suffers from composing “elite landscapes” (Cresswell 2003, p. 16), or as Berleant puts it, “temples of nature” that are “rarely a part of the ordinary landscape of daily life” (Berleant 1997, p. 16). These concerns reflect an issue common to many writers; that the picturesque tradition conditions a static and selective image of nature, negating the dynamic qualities of nature and society, while raising ethical concerns in relation to its anthropocentric delimiting of the living environment. The pervasive influence of the picturesque seems difficult for landscape architecture to fully relinquish. As Czerniak suggests, the problem of “seeing landscape as a three-dimensional work that mimics a two-dimensional image” has set up the “stubbornly pervasive techniques and attitudes that currently define and delimit landscape (and natures) pictorialisation” (Czerniak 2007, p. 110). She sees a necessary shift that supplants “how it looks with knowledge of how it works as a physical and cultural process” (Czerniak 2007, p. 113). Similarly, Corner suggests moving beyond the idea of landscape as “scenographic backdrops of earlier periods” to recognise that “these richly imbricated landscapes are charged and active, functioning less as displays and more as living biological entities that are engaged with time and other indeterminate forces,” where the living and evolving quality of landscape continually transforms “in ways resistant to closure and presentation” (Corner 1996, p. 58). It could be argued that there is still legitimacy in pleasing the eye, while recognising vision as a prominent sensory process. For instance, while Saito questioned the conventions of the picturesque, she acknowledged that vision is an integral part and necessary element of our aesthetic appreciation (Saito 1998a). While many writers have sought to question the premise of the picturesque there is also broad acknowledgement that responding to scenic quality remains a valid motive within design, so as we supplant the limitations of the picturesque we should also acknowledge certain qualities of maybe not a picturesque approach per se but certainly a scenic one. A number of recent projects evidence how scenic values are still relevant in contemporary practice, while indicating that while visual perception is emphasised it cannot be detached from a more immersive or multisensory experience. Staged experiences: In their recent exposition of infrastructural landscapes, Shannon and Smets identify that a “contemporary sense of the picturesque” has been particularly fostered through transport infrastructure, where “the creation of infrastructure places the designer in the position of directing the gaze” and a sense of the picturesque “is instigated by aligning the infrastructure in a way that underlines the striking features of the landscape it crosses” (Shannon & Smets 2010, p. 126). They identify that through the relationship between speed and perception the experience of landscape through a transport system “reduces the range of senses engaging the territory through movement,” where “vehicles have reoriented the perception of the environment,” and vision, rather than sound, smell or touch, becomes “the primary sense through which the

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landscape is experienced” (Shannon & Smets 2010, p. 122). While this may seem to delimit the landscape to scenic quality alone, Shannon and Smets describe that this advance in infrastructural design seeks to create “staged experiences” with the “ambition to interpret well-known places” which intensify the experience of the landscape (Shannon & Smets 2010, p. 126). The recent strategy to upgrade the Norwegian Scenic Routes aimed to not only upgrade the tourist infrastructure with scenic viewpoints and the provision of new amenities, but to deploy design and art based installations to intensify the experience of the landscape. Devised by the Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA), the Norwegian Scenic Routes strategy aims to elevate scenic viewpoints as “staged experiences,” as a series of strategically located designs that punctuate people’s journey along designated tourist routes, where each built project aims to reinforce the character of the route and invoke suggestive narratives. Guided by advice on design quality from an Architecture Council, the strategy has allowed young Norwegian design offices and artists to showcase their talent and get international acclaim, while including some internationally renowned figures, such as architect Peter Zumthor and artist Louise Bourgeois. The strategy demonstrates how design can connect infrastructure with a sense of place, while embracing the burgeoning tourist industry and its economic benefits for remote communities. For example, the Ørnesvingen Viewpoint by 3RW Architects consists of overlapping white concrete platforms overhanging the edge of a 455-metre vertical drop, which integrates a seasonally charged stream that forms a waterfall on the edge of the viewing platform (Figure 1.5 and Figure 1.6). While the platform offers dramatic views, this experience is animated with the ambience of one of the many mountain streams that characterise the region, providing a staged experience that is enlivened by hydrological activity. At another location at Kvalhausen, near Eggum, robust gabions filled with stone from site excavation and wooden walls built from drift logs found on a nearby beach create an amphitheatre structure from which to view the midnight sun (Figure 1.7). Designed by Snøhetta, the amphitheatre provides a platform to enjoy the dramatic scenery, while providing a setting to experience this renowned seasonal event. As with many of the other projects set along the tourist routes, attention to materiality and functional requirements are balanced with staging experiences of the landscape’s scenic, phenomenal, and ambient qualities, offering a more immersive encounter than scenic appeal alone. Symbolic experiences: While it may seem that the picturesque tradition, with its roots in response to pastoral (cultivated) Idyll in Europe and North America, would be at odds with design in a challenging post-industrial urban context, the desire to reinvent industrial cities retains certain qualities of the picturesque tradition, in particular the use of symbolic content that promotes a particular cultural ethos. This reflects how picturesque landscapes were also symbolic landscapes, in that they sought to evoke cultural associations and operate beyond visual appeal alone, where allegorical associations implied deeper meanings, often motivated by moral or political intent. The use of symbolic content can be seen in the work of West 8, who draw on cultural reference points to playfully create symbols that personify and envision new identities, as a response to the

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Figure 1.5  Ørnesvingen Viewpoint, Geiranger, Norway Source: Image courtesy of 3RW arkitekter; photo credit: Simon Skreddernes

production of constructed landscapes in relation to their cultural context. This is personified in their design of the Schouwburgplein in Rotterdam, as a space dominated by the design of four interactive and kinetic lights (Figure 1.8), acting as symbolic gestures reminiscent of the red oxide cranes that once lined the old harbours of the city. In this way, the symbolism is both retrospective and prospective, drawing on recognisable icons of the city’s industrial past, while re-inventing these as striking kinetic features that represent the new vibrant life of the city and its culturally astute urbanites (Figure 1.9). The Schouwburgplein, translated as Theatre Square in English, also operates as the nucleus to several cultural institutions, including theatres and concert halls, mixed with restaurants and cafes, situated adjacent to the city’s commercial district. West 8 grasped the opportunity to produce a forward-looking design, which they conceptualised as “colonising the void,” elevating design beyond spatial infill to create a culturally charged public space. As a plaza space the project responds to pragmatic demands, as a stage for the city where people can observe the transient qualities of urban life, while responding to the everyday routines of people. The design of the Schouwburgplein illustrates that symbolic meaning goes beyond purely physical or visual gestures, to work on what Backhaus and Murungi describe as “an embodied enactment of meaning” (Backhaus & Murungi 2009, p.  13), where symbolic experience emerges as a spatial event, which includes

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Source: Image courtesy of 3RW arkitekter; photo credit: Ken Schluchtmann

Figure 1.6  Ørnesvingen Viewpoint, Geiranger, Norway

Source: Image courtesy of Norwegian Scenic Routes; photo credit: Jarle Wæhler

Figure 1.7  Kvalhausen, Eggum, Norway

Source: Image courtesy of West 8; photo credit: Jeroen Musch

Figure 1.8  Schouwburgplein, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

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Figure 1.9  Schouwburgplein, Rotterdam, The Netherlands Source: Jeroen Musch, courtesy West 8

structural, social, and cultural dimensions, as the cumulative expression of Rotterdam’s cultural transformation, manifest in its urban fabric. In the increasingly competitive market for cities to produce architectural icons to act as economic and cultural catalysts, the Schouwburgplein stands out as a precedent for how landscape architecture can blend operational and scenic qualities, while offering a level of symbolic branding that helped Rotterdam promote its new image. For a city struggling with the impact of extensive bombing during the Second World War, allied with the decentralisation of port activity in the 1990s, the city invested in an extensive urban strategy to improve its infrastructure, including the building of the iconic Erasmus Bridge by UN Studio and the redevelopment of Rotterdam Central Station, alongside significant investment in cultural institutions and public spaces. Concentrated along a cultural axis, the strategy sought to cluster cultural institutions around new public spaces, with the Museumplein acting as a nucleus for the city’s most famous institutions, including the Dutch Architectural Institute, the Kunsthal, and the Natural History Museum. The Museumplein, originally designed by Yves Brunier, is in itself a response to the picturesque tradition, in particular an elevated bridge that physically detaches people from the ground, as if to constrain their experience of the landscape to vision alone. This is a playful gesture by Brunier to picturesque

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conventions, on one hand celebrating them, but at the same time consigning them to the past, as an artefact within a museum park. Unscenic experiences: The picturesque approach involved a process of selective composition, which Saito describes as creating environments that only included parts that lend to overall scenic quality. She identifies a problem in how any natural environment outwith a picturesque ideal was deemed to lack aesthetic value, which in turn neglects the diverse non-visual quality of many natural environments (Saito 1998a). The problems stemming from this are noted by several writers, for instance, Callicott sees this as a problematic condition of an anthropocentric perspective, which “distorts priorities in nature conservation away from less spectacular or awe-inspiring places” (Callicott 1992; Gandy 2013, p. 1309), while Gobster et al. identify that “landscapes that are perceived as aesthetically pleasing are more likely to be appreciated and protected than are landscapes perceived as undistinguished or ugly, regardless of their less perceivable ecological importance” (Gobster et al. 2007, p. 960). The idea of “unscenic” landscapes aims to challenge the embedded problems associated with selective appreciation. As Saito describes, “the ultimate reason for aesthetically appreciating the scenically challenged is the moral importance of overcoming our perception of nature as (visual) resource to be used for our enjoyment” (Saito 1998a, p. 103). This challenges a culturally embedded idea that while we cannot directly sense ecological quality, there is a strong culturally evolved expectation to assume that good ecological quality is associated with good scenic quality. Saito seeks to vanquish this assumption, proposing instead that our efforts at understanding nature place greater recognition and value to “origin, structure and function,” to recognise nature’s own reality “instead of imposing our own aesthetic value (such as pictorial coherence)” (Saito 1998a, p. 103). There are several ways in which understanding the “unscenic” value of ecological systems have transformed areas of landscape architecture and planning. For instance, Gobster et al. suggest that “ecological concepts such as biodiversity, ecological health and ecosystem services were heard of little, if at all, when aesthetics first began to affect landscape management policy” (Gobster et al. 2007, p. 962), while urbanist Matthew Gandy sees that over time, “ostensibly incongruous elements of urban nature, such as fallen trees or rotting wood” have become part of a “scientifically enriched public culture where the enhancement of biodiversity becomes a more pervasive element in urban design” (Gandy 2013, p. 1310). This highlights that advances in environmental sciences, alongside imperatives for increased biodiversity and carbon sequestration, have informed a growing recognition of “unscenic” environments in terms of their ecological value, which is increasingly evident across areas of management, planning, and design. An example of this shifting appreciation can be seen in the increasingly recognised value of wetland systems, especially “messy” systems, such as bogs and marshes, which lack a conventionally scenic quality. Pollock suggests that “as a messy, uncontrollable, and potentially threatening side of nature, wetlands are not part of a pastoral landscape tradition” (Pollock 2007, p. 98). She goes on to describe that “landscape in a pastoral sense is supposedly not dirty, because its

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dirt is sealed within a smooth surface that portrays a lack of disturbance, where the porosity and mutability of a wetland ecosystem is threatening to the temporal and spatial stability of this pictorial identity” (Pollock 2007, p.  98). Wetlands and other “messy” systems portray natural qualities, including imperfection, transience, change, and weathering, which were once seen as detracting from the static, or we might term it sanitised, composition of pictorial quality. However, they are now recognised and valued as vital ecological components, with natural processes that help counter environmental pressures occurring at a global scale. A project that captures the shifting appreciation of “unscenic” landscapes is Houtan Wetland Park, designed by Turenscape, which comprises 2.25 hectares of natural wetland that sits within the masterplan of a 13.43 hectare site that formed Expo 2010 Shanghai. This wetland, located on the western corner of the overall site, is a remnant of natural wetland system that only exists due to being marginalised amongst the site’s former use as iron and steel works, which vacated in 2004. Turenscape identified the value of not only retaining the wetland system, but re-incorporating it as an important aspect of the hydrological system for a new landscape framework. Their plan included extending the hydrological system by creating an artificial wetland on the south side of the natural one, offering human access to this area of “wilderness-like” character, which also acts as a water purification system (Figure 1.10) for the broader expo site (Li 2012). The project expresses layers of prior use, including the pre-industrial agricultural landscape evoked through filtration terraces that symbolically evoke traditional crop farming (Figure  1.11), alongside selected industrial relics, including gantry cranes, pontoon docks, tracks, overhead pipes, and storage tanks, restored as symbols of industrial usage that now function to support visitors to the site (Li 2012, p.  114). This provides traces of past use, going back to an idealised

Figure 1.10  Houtan Park, Shanghai, China Source: Image courtesy of Kongjian Yu, Turenscape

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Source: Image courtesy of Kongjian Yu, Turenscape

Figure 1.11  Houtan Park, Shanghai, China

Relinquishing control

pre-industrial era of agrarian farming, now sitting within a framework of pragmatic hydrological design (Figure 1.12). The wetlands have a dominant presence in the park, signalling the city’s attempt to reconcile the problems of heavy industry, which caused serious contamination to the wetland ecosystem and the adjoining river system, with a pragmatic understanding of hydrological engineering and the natural purifying function of the wetlands. The engagement of hydrological systems is evident in many of Turenscape’s other projects, including Tianjin Qiaoyuan Wetland Park, Qunli Stormwater Park, or Yanweizhou Park (see Chapter 8). Their director, Kongjian Yu, defines this as a new aesthetic approach he terms the “big feet” aesthetic (the aesthetics of sustainability), as opposed to the distorted “little feet” of traditional ornamental aesthetic (Yu 2016). He sees this as a question of survival, responding to and counteracting the six-fold increase in China’s urban population in the past 50 years, with significant environmental impacts, including pollution, water shortages, flooding, and loss of biodiversity. While Houtan Wetland Park constructs scenes evocative of its agrarian and industrial past, its overall spatial quality is predicated on what Yu terms an aesthetic of ecological high performance (Yu 2016). This avoids any picturesque conventions by configuring the landscape through a rigorous understanding of hydrological systems, including the re-integration of remnant wetlands alongside constructed wetlands that intensify natural processes, offering an immersive retreat in one of the world’s most densely populated cities (Figure 1.13).

Figure 1.12  Houtan Park, Shanghai, China Source: Image courtesy of Kongjian Yu, Turenscape

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Figure 1.13  Houtan Park, Shanghai, China Source: Image courtesy of Kongjian Yu, Turenscape

To initiate a sense of this field guide to the post-industrial landscape, the range of projects in this chapter indicate that from both a philosophical and design perspective a significant shift in the field has involved the progressive idea of de-objectifying the landscape. As evidenced at Candlestick Point this involves the primary conceptual approach of relinquishing control, underpinned by operative terms, including the relational, open-ended, indeterminate, and immersive, which conceptually align designed landscapes with ecological and experiential qualities. While these terms defy the traditionally selective process of pictorial composition, they are no less selective in the constructive process of design. Whether the aim is for open-ended, indeterminate spatial dynamics or high ecological performance, this constructive approach requires levels of scientific knowledge, as emphasised by Carlson, while the evocative power of landscape to symbolise cultural transformation or stage an enlivened sense of place highlights Saito’s belief that our appreciation and experience of landscape is multifaceted, as an immersive range of evocative, emotional, and system based processes working on a landscape’s “sensuous surface.” What seems apparent is a shift in design sensibilities that reflect the qualities Hepburn identified as aligning with nature, where transient, ephemeral, relational, contingent, and dynamic qualities have displaced concern for constructed scenographies. In part, this may be an ethical shift concerned with critically dismantling

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conventional ideas to progressively align landscape architecture with current imperatives for socio-ecological resilience. In this context the traditional values of a detached, contemplative appreciation of pictorial landscapes recedes in favour of Berleant’s call for a cultured sensibility, where de-objectifying and relinquishing control require a sophisticated grasp of environmental dynamics, while placing emphasis on the fact that we are immersed as participants, in process with the environment as a mutually transformative ground.

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Chapter 2

The agency of the wild

Post-industrial sites have opened up new territory for forms of unscenic or indeterminate nature that might be best described as spontaneous nature, which includes the various species of pioneer planting and animals that fortuitously colonise abandoned sites or other gaps in the urban fabric. Given the extent of post-industrial abandonment, this spontaneous nature has had an increasing presence within cities, becoming the subject of many landscape studies and projects. Ecologist Peter Del Tredici distinguishes that “from a strictly functional perspective, most vegetated urban land can be classified into one of three broad categories: remnant native landscapes, managed horticultural landscapes, and abandoned ruderal landscapes” (Del Tredici 2010, p.  299). This distinction indicates that nature can be broadly categorised in different ways, largely varying from planting that is retained and conserved as remnants of older native or “original” landscapes, or designed spaces, such as parks and public gardens, which clearly serve the public, to the increasing presence of spontaneous nature that emerges in abandoned or gap sites and comes with a level of contentious value. From the perspective of urban sociology, Dieter Rink suggests that this form of spontaneous nature goes against ideas of how the city is organised, especially aims for “order, cleanliness and maintenance,” but also against “pronounced ideas and images of what nature in the city should look like” (Rink 2005, p. 78). He sees that “clearly it is the images of parks and gardens that have been handed down for generations, which characterise patterns of perception and evaluation and which wilderness in the city fails to match” (Rink 2005, p. 78). Similarly, Dettmar suggests that experiences of nature in the city is in the conventional forms of the “civilised aesthetic, staged form of gardens and parks,” while a “wild” spontaneous nature is not a “symbolically ideal nature, but rather a profane expression of urban reality, as an expression of a city not functioning perfectly” (Dettmar 2005, p. 274). What underlies both points is that spontaneous nature has stirred contention about conventional sensibilities for urban nature, while not aligning with traditional forms and values. Urban geographer Matthew Gandy describes that “there is an ‘unfixed’ dimension to the aesthetics of spontaneous nature that requires a greater degree of imaginative engagement or reflection than conventional components of metropolitan nature” (Gandy 2013, p. 1310), which implies that in comparison to conventional forms of nature provision in the city, the appreciation of spontaneous

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nature, especially within abandoned sites, has had a difficult journey. For instance, artist Gil Mualem Doron outlines the range of negative classifications that characterised early planning designation of abandoned sites, where these spaces have been labelled as “wastelands, derelict areas, no man’s land, dead zones, urban voids, terrain vague.” However, he draws attention to the rich variety of spaces that these terms “inadequately classify”, including “disused harbours and train yards, abandoned barracks, closed mining sites or industrial areas, abandoned neighbourhoods, empty lots, spaces at the edge of highways and under bridges etc” (Doron 2000, p. 247). This indicates that spontaneous nature and its varied sites of colonisation follow the logic of being unscenic, in that they lack the visual appeal attached to conventional urban spaces, but may hold ecological value, which is less valued or deemed less worthy of protection due to a lack of conventional form. This is emphasised through designation on negative and derogatory terms, insinuating that sites of spontaneous nature possess no intrinsic value, as effectively being “wasteland” only worthy of redevelopment. While there are few in-depth studies that gauge the public’s perception of these sites, Doron’s review of the UK Civic Trust’s publication Urban Wasteland Now indicates that public perception seems mixed, with many people seeing these sites as ugly, but equally recognising that they have value through informal use and as “havens” for wildlife. He proposes that this reveals “that the wasteland was actually not a waste at all” as many people recognise these sites as potential assets (Doron 2000, p. 249). Other studies highlight negative associations, where the derelict nature of these sites may more likely be seen as blights on the landscape, as pieces of industrial property that have been used, discarded, and left for another generation to deal with (Jakle & Wilson 1992). This indicates that while there is increasing interest in the potential value of these sites, public opinion is very much divided. Gandy points out that “urban wastelands unsettle the familiar terrain of cultural landscapes, designed spaces, and the organisational logic of modernity” where “much of the conceptual vocabulary we have available is geared toward idealised landscapes” (Gandy 2013, p. 1311). He identifies that alternative vocabularies for wastelands have begun to contest derogatory terms, providing “edgelands,” “interim spaces,” and “interstitial landscapes,” as indicators of a shift in their evaluation (Gandy 2013, p. 1302). For instance, Jorgensen and Tylecote see that “their complexity presents a rich contrast to the bland, sanitised landscapes that are now the mainstay of so much urban development” (Jorgensen & Tylecote 2007, p. 458), indicating a growing appreciation that, in many cases, these “wastelands” may contribute more to urban biodiversity than the functional amenity planting contained in many public parks, while Brown highlights that to those interested in an area’s history and cultural heritage, such sites can be potential treasures (Brown 2001), indicating that potential values are cultural as much as ecological.

New wilderness What seems to emerge through a range of studies is that abandoned sites have particular value as places for nature and wildlife, which means they should be

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viewed as a valuable resource for this purpose (Kowarik 1993; Gansler 1995; Rebele & Dettmar 1996). Many writers have identified that given that abandoned sites offer space for nature to develop free from human influence, what emerges could be described as wilderness, as vegetation that “arises in the absence of human interference or cultivation” (Konijnendijk 2005, p. 37). Dettmar suggests that spontaneous nature often resembles the “tangled confusion of the wildwood,” which returns the land to something of a “primeval state within an alarmingly short space of time” (Dettmar 1999, p.  36), which Edensor describes as “the return of the agency of the wild,” where “the role of plants and animals in producing space, becomes evident” (Edensor 2005, p. 47). Jorgensen and Tylecote suggest that this wilderness is “more obviously hybridised because, neither cultivated nor wild (in the sense of a recognisable wilderness typology), it does not conform to any traditional or well-known vision of nature” (Jorgensen & Tylecote 2007, p. 458). In Wild Urban Woodlands, edited by Kowarik and Korner (2005), Kowarik identifies that wild urban woodland evolves without the influence of human activities, which in many ways is similar to the classification of a pristine wilderness. He suggests that any urban-industrial woodlands that “are free from direct, reversible human impacts and have reached a high level of self-regulation, for example, in the population dynamics of the plant species are, in principle, characteristic of pristine natural woodlands” (Kowarik 2005, p. 21). However, he discerns particular differences between these forms of wilderness, where pristine ecosystems are remnants of an original condition of a natural landscape, as opposed to urban-industrial woodlands that are effectively new and emerging from anthropogenic disturbance. Kowarik suggests that “in order to keep the fundamental differences between them transparent,” one can speak of “old wilderness” and “new wilderness” (Kowarik 2005, p. 22). He identifies a four point classification that includes “traditional cultural landscape,” such as meadows, pastures, hedges, and fields, and “functional greening,” as managed landscapes of parks, gardens, and urban green structures, both of which he views as “heavily culturally influenced.” In contrast he identifies landscapes that are more defined by the effects of natural processes, where it is “easiest to assign a wilderness character,” which he differentiates into “old wilderness,” such as woodlands, fens and bogs, rivers and lakes, and “new wilderness,” such as urban industrial woodlands and urban spontaneous vegetation (Kowarik 2005, p. 22). Kowarik proposes that “old wilderness” has a “retrospective perspective,” in how it corresponds to an earlier stand that grew in the same region and whose structure, species composition, and site factors were not influenced by human activities, while “new wilderness” has a “prospective perspective,” with no historic naturalness but evaluated according to how far the stand is from a future condition of self-regulation without direct human influence (Kowarik 2005, p. 19). On this basis, spontaneous urban nature is not evaluated as an original condition of a natural landscape, but rather a condition evaluated on the current site potential and the greatest possible degree of self-regulation (Kowarik 2005). What is of interest in Kowarik’s classification is not only the attempt to differentiate forms of wilderness, but more generally to promote the idea that

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spontaneous nature, in particular those sites that support urban woodland, have an intrinsic value that in many ways shares characteristics with pristine ecosystems. This point emphasises the intrinsic value of spontaneous nature, especially those sites that have evolved woodland stands, which can be placed on the same level of value and need for conservation as pristine ecosystems. Another important point that Kowarik identifies is that in comparison to other classes of “nature” landscapes within cities, urban-industrial woodlands may even reach “the highest level of naturalness” compared to other sites that are heavily influenced by urban, forestry, or agricultural uses (Kowarik 2005, p. 21), emphasising the potential for sites of spontaneous nature to become ecologically enriched, with the potential of significantly contributing to urban biodiversity. While classifying forms of urban nature has been an important step in recognising the value of spontaneous nature and new wilderness, Jorgensen suggests that this “wildscape can be seen as an idea, a way of thinking about urban scapes, rather than a closed category that can be spatially located” (Jorgensen 2012, p.  2). She sees that “there is no dichotomy of regulated and wild urban places: rather there is a continuum ranging from “wilderness” to apparently ordered spaces, with different levels of wildness existing at multiple scales at each locality” (Jorgensen 2012, p. 2). In many ways this retains the older idea of wilderness occurring in any environment, where “natural processes are left free reign” (Koole  & Van den Berg 2005, p.  1014), but emphasises that in an urban context the structure of this wilderness may be extensive, diffused and ranging through varying degrees of “wildness.” This diffusion means it is difficult to appreciate the full extent of its presence, often being dispersed over small spatial fragments, including the margins of transportation networks, abandoned or vacant residential, commercial, and industrial property, and the interstitial spaces that separate one land-use function from another (Del Tredici 2010). On sites where spontaneous nature is extensively established, Rink suggests that promoting its ecological value should show evidence of a clear intention, such as “incorporation within a structural or nature-conservation concept, while communicating this is crucial for (increasing) acceptance.” He sees that the evaluation of whether it is worth protecting “is not its ecological function but its particular structure, its symbolic function, its use or benefits and its relevance for human health and well-being” (Rink 2005, pp. 77–78), which implies that the ecological value of spontaneous nature needs to be aligned with other values, in particular social and recreational potential rather than ecology alone (Kowarik & Korner 2005; Del Tredici 2010). This highlights that while ecological values are increasingly accepted, the idea of wilderness is still charged with highly ambivalent meanings, to the point that Rink suggests terms such as “urban wilderness” or “wilderness in the city” should be avoided, both from an urban planning and a nature-conservation perspective (Rink 2005, pp. 78–79). From the perspective of environmental psychology, Koole and Van den Berg attribute this ambivalence to deep rooted cultural conceptions of wilderness, as representing the “untamed forces of nature” while being “intrinsically connected with uncontrollability and death,” but equally embodying “the vital forces of life and offering freedom from cultural constraints.” They see that this leads to

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people’s responses to wilderness being “likely to vary depending on which side of nature is psychologically more salient” (Koole & Van den Berg 2005, pp. 1014– 1015). Vicenzotti and Trepl propose that “ideas about wilderness and city have been continuously changing: wild nature is not necessarily threatening anymore, and even a threatening wild nature is not necessarily repulsive.” They suggest that “wilderness” can also be perceived as “a place where one can recover from the ills of modern urban civilisation,” which presents an inversion of the once held belief that cities were the ordered refuge from chaotic wilderness, “built to protect their inhabitants from the rigours and perils of wilderness” (Vicenzotti & Trepl 2009, pp.  381–382). While it is clear that in the context of post-industrial sites a new version of wilderness has emerged as markedly different from the cultivated forms of nature in conventional urban spaces, the ecological benefits of urban wildscapes need to be clearly set alongside social values, while avoiding any ambiguity about their role and benefits as public space.

A wasteland aesthetic The precedent of Südgelände in Berlin indicates that there are ways to integrate “wilderness” within designed landscapes, while incorporating many of the qualities Kowarik and others have identified. Südgelände is a former railway station at the edge of Berlin’s inner city, abandoned after the Second World War (Kühn 2006). Kowarik and Langer describe that the site evolved within the “particular political situation in Berlin between 1945 and 1989” where urban development in the western part of Berlin was slow, resulting in many abandoned or fragmented sites remaining free of development, although being set aside for future planning. Allied to this political context, they describe that the site’s position between heavily trafficked streets and rail tracks results in Südgelände having “an island-like character despite its urban location” (Kowarik & Langer 2005, p. 288). The site has had a contested history, with pressure in the 1970s by local community groups for the city authority to undertake an ecological survey, which identified that Südgelände had “an immense diversity of flora and fauna,” highlighting its ecological value (Langer 2012, p. 154). In the 1980s there were plans to completely clear the vegetation in order to erect a new freight train station, which led to strong protests and the founding of an NGO which has worked since then to preserve Südgelände as a nature area. Kowarik and Langer see this as an “exceptional case,” describing that “originally a desolate freight railyard, then for over four decades an almost untouched new wilderness, today it is one of the first official conservation areas in Germany in which urban-industrial nature is protected and made accessible to the public” (Kowarik & Langer 2005, pp. 288–290). Kowarik identifies this as fitting within his idea of “new wilderness,” where the special political situation made it possible for the development of specific ecosystem characteristics, where “the development of new wilderness took place at the Südgelände nearly unnoticed for a long time due to the inaccessibility of the site” (Kowarik & Langer 2005, p. 289). In Berlin the opening of Südgelände in 2000, was followed by Park am Nordbahnhof in 2009 and Park am Gleisdreieck in 2013, all of which incorporate

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elements of spontaneous urban nature that foster what Gandy refers to as a “wasteland aesthetic” (Gandy 2016, p. 437). The nature park Südgelände covers approximately 18 hectares, of which 12.8 hectares is managed landscape and 3.6 hectares is protected as a nature conservation area. The design approach offers a good precedent for how spontaneous nature on abandoned sites can be designed and managed for public interest, which Kowarik and Korner (2005) see as by no means limited to the exceptional situation of Berlin. Key ideas underlying the approach are set out in the following sections. Identity and support: It seems clear that negative public perceptions of abandoned sites stem from a lack of discernible purpose, while the idea of wilderness creates ambivalent responses. At Südgelände the site’s ecological value was evident and largely characterised as new wilderness, but its designation alludes to conservation by defining the site as a nature park, which provides a clear statement about the site’s value and purpose. Langer sees this as an effective way to change collective attitudes, where “officially designating and thus enabling urban nature” leads to a broader acceptance and appreciation of “what had once been perceived as a symbol of decline and neglect, in other words wasteland” (Langer 2012, pp. 151–152). Promoting the value of urban nature for the public good and designating the site for nature conservation provides a measure of resistance to other development proposals, while creating a positive identity that fosters social acceptance and political support. In the context of Südgelände, several governmental initiatives already encourage recognition and development of urban nature, with the Grün Berlin Group overseeing the project, within a network of other spaces throughout Berlin. There is already a pronounced movement for recognising wilderness in Berlin and throughout Germany, with the “Wilderness in Germany” campaign by the German conservation association (BUND) advocating that its best to leave nature alone, to not plan or interfere in a controlling fashion, but allow nature to develop and provide the space and time for wilderness to thrive. This highlights a progressive attitude to urban nature at governmental levels, which is subsequently carried through at local levels by organisations such as the Grün Berlin Group, providing a significant framework of political will and support that other countries could learn from. The project can be seen as a collaborative process, overseen by the Grün Berlin Group, who commissioned the planning group ÖkoCon  & Planland to design the nature park, while including artistic input by the Odious Group. This collaborative approach indicates that from the start the project recognised the importance of the ecological, social, and cultural dimensions of the site and their potential integration within a new design. What Südgelände highlights is that it is not an interdisciplinary approach in itself that is of significance, but how the collaborative input of different expertise works toward creative synthesis in the overall design. It could be argued that all landscape design would benefit from an interdisciplinary approach; however, in the case of abandoned sites, it becomes important to identify the right combination of expertise to understand the complexity of issues and to unlock ecological and social potential. For instance, the design concept for Südgelände relied on a significant level of site survey to fully

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The agency of the wild

appreciate the complexities of its ecological mosaic and the potential implications of natural succession occurring on the site, which informed spatial design and management. This spatial quality is further enhanced in relation to the cultural layers of the site, with a range of inputs by designers and artists to create spatial interest across the site, which results in the interlocking of narratives; of cultural layering and spatial design with the management of ecological succession and habitats (Figure 2.1 and Figure 2.2). Including wilderness: While designating an entire site as “wilderness” is evidently contentious, the approach at Südgelände was to create a sequence of managed landscapes with varying degrees of design intervention. At the core of the site is an area where uncontrolled development of spontaneous vegetation is allowed to happen without any interference, leaving it open to the natural processes of woodland establishment and falling into the classification of “new wilderness.” Kowarik and Langer acknowledge that, for some, manipulating the wilderness condition of the overall site may be seen as destroying its original uniqueness (Kowarik  & Langer 2005, p.  297). However, given the identifiable problems in public perception of retaining wilderness to a larger extent on the site, allied with issues of arresting succession for the benefits of greater biodiversity and spatial interest, it seems that a balance between preserving wilder areas with self-organising growth, while conserving a range of others through varying degrees of management, is an effective solution.

Figure 2.1  Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany Source: Image courtesy of Grün Berlin GmbH; photo credit: Holger Koppatsch

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Figure 2.2  Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany Source: Image courtesy of Planland; photo credit: Andreas Langer

Initial surveys identified that the site comprises a richly structural mosaic of dry grasslands, tall herbs, shrub vegetation, and individual woodlands, with woodland steadily increasing to cover around 70 per cent of the site with predominantly pioneer species, especially the native Betula pendula and the North American Robinia pseudoacacia. Kowarik and Langer note that “rare and threatened species are found primarily in the dry grasslands and only rarely in the woody vegetation” (Kowarik & Langer 2005, pp. 288–289). This they see as a significant aspect, as often species diversity is greater in the earlier and middle stages of succession than in later woodland stages; however, Südgelände provides an exception in how rare and threatened species of plants are predominantly found in the dry grasslands (Figure 2.3). This informed the re-organisation of planting over the site, as it meant that decreasing areas of woodland was beneficial to overall species distribution and biodiversity, although Kowarik describes that the 40- to 50-yearold Black locust stands that dominate the wilderness area are “astoundingly rich in plants, ground beetles, and spiders” (Kowarik 2005). The dominant presence of Black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) highlights that non-native species are commonly found in abandoned urban sites and accepted within the design proposal, while retaining areas of wilderness was evaluated in relation to character alongside regard of species distribution and composition across the site. Succession as narrative: Langer explains that the aim at Südgelände was to “demonstrate differing levels of succession as a narrative about how the site

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Figure 2.3  Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany Source: Image courtesy of Planland; photo credit: Andreas Langer

evolved from railway yard to wilderness,” where the “increasing potential for biodiversity, creates a more diverse landscape for people to explore” (Langer 2012, p.  158). To achieve this ecological structure, the site was organised into a gradation of habitat compositions, while the alignment of management and spatial structure formed three types of space defined as clearings, groves, and woody stands. Clearings were opened and partly enlarged, while being managed to restrict shrub growth over the long term. Stands that were light and open were to be maintained as groves (Figure 2.4), while in the wild woods natural dynamics are allowed to proceed “fully unfettered” (Kowarik & Langer 2005, pp. 295–296). The aim was to manage succession in such a way as to arrest the significant increase in woody vegetation and prevent a situation of ongoing succession, where the complete reforestation of the site would result in the decline of “characteristic species and plant communities of the open landscapes” and the “loss of spatial diversity as well” (Langer 2012, p.  155). This involved the active management of succession, which includes preventing succession in many areas of the site. The idea of preventing succession is notable, as it seems contrary to a more generalised notion of succession as a desirable condition, where unfettered growth results in optimum ecological conditions. As the approach at Südgelände highlights, many conservation-based projects see succession as something that needs to be managed and guided towards particular stages of establishment, where managing succession not only results in improved ecological structure, but allied with design objectives, can result in greater spatial diversity and interest. This

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Figure 2.4  Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany Source: Image courtesy of Planland; photo credit: Andreas Langer

involved different degrees of management, including set-aside non-managed areas of wilderness, selective management of open areas, and the removal of woody species, such as Black locust and Aspen, while including the occasional use of sheep to restrict grass and woody species through selective grazing (Langer 2012). Langer describes that the approach to managing succession responded to natural and spatial diversity, where the three habitat compositions, of clearings, groves, and woody stands, provides visitors with a series of differing landscape experiences, where “management has to be seen within the design concept” (Langer 2012, p. 158). Grosse-Bächle describes that while phases of succession are normally experienced over the course of time, at Südgelände these phases can be experienced as “one moves through the space, where the mosaic of succession stages is experienced as a time sequence” (Grosse-Bächle 2005, p. 242). The processes of succession are revealed as a sequential journey through the site, as a narrative about how the site evolved from railway yard to wilderness, while increasing the potential for biodiversity and creating a more diverse landscape for people to explore (Langer 2012). What is evident in this approach is that management is closely aligned with design, which aims to develop the site’s spatial structure as an interpretation of the long-term successional processes that have shaped the site. Interestingly, Hill and Daniel identify that people have a strong preference for natural landscapes with open structures, akin to “savannah (or savannah-like) landscapes,” with low groundcover, flowering plants, and scattered clumps of

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trees and shrubs (Hill & Daniel 2007, p. 36). While the approach at Südgelände may not have explicitly aimed for a savannah-like landscape, management decisions to arrest woodland succession based on ecological goals for preserving conditions for rare species, especially in the grass clearings that are sensitive to woodland encroachment, were also aligned with how this more open landscape structure is appealing to visitors (Figure 2.5). More generally, the design approach viewed management as a process of creating a sequence of spatial typologies, of clearings, groves, and woody stands, to effectively interrelate ecological and experiential qualities. Access and movement: The design had to consider how public access and movement would be managed in ecologically and culturally sensitive areas, keeping in mind that the site retained many historical elements that signified its prior usage as a railyard. Pathways were designed that make reference to the linear structure of rail tracks (Figure 2.6), which remain as an underlying presence on the site, while old tracks and other remnant parts, such as ramps and underpasses, were repurposed to form structural encounters. The path network leads the visitor through a sequence of managed spaces, allowing visitors to experience the varying stages of succession, while subtly creating degrees of control on people’s movement and access into areas of sensitive habitat. For example, the most sensitive areas of nature conservation are accessed by a 50cm raised walkway (Figure 2.7), providing access but acting to dissuade people from encroaching into

Figure 2.5  Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany Source: Image courtesy of Planland; photo credit: Andreas Langer

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Source: Image courtesy of Grün Berlin GmbH; photo credit: Jacob Schmidt

Figure 2.6  Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany

The agency of the wild

Figure 2.7  Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany Source: Image courtesy of Planland; photo credit: Andreas Langer

the vegetation. In other areas visitors are allowed free movement to explore old railyard structures or open grassland, indicating that the overall path structure is designed to guide people’s movement and access. Kowarik and Langer suggest there is a “need in urban nature conservation to combine social functions with species conservation functions” (Kowarik & Langer 2005, pp. 290–291), which requires degrees of control, from discouragement and constraint to free movement and exploration. On one hand, this concerns ensuring that visitors are discouraged from entering areas that have sensitive species, such as the dry grasslands where most of the rare species are found, or the interior wilderness woodland, while at the same time providing a varied set of spatial transitions, focal points, and functional requirements. Interestingly, in the more sensitive areas where movement is most constrained, this constraint is alleviated by the creative presence of the Odious Group, who effectively turn a 50-centimetre raised walkway into a work of art (Figure 2.8), demonstrating that where movement is constrained, imagination doesn’t have to be. Interplay and tension: By the nature of their layered quality, abandoned sites with spontaneous vegetation provide a fusion of natural and cultural elements. In their abandoned state it may seem as though a natural layer is overlaying a cultural one, as ecological processes infiltrate the post-industrial structure (Figure 2.9). The process of design creates the opportunity for a new cultural layer to be imbedded within this fusion, including selective moves to retain, conserve,

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Figure 2.8  Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany Source: Image courtesy of Planland; photo credit: Andreas Langer

Figure 2.9  Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany Source: Image courtesy of Planland; photo credit: Andreas Langer

The agency of the wild

erase, or introduce elements that make up a new composition, while seeking out potential alignments, juxtapositions, or transitions between differing layers to create a sense of interplay and tension. Pollock suggests that “tensions will always exist in design between past and future, protection and access, built and natural areas,” where a “design approach that recognises such tensions can deploy them fruitfully” (Pollock 2007, p. 103). At Südgelände differing spatial qualities are evident, including the juxtaposition of a linear walkway with a messy ecosystem; the dispersed railway artefacts nestled within open woodland, such as retained engines or a turntable (Figure 2.10 and Figure 2.11); the injection of block colour to contrast with textural decay and diffused planting (Figure 2.12); and the broad transitions between open to enclosed woodland settings, creating a series of orchestrated tensions between the old and new, linear and organic, man-made and natural. To diversify people’s experience further, the design includes visual axes that connect to views outside the site and sculptural platforms within, to offer a variety of vantage points and structural encounters. Del Tredici points out that in conservation based designs, the insertion of well-designed landscape features, such as pathways for access and art installations for interest, facilitate their use by people, thereby generating political support for their preservation (Del Tredici 2010, p. 310). For sites long associated with abandonment and dereliction this is a central issue, to transform once neglected sites into something that is perceived to be valuable to society. Creative input

Figure 2.10  Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany Source: Image courtesy of Grün Berlin GmbH; photo credit: Holger Koppatsch

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Figure 2.11  Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany Source: Image courtesy of Planland; photo credit: Andreas Langer

by the Odious Group involved a sensitive approach to the site’s cultural identity, working sculpturally with re-appropriated structural artefacts to create a series of encounters that respond to the site in differing ways, such as walkways, viewing platforms, and elevated viewing towers. These structures are interspersed with a range of retained elements, including signals, a rail turntable, water tower (Figure 2.13), tracks, and train engines and carriages, to create a dispersed series of encounters across the site. Alongside the use of vibrant colours, the effect is of a new cultural layer being intertwined with the site’s historical fabric, offering varying glimpses and tactile experiences, within an overall sense of creative diffusion between natural, industrial, and cultural components.

The agency of the wild As evidenced at Südgelände, a significant aspect of appreciating spontaneous urban nature is understanding how vegetation is established and evolves through succession. A common misconception is that succession refers to the incremental development of plants; however this is often confused with what is merely growth. Certainly the first stage of establishment may be characterised by a long period of pioneer species taking hold on the site, which tends to consist of opportunistic plant associations dominated by disturbance-tolerant, early­successional species. This is often the most commonly associated character of spontaneous

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Source: Image courtesy of Grün Berlin GmbH; photo credit: Holger Koppatsch

Figure 2.12  Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany

The agency of the wild

Figure 2.13  Südgelände Nature Park, Berlin, Germany Source: Image courtesy of Grün Berlin GmbH; photo credit: Holger Koppatsch

nature, but as Del Tredici points out, this is because in economically vibrant cities a significant portion of the urban fabric is always in the process of being torn up and re­built, which tends to create a constantly shifting mosaic of these early successional species (Del Tredici 2010). Cultural geographer Tim Edensor sees that the botanical colonisation of derelict land and buildings is “not a static process but changes over time depending upon the longevity of the abandoned site” (Edensor 2005, p.  43). He cites a study by Gilbert (1989) that identifies successive stages in which particular plants predominate, “where first of all, grasses and quickly colonising plants move in, referred to by Gilbert as the ‘Oxford ragwort stage.’ These initial colonisers prepare the ground for larger and taller perennial plants (the ‘tallherb stage’), and if the land is left for several years, these in turn give way to grass (the ‘grassland stage’). Finally, the ecology becomes more stable and typically becomes home to trees and shrubs (the ‘scrub woodland stage’)” (Edensor 2005, p. 43). Weiss et al. identify a further stage, where “scrub woodlands” provide the conditions for late-successional tree species, such as Sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) or Oak (Quercus robur), to emerge, although they identify that on many post-industrial sites with extreme soil conditions, it is doubtful that these species will quickly outcompete the pioneer tree species and many scrub woodlands will remain unchanged for a long time (Weiss et  al. 2005, p. 143). As is evident at Südgelände, there is potential for scrubby woodland

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to be succeeded by woodland species, where species including Black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) and Sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) are well established across the site, while the 40- to 50-year period of abandonment indicates the timeframe required for this late-successional vegetation to become established. Kowarik identifies that in peri-urban or rural abandoned sites, it is usually native early-successional trees, such as European white birch (Betula pendula) and European aspen (Populus tremula), that dominate, while urban abandoned sites are mostly determined by species that migrate from the urban surroundings, creating a more varied composition influenced by native and non-native escapees from cultivation (Kowarik 2005, pp. 14–16). He describes that a fundamental feature of the urban species pool is the prevalence of non-native species that were introduced accidentally to urban habitats or that escaped from cultivation (Kowarik 1995), while Edensor identifies that non-native species have a significant presence, where plants once “considered exotic and desirable blooms in Victorian times” become “tough adversaries in the battle against excessive vegetation,” identifying Hogweed, Rhododendron, Japanese knotweed, and Himalayan balsam as particularly invasive species (Edensor 2005, pp. 45–46). This indicates that the biodiversity of abandoned sites comes from an array of plant species, which Del Tredici describes as “a cosmopolitan assemblage of early-successional, disturbance-tolerant species that are preadapted to the conditions of the urban environment” (Del Tredici 2010, p. 307). Edensor provides an extensive list of species that have particularly adapted to urban environments, including “a ground cover of rosebay willow, Fat Hen, dock, nettles, brambles, sorrel, horsetail, ferns, groundsel, chickweed, thistles, knotweed, ivy, dense blankets of convolvulus leaves interspersed with its white trumpet flowers, and plantain and other grasses,” creating a “dense mat of green, composed of varied shades, textures and shapes of leaves and stem,” with taller forms of vegetation “rising above the undergrowth,” including “elder, willow and silver birch trees, hawthorn bushes and the much feared giant hogweed” (Edensor 2005, p. 43). Punctuating this “mantle of green,” Edensor notes splashes of different colours: the purples, blues and pinks of the intrusive Himalayan balsam, forget-me-not, foxglove and willow herb, the crimson of poppies, the strong yellows of ragwort, dandelion, celandine, coltsfoot, buttercup, evening primrose and stray rape plants, the gleaming white of michaelmas daisy and cow parsley, as well as multi-coloured lupins. Inside the ruin and on its outer walls, mosses, lichens and liverworts start to cloak the building and shaggy caps, puffballs and less edible fungi nestling amongst undergrowth or on rotting wood also colonise the outside and interiors. (Edensor 2005, p. 43) Edensor’s account of plant diversity indicates that in ecology importance is placed on the composition, layering, and distribution of species, as much as their successional development, which on abandoned post-industrial sites is highly influenced by local conditions, in particular ground and soil conditions. The

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conditions of abandoned sites and associated problems are broad, while being highly contingent on the history and context of the site, while in some cases site conditions may prevent even the most robust pioneer species from taking root. Common issues include levels and types of contamination that hinder plant establishment and soil formation processes, low nutrient or poorly developed soil structure, ground compaction and impervious surfaces, and porous substrates and leaching effects, amongst a multitude of other ground conditions that influence plant distribution. As a result, vegetation on abandoned sites often lacks consistency within overall planting structure at a site level, but can result in interesting alignments between ground conditions and the distribution of planting. Del Tredici identifies that in practical terms, “spontaneous urban vegetation can effectively achieve many of the ecological goals of traditional restoration with less financial investment and a greater chance of long-term success,” while having the “capacity to make significant contributions to the ecological functionality of many cities, particularly those struggling to adjust to the reality of negative economic growth and population loss” (Del Tredici 2010, p. 300). Citing a study by Muratet et al. (2007), he points out that it is mainly in economically depressed cities that a large percentage of the urban core has been abandoned for significant periods of time, where plant succession often proceeds without interference (i.e. maintenance) from people and comes closer to achieving a “stable,” multi-layered structure than it does in more prosperous cities (Del Tredici 2010, p. 301). Relatively old sites of spontaneous nature, such as Südgelände, may possess the richest forms of urban biodiversity, which Gandy sees as requiring a shift to replace the term brownfield with “open mosaic habitat” as part of a “scientifically driven effort to modify dominant attitudes towards void space in land use planning” (Gandy 2013, p. 1302). While many studies point toward a scientifically enriched understanding of abandoned sites, Rink suggests that “most city-dwellers are hardly aware of the species diversity of urban nature” (Rink 2005, p.  76), which Edensor identifies as a case of “assumed absence.” He highlights the presence of insects, birds, mammals, fungi, shrubs, flowering plants, and trees in the “constitution of the urban, despite their wrongly assumed absence” (Edensor 2005, p. 42). Hinchliffe et  al. see this assumed absence as a symptom of the “previously unscientific and apolitical city wilds,” while suggesting that recognition for urban biodiversity is increasingly reflected in planning policies, such as Biodiversity Action Plans (Hinchliffe et al. 2005). Similarly, Gandy recognises that an increasing number of cities now have their own Red Lists for plants, animals, and even invertebrates, as “insights from urban ecology become connected with scientifically inflected strands of urban environmental discourse” (Gandy 2013, p. 1303). These observations not only indicate the increasing recognition of urban biodiversity, but a significant step in political will to recognise the need for nature conservation through policies and action plans, which in turn provides increasing leverage for nature conservation in urban areas. Armstrong identifies that “marginal places provide a different beauty in the city,” where these sites “evoke an aesthetic of disorder, surprise and sensuality, offering ghostly glimpses into the past and tactile encounters with a forgotten

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materiality,” while offering “a counter narrative conveying a sense of transgressive freedom” (Armstrong 2006, pp. 119–120). This indicates the particular interplay and tension that arises in abandoned spaces, where growth and decay overlay each other, as the opportunistic space for spontaneous nature to emerge, while conjuring a sense of “the return of the agency of the wild” (Edensor 2005, p. 47). As evident at Südgelände, sites largely left as wasteland can be successfully transformed into urban nature parks, where creative interplay is not only predicated on the tension between natural and structural components, but the creative synthesis of scientific insight, spatial design, and artistic vision. This not only involves appreciating and working with the agency of the wild, but establishing its value and purpose for the benefit of society. It is in this context that landscape architects have a key role to play, fusing scientific and spatial thinking to establish the benefits of new wilderness within the urban, social realm.

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Chapter 3

A menacing dragon

The growing recognition for an urban “new wilderness” has led to the re-engagement of another major theme in landscape aesthetics: the sublime. Helen Armstrong sees it as ironic that “through dereliction we can again experience the concept of the sublime, so recently lost to us through the taming and commodification of wilderness” (Armstrong 2006, p. 126). Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757) is seen as the formative theory, which conceptualised the experience of the sublime as the combined feeling of terror and delight upon confronting powerful and threatening forces of nature. Amanda Boetzkes identifies two points worth highlighting in Burke’s aesthetic treatise, “first, the sublime experience overwhelms both the mind and the body, and second, its cause is something in external nature that raises the possibility of death” (Boetzkes 2010, p. 24). While the possibility of death seems extreme, Burke’s idea was that the sublime is the unreasoned delight provoked by the exposure to terror, provided one is not personally threatened, as “a sort of delightful horror” (Burke 1759, p. 123). Burke’s treatise suggests that the strongest passion caused by the great and sublime in nature is astonishment, a state of the soul in which “the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it” (Burke 1759, p. 53). Emily Brady suggests that the sublime “opened up a greater potential for valuing wild nature” (Brady 2009, p.  2), while Jorgensen and Tylecote see that “the development of theories of the sublime seem, with hindsight, to be an attempt to engage with the vastness, infinity and ineffability of nature (and wilderness)” (Jorgensen & Tylecote 2007, pp. 447–448), which reflects the enthusiasm for journeying into wild and rugged landscapes through the eighteenth century Grand Tour. As a fashion for seeking out the most sublime landscapes with the purpose of broadening one’s aesthetic appreciation, this movement informed Burke’s differentiation between the experience of “Beauty” and “the Sublime,” where according to Burke the apprehension of beauty is a spontaneous reaction to unchallenging objects or entities that inspire love or pleasure. By contrast the sublime imposes a “frisson of fear that comes from confronting something more powerful than oneself” (Bedell 2001, p. 105), which brings about “sensations of wonder, awe, or terror” (Harrison 2003, p. 109).

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Arguably the most recognised post-industrial design is Peter Latz’s Landscape Park Duisburg-Nord in Germany. The idea of the sublime offers a critical lens to evaluate this seminal project, while in turn helping to illustrate how ideas about the sublime have shifted through evaluation of Latz’s design sensibilities, which, in turn, significantly influenced contemporary landscape architecture. The objective of Latz’s design was to create a metamorphosis from utilitarian function to fantasy and playfulness, to “allow existing abstract structures to function in new ways” (Latz 2001, p. 151), which Brown identifies as Latz’s interest in “how imagination and the metaphysical make structures grow and change from rusting machines into mythical creatures, fantasy characters, and animated ghosts” (Brown 2001, p. 70). The idea of imposition is one aspect of the sublime which transfers easily to the contemporary context of post-industrial landscapes. For instance, while Latz’s design sensibility wasn’t driven explicitly by ideas of the sublime, certainly his description of the park’s central blast furnace resonates with the idea of imposition (Figure 3.1), describing that “the blast furnace is not only an old furnace, it is a menacing dragon rising above frightened men, and it is also a mountain top used by climbers, rising above its surroundings” (Latz 2001, p. 151).

Figure 3.1  Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – Blast Furnace Viewing Tower Source: Image courtesy of Michael Latz

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The unsettling landscape Brady describes that a shift in aesthetic appreciation in the eighteenth century was brought about by increasing travel and access to remote and wild places. She notes that “this new landscape taste was made possible by a number of economic, social, religious, and technological factors that enabled many people to have direct, relatively safe access to such places,” which in turn “made appreciation of the sublime possible in the first place, where fear and hatred of mountains, deserts, and other wild places became tempered by admiration and reverence” (Brady 2013, p. 173). We can see parallels in how post-industrial sites have opened up a new aesthetic territory in a similar manner to that of Burke’s era, which historian David Nye describes as “the industrial sublime,” as a sense of awe brought about by the visceral and emotional impact of powerful industrial landscapes (Nye 1994, p. xxvi), where former sites of heavy industry, such as Duisburg-Nord, now offer public access to places that were previously inaccessible and dangerous (Figure 3.2). Nye describes that the industrial sublime is predicated on the engagement of industrial power as symbolic of progress and economic force, yet in post-industrial sites it is the scale of obsolescence that becomes most compelling. As architect and critic Hugh Hardy writes, “the hypnotic attraction of places like Bethlehem Steel in Pennsylvania, or the former Thyssen Steelworks in Duisburg, Germany, stems from the romance of their abandonment  – the saga of what was once

Figure 3.2  Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – Elevated Walkway over Bunkers Source: Image courtesy of Michael Latz

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so mighty brought low” (Hardy 2005, p. 32). Brady defines that “the sublime is typified by feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and insignificant amid crashing waves, towering cliffs, great storms, and the like,” suggesting that “it is uncomfortable, even difficult – an imposition of environmental events” (Brady 2013, p. 180). In the case of experiencing the blast furnaces at Duisburg-Nord we could argue that it is not only their gigantic scale that compels a sense of the sublime, but the implication that these once powerful industrial machines have now become so obsolete, signalling a profound turning point in our technological age, while stirring a feeling of the sublime due to the immense implications of such an event occurring within our collective history. This idea can be related to another early conceptualisation of the sublime stemming from Immanuel Kant’s proposition that “sublimity is not contained in anything in nature but only in our minds” as we can become conscious to nature within and also to nature outside us (Kant 1790, p. 123). Kant proposed that there is no sublime object per se, but that the sublime arises through an emotional disposition when an experience overpowers the constraints of reason and order. While a simpler interpretation of the sublime might suggest that its effect arises from the imposing scale of post-industrial ruins, such as the blast furnaces at Duisburg-Nord, based on Kant’s idea, it is not these objects in themselves, but what experiential response they compel. In other words, the sublime is not an object or a scene, but an emotional response to a particular moment of profound experience, as being confronted with the imposition of environmental events, where industrial ruins provide a sense of “prodigious human effort and material transformation wrought by great physical forces,” while “even silent, they resound with power” (Hardy 2005, p.  32). However, their abandonment implies that a profound event has occurred, which has brought this once powerful human industry into a state of decay, to compel an unsettling sense of our own mortality. The landscape design of Duisburg-Nord was largely informed by the client’s desire to retain and integrate as many of the industrial artefacts as possible. This aligned with Latz’s concept of working through a syntactical approach that sought to interpret the existing structure and layers of the site with the aim of re-animating these through new programmes of use. Udo Weilacher describes that this approach resulted in “a largely intact industrial complex,” offering “almost all the levels of information needed to fully understand this strange landscape” (Weilacher 2008, p. 112). What is evident in this syntactical approach is that the site is highly complex, with an extensive entanglement of varying layers networked across the site and beyond. Latz’s approach to layering provides a means to disentangle the complexity of the site, while avoiding the pitfalls of a more reductive approach of mere space making. He organises the park into four layers, of water park, rail park, transport network, and fields and gardens, which he regards as “information layers” that he aims to make intelligible through the design. Key design ideas included developing the water park as a hydrological recovery system (Figure 3.3), utilising the extensive rail system as a potential network for promenades and sub-parks (Figure 3.4), while re-appropriating industrial structures for recreational purposes (Figure 3.5).

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Source: Image courtesy of Michael Latz

Figure 3.3  Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – Water Park Canal

Figure 3.4  Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – Emscher Promenade Source: Image courtesy of Michael Latz

Figure 3.5  Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – Bunker Climbing Garden Source: Image courtesy of Latz+Partner

A menacing dragon

While none of these design ideas may appear to lend themselves to an experience of the sublime, it is what underpins Latz’s syntactical approach that provides this potential. His main concern was to conserve the highly complex and interwoven structure of the site by exploring how the various layers interlink, overlap, or fragment, with the aim of creating a place of multiple identities, as a complex of programmatic layers and spatial formation. Underlying this structural objective was the conceptual aim of creating a place of dispersal, where the various components of paths and raised walkways do not add up to a defined system of easy directionality or circulation, but instead propel the visitor through sequences of varying spaces, without any clear sense of orientation (Figure 3.6). For instance, Hemmings and Kagel describe that “even though the blast furnaces and smoke stacks of the iron works can help place oneself in relation to the works central complex, their help in orientation is misleading when it comes to the cognitive mapping of the space as a whole,” whose “emphasis on the unexpected encounter and the creation of ‘natural’ transitions leaves it deliberately ill-defined” (Hemmings & Kagel 2010, p. 255). In this place of dispersal, with no clear sense of directionality, we can identify an intention to deliberately disorientate people, where Latz’s syntactical reading of the site concludes that to respect the intelligibility of its structure is to retain its complexity for the experience of visitors. In other words, rather than reduce its complexity in relation to conventions of park design that call for ease of leg-

Figure 3.6  Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – Railway Park Source: Image courtesy of Latz+Partner

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ibility, orientation, and circulation, Latz sees complexity as a quality that should not only be retained but further intensified through design interventions. Latz’s design approach has two intentions, which on one hand makes sense of and organises the various layers that comprise the functional aspects at the scale of site, while on an experiential scale it creates an interwoven spatial framework that deliberately unsettles people’s sense of position and orientation through its sheer complexity. This intentional staging of an unsettling experience can be linked to Kant’s idea that the sublime arises from an experience that exceeds understanding and leads to feelings of anxiety, when our normal processes of apprehending a situation or event are unsettled and we struggle to regain any bridgeable perceptive grasp. Latz intensifies his aim to unsettle through the design of sub-spaces to create unusual encounters, adding a level of alterity to this already disorientating complex. These include distinct sub-spaces that introduce the sensitive use of planting into juxtaposition with the intensive fabric of industrial structures, such as the delicate colour blossom of the gridded cherry orchard set against the irregular structure and metallic texture of the blast furnaces (Figure  3.7). In this case, a sense of alterity is not only driven by the contrast between natural and industrial elements, but the placement of a distinct planting typology, an orchard, within an industrial complex, playing with people’s sense of encountering something familiar but within an unusual setting. Another example of intentional juxtaposition

Figure 3.7  Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – the Cowper Plaza Cherry Orchard Source: Image courtesy of Latz+Partner; photo credit: Peter Schaefer

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is the introduction of ornamental, Renaissance-style gardens set within the intensive core of the retained industrial complex (Figure 3.8). These gardens are positioned on top of old ore bunkers that were used to contain some of the most contaminated and problematic material from demolished buildings. Not only does the formal use of delicate planting sit in contrast to the grand scale of industrial structures that tower above them, there is a radical juxtaposition between these delicately formal gardens sitting as a cap on the site’s most toxic material, where it is almost unsettling to think that of the many people who appreciate these ornamental garden spaces, most are unaware of the toxic history buried beneath their ornamental veneer. Latz’s approach to designing sub-spaces demonstrates a highly inventive response to site conditions. For instance, in an area demarcated as a flower garden, Meadow sage (Salvia pratensis) grows amidst a bed of building rubble (Figure  3.9), indicating the unusual symbiosis between dereliction and natural colonisation, based on a sensitive approach to planting as a means to elevate and place value on otherwise “worthless material” (Weilacher 2008, p.  124). This approach extends through a range of planting ideas across the site, from highly domesticated or formal gardens, structural planting that aligns or juxtaposes with industrial structures, to areas of conserved informal planting that have

Figure 3.8  Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – Sinter Box Garden Source: Image courtesy of Michael Latz

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Figure 3.9  Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – Meadow Sage on Recycled Substrate Source: Image courtesy of Michael Latz

colonised the site. While this may suggest a lack of continuity in plant structure, it relates to Latz’s aim of creating a complex array of experiential encounters, where each area of the site has been intensively thought through to establish a sense that planting is everywhere and is always responding to the site on some well-considered level.

The ambivalent landscape Latz’s syntactical layering of the site allows for the synthesis between natural and industrial systems, where natural processes seem to have established themselves on a par with the remnants of the industrial structure, as systems are at one and the same time entirely natural and entirely artificial (Latz 2006). This can be seen as a common characteristic of post-industrial sites, where natural systems have encroached and become embedded into the layers of industrial structure, resulting in a sense of intrinsic interweaving between the two. Jorgensen and Tylecote identify that on abandoned sites this “muddle of human and natural agency” leads to a significant level of ambiguity in apprehending this situation, particularly discerning between growth and decay, progress and regress (Jorgensen & Tylecote 2007, p. 455). Kowarik identifies this sense of ambiguity presents “a characteristic double nature” as a “product that is equally natural and artificial,” attributing this to the sharp contrast between a cultural layer of rubble,

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ruins, and rusted iron, and a natural layer that grows untamed and often surprisingly quickly (Kowarik 2005, p. 3), indicating the capacity of nature to surpass even the most extreme industrial conditions. In many post-industrial sites there is a powerful coming together of natural and industrial systems that seems impossible to unravel and appears ambivalent to human comprehension. Roth discerns that ruins are inherently ambivalent, being emblematic of transience and of persistence over time (Roth et  al. 1997), while Hemmings and Kagel describe nature and industry as not categorically different but rather as periods in historical succession, with each “becoming the foundation for the other” (Hemmings  & Kagel 2010, p.  253). They describe that at Duisburg-Nord “the impression given is that plants and factory have witnessed some difficulty together and that both emerged bearing qualities of the other” (Hemmings & Kagel 2010, p. 253). The encounter of this form of natural/artificial fusion does not correspond with any conventional image of nature, or for that matter public space. It brings about a significant level of confusion and ambiguity, which aligns with Brady’s idea that the sublime encounter has “an intensity absent in other types of aesthetic experience” (Brady 2013, p.  177). She describes that this involves “an expansion of the mind,” as if the imagination is grasping at something that defies apprehension, which leads to the “negative feeling associated with sublime qualities” (Brady 2013, p. 177). This inapprehensible quality of the sublime resonates with Latz’s intention for Duisburg-Nord, implying that a level of ambivalence is part of the design concept. Latz suggests that “new conceptions must design landscape along with both accepted and disturbing elements, both harmonious and interrupting ones,” while “accepting a fragmented world means doing without the complete overall picture and leaving room for the coincidence of nature in the web of the layout” (Latz 2000, p. 98). Rebecca Krinke describes that Latz’s objective was not to preserve the industrial ruins as if an industrial museum, but rather, to give them new life (Figure 3.10), where “old industry provides an armature for new experiences of scenery and activity,” as “layers of time” which are simultaneously coexisting in the landscape and conceived as an on-going process that is “active and complex” (Krinke 2001, p. 138). While we can suggest that Latz’s approach aims for levels of ambivalence, this is not to suggest his approach is in itself ambivalent. His attention to social programming follows the same process of creative invention as his approach to planting design, where it seems there are events happening and designed encounters throughout the site, with each one responding to the physical artefacts of the industrial complex in unique ways. This includes rock climbing in the former ore bunkers (Figure  3.5), large event spaces in reconditioned industrial sheds, elevated walkways interweaving through industrial structures (Figure 3.2), formal promenades cutting across the industrial core (Figure  3.4), and informal pathways extending to the outer edges of the site (Figure 3.6), amongst other recreational and experiential encounters. This conjures a sense of inventive symbiosis between structure and activity that aims to re-animate the site and its obsolete industrial structures through integrative design.

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Source: Image courtesy of Michael Latz

Figure 3.10  Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – Bunker Gallery

A menacing dragon

Figure 3.11  Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – Public Events Space Source: Image courtesy of Michael Latz

The ability to support such a range of vibrant natural and social activity is an inventive response to the structural qualities of the site, while at the same time defying any rigid or preconceived ideals. Weilacher describes that Latz’s approach creates a landscape that “signals freedom and the ability to change” and can be “understood as a dynamic structure that does not fit in with any rigid ideals” (Weilacher 2008, p. 101). This conditions a response by visitors that “instead of relying on preconceived ideas” are “prompted to evaluate each element anew and reconsider their relationship” (Hemmings & Kagel 2010, p. 253). As Hemmings and Kagel eloquently describe, “on a site where workers’ movements were once closely controlled, and free roaming equalled transgression, buildings and structures now denote the exact opposite of labor and exploitation, namely leisure and recreation, as if it were a perpetual Sunday” (Figure  3.11) (Hemmings  & Kagel 2010, p. 251).

The irresolvable landscape Hemmings and Kagel suggest that “among the many readings that the park encourages, one critical reading is missing: an authoritative interpretation of the site’s social significance in a sustained historical trajectory” (Hemmings & Kagel 2010, p.  254). They identify that while there is emphasis on remembering the past, “little effort has been made to document the social and political history of

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the site,” while pointing out that the former mill’s role “in two world wars seems relegated to an erstwhile time categorically separate from the remnants of production, which rather than enlighten the visitor, helps obfuscate the plant’s political history by keeping it distant and opaque” (Hemmings & Kagel 2010, p. 254). For instance, Hargreaves identifies that “there is no mention of the Jewish slave labourers held here against their will to further the manufacture of steel for the Nazi war machine, many of whom perished in the process” (Hargreaves 2007, p. 165). He suggests that “the story of Duisburg is incomplete without its full cultural context, and is also perhaps a troubling celebration of the industrial sublime” (Hargreaves 2007, p. 165). It should be noted that the broader Emscher Park, containing Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord by Latz, is set within the much broader post-industrial Ruhr region, estimated to be approximately 200 square miles. Dettmar describes that by the mid-1980s this region was facing the increasing decline in mining and heavy industry, with ecological and cultural problems becoming known, in addition to the area’s substantial economic and social problems. He outlines that the Ruhr featured the highest unemployment rates in North Rhine-Westphalia and in the former West Germany at over 15 per cent, contributing to an increasingly negative image for the region, burdened by its industrial past, with the origins of the Emscher Park “stemming from a state government attempt, with the International Building Exhibition (IBA), to provide a catalyst for a fundamental renewal of the Ruhr area” (Dettmar 2005, p. 263). Dettmar’s description indicates that the primary concern was to arrest significant levels of economic decline in the Ruhr Valley region, while the question of how the design provides greater interpretation of the site’s historical context needs to be placed in relation to other significant factors, in particular the need to address the imminent context of economic decline and social deprivation. It also highlights that Latz’s park design for Duisburg-Nord sits within larger organisational structures and broader geographical scales of concern for the Ruhr region, within which the remit of the landscape architect can only extend so far. On this basis, it could be argued that concerns for the interpretation of historical context need to be evaluated in relation to the pressing needs of the present, which is socially imminent and politically loaded. In this context, Latz describes that his main aim was “the re-animation of the devastated areas and their regeneration as a landscape for a densely populated territory” (Latz 2001, p. 150). The park design sits alongside other forms of engagement, such as strategies for social inclusion and employment. For instance, Joern Langhorst identifies that one of the underlying initiatives was to negotiate initial resistance of the former workers living in the housing right next to the park by, not only contributing to “favourable social change” for the area, but by encouraging them to “participate in more or less formal ways in the park, such as guiding tours or just casually talking to visitors about their experiences and the industrial structures” while “for others, the park has become a daily destination” (Langhorst 2004, p. 69). He sees that “the park design and the incremental implementation (starting in 1989 and still continuing) with its high degree of participation succeeded in changing the largely negative attitude of workers into a positive one and avoided reducing it to a romanticised ver-

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sion of the industrial” (Langhorst 2004, p. 69). It is apparent that at Duisburg-Nord any presentation of historical authenticity seems a secondary concern to the presentation of new horizons for social and ecological recovery, which the design seeks to primarily target, where “communities want improvements beyond, not necessarily reminders of, toxic histories” (Clemence Chan 2009, p. 29). In regard to Kant’s ideas, David Johnson describes that the aesthetic experience of the sublime involves a process where “the imagination tries to present an intuition of some object that is strictly and intrinsically unpresentable, thereby running up against its own limit” (Johnson 2012, pp. 118–119). He identifies that “the experience of the sublime involves a crisis for the faculty of presentation in the form of an irresolvable conflict between it and a set of objects that remain fundamentally inaccessible to it, but that it strives to present nonetheless” (Johnson 2012, pp.  118–119). Drawing from Kant’s conceptualisation of the sublime, Lyotard identified the issue of irresolvability as related to the encounter of an object or situation which defies conceptualisation, where the imagination intuitively grasps at something that is tantalizingly beyond reason. In this, a sense of the sublime arises from this irresolvable moment, of the straining of the mind at the edges of itself and at the edges of its conceptuality (Lyotard 1991). This implies that the mind cannot always organise the world rationally, while some objects or situations are simply incapable of being brought neatly under concepts, which for Lyotard provides a powerful quality to embrace, akin to an experience of the sublime. Latz’s design for Duisburg-Nord presents something of an irresolvable complex, in particular for those who experience it, which stems from a deliberate approach to work with the qualities of imposition, complexity, disorientation, open-endedness, and ambivalence. In regard of Lyotard’s conceptualisation of the sublime it can be argued that these qualities cumulatively inform a sense of irresolvability, which Latz sees, not as a problematic issue, but as a quality to be intensified. Latz recognised the complexity and depth of the site’s contextual past and more imminent present, which he responds to by opening up rather than delimiting people’s experience of these contextual dimensions, to compel visitors to use their own faculties of imagination and reason in negotiating this irresolvable landscape. In other words, he does not resolve the issue of the site’s interpretation but intentionally presents it as an irresolvable context, reflecting Lyotard’s idea that some events exceed representation and a sense of the sublime arises in realising we are at the limits of reason and representation (Lyotard 1991). The objective to bring spatial experience to an “authentic” account of the political and economic trajectories of post-industrial sites has a number of challenges for landscape interpretation, including: the destructive logic of industrial production and economic exploitation (Hemmings  & Kagel 2010); the “history of human, material and chemical flows on and off site” alongside “histories of consumption that are also embedded in such sites” (Meyer 2007, pp. 63–64); and the machines and processes that determined their configurations, “moulded to purposes known only to those who used them” (Hardy 2005, p. 32). This highlights the complex histories associated with these landscapes, while Latz provides a space for Duisburg-Nord’s historical context to have a presence, if not fully

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presented or resolved, but imaginatively grasped at through fragments of encounter that present the latent memory of the site. In doing so he presents it as a sublime experience, following Lyotard’s idea, where the subject of sublime feeling is decentred through encounters with the “inexpressible,” “unpresentable,” and “indeterminate” (Brady 2013, p. 180). Whether this experience of the sublime intensifies or obfuscates the site’s historical context remains open to debate; however, Elisabeth Clemence Chan identifies that this sense of history is lost “when industrial ruins are polished, painted and planted” where they “lose their ambiguity – the incomplete state of decay – that gives them a more complex meaning” (Clemence Chan 2009, p. 28). While at Duisburg-Nord an authentic history is not exactly presented, Latz’s syntactical approach retains the industrial ruins and much of their underlying infrastructure, providing an evocative experience of the site’s trajectory into post-use and decay. This reflects Christopher Woodward’s idea that ruins evoke the fragility of life and the relentlessness of time, while the quality of a ruin’s incompleteness compels the viewer to supply the missing pieces from their own imagination (Woodward 2012), to offer the uncertainties, vagueness, and confusion of history that is impossible to articulate, other than through the artefacts in ruin (Clemence Chan 2009). So, while authentic history is challenging to present, ruins have incredible power to signify powerful cultural narratives, which at Duisburg-Nord is evoked through a sense that where once there was the intensive activity of human industry and power, now there is social and ecological renewal, although this optimistic future still has to contend with a problematic legacy, including the social and environmental impacts of industrial exploitation. Brady suggests that “if the sublime is to have a place in current environmental thought, its value will lie in the relatively neglected qualities it identifies, the way it characterises a distinctive type of aesthetic engagement with environment, and the particular aesthetic-moral relationship that emerges through that engagement” (Brady 2013, p. 182). As demonstrated through appraisal of Latz’s design of Duisburg-Nord, the spatial tactics deployed do not provide any comfortable experiences or easy reading of a complex situation, but instead, through qualities of being imposing, complex, disorientating, open-ended, and ambivalent, amount to an experience of irresolvability, conjuring much of the agitation in confronting and reflecting on the many uncomfortable dimensions and realities of a post-industrial world. In this sense, sublime experience involves far more than looking at the gigantic scale of the imposing blast furnaces, but instead the more imposing scale of looking out from them (Figure 3.12), offering a vantage point over the Ruhr valley to reflect on the extensive scale of toxicity, which truly pushes the borders of imagination and reason: approximately 200 square kilometres in the German Ruhr shaped by the profound impacts of industrial use, set within the broader scale of an estimated 2.5 million industrial sites in Europe that produce potentially polluting activities, with around 340,000 sites identified as needing urgent remediation and only 51,000 sites actually remediated (European Environment Agency 2012). The extensive scale and impact of human-induced toxicity is truly the sublime event.

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Figure 3.12  Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, Germany – View West to Operational Industry Source: Image courtesy of Michael Latz

Chapter 4

The entanglement

There is a frequent misconception that Duisburg-Nord provides a great example of a remediated landscape, which is not strictly accurate. Certainly, processes of remediation were conducted on the site, but these only extend to what Hargreaves outlines as “capping to cover a few of its most toxic areas and an attenuating landscape strategy over the rest.” He says that “whether this will take a hundred years to remediate or thousands is anyone’s guess” (Hargreaves 2007, p. 162). Kelly Shannon more accurately describes that at Duisburg-Nord the “natural landscape was not restored but rather ecologically stabilised” (Shannon 2006, p. 148), which provides a better outline of how extensive areas of contamination were left untouched to allow pioneer species to establish and stabilise ground conditions (Figure 3.6). If anything, Duisburg-Nord is a good example of the challenges in remediating extensively contaminated sites, where landscape stabilisation is often the only viable option. More specifically stabilisation can involve phytostabilisation, as a process that occurs through the action of plant root systems that accumulate and immobilise soil pollutants, thus preventing the migration of contaminants through erosion, leaching, or runoff (Kennen  & Kirkwood 2015). Phytostabilisation may be seen as a temporary solution until more intensive remediation processes are deployed; however, for large contaminated sites, such as Duisburg-Nord, stabilisation may be the only economically feasible option (Schwitzguébel et al. 2009). Pioneer species that grow naturally and stabilise ground conditions require lowto-no-maintenance, which offers a cost effective alternative to the high costs of intensive site clean-up. This highlights that the challenges of remediation are cost related, where sites at the extensive scale of Duisburg-Nord present significant economic burdens to regions, such as the Ruhr, that face a multitude of other socio-economic challenges. Hargreaves acknowledges this factor, saying that “due to limited resources and the largeness of the site, there is a seeming inability to transform the post-industrial artefact and the necessity of using a laissez-faire approach to remediation once away from the project core” (Hargreaves 2007, p. 162). The situation at Duisburg-Nord is repeated in countless other sites across the world, to the extent that when strategically negotiating sites of contamination approaches for remediation should be balanced with understanding stabilisation, as these are not equivalent and often lead to a further misconception: that

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remediation is the more prominent approach. It could be argued that understanding stabilisation is as important and possibly more commonly encountered than actual remediation, regardless of how desirable site clean-up might be. The other reason for recognising stabilisation is that it mainly involves conserving pioneer species that have colonised the site, which brings all the potential benefits identified as the “wild,” spontaneous vegetation outlined in previous chapters. When site clean-up is required, Niall Kirkwood suggests that we should approach remediation where “site technologies are not viewed as physical constraints but as means of inspiration” (Kirkwood 2001, p.  7). His point is that if we approach remediation as a technological process with better scientific understanding, there can be better integration with site design and more effective deployment of remediation processes, which Langhorst describes as seeing remediation as another ‘technological layer’ in the landscape (Langhorst 2004, p. 67). Kennen and Kirkwood describe this as a process of implementing “on-site scientific and engineering solutions” to deal with contaminants found predominantly in soils and groundwater, while being “targeted to be self-sustaining and integrated in the site design” (Kennen & Kirkwood 2015, pp. 4–5). Udo Weilacher identifies that “there are no definite or secure formulations” for dealing with contaminated sites, as they “cannot be taken back simply or without far reaching consequences” (Weilacher 2008, p.  80), while Hugh Hardy identifies that “because of their variety, there is no uniform method for reconstruction” (Hardy 2005, p. 32). These comments indicate the challenges involved with remediation, where there are no universal or easy plug-in frameworks of approach and due to the complexity of soil and in situ conditions, each contaminated site requires its own strategy and site-specific response. As distinct from phytostabilisation, phytoremediation involves the active reduction or elimination of contaminants, removed from the soil or substrate by plant species known to accumulate pollutants in their tissues. Hyper or super accumulator species are particular species known for their ability in this process, for instance, Sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) can accumulate arsenic, Willow (Salix viminalis) is a phytoextractor of cadmium, Alpine pennycress (Thlaspi caerulescens) can be used to extract cadmium and zinc, while Oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus genus) have been used to remediate petroleum contaminates. This highlights the range of plant types, including trees, perennial plants, and fungi, which can be used to target specific contaminates that are highly toxic to other plants. It also indicates that many pioneer species, including hyper-accumulator fungi and plants, “show great genetic adaptation” (Batty & Halberg 2010, p. 2), while increasing understanding of their potential qualities is important for processes of stabilisation or active remediation. However, from the perspective of ecology, Roccotiello et  al. suggest that “care should be taken in choosing the right species for the application of bioremediation techniques, because the introduction of alien fungi and plants may alter and disrupt indigenous ecosystems, or may be unsuitable for local climate conditions” (Roccotiello et al. 2015, p. 565). Even before any remediation is initiated, there is the major challenge in surveying sites to establish the extent and make-up of contamination, especially given the elusive state of its chemical composition and sub-surface presence.

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Roccotiello et al. suggest that surveying should also take account of the biotic components of soil, fungi, and plants as the pioneer organisms that “play a key role in the colonisation of contaminated sites,” while this approach helps provide a “site-specific characterisation,” which in turn helps in “the selection of tolerant organisms occurring on polluted sites.” They see that this selective process can help identify “a choice of best reasonable target conditions” (Roccotiello et al. 2015, p. 564); however, as ecologists Lesley Batty and Kevin Halberg highlight, while “a target must be defined by which the remediation activity can be deemed a success,” there is a challenge in identifying “where this point should lie” (Batty & Halberg 2010, pp. 4–5). In using phytoremediation this issue is pronounced, which can be related to the general uncertainty inherent in natural and biological systems, the costs associated with long term monitoring, and the low efficiency of plants in their dormant period (Kennen & Kirkwood 2015). Plant scientists Elizabeth Pilon-Smits and John Freeman describe that the “limitation of phytoremediation is that the plant roots have to be able to reach the pollutant and act on it,” where “the pollutant must not only be within physical reach of the roots, but it must be bioavailable for absorption as well,” while “the soil characteristics, toxicity level, and climate have to be amenable to plant growth.” While this highlights limitations, they describe that phytoremediation is being used successfully to deal with a range of challenging contamination issues in diverse locations, such as “military sites, agricultural fields, industrial sites, mine tailings, wood treatment sites, sewage and municipal wastewater, agricultural runoff/drainage water, industrial wastewater, coal pile runoff, landfill leachate, mine drainage, groundwater plumes, and outdoor and indoor air, all allied with specific pollution issues” (Pilon-Smits & Freeman 2006, pp. 203–205). Kennen and Kirkwood identify that phytoremediation offers advantages by providing a natural and passive process that leaves soil intact or improved, while being less expensive than other approaches, while Pilon-Smits and Freeman see that it not only results in “environmental clean-up but also in ecosystem restoration” (PilonSmits & Freeman 2006, p. 205). The shortcomings of phytoremediation for effective site clean-up are reflected by Pilon-Smits’ identification that “in the remediation industry, phytotechnologies still account for less than 1% of the market share of remediation techniques carried out” (Pilon-Smits & Freeman 2006, p. 205). For the purposes of fast and effective site clean-up, other approaches to bioremediation are becoming common, including bioremediation techniques which utilise microorganisms to biologically degrade contaminants, involving mechanical means to accelerate this natural process, while providing advantages of cost efficiency (Semple et al. 2001), allied with ease of implementation on site (Khan et al. 2004). These techniques have advantages of being tested and proven, while providing a flexible approach to a wide range of sites with ease of monitoring target results, although this relies on conducive site conditions, such as large areas and accommodating weather conditions (Kennen & Kirkwood 2015). While phytoremediation places emphasis on the role of plants as the active agent in the remediation process, bioremediation exploits an understanding of microbial processes, by which the microbial community in the soil, occasionally

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enhanced through inoculation, can be exploited to bioremediate (through either in situ or ex situ approaches) contaminated sites (Killham 2010, p.  242). This includes an increasing range of specialist approaches to remediate specific pollution problems, such as contamination by heavy metals, chlorinated hydrocarbons (or synthetic insecticides), and petroleum. Two of the most common bioremediation techniques are windrows and biopiles, both of which involve composting systems, where organic matter is mixed with contaminated soil to improve the processes of degradation and form a microbial community structure that allows bioremediation to occur (Thassitou  & Arvanitoyannis 2001). This organic matter can include a wide range of substrates, such as “wood chips, wheat straw, peat, corn cobs, sawdust, a nutrient-fortified mixture of grain and sawdust, bark, rice, annual plant stems and wood, fish oil, alfalfa, spent mushroom compost, sugarcane bagasse, coffee pulp, sugar beet pulp, okra, canola meal, cyclodextrins” (Rhodes 2014, p. 197), used to establish composting systems which are accelerated by mechanical processes, such as being aerated by periodical turning of the windrows or via a vacuum pump or air injection blower system in biopiles (Kennen & Kirkwood 2015). For problematic cases of chemical, metal, and petroleum contamination, bioremediation approaches can be used to establish microorganism communities to utilise bacterial action as a process of degrading toxic substances, where the process of introducing bacteria can metabolise particular contaminants, of which a number of natural species have been identified, isolated, and grown in quantity for application on contaminated soils or waters (Clewell  & Aronson 2013). For instance, organic chemist Christopher Rhodes describes that in 2007, a cargo ship spilled 58,000 gallons of fuel along the San Francisco shoreline and mats woven from human hair (resembling doormats) were used as sponges to soak up the spilled oil. These were then collected and layered with oyster mushrooms and straw. The mushrooms broke down the oil and after several weeks the resulting soil was good enough to be used for roadside landscaping (Rhodes 2014, p. 198). While the range of remediation techniques are only given summary outline here, the aim is to highlight the range of approaches, including the general areas of phytoremediation and bioremediation, alongside other measures such as capping. Other innovative techniques, such as phytomining, are currently limited but starting to receive growing interest, in particular approaches for extracting valuable materials, such as pharmaceutical or mineral elements, which can be recycled and may have economic value. In practice, a range of techniques can be used in conjunction, where “the most efficient remediation solution may be a combination of different approaches” (Pilon-Smits & Freeman 2006, p. 205). For instance, at Duisburg-Nord the approach to remediation involved extracting and capping the most toxic materials, installing a water recovery system, and allowing pioneer species to stabilise extensive areas of the site. This highlights that site clean-up is contingent on conditioning factors, such as budget expenditure, the type and complexity of contamination, and what future use the site may have, while being largely implemented by specialist companies that work alongside landscape architecture, although requiring a grasp of operational procedures by designers to better align and integrate within design proposals.

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A non-striving approach The Gas Works Park in Seattle is a notable example of site remediation within landscape architecture, while also deemed by many as one of the earliest precedents for post-industrial site design. Again, we must be careful of regarding it as a case of successful remediation, as problems with contamination continue to affect the site, which indicates that the clean-up is not fully resolved. For instance, Langhorst notes that the site has been partially closed between 2000 and 2003 to address issues of “surface soil contamination that initial clean-up presumably sealed off” (Langhorst 2004, p.  68). In contrast to Duisburg-Nord, where limited remediation took place, Gas Works Park had considerable efforts to remediate contamination resulting from its former use as the Seattle Gas Light Company gasification plant. Thaisa Way describes that while its former use resulted in leaving a “toxic wasteland,” because of its central position in the city it was considered to offer a prominent space for a new park, while informing Seattle’s ambitions to re-imagine itself as a post-industrial metropolitan region. This informed Richard Haag’s vision for a park that aimed at “encouraging new forms of human association, perception, and participation” for the city’s people (Way 2015, p. 150). In the context of remediation what is of interest is Haag’s approach to how he lay down particular benchmarks for landscape architecture, in particular his proposal to treat contamination in situ and not by the conventional approach of removal and landfill. The site consisted of major zones of contamination below the soil surface and heavily contaminated groundwater. Way describes that the most polluted soils and construction rubble were collected to form the “great mound,” which was covered with an 18-inch clay cap and fresh topsoil, while structured as a “perfect cone that water runs-off quickly ie not penetrate into toxins” (Way 2015, pp.  161–162). While this involved the process of capping, Haag saw this as an opportunity to not only deal with the most problematic waste, but make a central topographical mound feature that acts to counterbalance the domineering presence of the retained gas works furnace (Figure 4.1). The central mound offers a 360-degree view of city and lake, while acting as an observational point from where the public could witness park development (Way 2015). Haag envisioned that the site would change over time and people would be allowed phases of controlled access to experience its incremental development. Key to this development was the remediation of contaminated soil, for which Haag utilised a bioremediation process that drew on natural processes to recycle and neutralise contaminants (Figure 4.2). This involved breaking layers of clay and sand, while adding sawdust, sewage, sludge, leaf litter, and fly ash to remediate the soil through microbial processing (Way 2015). From soil that was effectively non-fertile, this remediation process has slowly changed its composition to support ruderal grass species, providing a greening of the site. The transformation of the site’s landform creates a gently undulating topography which softens the impact of the imposing industrial structure, while functioning to direct the park’s hydrological system through a carefully designed grading plan, slowing the flow of water and allowing the surface remediation of soluble pollutants through bacterial agency in the soil.

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Figure 4.1  Seattle Gas Works Park, United States Source: Image courtesy of the Haag Collection; image credit: Richard Haag

Figure 4.2  Seattle Gas Works Park, United States Source: Image courtesy of the Haag Collection; photo credit: Richard Haag

The entanglement

Some detractors of the Gas Works Park suggest that Haag erased many of the site’s former structures which renders the site, or in particular the furnaces, relatively isolated. However, given the extent of contamination and objective to remediate it, at Gas Works Park conserving the existing site conditions and industrial structures were not practically possible, although retaining the blast furnace creates a striking artefact that is effectively counterpointed by the undulating topography. Set in the context of early post-industrial design, Haag’s approach is more rightly viewed as pioneering, as while the remediation techniques utilised at Gas Works Park were not necessarily new, Haag approached the design with an appreciation of the differing requirements for treating contaminants in situ, turning these into design opportunities. For instance, he creatively combined different techniques, where the short-term intensive capping process was utilised to create the earth mound, which acted as a vantage point for people to experience long-term remediation processes, creating an interplay between the two techniques and the timelines they require. One of his key ideas was that the site would change over time, while recognising and giving expression to the fact that this would happen by social use and soil conditions changing together, which Haag described as a “non-striving approach,” allowing site based processes the appropriate time to develop.

Hypernature As evident at Gas Works Park and numerous other post-industrial sites, conservation of existing conditions may not be practically feasible or have the desired approach. It is apparent that on many post-industrial sites the significant impact of industrial activity has erased or significantly marginalised any previously occurring ecosystems, where the notion of returning to some prior natural condition is highly impractical. Equally, as outlined in Chapter 2, spontaneous planting on abandoned sites can cumulatively develop to establish new ecosystems, which require considered evaluation in relation to their structure and quality of biodiversity. This throws up a contested question regarding whether respect for spontaneous vegetation should involve retaining established plants with no interference, or whether intervening through design or management is the preferred way forward. In some cases, such as Nature Park Südgelände, Berlin or Evergreen Brick Works, Toronto (see Chapter 5), sensitive design and management can be an effective middle ground, or in the case of Duisburg-Nord, a varied approach that creates interesting contrasts, where spontaneous vegetation is interspersed with cultivated forms of planting. These cases indicate that the complex and intricate structure of many post-industrial sites requires a more convoluted approach, as opposed to any simple either/or answer. The question of whether to retain pioneer species or opt for a newly fabricated planting scheme can lead to contention. For instance, the New York High Line has stirred a significant amount of debate regarding its approach to planting, in particular how the site’s established spontaneous vegetation was largely replaced by a new planting scheme (Figure  4.3). Urban geographer Matthew Gandy suggests that the project “re-created aesthetic aspects to spontaneous

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Source: Image courtesy of Iwan Baan Studio

Figure 4.3 The New York High Line, United States

The entanglement

vegetation through the replanting of birch trees to produce a distinctive kind of ecological simulacrum of what occurred on the derelict structure before its extensive landscaping,” resulting in the “wasteland as artifice” (Gandy 2013, p. 1306). While Gandy’s perspective has relevance, it offers a generalised evaluation of the High Line’s planting design, while closer scrutiny reveals that the planting design had a more nuanced approach, including areas where spontaneous vegetation has been retained, areas where new planting evokes spontaneous vegetation and other areas containing native species reflective of regional ecosystems. If we were to reframe the question, then we could ask, what is an authentic urban nature, particularly in the context of post-industrial sites? For instance, one area of the High Line, designated as the Interim Walkway garden, contains spontaneous vegetation, offering a showcase of pioneer species retained without any interference. However, this includes species, such as Giant foxtail (Setaria faberi), that are non-native and most likely the result of migration through shipping cargo between Asia and North America, indicating that the presence of spontaneous species are often the result of anthropogenic activity, such as global trade exchange, or as outlined in Chapter 2, as exotic escapees introduced through botanical interest to form a cosmopolitan array of urban species. In this context the question of what constitutes an authentic urban nature in the context of post-industrial sites might better focus on the ability of plants to colonise and thrive on such challenging sites. This informs the planting design of the High Line, where the plant selection showcases how native, drought-tolerant, and low-maintenance species can thrive on poor soils and exposed sites, which indicates that beyond appreciation of spontaneous vegetation, site conditions, qualities, and opportunities are also significant aspects to evaluate. The project arose from the grassroots activism of local residents, who formed the Friends of the High Line to press the city authority to retain its structure and consider its potential as a new public space, which the interdisciplinary team of James Corner Field Operations, Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, and Piet Oudulf took on after winning a design competition in 2004. Their proposal was predicated on the question “What will grow here?,” thinking not just of plants, but of ecosystems, cultural programmes, and sustainable economies. The design team recognised particular qualities of how the existing 1.45-mile-long defunct infrastructure offered potential as a counterpoint to the intensity of its metropolitan context, with its elevated, meandering, and sequential spatial structure providing a sense of slowness, distraction, and otherworldliness. The design sought to retain a sense of the strange, wild character of its post-use condition, yet placing this within the prospective design of a new public space. Possibly the park is a victim of its own success, where ambitions to balance between the wild, the cultivated, the intimate, and the social are often lost amongst the high volume of visitors, with millions of people visiting each year, making the High Line the most visited park per acre in New York. The High Line design team included renowned garden designer Piet Oudolf, whose approach can be described as a naturalistic style informed by ecology, characterised by planting matrixes that convey how plants grow and intermingle in the wild (Figure 4.4). This approach sits alongside other notable “naturalistic”

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Figure 4.4 The New York High Line, United States Source: Image courtesy of Iwan Baan Studio

designers, such as Gilles Clement, while aligning with what Michael Van Valkenburgh defines as “hypernature.” The idea of hypernature promotes an attitude to seeing planting design as an exaggerated version of natural systems, which involves high species richness and visual intensity (Dramstad et  al. 2002), to call attention to human agency in the creation of urban ecologies rather than attempting to pass the work off as innocuously natural (Van Valkenburgh 2010). The simulation of natural qualities involves what Elizabeth Meyer describes as “the deployment of design tactics such as exaggeration, amplification, distillation, condensation, juxtaposition, or transposition/displacement.” She suggests that this requires “a keen understanding of the medium of landscape,” while providing attention grabbing planting schemes necessary for the distractions of routine urban life (Meyer 2008, p. 17). Reflecting these qualities, Oudulf’s planting design for the High Line involves the use of plants mainly native to the region, creating a planting matrix that evokes (or simulates) a sense of a regional characteristic, while structurally amplifying this to create a bold, form-full structure, providing a vibrant presence within the dense urban context of Manhattan (Figure 4.5). The planting is organised into a series of loosely zoned garden biotopes that offer a range of experiences, from the retained vegetation of the Interim Walkway, the Northern Spur Preserve that evokes the spontaneous vegetation, aligning with Gandy’s idea of the “wasteland as artifice,” to other areas that evoke woodland thickets, edges and groves,

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Figure 4.5 The New York High Line, United States Source: Image courtesy of Iwan Baan Studio

wetlands, wildflower fields and meadows, managed lawns, mixed grassland and shrubs, to offer a vibrant display of naturalistic planting that draws on regional characteristics. Featuring over 500 species of plants and trees, the planting scheme is organised with a level of rigour and consideration for management akin to a botanical garden, with levels of information that provide ethnobotanical insights, such as how certain plants have been used for medicine and food, alongside information about habitat properties for particular wildlife species. The array of gardens offers both a retrospective display of previously existing spontaneous nature alongside a prospective sense of urban renewal, of a vibrant use of planting that contributes to high quality public space. Set alongside an equally vibrant programme of public events and activities, the High Line is a significant precedent for how open space can be a catalyst for urban revitalisation. For instance, engineer Wolf Mangelsdorf describes the High Line as a “catalyst of urban regeneration with a positive impact on the development of the surrounding areas” where a diversity of developments “have been springing up along its path” (Mangelsdorf 2013, p. 96). This includes boutique galleries and hotels, luxury condos and penthouse apartments, alongside restaurants, street markets, and an array of cultural events, creating a new locus for cultural activity in the city, alongside a clear sense of neighbourhood revitalisation. The idea of hypernature implies a process of understanding ecological performance to fabricate systems that are essentially an enhancement of nature. For

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landscape architecture this is not necessarily new, as the discipline has always had a fundamental aim of providing an “improved” version of nature. However, our image of nature has changed greatly over the centuries (van Mensvoort 2006), largely in line with progressive ideas in the natural sciences and cultural values that have informed shifts in aesthetic sensibility. In the same way that remediation processes are viewed as a technological layer, hypernature follows a similar attitude of viewing nature through a scientifically enriched lens. This brings regard of planting design closer to the etymology of technology, involving applied knowledge, systematic treatment, and craftsmanship, imbued with practical intentions to intensify ecological performance. For landscape architects this presents an entanglement in how our cultured sensibilities shape our appreciation of nature, where current sensibilities are heavily influenced by ecological pragmatism as nature is increasingly appreciated for its performative ecological properties, while at the same time seeking to intensify experiential qualities.

Techno-nature Alongside a scientifically enriched appreciation of planting and ecology, what has also emerged in the contemporary field is a growing interest in the dynamic qualities of technology, as increasingly complex technological systems can demonstrate similar qualities to natural systems. Mark Bedau, a philosopher who works in the field of artificial life, describes that forms of emerging technologies are starting to share fundamental properties of living systems, such as self-assembly, self-organisation, metabolism, growth and division, purposeful action, adaptive complexity, evolution, and intelligence, largely driven by areas of technological innovation allied with scientific understanding, such as synthetic biology, micro-engineering, nanotechnology, robotics, and the various branches of artificial intelligence. What is significant in this expanding field is what Bedau identifies as a “fundamental change in the way we engage with our world,” where technological innovation shares ecological concerns, with the potential for “a more environmentally compatible kind of technology that is more complex, interconnected and responsive than the machine-based devices that have characterised the 20th century” (Bedau 2009, p. 95). While the potential of living technology is currently emergent and largely a futuristic possibility, what has become more pervasive is a range of hybrid and responsive forms of technological devices, including catalytic materials, sensor and actuator systems, biomonitors, telematics, and microprocessing, as an array of purposeful technologies that can be embedded in the environment. For instance, biomonitors already exist to gauge levels of CO2, while catalytic materials synthesised with existing building materials can reduce air borne pollutants. The possibilities currently being tested create a more environmentally embedded, responsive, and distributed form of technology, while being driven by a purposeful endeavour to produce sustainable technologies and contrivances that are “more congenial to socio-ecological systems” (Drenthen et  al. 2009, p.  7). The distinctions between artificial and natural systems have become significantly entangled, as innovative technologies, such as metabolic or catalytic materials,

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act as connectors between artificial structures and natural systems (Armstrong 2010). Antoine Picon describes this as the emergence of a “techno-nature,” where “the difference between the natural and artificial is not as clear-cut as it used to be,” indicating that we are entering an era with a “profound blurring of distinction between the natural and the artificial” (Picon 2015, p. 262). One project that provides a sense of how these entangled systems are shaping landscape architecture is Gardens on the Bay in Singapore. Led by Grant Associates, the ambitious scale of this project involved a multidisciplinary team that included Wilkinson Eyre (architects), Atelier Ten (environmental design consultants), and Atelier One (structural engineers), amongst a range of other disciplinary expertise. Grant Associates aim was to deliver “A  Fusion of Nature and Technology,” as “an ecological simulation of epic proportions” (Myers 2015, p. 34), set in the reclaimed swamplands around the city’s bay area (Figure 4.6). The following section explores this project based on a series of operative terms, including the embedded, optimised, responsive, and performative, which reflect fundamental qualities of living systems to provide a comparative evaluation of integrated technology. Embedded: A  characteristic of living systems in that they are embedded in the environment, possibly on multiple system levels. The Gardens on the Bay project firstly needs to be evaluated in the broader scale context of Singapore’s objectives to become an international precedent for sustainable urbanisation. This

Figure 4.6  Gardens on the Bay, Singapore Source: Image courtesy of Grant Associates; photo credit: Robert Such

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is based on an aspiration to be seen as a “City in a Garden,” which implies that urbanisation will be embedded in natural systems. However, major infrastructural projects around its waterfront, including Gardens on the Bay, have involved an intensive process of reclaiming land, such as naturally occurring swampland, to create the infrastructural basis for new urban development. For Gardens on the Bay this involved half of the $1 billion project budget being used to reclaim land and construct the various network systems, including roads, power, and drainage, to establish the grounds for the gardens. In this way the city has effectively dis-embedded itself from its natural coastline, creating contained infrastructural platforms to support its aspiration for sustainable development, which indicates that aims to become embedded as a “City in a Garden” requires an intensive dis-embedding from naturally occurring systems, where “artifice is Singapore’s nature” (Myers 2015, p. 31) and sustainability comes with great economic expenditure. Beyond this somewhat contradictory basis, the gardens project by Grant Associates was conceived as an integrated system, where the various components, including Supertrees and conservatories, would incorporate interlinked systems (Figure 4.7). For instance, the Supertrees act as vertical gardens ranging from 25 to 50 metres in height with embedded energy and water technologies that are integral to the cooling of the conservatories (Figure 4.8). The Supertrees incorporate photovoltaic cells to harvest solar energy, rainwater harvesting, and air exhaust systems, intertwined with the vertical display of tropical flowering climbers, epiphytes, and ferns (Figure  4.9). An on-site energy centre produces power through biomass from waste wood, which is embedded into the city’s National Parks Board maintenance of some 3 million trees which generate about 5,000 tonnes of timber clippings a month, while by-products from power production, including ash and liquid desiccant, are re-used in the garden. The project’s aim is to demonstrate sustainability at a large scale, which it succeeds in doing in terms of reducing energy reliance on the grid and using many system-based environmental solutions, such as conserving energy, purifying water and air, recycling by-products, and creating exchange systems between its main infrastructural components. While it is not fully self-sufficient, requiring some electricity from the grid, this requirement is significantly decreased for a structure of this scale. Beyond the sourcing of biomass from the city, the gardens largely operate as a self-contained system, with systems transfer within its own infrastructure. On an international scale the Supertrees and conservatory architecture offer marketable icons, helping the city to further embed itself as an internationally renowned tourist destination, while contributing to Singapore’s aspiration to be seen as a “City in a Garden.” Optimised: Living systems are characterised by optimised performance, which at Gardens on the Bay is evident in how nature has been so luxuriously simulated throughout the gardens, being most pronounced around the Supertrees. The construction of these structures is relatively simple, comprising four major parts, including a concrete core around a steel frame that supports planting panels and a canopy structure at the top. What is impressive is the Supertrees’ ability to provide the optimised conditions to support a diverse range of planting, with

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Source: Image courtesy of Grant Associates

Figure 4.7  Gardens on the Bay, Singapore

Source: Image courtesy of Grant Associates

Figure 4.8  Gardens on the Bay, Singapore

The entanglement

Figure 4.9  Gardens on the Bay, Singapore Source: Image courtesy of Grant Associates

an extensive variety of bromeliads, orchids, ferns, and tropical flowering climbers thriving on these structures (Figure 4.10). Interwoven with the planting are technologies that mimic the ecological function of trees, including photovoltaic cells that harness solar energy and rainwater collection systems that channel water to irrigate planting and water displays.

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Figure 4.10  Gardens on the Bay, Singapore Source: Image courtesy of Grant Associates; photo credit: Darren Soh

The heating system in the conservatories is optimised by the strategic placement of beams to provide shade, while the Supertrees act as coolant systems for the conservatories. There is little waste, where by-products, such as bio-waste and excess heat, are fed back into the system. Overall the gardens are designed for optimum productivity by taking a strategic systems approach, where technological and natural systems have been fused and system flows, including energy, water, biomass, and heat, are carefully orchestrated to create an integrated system of high efficiency and achieve a strong sense of optimisation. Responsive: A characteristic of living systems is their responsive qualities to environmental conditions, while being autonomous and self-organising. For the scale of a project such as Gardens on the Bay it is unrealistic to assume it would operate in autonomy from human control, which is largely indicated by the series of monitoring and energy stations that support the garden’s overall performance; however, there is a range of technologies incorporated within the garden’s various structures that act as responsive devices. For instance, the roofs of the conservatories are fitted with sensor-operated retractable sails that open automatically, providing an example of how responsive technologies can enable more autonomous performance. The gardens demonstrate how a range of technological devices can help to create a controlled biome, where devices help monitor and control the quality of the various systems, such as the oxygen content and velocity of water circulation,

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the optimum light and heat conditions for plants, or the capture and transfer of energy. This indicates that technology can enhance optimisation through responsive devices that are both purposeful and useful, although these are still largely set within human control systems. Another way to consider responsive qualities is by incorporating intelligent design within a built structure, such as how the conservatories work with natural heat convection, where only the lower levels are cooled and thermal convection allows warm air to rise, which is vented out at higher levels. Performative: The design of the gardens does not lose focus on its role as a public botanical gardens, with horticultural displays being pushed to extreme forms of constructed hypernature, particularly in the imposing vertical gardens. The Supertrees incorporate elevated walkways that provide differing vantage points of the vertically stratified planting, alongside panoramic views of the gardens and the bay area. The use of integrated technology provides a basis to enliven horticultural interest through coordinated light and sound displays in the evenings (Figure 4.11), when the Supertree Grove becomes both a natural and technological spectacle. Overall, the gardens become an entanglement of botanical, technological, and architectural features, set within a structure of optimised environmental management. Its performative aims are not only to support the propagation of plant species, including many endangered plants, but also to provide a vast range of visual and educational encounters.

Figure 4.11  Gardens on the Bay, Singapore Source: Image courtesy of Grant Associates; photo credit: Darren Soh

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Gardens on the Bay demonstrates that taking a systems approach in the design of a landscape can result in a range of carefully synchronised and calibrated relationships between technological and natural systems. It’s evaluation highlights that rather than differentiating between technology and nature, comparative understanding could identify common features between biological and artificial systems, such as how they “operate under similar constraints” (Weinstock 2013a, p.  22), to identify concepts, including spatial embedding, responsiveness, optimisation, and performance, that underpin intelligent systems based design. In areas of Gardens on the Bay this is partly biomimetic, where artificial systems, such as the Supertrees, take on the properties of natural systems. In other areas it aligns with the characteristics of hypernature by creating an exaggerated simulation of nature, such as the conservatory biomes and natural tapestries supported by the Supertrees. More generally the project is synthetic, in that the overall landscape is a hybrid techno-nature framework, where artificial systems synchronise with natural systems (Figure 4.12). While Gardens on the Bay demonstrates a synthetic approach to technonature, notably it remains outside of the distinction of a living technology, which Bedau et al. define as exhibiting lifelike properties, including being autonomous, self-repairing, self-reproducing, evolving, adapting, and learning. They identify that no current technology embodies “this powerful combination of life’s properties,” although some emergent technologies contain a mixture of artificial and natural systems that indicate that in the near future living technologies will create a “major transition in human history” (Bedau et al. 2010, p. 90). How this will radically transform our environment remains to be seen, although some speculatively entangled propositions are currently being tested. For instance, Hylozoic Ground (Figure 4.13) and Sentient Chamber are examples of the work by architect Philip Beesley and the Living Architecture Systems Group as installations that explore artificial systems with the power to sense and respond to human interaction. These explorations into architectural potential incorporate responsive technologies, including microprocessors, actuators, and proximity sensors, while using digital fabrication techniques to create intricate organic lattices that respond to human presence through an immersive and alluring display of motion, light, and sound. While these projects are currently experimental, they speculatively raise questions about how a more responsive, living architecture might behave in the future. From the point of view of urban spatial planning, Jochen Monstadt suggests that “against the background of the pressing environmental and resource problems of contemporary societies, this interwoven restructuring of cities and infrastructures means that we must look at the relationship between cities, technology, and ecology in new ways” (Monstadt 2009, p.  1927), which requires a fundamental shift from thinking of ecology in cities to understanding the ecology of cities (Evans 2011, p.  227). Michael Sorkin sees this as thinking about the “biological complexity of the urban habitat – biopolis – the city as an organism, a place where ecologies are not simply laminated but integral” (Sorkin 2012, p. 12), which requires a more scientifically enriched appreciation of nature, but also of technological systems, while including people within a new sense of reciprocal entanglement. This reciprocity is evident in projects, such as Gas Works Park

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Source: Image courtesy of Grant Associates; photo credit: Darren Chin

Figure 4.12  Gardens on the Bay, Singapore

The entanglement

Figure 4.13  Hylozoic Ground Source: Image courtesy of PBAI/LASG; photo credit: Philip Beesley Architects Inc.

or Duisburg-Nord, where society and site transform together and remediation is as much social as ecological. It is also evident in the precedent of the High Line, where site recovery is directly interlinked with urban revitalisation, where ecosystems, cultural programmes and sustainable economies are catalysed by a stronger sense of integrated reciprocity. The philosopher Isabelle Stengers suggests that “ecology proposes that we do not think in terms of determination but in terms of entangling speculative questions” (Stengers 2008, p. 48). At Gardens on the Bay reciprocity is more intricately entangled, where the landscape incorporates processes that are neither entirely natural nor artificial, but an optimised synchronisation of both, demonstrating the potential to align landscape performance with large-scale systems, including climatic, hydraulic, and energy-based systems that underpin sustainable urbanisation. In this context design sensibilities are not concerned with generating simple answers to narrowly defined problems, but rather employing creative and critical methods to engage environmental circumstances that are complex, embedded, and openly dynamic, responding to David Salomon’s view that “the social, environmental, and political problems we are now facing, and will continue to face, are not narrow or simple either” (Salomon 2016, p.  64). Approaching design as a process of entangling speculative questions might offer one way to develop design through a cultured sensibility that sees the landscape as an “ecology of circumstance” (Amin & Thrift 2002, p. 77), which requires design concepts, methods, and improvisations that open up new questions and horizons.

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Chapter 5

Everyday aesthetics

Philosopher Arnold Berleant has proposed the idea of a “social aesthetic,” involving aesthetic engagement that “renounces the traditional separations between the appreciator and the art object, between the artist and the viewer, and between the performer and these others” (Berleant 2005, p.  250), which Emily Brady describes as collapsing the “dichotomy between subject and object through participation in the environment” (Brady 2009, p. 6). In this way, Berleant suggests that aesthetic appreciation could be transformed into a realm in which we live as participants, as opposed to an older tradition that sees observation of objects as the dominant mode of appreciation, where the aesthetic appreciation of objects, of art objects and sometimes of objects in nature become inadequate to fully engage the context of the social environment. Berleant’s point is to expand aesthetic appreciation to a kind of environmental aesthetics, to not “restrict environment to its physical aspects” but appreciate human presence and transform traditional approaches in art and architecture to bring emphasis to dimensions of time and participation through movement. He suggests that “no environment that we can know and speak about is without a human presence; such a thing, in fact, is empirically impossible” (Berleant 2005, p. 253). Berleant suggests that in architecture “buildings are not self-sufficient objects but are places for human activity,” which “transforms architecture from an art of physical structures into an art of complex social and environmental organisation” (Berleant 2005, p. 252). For landscape architecture this is important, as the process of spatial design has direct social significance, with the potential to promote social activity and the interaction between people and society, society and the environment. This requires aligning the appreciation of spatial form with possibilities for social activity by considering how people act as participants and shapers of an evolving landscape, where social participants contribute to “creating the aesthetic character of the situation” (Berleant 2005, p. 254). Two projects that place emphasis on social aesthetics are Saint-Ouen in Paris and Evergreen Brick Works in Toronto, which deploy operative terms of flux and flow to catalyse social activity. Flux: Designed by Agence Ter, Saint-Ouen is a 12-hectare park located within the larger 100-hectare integrated development zone of former docks on the banks of the Seine, in the northern suburbs of Paris. The sense of flux is firstly evident in the surrounding urban area, as the former industrialised docks are being transformed into a new mixed development (Figure  5.1). The park parallels the

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Source: Image courtesy of Agence Ter

Figure 5.1  Park Saint-Ouen, Paris, France

Everyday aesthetics

same grid pattern as surrounding housing to spatially blend with this block pattern, before opening up into a series of terraces that parallel with the Seine. This indicates that the park plays a strategic role of integrating public space between the existing city centre and the river Seine, while linking to the theme of water by providing a spatial framework for collecting and treating rainwater. This dual quality informs Agence Ter’s ambition to create an inclusive and democratic space based on the concept of materialising two types of place: spaces for nature and gardens for the public (Elsea 2017). One of the qualities of Agence Ter’s design is how the spatial framework integrates a range of spaces for social activity alongside hydrological functions of water cleaning and storage, resulting in an overall sense of social and natural systems interweaving across the site, largely organised through the physical interplay between raised terraces and sunken floodable areas (Figure  5.2). The hydrological system comprises valleys, ponds, and large sunken surfaces that gather rain water, road surface run-off, and floodwater from the Seine, indicating that the park is a hydraulic system, operating as a huge reservoir that filters water and uses it to irrigate the plantations (Figure 5.3). The park draws on the ecological corridor of the river Seine, creating a series of habitats that support biodiversity, including tritons, dragonflies, frogs, birds, and insects (Elsea 2017). Diversification is also evident in the park’s social provision, incorporating a diverse range of structures to encourage and enable activity, including an

Figure 5.2  Park Saint-Ouen, Paris, France Source: Image courtesy of Agence Ter

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Figure 5.3  Park Saint-Ouen, Paris, France Source: Image courtesy of Agence Ter; photo credit: Yang Chen

educational greenhouse, which links to allotment gardens (Figure 5.4) and contains meeting spaces, a kitchen, a large experimentation and event space, a skate park, multifunctional amphitheatre, playgrounds, and flexible open spaces. The main catalyst for social activity is agricultural use, with a range of opportunities for people to become involved, while being organised around the educational greenhouse that acts as a community hub. Programmes overlap or create varied juxtapositions across the site, which is enlivened by shifts of seasonality in the productive gardens, event spaces, and planting and hydrological systems, with cycles of daily usage and seasonal event programmes, seasonal flooding, and hydrological fluctuations providing a sense of constant flux. It is through this sense of flux that participation is invited, either as part of a productive community cultivating the landscape, engaging in the various public events, or appreciating the rich ecological systems, to cumulatively provide the park with a vibrant identity for social activity. Sue Anne Ware describes that the park’s design reflects Henri Bergson’s notion of “duration,” as a design tactic where time is mobile and always incomplete. She cites Bergson’s (1910) idea that “all existence is in a flux of becoming, moving and growing, a succession of states which never rest where they are” as “duration is ineffable and is never a complete picture” (Ware 2016, p. 81). This idea captures the spatial quality of Saint-Ouen Park, which seems to be in a constant state of motion through its diversification and interweaving of natural and social activity. At the same time, the park retains a sense of traditional French aesthetic preferences for geometric order and strong axes, opening up vistas into the surrounding city and riverscape to create a feeling of openness in contrast to the compact spaces of surrounding

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Figure 5.4  Park Saint-Ouen, Paris, France Source: Image courtesy of Agence Ter; photo credit: Yang Chen

streets. This indicates that at Saint-Ouen spatial formalism is still important; however, this is considered in relation to social and hydrological action, providing an enlivened sense of spatial organisation and experience. Flow: Evergreen Brick Works is a community environmental centre located within the floodplain of the Don Valley Ravine on the edge of Toronto. The project involved transforming a post-industrial brick manufacturing site into an environmental centre, with strong emphasis on educational programmes for all ages to foster greater appreciation of urban sustainability and green design, which the centre in itself is a great example of. The project was initialised by Evergreen, a Toronto non-profit organisation dedicated to creating programmes that reconnect city communities with local natural systems. Evergreen’s director, Geoff Cape, saw the potential in this collection of abandoned buildings to create a kind of village in splendid isolation in the midst of the city (Figure 5.5), where people of all ages could come together to explore the relationship between nature, culture, and community (Lobko 2011). They promote this as a “new species of environmental centre” (Evergreen 2011), where people can become part of a resilient ecological community. The site’s former condition as an industrial pad factory site, characterised almost exclusively by hard surfaces and impenetrable building configurations, required extensive adaptation. A multidisciplinary design team led by DTAH and including architects, landscape architects, interpretive designers, engineers, ecol-

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Figure 5.5  Evergreen Brickworks, Toronto, Canada Source: Image courtesy of DTAH; photo credit: Tom Arban

Figure 5.6  Evergreen Brickworks, Toronto, Canada Source: Image courtesy of DTAH

ogists, and artists has successfully transformed the site into a multi-use community facility, including new office buildings, a conference and meeting facility, farmers’ market, native plant nursery, cafe, demonstration gardens, exhibition space, and extensive children’s education and programming areas. The design focus on adaptive re-use, rather than an emphasis on new buildings, retains the site’s industrial legacy (Figure 5.6) while adding to the centre’s identity for catalysing innovative programmes for sustainability.

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The main challenge in establishing the centre related to the former industrial site being dislocated from the city’s public infrastructure, while being set within a pronounced hydrological ravine landscape, creating problems of accessibility and seasonal storm water flooding. To overcome these problems, the design focused on working with flows of movement through the site (Figure 5.7), including water, cars, electricity, trains, and wildlife, to create a free-flowing system that catalyses change through higher site porosity and integration with surrounding networks. The problem of site accessibility was alleviated through improved bicycle and pedestrian path networks (Figure 5.8), alongside new vehicular connections by shuttle bus and car share programmes. Site design responds to being within a floodplain ecosystem by establishing a robust storm water management system, a diverse hydrological structure comprising of constructed wetlands, a rain garden, bioswales, green roofs, a storm water management pond, and retention greenways (Figure 5.9). The outcome is a diverse spatial framework activated by the idea of enhancing flow, where recreational and event spaces are interwoven with areas of managed biodiversity and hydrological systems, while social and natural activity work in close proximity and the centre acts as a nucleus within a broader 40-acre wetlands and meadows park. The conceptual design approaches at Saint-Ouen and Evergreen Brick Works reflect Yuriko Saito’s concern for a shift in aesthetic appreciation from “high art” to what she describes as an aesthetic of the everyday. Saito suggests that “some-

Figure 5.7  Evergreen Brickworks, Toronto, Canada Source: Image courtesy of DTAH

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Figure 5.8  Evergreen Brickworks, Toronto, Canada Source: Image courtesy of DTAH

Figure 5.9  Evergreen Brickworks, Toronto, Canada Source: Image courtesy of DTAH

times our aesthetic interests and concerns generate memorable aesthetic experiences, while other times they simply lead to further thoughts, judgements or actions, without inspiring special moments that stand out from the flow of our daily affairs” (Saito 2007, p. 10). This sense of aesthetic appreciation places value on the everyday and unexceptional as much as the grand and distinguished, where aesthetics goes far beyond art appreciation or the special or sublime experience,

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to permeate every aspect of everyday life (Jorgensen 2011). Using concepts such as flux and flow provide tactical ways to engage the everyday, to give them a frame of reference that links spatial design to social and ecological dynamics. In this way a project may still have concern for spatial form, but with emphasis on how designed space contributes to the activation of social participation, ecological systems, and the dynamic interactions between them. Notably, both projects emphasise the potential of urban agriculture and food-based events as key catalysts for social participation and interaction, while providing the spatial provision for production, education, and markets within the organisation of each site. This highlights that flexibility and adaptation are important qualities of spatial design, allowing people the space to self-organise and evolve, while trusting that this approach results in the enrichment of the landscape. In this way it is not objects or spatial dimensions that become the primary focus of the aesthetic field, but an engaged sense of social participation and ecological systems that are actively shaping the landscape. This sense of engagement creates a process of spatial transformation that is dynamic; it is in flux and flow, where change is both social and ecological, while occurring through durations that are everyday, seasonal, and incremental. As a means to conceptualise the landscape it resonates with Berleant’s idea of an environmental aesthetic, where dimensions of time and participation through movement are foregrounded (Berleant 2005).

Rights to the city Recognising the everyday practices of people highlights that post-industrial sites have played a significant role in how people, as much as nature, act to pioneer and colonise abandoned or disused sites, which in turn has catalysed thinking about the social needs of a population and their rights to access and use these sites. There is a growing interest, reflected in an expanding range of studies, into the social rights to public space, which identifies with an array of tactics and durations for the appropriation of abandoned sites, amongst other urban spaces (notably Oswalt et al. 2013; Lydon & Garcia 2015; Ferguson 2014). For the purposes of this more succinct account, three generalised forms of social appropriation can be described as transgressive space, which works in disregard of planning regulations; loose space, which regards planning regulations but opportunistically works within its gaps; and commons space, which promotes people’s rights to the city. Transgressive space: The transgressive appropriation of abandoned sites offers great potential for the everyday practices of people. In its broadest description, the act of transgression is in disregard of any regulatory planning system, which in many cases is about appropriating disused or abandoned space and making it socially active. Matthew Gandy points out that while abandoned sites may appear “useless” to the momentary glance of passers-by, they “might nonetheless be spaces of adventure, imagination, and self-discovery for artists, children, filmmakers, and other explorers of the urban realm” (Gandy 2013, p. 1302). Tim Edensor suggests that “ruins may become spaces for leisure, adventure, cultivation, acquisition, shelter and creativity,” including forms of alternative public

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life and “the pursuit of illicit and frowned-upon practices” (Edensor 2005, p. 21), while Anna Jorgensen and Marian Tylecote describe that these sites can be seen as “places to take short cuts, walk the dog, wander about, gather blackberries, hang out, light a fire, dump rubbish, sleep rough, take drugs, ride a motorbike, build a den or chop down trees,” to give but a few examples, while more substantial forms of organisation can take hold, such as travellers’ encampments (Jorgensen  & Tylecote 2007, p.  455), squatting and community gardens (Doron 2000, p. 254), and artist and activist installations (Desimini 2015, p. 280). These accounts indicate that abandoned sites offer space for a vast array of transgressive occupation, which implies that cities may need such spaces for society to expand. Gil Doron suggests that “these emptied shells have been transformed, outside the dominant economic system, into workshops, studios and recreation rooms,” while being “diversified into galleries, theatres, concert halls and clubs, outside the established art and cultural institutions” (Doron 2000, p.  253). This indicates that underlying the array of transgressive occupation is a common situation where the site or space is appropriated without any formal regulation or institutional support (Desimini 2015); however, groups who collectively occupy these sites may form their own self-regulatory organisations. In other words, while they might transgress on formal planning regulations, they bring their own forms of socio-cultural structure that is self-regulating and may have quite an elaborate albeit non-apparent structure of informal organisation. It is often the presence of this informal and transgressive social organisation that brings about tension with city authorities. For instance, Gandy suggests “the re-enchantment of urban space as a focus of “play” in its broadest sense is a profound challenge to an increasingly commodified, controlled and denuded public realm” (Gandy 2016, p. 436), while Jorgensen and Tylecote see that tension arises in how these sites are often unmanaged, and “for those who use an aesthetic of care to evaluate the quality of urban communities and their landscapes, may signify a complete breakdown in social order” (Jorgensen & Tylecote 2007, p. 455). So while these sites offer an opportunity for people to appropriate them, in turn they become the locations, either intentionally or inadvertently, of ideological and political tension through colonising the spaces within, what Jorgensen and Tylecote refer to as, “capitalism’s imperfectly formed spatial fabric” (Jorgensen & Tylecote 2007, p. 452). Jill Desimini suggests that “temporary users and traditional developers operate with opposing intentions and methods” where “the former is concerned with content whereas the latter relies on financial return. The appropriator repurposes existing resources, mining the “junkyard” for opportunities, whereas the investor pushes new construction” (Desimini 2015, p.  280). While this points to one tension that arises through the appropriation of abandoned spaces, many writers suggest the greater tension lies in competing forms of urbanisation, where global capitalism and neoliberal development have both shaped contemporary cities (Smith 2010), and cities are both political/economic entities and cultural/social constructs, with each underlying the other (Susser & Tonnelat 2013). When in balance and operating together, these competing forces may actually provide an enhanced

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form of urbanism; however, renowned urban geographer David Harvey suggests the balance has tipped in favour of an advanced capitalism (Harvey 2012). Advanced capitalism places great value on real estate and protecting land assets, requiring cities to become pervasively programmed and regulated, while being branded on desires for inward investment, where the transgressive occupation of abandoned spaces does little for any of these causes. For instance, Desimini provides the example of Dörnbergdrieck in Berlin, where an initially transgressive appropriation of an abandoned site turned into a community garden that lasted for over 40  years. However, she identifies that no matter what the duration, there is a “vulnerability” for established occupation, as when ultimately faced with development pressure “hotel construction prevailed” (Desimini 2015, p. 280). The example of Dörnbergdrieck illustrates that transgressive occupation can take on longer durations to become established as a more enduring temporary use, although this is dependent on “the staying power of the individuals and organisations involved” as much as “market fluctuation” (Desimini 2015, p. 280). It also indicates that whatever the duration, transgressive occupation will have to negotiate what urban geographers Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift describe as a “machinic apparatus” of regulatory controls to modulate society, including “policing, planning regulations, zoning policies, place-promotion, preferred forms of capital investment, the bounding of discrete spaces, the regulation of flows of traffic, people and money, together with flexible systems of information gathering” (Amin & Thrift 2002, p. 45). Loose space: The transgressive occupation of abandoned space that results in longer durations of temporary use moves us closer to the idea of loose space. Desimini describes that in this more established form of temporary use projects often have stated goals and last for set durations (Desimini 2015). She sees that these projects thrive in “moments of economic downturn and stagnant investment” (Desimini 2015, p. 284), while Doron describes that it usually involves communities taking over private spaces and turning them into the hands of the public or at least to a certain community (Doron 2000, p. 254). Desimini suggests that in this type of situation the “temporary becomes a demonstration project rather than a viable urban design strategy,” which is often “evoked for its potential to thrive in situations of economic stagnation and its implied democratic appropriation of space” (Desimini 2015, p. 288). This form of temporary appropriation can be related to Karen Franck and Quentin Stevens’ description of “loose space,” which occurs when the assigned use for a landscape type ends, allowing new uses to replace the programmed ones, or when alternative users are somehow able to “appropriate” the space for their own ends, alongside official users (Franck  & Stevens 2007). This form of occupation works within formal planning; however, it occurs when a loosening of regulations provides greater degrees of freedom, or in some instances even encourages forms of self-organising activity. Desimini identifies that this loosening of regulations “allows for new activities to occupy the lapse between one regulated, sanctioned use and the next” (Desimini 2015, p. 280), while often being seen as desirable due to sustaining levels of social vitality in urban areas where development is not happening. Franck and Stevens identify that “acces-

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sibility, freedom of choice and physical elements that occupants can appropriate all contribute to the emergence of a loose space, but they are not sufficient. For a site to become loose, people themselves must recognise the possibilities inherent in it and make use of these possibilities for their own ends, facing the potential risk of doing so” (Franck & Stevens 2007, p. 2). This reflects Desimini’s idea that loose spaces are the “free, breathing room of the city,” which “supports the intersection of differences,” of the “unexpected, the spontaneous and risky” (Desimini 2015, p. 281). Some writers have questioned the motivations behind the loosening of regulations, suspecting that it is often driven by a stop gap approach that has little resistance when capitalist investment returns. In this situation the loosening of regulations can be seen more like a suspension, which Doron sees as allowing temporary use but only “stretched into an unknown future until the planning begins” (Doron 2000, p. 261). She describes that sites of temporary use, or as she calls them, “transgressive zones,” are created by the “suspension of new plans for an area that is underused or has been abandoned by its formal activities” (Doron 2000, p. 259). Desimini sees that “by relegating certain types of use to the temporary, they become the most susceptible to replacement and future elimination,” where “the loose use is subservient to the sanctioned one” (Desimini 2015, p. 281). In this perspective, the loosening and suspension of regulations is part of a planning process, where the encouragement of temporary occupation is part of a strategy to overcome short term problems, such as economic stagnation. Forms of loose space can also be seen as strategic opportunities, where temporary projects are strategically deployed within long-term developments. One example is the Kings Cross Pond Club, a public art project commissioned by Kings Cross Central Partnership to occupy a temporary construction site in the midst of the intensive regeneration of this area of London. Shumi Bose describes that the area behind the dual tram sheds of Kings Cross and St Pancras train stations was “an unsavoury wasteland, home to not much more than a karting track, a couple of rave clubs and a smattering of prostitutes” (Bose 2015, p. 174). The area was targeted for substantial urban redevelopment, including residential and commercial units, while being catalysed by the relocation of notable institutions, including Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design, and companies such as Google and Louis Vuitton. The aim is to catalyse a new cultural zone for London that includes an estimated 50 new buildings moving into a site of some 67 acres in total, while it’s expected that “about 30,000 people will come to King’s Cross every day” to work and play (Michon 2016, p. 101). While the overall regeneration of the area will include a series of open spaces, the strategy for promoting social value included a series of temporary projects, which included the two-year Kings Cross Pond Club (Figure 5.10). The project was part of a series of temporary projects in the construction phase of the area’s redevelopment that formed a strategic programme of “attention-grabbing temporary uses” to help foster a new identity of social activity for the area (Michon 2016, p. 102). Designed by Dutch studio Ooze Architects as a micro-ecological environment that centred on a natural swimming pond, the project allowed bathers to encounter an organic, aquatic environment, yet set within the vast construction

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Source: Image courtesy of Ooze Architects; photo credit: John Sturrock

Figure 5.10  Kings Cross Pond Club, London, United Kingdom

Everyday aesthetics

sites of Kings Cross, providing a “photo-friendly community attraction” as a “green oasis” (Bose 2015, p. 175). The principal designers’ (Eva Pfannes and Sylvain Hartenberg) aim was to combine the joy of swimming with awareness of coexisting with a natural environment, as the interplay of processes between humans, water, soil, and plants. The experience of swimming in a natural pool amid roaring construction provides a strategic image, but the project has a deeper message, calling attention to “the balance between ourselves, and what we call nature,” where the natural filtration of the pond creates restrictions to human use, which requires working in regard of the system’s capacity as a natural resource (Pfannes, interviewed in Bose 2015, p. 176). The designers see the project as “a natural environment in miniature,” where water in the swimming pond is purified by natural processes using plants, nutrient mineralisation, and a set of filters to supplement natural filtration (Figure 5.11). This creates a closed-loop system, where the daily number of bathers is restricted by the amount of water the system is able to clean, as “the water is purified by a living filtration wetland and submerged water plants” (Bose 2015, p. 174). In reflection of their Pond Club project, the designers seen its value in “teaching” through a “poetic experience,” seeing the project as a “relational object” that has the ability to compel questions about the culture of living, in particular the need to consider harmony between consumption or utility and natural, biological systems (Potrcˇ, interviewed in Bose 2015, p. 176). In this way they see the social activation of space as a “symbol of understanding” (Bose 2015, pp.  175–176), which highlights that while temporary projects are often deployed to conjure social interest and engagement, they have greater freedoms to inject thoughtful responses to the processes of urbanisation, beyond the aims of providing shortterm branding for the benefit of long-term regeneration. For many projects of this kind, the question seems consistently aimed at how investment in public space is meaningfully and sustainably interlinked with community and environment,

Figure 5.11  Kings Cross Pond Club, London, United Kingdom Source: Image courtesy of Ooze Architects

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although as illustrated at Kings Cross and Dörnbergdrieck, it is far less questioning forms of urban development that most often prevail. Commons space: In its original conception by ecologist Oliver Gilbert, the idea of urban commons was to evoke the human ecology that “opportunistically stakes a claim to available territory” (Jorgensen & Tylecote 2007, p. 456). From the viewpoint of social anthropology, Ida Susser and Stéphane Tonnelat describe that the commons underpins the right to the city as advocated by Henri Lefebvre (1968) and developed by others (Purcell 2002; Stanek 2011), which included “the right to urban everyday life, the right to simultaneity and encounters, and the right to creative activity (or the city as Oeuvre)” (Susser & Tonnelat 2013, p. 107). They outline that “the commons is an old term describing a specific regime of property management for spaces such as grasslands, fisheries, and other natural resources collectively held by a community,” which manifest the belonging of its members through a sharing principle, which is neither private nor public. They suggest that while this was widespread until the twentieth century it has “suffered from the joint rise of both the private and the public domains, which have laid the ground for the marketization of nearly all objects and resources” (Susser & Tonnelat 2013, pp. 107–108). Current social movements for commons space promote that communities should have higher preference than capitalist development or private land owners, where user communities are seen as the primary stakeholders over and above investors, and that community interests are not for sale (Bollier 2007, p. 29). Susser and Tonnelat suggest that people have begun to collectively recognise and demand a “right to the city,” where streets become the sites of social struggle (Susser & Tonnelat 2013). They see that commons space offers a potentially transformative social process, where people can generate “diverse forms of communal values and new visions” (Susser & Tonnelat 2013, p. 107), reflecting Dougal Sheridan’s idea that “normal assumptions about spatial organisation and use may well be questioned and alternatives developed” (Sheridan 2012, p.  203). These alternatives relate to Jorgensen and Tylecote’s idea that commons spaces are “unlike most other urban public spaces,” because they are not prescriptive and “each individual seems free to do in them as they choose” (Jorgensen & Tylecote 2007, p. 456). They suggest that “instead of conceptualising derelict urban sites as terra nullius, containing nothing of value, and clearing them in readiness for future development, their intricate topography of human structures and artefacts, natural growth and decay, could be treated as the basis for future site planning and design” (Jorgensen & Tylecote 2007, p. 459), which Dieter Rink suggests “would enhance the areas concerned as well as being cost-effective” (Rink 2005, p. 67).

The Freedom Park The former Tempelhof airport site in Berlin provides a precedent of how ideas about transgressive occupation, loose space, and commons rights to the city can be seen in the shaping of this landscape. The former airport, built in the 1930s and closed in 2008, extends over a 900-acre site that created a significant economic burden for the city authority after its closure. Initial plans to turn the site over to

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private developers was met with considerable public opposition, when in 2009 an estimated 5,000 people undertook a “Squat Tempelhof” to demonstrate against this proposed development and call for the creation of a public park. The result was almost 700 acres of the site being designated as Tempelhofer Freiheit (Tempelhof Freedom Park), reflecting the will of people to not only recognise its social value but to see this as the basis for evolving its public spaces. One of the immediate qualities of the site is its expansiveness (Figure 5.12), where the central areas of former airport runways have been retained to offer a

Figure 5.12 Tempelhof Freedom Park, Berlin, Germany Source: Image courtesy of Fraser Halliday

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vast and open viewpoint across the site. Gross Max won an ideas competition that recognised that this sense of openness could be interpreted both as a spatial quality as well as a socially driven concept: of establishing an openness, or looseness, to programming public activity. For instance, Desimini describes that “the site is a perfect candidate to explore the long-term potential of loose space,” where the “space is remarkable, its vastness transcendent, and its ability to welcome multiple uses unparalleled,” including skating and biking on the runways, protected habitat in-between, bird-watching, community gardens, art installations, and picnicking (Desimini 2015, p. 291). Possibly the most interesting areas are where improvisation is encouraged, supported by the provision of basic materials, including pallets and shopping trolleys, while allowing people to appropriate these materials to their own ends. What has emerged is a series of self-organised community gardens and art installations (Figure 5.13), which transform in relation to varying durations of group engagement. Desimini identifies that at Tempelhof activities are supported and the landscape has been given time and space to establish, acting as “an incubator of self-organised urbanism,” where the space is “funded and backed by the city but allowed to develop spontaneously” (Desimini 2015, p.  291). As such the strategy is focused not only on spatial transformation, but also social and cultural transformations, where space is promoted as a progressive ground that enables people to “take action” and become “directly involved with the production of

Figure 5.13 Tempelhof Freedom Park, Berlin, Germany Source: Image courtesy of Grün Berlin GmbH; photo credit: Manuel Frauendorf

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space” (Desimini 2015, pp. 279–280). As a democratic process this allows people to make collective decisions about the park and its role in the city. For instance, in 2014 concerns were raised that the proposed plan for the site included urban development around its edges, including new residential districts, commercial sites, industries and public services, resulting in a public referendum that called for “100% Tempelhofer Feld,” which was successful in stopping construction on the edges and keeping it in its current open condition. What has instead emerged is a planning process where “pioneer” groups can propose projects that get city support, which are chosen on a selective evaluation of their benefits for public participation, such as gardening, education, art and culture, sport, and local users. While the landscape plans were not fully realised what has emerged reflects the essence of Gross Max’s concept, to, on one hand, preserve the unique qualities of the site while allowing it to develop by having different curators orchestrating public programmes that encourage participation. Elizabeth Meyer suggests that such “participatory environmental experiences not only break down the barriers between subject and object; they change us and, at times, have the capacity to challenge us, to provoke us to act” (Meyer 2008, p. 18). This reflects philosopher Jacques Rancière’s call for “emancipated spectators” (Rancière 2008) that are “able to form alternate visions in which they can project themselves as unique individuals belonging to an imagined community” (Susser  & Tonnelat 2013, p. 114). This is evident at Tempelhof, where the emancipation of users has ultimately resulted in resistance to plans for the development of the park, to instead evolve as a place where space is produced through socially driven projects. Gross Max realised the importance of appreciating Tempelhof’s contextual setting, seeing that “the site has been transformed over time, but has always remained a distinct and coherent entity.” Their aim was to work with its metamorphosis, the “unfolding of the site over time,” focused on “processes of change, transformation and duration” to evolve its cultural context (Hooftman 2012, p. 3). As reflected in the case of Park Saint-Ouen and evident in the other projects in this chapter, designing sites for new social use should reflect the concept of movement, of setting things in motion “rooted in the notion that a park is not an object but a process,” which requires an approach that is “geared to enchantment rather than formalism” (Bava 2012, p. 6). This sense of enchantment arises when social values are fused with aesthetic ones, personified by the enrichment of design with concerns for social participation, discovery, and responsibility, combined with a sense of freedom for people to actively shape public space. This can be described as socially driven space, reflecting Berleant’s idea of a “social aesthetic,” construed as resembling human relations, where many factors combine to shape the aesthetic experience, including participants, site, and cultural context.

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Chapter 6

Transitional urbanism

It is well recognised that the majority of the world’s population now live in cities, with more than 7  billion people classified as living in urban settlements, while a large bulk of resource consumption takes place in these urban contexts, concentrated in cities (Hodson et al. 2012). From the perspective of urban ecology, Cristina Ramalho and Richard Hobbs suggest that cities “have expanded rapidly over the course of the major urban transition that started in the 1950’s and that has accelerated steeply over the past 10–20  years” (Ramalho  & Hobbs 2012, p.  179), resulting in what Jochen Monstadt describes as the “radical sociospatial reorganisation of cities” (Monstadt 2009, p. 1931). This can be viewed as a successional transformation, as a post-industrial era that reflects a broad shift from a production economy to a consumption economy. This transformation has informed numerous urban transitions, including the spread of suburbanisation, the growth of infrastructural networks and automobile usage, the philosophy of obsolescence, and the increase in globalisation (Grove et al. 2015, p. 24), while bringing about the growing role of transnational companies and their globalisation strategies, new technological developments, deregulation (and reregulation) policies, and the privatisation of public services (Harvey 1989; Lefevre & d’Albergo 2007; Monstadt 2009). Historical conceptualisations viewed cities as a pattern based on a dense centre core with concentric outward development within contained and well-defined areas, where ideas about “order, legibility and straight lines” dominated imaginations about what the urban should accomplish (Simone 2011, p. 357). However, contemporary cities now are perceived to be increasingly dispersed and expansive, “expanding rapidly in a spatially complex, non-linear manner” (Ramalho  & Hobbs 2012, p. 179), which has resulted in not only a fundamental restructuring of cities but also their urban regions (Monstadt 2009, p. 1931). Urban theorists Neil Brenner and Christian Schmid describe that the changing structure of cities adopts a more polycentric and web-like sprawl, where multiple centres are served by overlapping networks of transportation, electronic communication, production and consumption, with an unprecedented densification of inter-metropolitan networks, requiring colossally scaled infrastructural investments (from highways, canals, railways, container ports, airports and hydroelectric dams to undersea cables, tunnels,

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pipelines and satellite fleets) stretching across territories and continents as well as oceanic and atmospheric environments. (Brenner & Schmid 2015, p. 152) As cities have changed, the idea of “the urban” has shifted to reflect this more dispersed and expansive pattern of urbanisation. Brenner and Schmid assert that “the urban can no longer be understood as a bounded spatial unit,” where it is “misleading to equate the urban with any singular, bounded spatial unit (city, agglomeration, metropolitan region or otherwise); nor can its territorial contours be coherently delineated relative to some postulated nonurban “outside” (suburban, rural, natural, wilderness or otherwise)” (Brenner & Schmid 2015, pp. 165– 166). In relation to spatial planning, Joe Ravetz, Christian Fertner, and Thomas Sick Nielsen see this as a process of ongoing urbanisation as the “integration of even relatively peripheral areas into the urban system, the connection of neighbouring cities to form polycentric networks and the formation of large-scale metropolitan regions” (Ravetz et al. 2013, p. 15), where the concept of the free-standing city in rural surroundings is replaced by a wider regional urban system of inter-connected and polycentric settlement forms (Hall & Pain 2006). Rather than being relegated to a non-urban “outside,” the moment of extended urbanisation must be “viewed as an integral terrain of the urbanisation process as a whole” (Brenner & Schmid 2015, pp. 167–168), where “the entire fabric of planetary settlement space is now being both extensively and intensively urbanised” (Madden & Wachsmuth 2017, p. 238). Brenner and Schmid suggest that “rather than witnessing the worldwide proliferation of a singular urban form, “the city,” we are instead confronted with new processes of urbanisation that are bringing forth diverse socio-economic conditions, territorial formations and socio-metabolic transformations across the planet” (Brenner & Schmid 2015, p. 152). In this context, the growing concern for sustaining rapidly expanding urban areas requires new conceptualisations, while landscape architecture plays a key role in providing integrative solutions to transitional urbanism. The following sections suggest a series of conceptualisations that reflect current urban theory, while providing examples of how this informs landscape architecture as a response to urbanisation. The interfacial landscape: Extended urbanisation becomes most pronounced around city edges, where the older distinction between city and countryside has become increasingly blurred by a pattern of urbanisation that is often nucleated, fragmented, and discontinuous, resulting in the idea of a distinct city edge becoming outdated. David Madden and David Wachsmuth see that “the town/country divide that once appeared to offer a stable, self-evident, basis for delineating the specificity of city settlements, today appears increasingly as an ideological remnant of nineteenth-century industrial capitalism that obfuscates the patterns and pathways of contemporary urbanisation processes” (Madden & Wachsmuth 2017, p.  238). These landscapes are now commonly described as peri-urban areas, characterised by a fragmented mix of rural and urban features, where rural areas in proximity to cities have been increasingly shaped by urban influences (Caruso 2001; Ravetz et  al. 2013). Ravetz et  al. describe that these

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areas commonly suffer from “a lack of spatial governance” (Ravetz et al. 2013, p. 13), which Thomas Sieverts describes as creating a complexity that is difficult to conceive as a legible whole, as the complexity, discontinuity and richness of these areas challenges interpretation (Sieverts 2003). While these issues become most pronounced in peri-urban areas, they extend well beyond city limits into the regional landscape, challenging the distinction of an urban to rural gradient that characterised old cities. Ramalho and Hobbs suggest that assuming that urbanisation and its induced environmental changes decrease in a linear gradient from the core to the city fringes is now deemed as an oversimplification of urban environments, as it “does not fit with the non-linear and complex growth of contemporary cities” (Ramalho & Hobbs 2012, p. 179). Ravetz et al. see that what emerges is a growing understanding of the “urban–rural interface” emphasising the “mixed character of these areas without fixing them on a single, simple gradient” (Ravetz et al. 2013, p. 17). What results from this new pattern of urbanisation is the emergence of a landscape unlike the traditional core/periphery structure with a dense middle, but instead a more fragmented structure of discontinuous land uses (Mossop 2006). In this situation urban development appears to have sprawled into the countryside in a way that obscures the distinction between city and countryside, where instead of a distinct city edge, a structure of interfaces between urban and rural land uses have become inter-dispersed, into “patchy and complex spatial patterns across the landscape, rather than in a linear gradient” (Ramalho & Hobbs 2012, p. 181). Environmentalist Marion Shoard describes that the new city edge interface is characterised by competing land use, where “business parks, distribution depots and housing estates” sit “cheek-by-jowl” with other less desirable uses, such as “travellers” encampments, rubbish tips, recycling centres, car scrapyards, sewage works and telecommunications masts” (Shoard 2000, p. 78–79). She proposes that if you visit a high street today “the chances are that you will not learn all that much about what makes the town which contains it tick economically” while suggesting that you would probably get a much better idea by taking a trip to its interface, where “you will find the branch offices and the industrial works and superstores which probably account for far more turnover than the businesses and shops surviving in the traditional centre” (Shoard 2000, p. 85). This indicates that while peri-urban areas are peripheral, they play a significant role in the overall functioning of cities, as the interface with broader regional and global territories through numerous infrastructural and networked linkages that interconnect an increasingly extended urban field. There are growing pressures on peri-urban areas, not only for spatial resources but for other environmental resources, such as water and ecological networks, which lead to highly complex planning issues. These areas are increasingly subject to often contradictory aims, where urban expansion primarily for economic growth, such as commercial, business, and transport services, are set alongside aspirations to protect the natural environment, increase the provision and access to open space, and develop more resilient forms of environmental engineering, such as flood prevention schemes. This not only leads to a fragmented structure, but one that is largely structured around the enclosure of land

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that significantly orchestrates and constrains public movement, where “spaces are separated according to their usage” (Mangelsdorf 2013, p. 95). One project that personifies many of the issues of a peri-urban landscape is the Terra Nova Biosphere Belt by bbz Landscape Architecture, located in the area between the towns of Bedburg, Bergheim, and Elsdorf, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. This area has been heavily impacted upon by open-cast lignite (brown coal) mining, which has largely erased the site of the ancient Hambach Forest to clear land for mining. These mining operations began in the 1970s and are due to continue until approximately 2100, with a long-term mitigation plan to create one of Germany’s largest lakes as the outcome of mine excavation in a vastly altered landscape. While mining operations are on-going, bbz Landscape Architecture was tasked to create a recreational corridor to interconnect the three towns, while bringing emphasis to efforts to restore the ecological quality of the landscape, alongside interpretation about industrial processes. In response, the designers created a network framework between the towns, while working with the various interfaces between public space, areas of ecological restoration, and industrially active land (Figure  6.1). The framework includes a network of cycle and pedestrian routes, punctuated by pavilion structures that are strategically positioned to emphasise the various interfaces (Figure 6.2) and provide levels of

Figure 6.1 Terra Nova Biosphere Belt, Rhein-Erft, Germany Source: Image courtesy of bbz Landscape Architects; photo credit: Veit Landwehr

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Figure 6.2 Terra Nova Biosphere Belt, Rhein-Erft, Germany Source: Image courtesy of bbz Landscape Architects; photo credit: Tom May

interpretation to help people understand the long-term processes of this energy landscape. Regarded as a Biosphere Belt, the framework not only allows movement through this operational landscape, but brings attention to the various geological and industrial processes that have shaped it. The pavilions are constructed with the consistent use of material and colour, to provide a set of structures dispersed along the 14-kilometre route to bring a level of coherence and interpretation to the landscape (Figure 6.3). This route sits along the former soil conveyor system as a wide and enclosed linear corridor, which has been transformed into a linear park that supports recreational and ecological functions. New earth mounds support a range of vegetation, including grassland, cypress, and pine woodland, which provides spatial diversity alongside habitat restoration, while evoking characteristics of the area’s pre-glacial landscape to imply the origins of lignite in the region. This conveys a broad-scale temporal narrative, placing the relatively short timeframe of industrial extraction in the context of long-term geological timeframes and interactions at the scale of the biosphere. In this way the project aims to provide levels of accessibility, not only in relation to movement, but also providing interpretation about the extensive processes active in this industrial hinterland.

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Source: Image courtesy of bbz Landscape Architects; photo credit: Veit Landwehr

Figure 6.3 Terra Nova Biosphere Belt, Rhein-Erft, Germany

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The interspersed landscape: The idea of the peri-urban landscape brings emphasis to what is now seen as an area of mixed functions, which Ravetz et al. describe as “a new kind of multi-functional territory,” as something between, neither urban nor rural, but a more transitional landscape where these forms of land use are interspersed (Ravetz et al. 2013, p. 13). They identify that these areas are “open to a wide range of possible uses,” including “tourism, high-value housing, business sites, agriculture, nature conservation, flood mitigation or energy production and distribution,” where economic, ecological, historical, and residential aspects are in competition with each other (Ravetz et  al. 2013, p.  25). Martin Kaufman and William Marsh describe that “unlike the older core city, edge cities are characterised by isolated areas of residential, commercial centres and corporate/industrial campuses” (Kaufman & Marsh 1997), alongside many of the city’s essential apparatus, such as rubbish tips, electricity sub-stations, sewage works, gas-holders, motorway interchanges, and so on (Shoard 2000). The problems arising in a multifunctional and interspersed landscape are evident in Proap’s design for the Alcântara Wastewater Treatment Plant. The treatment plant is situated in Alcântara, a district of Lisbon, Portugal, that historically acted as one of the city’s key industrial zones, resulting in its fragmented and interspersed urban fabric. The infrastructural presence of the treatment plant, along with road networks, is set alongside older patterns of farmland, creating discontinuity in the landscape, especially the visible disconnection between the building’s sloping roof and surrounding terraced hillside. Proap addressed these conflicting components by transforming the roof into a landscape evocative of hillside farming (Figure 6.4), bringing reference to the farming history of the Alcântara Valley to effectively blend the building into the surrounding landscape. The activation of the roof as a bioengineered landscape supports a rich variety of planting (Figure  6.5), while providing visual coherence with the adjacent hillside when viewed from the elevated roadway, negotiating the problems of disconnection amongst interspersed landscape components, while enhancing ecological and visual qualities in the process. Ravetz et al. describe that the peri-urban area operates as “a kind of frontier capitalism,” promoted by “business/science park investors with images of green fields and fast road connections to the airport” (Ravetz et al. 2013, p. 25). In order to gain access to larger consumer and labour markets there are clear incentives for new business parks, shopping malls and airport zones to find new locations, not within but between major cities, in order to serve larger populations more efficiently (Ravetz et al. 2013, p. 23). This indicates that peri-urban areas are often seen as desirable places to live and work, with the potential of offering an attractive mix of more rural setting, well-connected transport networks, and a range of efficiently serviced support infrastructures. However, it also leads to often conflicting impacts between these components, which extends beyond visual impact to include globally increasing issues of noise, smell, air, and other forms of environmental pollution. An example of the potential conflicts between residential areas and largescale infrastructure can be seen at the Buitenschot Land Art Park, which lies southwest of Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, one of Europe’s busiest airports for

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Figure 6.4  Alcântara Wastewater Treatment Plant, Lisbon, Portugal Source: Image courtesy of Proap; photo credit: Diogo Bento

Figure 6.5  Alcântara Wastewater Treatment Plant, Lisbon, Portugal Source: Image courtesy of Proap; photo credit: Diogo Bento

Transitional urbanism

cargo and passenger flights. Designed by a multidisciplinary team that included H+N+S Landscape Architects and artist Paul De Kort, working with the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research [TNO], the project’s aim was to reduce noise from the airport’s main runway to lessen impact on adjacent residential neighbourhoods. The project is informed by understanding how the impact of ground noise from planes taking off and landing can be reduced through a structure of ridged landforms (Figure 6.6), which were derived from the observation that multiple ridges in plowed fields helps to absorb and disperse ground noise. Inspired by De Kort’s study of acoustic experiments by German scientist Ernst Chladni, alongside techniques in local farming, these imaginative landforms draw abstract references from both scientific and agricultural practices, scaled up as a series of interlocking landform diamonds (Figure 6.7). The landforms provide a spatial framework for a series of pathways, cycle routes, and recreational subspaces to add functional value for local residents, while providing a series of striking vistas and spatial encounters across the site, including a parabolic dish that, inversely to the park’s purpose, captures and amplifies sound (Figure 6.8). For a site that was previously flat and relatively featureless, the design has generated a series of spatial interplays between the ridged landforms, the variety of spaces set within the strong axial framework, and a mosaic of grassland dominated by red fescue. The park’s landform structure has proven successful in its primary task of significantly reducing ground noise from the airport, while providing additional social and ecological benefits. Notably, the project stems from the Schiphol Group’s ambitions to develop the airport as a “Mainport” of Europe, while recognising that although this development is good for the Netherlands, it has an impact on the immediate surroundings, requiring projects, such as Buitenschot Park, to limit adverse effects, such as noise impact, and gain support from local residents, public administrators, government authorities, and other stakeholders for the further expansion of the airport (Schiphol Group Strategy 2016–2020).

Figure 6.6  Buitenschot Park, Amsterdam, The Netherlands – Noise Reduction Diagram Source: Image courtesy of H+N+S Landscape Architects and TNO

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Figure 6.7  Buitenschot Park, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Source: Image courtesy of H+N+S Landscape Architects; photo credit: Your Captain Luchtfotografie

The transitional landscape: The idea of the transitional landscape is not only about the spatial structure of multifunctional land uses, but also how these areas encompass the changing nature of the city itself. Ravetz et  al. see this as both the physical expansion of urban or suburban form and also “the wider economic, social and cultural dynamics of change,” where the peri-urban area is characterised by “continuous flux and transition” (Ravetz et al. 2013, p. 14). They see a challenge in understanding the transitional quality of peri-urban areas, where processes of change, expansion, agglomeration and other structural effects, are often working in combination. The result is “not always smooth and predictable,” but often rapid and discontinuous, while involving a range of system-wide changes, including “economic systems, social structures, political systems, spatial patterns, technology and infrastructure systems” (Ravetz et al. 2013, p. 26). The transitional dynamics of peri-urban areas are what makes them compelling landscapes to study, where multifunctional land uses are set in a transitory state of spatial configuration, as an expression of the overall urban system. Ravetz et  al. discern typical transitions as including shifts from primarily agricultural production towards a more diverse multi-functional landscape and settlement

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Source: Image courtesy of H+N+S Landscape Architects; photo credit: Paul De Kort

Figure 6.8  Buitenschot Park, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Transitional urbanism

pattern, an urban re-structuring for globalised systems of production and consumption, and urban restructuring towards a networked economy with different patterns of green/grey infrastructure, often resulting in the peri-urban area becoming “a front line between the problems of the city and the countryside” (Ravetz et  al. 2013, p.  14). This reflects Michel Desvigne’s observation that the “usual catastrophe of the city outskirts is embodied in that terrible line separating the housing environment from the vast swathes of land that were created by the consolidation of lots and are used for modern-day intensive farming” (Desvigne 2009, p. 63). In response to this context, Desvigne’s design for the TGV Station, Avignon, creates a spatial organisation of various components of land around the station that negotiates how this transportation hub, alongside sprawling housing on the city’s edge, sits in relation to patterns of rural field divisions and windbreak hedges. His aim is to create greater consistency between these urban and rural features by using the “positive features” of this peripheral landscape, which involves deploying the characteristic elements of farmland, including fields, prairies, orchards, and groves (Figure 6.9), as spatial devices in a framework for expanding urbanisation (Desvigne 2009, p. 63). In this way the transitional encroachment of urban sprawl into the rural landscape is spatially absorbed within a landscape framework that is transposed from the pattern and character of the agricultural landscape, offering a more consistent and integrated transition between urban and rural components. Desvigne’s aim is not only to evoke the rural alongside the urban, but to create a landscape framework that absorbs the development and expansion of the city, where transitions between urban and rural components are blended into a new composition. The project recognises that in these peri-urban areas urban expansion is on-going and to a high degree unpredictable in what form and extent

Figure 6.9  TGV Avignon, France Source: Image courtesy of Michel Desvigne Paysagiste

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it takes; however, this uncertainty can be strategically absorbed within the physical constraints inherited from the agricultural structure, which acts as a landscape framework for future urban development. This reflects broader ideas about the transitory condition of peri-urban areas, where development is influenced by fluxes of uneven and often unpredictable drivers, which Brenner and Schmid see as “a contradictory interplay between rapid, explosive processes of urbanisation and various forms of stagnation, shrinkage and marginalisation, often in close proximity to one another” (Brenner & Schmid 2015, p.  151). Landscape frameworks offer the spatial organisation to absorb these uneven developments, while providing a level of coherence in structure and character that effectively brings coherence to interspersed rural and urban elements. The idea of a transitional landscape is not only a spatial condition but also a temporal one, which Desvigne describes as working with the “intermediate nature” of the landscape, where the use of agricultural patterns is not based on nostalgia but their ability to change, while at the same time providing legible frameworks to organise the development of the city. While many urban developments subsume planting for the purposes of greening streetscapes, Desvigne inverts this approach. He describes projects, such as TGV Avignon and Bordeaux Parc aux angéliques, as experiments that “entail devising vast vegetal structures comprising tens of thousands of trees,” with dimensions that “exceed those of cities” on both geographical and temporal scales. In this sense, it is not only about working with rural and urban elements, but configuring these with an appreciation of what Desvigne describes as “the long time frame of landscapes and cities,” in the same way that farmers and forest rangers appreciate successive phases “of different stages of development that concentrate and condense, in a short period, processes with historical rhythms” and “to play with the multitude, with the successions” (Desvigne 2009, pp. 12–13). The effectiveness of this approach can be seen in Desvigne’s design at Bordeaux Parc aux angéliques, which works on a long-term 10-year implementation of planting frameworks, established in post-industrial sites as they incrementally become available (Figure  6.10). Over time, this creates an extensive network of planted routes and open spaces, which involves planting groves that follow the grid like formation of the industrial sites, while providing linkages between the Garonne River and adjacent neighbourhoods. The result personifies Desvigne’s idea of working with the intermediate qualities of the landscape, evolving a robust framework of groves, alley ways, and clearings, dominated by Poplars, to absorb future urban development (Figure 6.11). The approach involves a process of gradual substitution, seeing the design of this large-scale park as an incremental process of pragmatically working with the transformation of the city, while recomposing it within its broader riverine territory, conjuring a sense of the largescale presence of a forested riverine landscape infiltrating the city that acts to harmonise the long gestation period of the city and its territory. The metabolic landscape: Many writers increasingly see the city not as a static structure, but akin to a living system, which consumes energy, food, water, and other materials while excreting wastes and other outputs. For instance, Joe Ravetz likens the city to a living organism, describing the continuous flow of

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Figure 6.10  Bordeaux Parc aux angéliques, France Source: Image courtesy of Michel Desvigne Paysagiste; photo credit: Mairie de Bordeaux & Thomas Sanson

Figure 6.11  Bordeaux Parc aux angéliques, France Source: Image courtesy of Michel Desvigne Paysagiste; photo credit: Florian Delon

Transitional urbanism

inputs and outputs as its “metabolism” (Ravetz 2010). The rationale is that like an organism, the city requires water, energy, food, and other resources, while also producing wastes and residuals that must be disposed of, which all contribute to its sustainable growth (Forkes 2010). Citing the early work of Herbert Girardet, David Wachsmuth describes that cities “transform raw materials into finished products,” where the “urban metabolism is the conversion of nature into society,” involving the conversion of “food, fuels, forest products, minerals, water, and human energy into buildings, manufactured goods, and financial and political power: all the components of civilisation” (Girardet 1996; Wachsmuth 2012, p. 514). In the post-Rio era, ecosystemic approaches to cities, such as metabolism studies, have received increasing support in view of sustainability goals (Alberti 2008), informing a shift in studying a city’s resource systems to also include aspects of environmental pressure, which Wachsmuth sees as a “transition in environmental concern from limits of growth to climate change” (Wachsmuth 2012, p. 514). Progressive cities have become early adopters of strategies that promote low-carbon living through fossil fuel divestment and climate resilience. For instance, by investing in renewable energy, heat transfer, and public transportation systems, Copenhagen aims to be carbon-neutral by 2025. More broadly, while urban metabolism studies may respond to global trends, such as resilience to climate change, the main impetus is to adapt cities towards more resilient economic futures in response to a range of global pressures, including population growth, resource scarcity, energy demand, and food shortages. The premise underlying urban metabolism studies is that cities sustain themselves on flows, including people, energy, materials, biota, and information, which require evaluation in regard of the efficiency and magnitude of their distribution. This might be defined as the sum total of the technical and socioeconomic processes that occur in cities, resulting in growth, production of energy, and elimination of waste (Kennedy et  al. 2007). Evaluating an urban metabolism helps to identify processes that threaten the sustainability of a city, including “altered ground water levels, exhaustion of local materials, accumulation of toxic materials, summer heat islands, and irregular accumulation of nutrients” (Kennedy et al. 2007, p. 43), fragmentation and degradation of natural habitats (Marzluff & Ewing 2001), the contamination of watersheds, pollution from plastics, loss of biodiversity and ecosystem collapse (Alberti & Marzluff 2004), the disruption of hydrological systems, energy flows and nutrient cycling (Grimm et al. 2001), the loss of farmland, forests, and species diversity, alongside increased traffic and pollution (Kennedy et al. 2007), all of which indicates the range of issues that metabolic studies need to interpret and subsequently find constructive solutions for. A recent project that focused on interpreting the city of Rotterdam’s urban metabolism was curated by Dirk Sijmons for the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam in 2014. Entitled Urban by Nature, the exhibition outlined an extensive study, the Rotterdam Urban Metabolism, conducted by a team including Fabric, James Corner Field Operations, and TNO, to explore how expanding urbanisation into Rotterdam’s broader regions can be made sustainable in relation to urban and economic growth, alongside other potential impacts, such as

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climate change and environmental degradation. The study identifies key principles to improve Rotterdam’s urban metabolism, including the countering of waste through catalysing high-value flows; the channelling of residual waste flows; the recovery of raw materials; and the reduction of transport movements (Tillie et al. 2014). The study aims to put the “relationship between city and nature on the agenda,” to explore how strategies for managing flows can cumulatively develop a more resilient city based on its metabolism (Sanson & Brugmans 2014, Preface). The study places emphasis on evaluating the interactive quality of flows in relation to their relevance to the everyday life of people, responding to what Sijmons sees as the strategic task of enhancing the efficiency and cohesive interaction between flows through spatial planning and design. This is concentrated on nine vital substance flows, including goods, people, waste, biota (inter alia plants and animals), energy, food, fresh water, air, sand, and clay, although this becomes more complex, with other aspects, such as building materials and freight traffic, indicating that understanding an urban metabolism is not straightforward. It is not simply a case of identifying how matter flows from one location to another, but exploring how flows are performing and contributing to the city’s functioning and well-being, while taking account of the many subsystems acting within the more vital flows (Tillie et al. 2014, p. 14). The study identified a range of strategies for improving the relationship between flows, such as the recovery of waste product heat back into the city’s heat network to benefit inhabitants and businesses (Figure 6.12). Heat hubs form the couplings between residual heat from the port and geothermal heat at depths of 2 and 4 kilometres. The hubs control the cascading of the various demands for heat from the immediate environment, while offering the potential to act as public spaces with secondary social functions. Another strategy involves working with Organic Carbon Dioxide for Assimilation of Plants (OCAP), which links CO2 production from the port to those requesting CO2 in areas with greenhouses, using new and disused gas pipelines (Figure 6.13). As the supply of CO2 outstrips demand, an important addition to the project is the storage of CO2 in the ground, a process known as Carbon Capture Storage (CCS). These examples indicate that studying urban metabolism is not only concerned with optimising flows in themselves, but looking for cohesive synergies in the varied interactions of flows, alongside spatial opportunities to support urban functions. The study highlights the need for city planning to adopt a more “smart city” approach, where data, cooperation, and innovation are underpinned by digital resources that enable data collection and monitoring of metabolic processes, while providing the capacity to make more rapid, regenerative changes in spatial planning and policy than was previously possible. The interdependent landscape: Wachsmuth points out that an older conceptualisation of urban metabolism tended to create a false distinction, where nature was deemed to be located in the city’s rural hinterland, while the city was where the society that metabolises this nature is located. He describes this as a conceptualisation that viewed the city as “only understandable in relation to the external natural environment that supplies the raw materials for its growth,” while

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Figure 6.12  Channeling (Energy) Waste: Heat Hubs, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Source: Image courtesy of FABRICations

Figure 6.13  Channeling (Energy) Waste: Carbon Dioxide, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

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relegating nature to “nothing more than raw materials” that fuel the urban metabolism (Wachsmuth 2012, p. 514). However, Wachsmuth challenges this assumption, suggesting that a key transition is going beyond the proposition that cities are “constructed on natural foundations and subject to natural constraints,” to the proposition that “the city is constitutively social and natural from the bottom to the top, and urban nature is just as political as urban society” (Wachsmuth 2012, p. 515). Monstadt suggests that the “interdependence of environmental and social changes becomes most apparent on the terrain of the urban, where the metabolic transformation of nature is concentrated both in its physical form and in the production of socioecological consequences,” where “nature in cities (and beyond) is socially produced, guided by social, economic, and political processes, and embedded within varying power relations” (Monstadt 2009, p. 1933). In this context, nature is valued not only as the “fuel in urban society’s engine” (Wachsmuth 2012, p.  515), but as what human geographer Erik Swyngedouw proposes to be a “socio-nature,” where the ubiquity of nature in social realms (including the city) is never independent of the social (Swyngedouw 2006). This implies that urbanisation is built on a closer and more complex structure of socio-ecological systems, outlined by Swyngedouw as including “the production of dams, the re-engineering of rivers, the management of biodiversity hotspots, the transfiguration of DNA codes, the cultivation of tomatoes (genetically modified or not) or the construction of houses” (Swyngedouw 2006, p. 27). From the perspective of urban ecology, Marina Alberti describes that the fundamental attributes of complex human and ecological adaptive systems include “multiple interacting agents, emergent structures, decentralised control, and adapting behaviour.” She suggests that to manage urban sprawl requires working with “integrated human-ecological phenomenon,” where cumulative effects can result from “locally-made decisions involving many intelligent and adaptive agents” (Alberti 2008, p. 22). This implies that socio-ecological systems can be viewed as complex adaptive systems, which presents a challenge for urban planning to respond to such a conceptualisation. One project that indicates how urban planning might respond is proposed by Dutch architects MVRDV in cooperation with the city of Almere, both of whom are renowned for pioneering social planning. The project, called Freeland, acts as a developmental strategy for an area to the west of the city known as the Almere Oosterwold, where urban expansion into surrounding farmland is the starting point for a project that aims to revolutionise how land is developed through greater interdependence between people, planning and landscape. MVRDV refer to the strategy as being organic and liberated, with aims to establish an evolutionary urbanism that sets a developmental framework for an area of 43 square kilometres, while setting parameters for urban components, such as roads, public space, and infrastructure. This allows freedom in how people develop their own plot; however, with the liberty to define one’s own living space comes responsibility to integrate it within the collective neighbourhood and the development of Oosterwold, as a process of socially embedded planning that challenges people to become active participants in urban development

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(Figure 6.14). The aspiration is that this approach will enable a form of collective planning to transform the area into a diverse living and working landscape (Figure 6.15), where people have the freedom to develop their own plots and organise the various services, such as energy, food, and water supply, in relation to the broader development of the town. The strategy, which aims to add 60,000 homes by 2030, is underpinned with initiatives to help catalyse collective development, while recognising the increasing use of social media to enable crowd planning and funding to inform collective planning decisions through “swarm intelligence,” indicating its basis as a process of complex adaptive planning. As a tantalising experiment in urban planning, Freeland offers the prospect of an urban development that redefines conventional top-down planning, to instead encourage greater individual and collective freedom, with the logic that this can foster greater interdependence between people, land, and urban processes. This reflects current thinking about the “ecology of cities,” of how aggregated human and ecological systems are dynamically interwoven (Grimm et al. 2008), where urbanisation is a constitutively socio-natural process and the city is “not merely the site of urban metabolism but rather its product” (Wachsmuth 2012, p. 519).

Figure 6.14  Almere Oosterwold Freeland, The Netherlands Source: Image courtesy of MVRDV

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Figure 6.15  Almere Oosterwold Freeland, The Netherlands Source: Image courtesy of MVRDV

The Freeland project aims to foster greater integration between neighbourhood and productive land, with the prospect of encouraging urban agriculture through allotments and collective farming, to bring processes of production and consumption closer together. While the outcome of the Freeland experiment remains to be seen, projective visualisations suggest that its evolving form will reflect the relational and hybridised drivers, patterns, and processes that catalyse its development, where urban living and rural production become more evidently interdependent. Freeland emphasises opportunities for public participation with the objective of creating greater integration between agricultural and urban land use, which implies that food is a key aspect of a city’s metabolism, directly linked to human metabolism. For instance, the Rotterdam Urban Metabolism study identifies that “good food grows on good soil, requiring good water and nutrients”; however, these conditions are scarce and the city largely relies on importing food resources, often from sources well beyond the urban region (Tillie et  al. 2014, p. 80). In response, the aim for Rotterdam is to shift food production to closed, organic cycles, which are recognised as happening within small-scale initiatives across the city, with the potential of scaling up to create greater commercial interest.

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A successful example of urban food production in Rotterdam is the “Uit Je Eigen Stad” (From Your Own Town) project, centred on an aquaponics system that works on fish excretions being broken down into nutrients for water plants, which in turn clean the water, indicating that it is not only about cultivation but about utilising the waste products to create a sustainable, symbiotic system. The success of this project is part of a broader strategy to encourage urban farming projects across Rotterdam, which have significantly increased in recent years; however, the greater aspiration to shift the city’s food production into closed looped and localised systems remains a long-term prospect. Pierre Bélanger sees that “the economy is now inseparable from the environment, and so are modes of production,” which requires a growing awareness of their mutual co-dependency (Bélanger 2009, p.  90). The Rotterdam Urban Metabolism study highlighted the interdependence between many urban landscape systems across the region, with the need for cohesive planning and strategic cooperation between planning, environmental, and economic agencies to deliver solutions at policy, planning, and spatial levels. For instance, the study mapped out how only a few “green” and “blue” infrastructures are linked up (Figure 6.16), while intensive farming methods have a significant impact on biodiversity. At the same time, potential spatial reservations were recognised within empty spaces at the port, which supported a range of species including types of plants, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals, while areas around power stations and below high-voltage lines could provide potential space to increase biodiversity by providing corridors and patches to enhance the city’s ecological network. Monitoring the presence of certain species indicates the quality of air, water, and soil in the urban ecosystem, while it is becoming increasingly recognised that enhancing urban ecosystems has numerous interconnected benefits, where urban plant and animal life helps regulate water cycles and air temperature, reducing the urban heat island effect, which in turn decreases the incidence of asthma and bolsters residents’ immune systems, while also being beneficial to psychological health through recreational opportunities (Haase et  al. 2014; Tillie et al. 2014). These benefits indicate how biodiversity in the urban ecosystem contributes to the quality of urban life, while the study identified that the main barrier to increasing biodiversity in urban areas, such as the port, related to restrictions through policy that place limitations on landowners. As further outlined in Chapter 7, the Ecological Energy Network demonstrates the potential of overcoming these barriers by encouraging ecosystem management in cooperation with a variety of land owners and network regulators. The hydraulic landscape: There is increasing recognition that while cities have grown away from dependence on the surrounding landscape, they “cannot function in isolation from their natural environment” (Kennedy et al. 2007, p. 55). Bélanger suggests that “put simply, the urban-regional landscape should be conceived as infrastructure,” while identifying that “the watershed is the most basic and irreducible structural element in this system” (Bélanger 2009, pp. 90–91). In terms of sheer mass, “water is by far the largest component of urban metabolism” (Kennedy et al. 2007, p. 45), while recognising watersheds as a driver for urban systems inverts the older idea of the city as a physically bound structure,

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Figure 6.16  Rotterdam, The Netherlands – Urban Scale: Flows of Biota

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to reframe its limits in relation to underlying ecological resources on the regional scale of its hydrological catchment area. Bélanger suggests that in this strategic shift, “the slow, yet large-scale accumulated effects of near-water industries and upstream urban activities once considered solely at the scale of the city, are now more effectively understood at the scale of the region” (Bélanger 2009, p. 86). Strategies for watershed management are slowly emerging as an alternative to conventional city planning, while the values of this approach are being increasingly recognised. Antoine Picon suggests that given the increasing scarcity of water resources, “one may even wonder if it is not time to consider cities as complex hydraulic systems, as a series of watersheds that must be managed with the greatest care” (Picon 2015, p. 257). On a strategic level, planning with watersheds is about recognising that urbanisation functions beyond the scale of the city, where many functions, such as landfills, agriculture, vehicular networks, sewage systems, and water supply, are inextricably bound within and can no longer be planned without their watersheds. Alberti describes that watersheds reflect simultaneously “biophysical factors, such as land cover, geomorphology, hydrology, climate, and natural disturbance regimes” alongside “land and infrastructure development of multiple human agents (both individuals and organisations) who interact in economic markets and public institutions (e.g., governments)” (Alberti 2008, p. 93). This indicates that watersheds support both natural and human functions, including numerous benefits, such as water provision, flood control, energy supply, recreation, biodiversity, nutrient cycling, and carbon sequestration, amongst others. In regard to the growing pressure to manage water in urban areas, in particular to mitigate against flooding, Cloudburst is a strategic plan by the City of Copenhagen and Greater Copenhagen Utilities (HOFOR). The aim was to develop a citywide planning strategy that responds to the Copenhagen and Frederiksberg catchment areas with aims to create an integrated blue-green infrastructure to protect against flooding. The strategy was a response to the impact of flooding in July 2011, when 150 millimetres of rainfall fell on the city of Copenhagen in just two hours, resulting in insurance claims in excess of 800 million euros and socio-economic losses estimated to be double that figure (Strickland  & Divall 2015). This event compelled the city authority to create a more resilient approach to water management, to avoid such sudden “cloudburst” events. Ramboll + Ramboll Studio Dreiseitl were tasked with formulating a toolkit of strategic solutions to increase the city’s resilience to flooding. The strategy involved identifying which parts of the city were most at risk of flooding, while working with broad principles: to retain rainwater in the upper catchment; to provide robust and adaptable drainage of lower lying areas; and to focus on implementing green and blue solutions in existing projects (Strickland  & Divall 2015). Toolkit solutions involved a range of spatial designs, largely integrated into the existing urban fabric, while working through a hierarchy in relation to street widths and open spaces. For instance, in narrow streets, road cambers and drainage channels were adapted to channel water run-off, while in wider streets, planted channels act to retain and filter water. A number of open spaces have been adapted to retain and store flood water (Figure 6.17), while the central

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Source: Image courtesy of Ramboll + Ramboll Studio Dreiseitl

Figure 6.17  Copenhagen Cloudburst, Denmark

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feature of St  Jorgen’s Lake, an existing lake in the city centre, is intended to become a “Cloudburst park,” with adjustment to its current water level to provide a large central water storage area (Figure 6.18). These solutions have been planned to allow public movement throughout the city even when a drastic cloudburst event occurs. What is of interest in the Cloudburst project is that the strategy aims to reverse conventional approaches in urban water management that sought to channel and hide water, to instead bring these systems onto the surface and make them more visible and by turn manageable (Strickland & Divall 2015). The strategy seeks to mitigate against a significant problem, but does so by integrating flood solutions into the urban fabric, while seeking additional benefits, such as increased biodiversity and recreational opportunities, to contribute to Copenhagen’s reputation as being one of the world’s most liveable cities (Monocle 2014). The project is notable in how the strategy is being implemented through a cross-department co-operation between the roads, water, parks, and environment authorities as a precedent for joined-up thinking, while indicating that water is an essential force within urban areas and when managed sensitively can offer the benefit of creating a greener and more liveable city. The circular landscape: From the perspective of sustainable urban planning, Hodson et al. see that “returning to more circular, location-specific urban metabolism is now considered to be a necessity if cities are to survive a future of resource and climate uncertainty” (Hodson et al. 2012, p. 793). However, Monstadt suggests that innovations in socio-technical infrastructure have allowed cities to extend their “ecological hinterland by importing natural resources or resource-based infrastructure services, like electricity, etc, from afar,” while also using ecosystems “far beyond the urban bioregion as sinks for their emissions” (Monstadt 2009, p. 1926). He suggests that “the innovation of urban infrastructures liberated urban growth from its former metabolic constraints and from the productivity and carrying capacity of the urban bioregion” (Monstadt 2009, p. 1926). Cities now depend on ecological transformations that occur on the global scale (Alberti & Marzluff 2004), where many goods, including food and building

Figure 6.18  Copenhagen Cloudburst, Denmark Source: Image courtesy of Ramboll + Ramboll Studio Dreiseitl

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materials, are increasingly sourced from continental and global trading networks, as more local resources become limited or completely exhausted (Kennedy et al. 2007). Resource demand results in the expansive reach of infrastructures, where the scales of societal demand requires economic networks and transport infrastructures that span continents and may in turn separate the demand for natural resources and the ecosystems that provide these resources (Berkes et al. 2006; Cumming et al. 2013, p. 1141). Hodson et  al. propose that to return to a more circular, location-specific urban metabolism requires strategies of decoupling and recoupling of urban systems, where decoupling involves challenging the assumption that there is “an endless supply of resource inputs for consumption and nature’s unlimited capacity to absorb the concentrated wastes it produces” (Hodson et al. 2012, p. 793). They suggest that given that many of the energy and resource flows that cities depend on are finite, it follows that the continuation of global economic growth will depend on the decoupling of this economic growth from escalating resource use, while seeing it as necessary to reconfigure the world’s urban infrastructures to reshape resource flows through cities in more innovative ways. This involves decoupling urban growth from increased use of constrained and non-renewable resources while depending on a strategic “recoupling” of urban systems to more abundant and renewable resources. Where possible, this recoupling would be better managed at a city-region scale, which “facilitates the re-embedding of urban systems within the wider nexus of ecological services (e.g., water supplies, soils, air quality, landfill space) and natural resource extraction (such as, e.g., fossil fuels or building materials that can be drawn from multiple sources)” (Hodson et al. 2012, pp. 790–792). On a pragmatic level, Hodson et al. suggest that a “combination of resource productivity improvements, increased use of local renewable resources, and reuse of waste products can allow cities to better manage the flows passing through them in pursuit of decoupling” (Hodson et al. 2012, p. 792). For example, transitioning from consumption of finite resources to sustainably managed renewable resources, such as sunlight, wind, and biomass, opens up the possibility of being able to meet the needs of more people while managing ecological resources more locally and sustainably. The motivations for such a city-region transition may be both economic and environmental, allowing a city to become more economically autonomous, while contributing to environmental targets for carbon reduction and renewable energy provision. However, Hodson et  al. acknowledge that “while there is some evidence to indicate that relative decoupling is taking place (mainly in developed country cities), absolute reductions in the use of non-renewable resources are unlikely to happen without deliberate intervention to stimulate broad, systemic (including behavioural) changes” (Hodson et al. 2012, p. 792). The “reshaping” of resource flows and networked infrastructures implied by Hodson et al. relates to Girardet’s idea that an urban metabolism can adopt two distinct shapes, being either circular or linear (Girardet 1999). As Wachsmuth explains, circular characterises the natural world, where one organism’s waste is another’s sustenance, while linear characterises the urban world, with resources

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in, waste out. He sees Girardet’s idea as a response to the dawning global environmental crisis, as an “over-proliferation of linear metabolisms as cities grow and spread” (Wachsmuth 2012, p.  513). For instance, fossil fuel resources are a clear example of a linear process, sourced from global networks, stored, and then consumed, with numerous waste products, such as particulate emissions, nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulphur dioxide (SO2), CO2, and other greenhouse gases, which are released and contribute to the creation of the urban heat island effect, climate change, acid rain, and air pollution (Forkes 2010). This linear process then requires other means to help mitigate against these negative impacts, such as systems of carbon sequestration, although currently there is a significant imbalance in this endeavour. To make urban areas more sustainable, there are growing trends towards circular economies. Linear economies, in which raw materials eventually end up as waste that is subsequently destroyed, are being transformed into circular economies, in which the recovery of raw materials is maximised and value destruction minimised (Aboutaleb 2014, p. 10). The incentives are not only for sustainability, but also a growing circular economy that is commercially viable and valuable to invest within. For instance, the Rotterdam Urban Metabolism study recognised increasing interest in “urban mining,” involving the recovery of raw materials from sewage, the river, or other urban waste flows, where partners in wastewater treatment are already actively involved in the extraction of raw materials. In other cities circular initiatives are becoming more common, including heat, gas, nutrient, and mineral recovery, alongside numerous forms of material recycling and upcycling, where what was once considered as waste is being re-evaluated as a potential resource, where “it is now useful to regard the city as a new ‘mine’ for extracting essential raw materials” (Aboutaleb 2014, p. 10). The circular economy is a response to the dwindling resources of raw materials and reliance on global markets that are increasingly volatile, while seeking to create commodity markets and circular economies that are more localised, with close proximity between processes of production and consumption. From the perspective of industrial ecology, Christopher Kennedy, John Cuddihy, and Joshua Engel-Yan suggest that “a sustainable city implies an urban region for which the inflows of materials and energy and the disposal of wastes do not exceed the capacity of its hinterlands” (Kennedy et al. 2007, p. 44). This describes what underlies the idea of a circular shaped metabolism, where waste products are designed for reuse or returned as resources for other systems, alongside transitioning to localised renewable energy sources and the reuse of energy waste flows. Alberti suggests that “it is becoming quite evident that Earth’s ecosystems are increasingly influenced by both the pace and patterns of urban growth, and to a great extent the future of ecosystems will depend upon how we will be able to make urban regions sustainable” (Alberti 2008, p. 1). This viewpoint is reflected in a study by Richard Weller focused on the city of Perth and its predicted population increase from 1.5 million people to 3 million by 2050. Entitled “Boomtown 2050: Scenarios for a Rapidly Growing City,” the aim of the study is to explore rapid

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urban expansion in response to what Weller describes as “the opportunities and constraints for urban development that emerge from a fundamental appreciation of the city’s landscape conditions” (Weller 2008, p. 6). Perth’s economic growth is predicated on the industrial extraction of minerals in its surrounding region, but equally faces considerable challenges sustaining a rapidly growing population in relation to other resources, in particular water. Weller sets out seven scenarios, “four of them spread the city further into its landscape (horizontal scenarios) and three present infill development (vertical scenarios) within the existing city boundary” (Weller 2008, p. 6). The study highlights the many limitations of current planning approaches, while proposing alternative ways in which “the city can grow to achieve a more sophisticated synthesis between urbanism and landscape” (Weller 2008, p.  6). This involves taking in a more holistic sense of the bioregion, countering the McHargian logic of planning that involves identifying environmental qualities, such as vegetation, wetlands, flood zones, riparian buffers, aquifer recharge zones and slopes greater than 25% that should be exempt from development, as a process of constraining development in opposition to the city. Instead, Weller promotes MVRDV’s idea of “leveraging ecological limits to generate creative opportunities,” which rather than constraining integration leads to hybridised natural and cultural systems (Figure 6.19), to provide “ingenious new growth trajectories” (Weller 2008, p. 9), as previously highlighted in MVRDV’s proposal for Almere Oosterwold. The study presents multiple developmental trajectories, as opposed to a singular strategy or one masterplan, where each scenario is “presented as singular extremes” with the purpose of articulating “potentially positive and negative consequences of certain planning directions” (Weller 2008, p.  16). This includes a Food City’s interweaving of high-tech agricultural and industrial zones with residential areas to bring greater connection between people and productive landscapes; a Garden City that proposes integrating new development within reforestation zones to offset carbon emissions and reinstate habitat; and a River City that explores high-density development in relation to optimised transportation flows (Figure 6.20). While Weller’s aim was to open up local public debate about the future of the city, more broadly it highlights how landscape architects have the capacity to appreciate a city holistically in terms of its regional landscape in the face of large-scale urban pressures. As the projects in this chapter illustrate, there is an intrinsic relationship between processes of urbanisation and landscape, where landscape planning and design are increasingly concerned with providing the spatial strategies to absorb, integrate, and support transitional urbanism. This involves working with the increasingly interfacial, interspersed, and transitional structure of the urban fabric to work opportunistically in resolving the problems of fragmentation, discontinuity, and other environmental impacts caused by competing land uses. This extends to seeing the “city” as a system, intrinsically embedded in the spatial resources and processes that sustain its economy and population, which places great emphasis on the role of landscape as the ground where urban functions are organised, catalysed, and interrelated. For practices involved in the planning

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Source: Image courtesy of UWA; publishing credit: Richard Weller

Figure 6.19  Seachange City, Perth, Australia

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Figure 6.20  River Road City, Perth, Australia Source: Image courtesy of UWA; publishing credit: Richard Weller

and design of landscapes it is not only about working to resolve spatial issues, but to provide visions about what the “city” and its extended urbanisation should become, as a transdisciplinary concern to stir debate amongst designers, planners, and citizens during this critical period of transitional urbanism.

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Chapter 7

The mesh and the matrix

The effects of extended urbanisation have resulted in a densification of networks embedded in the landscape, including large-scale infrastructural networks of vehicular, goods, energy, information, and hydrology flows, amongst others, stretching across regions and interconnecting continents, while covering terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric environments. These networks form an infrastructural landscape that supports what Brenner and Schmid describe as “the socio-metabolic imperatives associated with urban growth,” including the “procurement and circulation of food, water, energy and construction materials; the processing and management of waste and pollution; and the mobilisation of labour-power in support of these various processes of extraction, production, circulation and management” (Brenner & Schmid 2015, p. 167). The old notion of “countryside” offering an antidote to the intensity of city life may still remain, but closer scrutiny of what makes up this landscape reveals the increasing presence of operational activity, set within a mesh of expansive networks. Brenner sees that the non-city landscapes of the world remain “quite fundamental, in operational terms, to providing various kinds of material and metabolic support for urban-industrial life” (Brenner 2017, p.  227), as extended urbanisation involves the “operationalisation of places, territories and landscapes, often located far beyond the dense population centres, to support the everyday activities and socioeconomic dynamics of urban life” (Brenner  & Schmid 2015, p. 167). This results in what Bélanger describes as a situation where people are “far removed geographically and materially from sites of extraction and distribution” (Bélanger 2015, p. 196). Alongside the progressive mechanisation of agriculture, rural land use now encompasses an array of intensive operational activity, including extraction industries, intensive forestry, gas and oil refineries, power stations, renewable power fields, energy networks and sub-stations, electricity grids, and distribution depots, while the pastimes of tourism, recreation, and conservation also seem to have followed a pattern of intensification and network reliance. Even areas of ecological interest have become evaluated within terms of efficiency; of how nature is managed to provide the “ecosystem services” reflecting an urbanised sense of value. Joan Iverson Nassauer suggests that “in the century when the human population has become predominantly urban, all landscapes can be considered urban to the degree that they are managed to provide ecosystem services”, while

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asserting that “agriculture, forestry, mining, and transportation landscapes are arguably equally urban, even when they appear to be countryside” (Nassauer 2013, p. 79). Hodson et al. suggest that cities are “open systems that will always require sources (of resources) and sinks (for wastes) that are located outside their borders” (Hodson et  al. 2012, p.  791), while David Harvey points to “sociotechnical innovations” in water supply, sanitation, energy supply, and transport, which underpin the acceleration of the urban metabolism (Harvey 1998, p. 45). These technical infrastructure systems “mediate resource flows and vitally shape environmental problems in modern societies,” as “networked infrastructures such as energy, water, wastewater, and transport systems have always been critical in the promotion of urban sustainability” (Monstadt 2009, p.  1924). Hodson et al. describe that “infrastructures (specifically energy, waste, water, sanitation, and transport infrastructures) create a sociotechnical environment that plays an important role in shaping, and potentially reshaping, how resources are procured, used, and disposed of by the city” (Hodson et al. 2012, p. 791), which has brought about large-scale shifts in the physical organisation of infrastructures, which have rapidly spread since the 1950s. Hodson et al. identify that territorial priorities set by local authorities at the scale of the city (e.g. economic growth targets, carbon emissions reduction aspirations, resource security) are becoming strategically intertwined with the reconfiguration of sociotechnical infrastructure systems that may or may not be organised at the scale of the city. They see that the issue “is the degree to which there is separation or alignment between territorial policy agendas and the power to manage urban infrastructure regimes” (Hodson et al. 2012, p. 794), where local authorities may need to gain degrees of influence and control over sociotechnical infrastructure regimes in order to achieve territorial objectives. However, Kelly Shannon and Marcel Smets suggest that “infrastructural design emerges as one of the last resorts that allow public authorities to give structure to haphazard settlement and reclaim the discipline of urbanism” (Shannon & Smets 2010, p. 9). As cities have changed, so too has city planning, with vision building and cooperative alliances between government and private investment forming the capacity to manage transitions in infrastructural design. The radical transformation and creation of landscapes through infrastructural development is a global phenomenon, where “large scale capital-intensive infrastructural projects are completely transforming urban and rural territories alike,” while the creation of infrastructure can “no longer simply be considered as the accumulation of a large object in isolation from its surrounding” (Shannon & Smets 2010, p. 9). Margaret Dewar and David Epstein suggest that urban now refers “not only to cities but to their megaregions which are tightly intermeshed in infrastructure, trade, and travel patterns, as well as their hinterlands that feed the global supply chain” (Dewar & Epstein 2007). The idea of an intermeshed infrastructure reflects Henri Lefebvre’s idea that what results in the urban fabric is a “net of uneven mesh” (Lefebvre 1996, p.  71), through which industrial processes are stretched out, across boundaries and working between city to global scales. Of interest is not only the physical extent of this meshed infrastructure but how it operates as

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a sociotechnical infrastructure that extracts, processes, and distributes flows of materials, energy, and information, while including the mobility of people within its networks. Frederick Steiner describes the many benefits we receive from nature, including resource services, such as food, water, and energy; regulatory services, such as purification of water, carbon sequestration and climate regulation, waste decomposition and detoxification, crop pollination, and pest and disease control; support services, such as nutrient dispersal and cycling, and seed dispersal; and cultural services, including cultural, intellectual, and spiritual inspiration, recreational experiences, ecotourism, and scientific discovery. (Steiner 2011, p. 336) Many of these benefits are now seen within the planning areas of green and blue infrastructure, while clearly offering numerous social benefits. The question arises as to whether these ecosystem infrastructures should be classed as being part of a sociotechnical infrastructure. Many natural resources become enmeshed, such as food, water, and energy supplies; however, many remain less bound and may better align under the idea of a socioecological infrastructure. Bélanger has warned that “infrastructures technological performance effectively neutered ecological complexity and reduced it to functional utility and operational efficiency” (Bélanger 2015, p.  198). To confront this problem, differentiating between sociotechnical and socioecological infrastructures could enrich our appreciation of infrastructural design, where the more bound system of a sociotechnical mesh is differentiated from the relatively unbound system of a socioecological matrix. While this implies separation, the prefix of socio emphasises that while being differentiated, the two systems are also interlinked, reflecting Alberti’s suggestion that “cities and urbanising regions are complex coupled human-natural systems in which people are the dominant agents” (Alberti 2008, p. xi). From the perspective of human geography, James Evans sees that the “challenge in urban ecosystems is to move from seeing human activity purely as an external factor causing disturbance, to being a driver and limiter of ecological processes in its own right” (Evans 2011, p. 228), while Machlis et al. propose that “in urban systems humans and their institutional arrangements and artefacts are part of the organismal and the physical components, respectively” (Machlis et al. 1997). On this basis the social aspect is significant, as the recognition of predominant human presence and agency within the landscape. Cumming et al. describe that “landscapes are spatially bounded entities that are heterogeneous in many key elements and processes of interest,” while typically encompassing both social and ecological subsystems that are often treated separately, but in reality coexist in a close relationship. They see that “humans are profoundly dependent on ecosystems for their wellbeing, and ecosystems have been hugely modified by people” (Cumming et  al. 2013, p.  1140). This chapter explores a range of concepts that differentiate between the mesh and the matrix, while recognising that these distinctions are often blurred by hybrid and interac-

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tive relationships between forms of infrastructure. The exploration is structured around a series of operative terms that underpin infrastructural performance, while identifying how landscape architects are responding to the context of infrastructural design. Flow: Whether seen as a mesh or matrix, the primary function of an infrastructural network is to facilitate flow. The range of flows can be generalised as “matter, energy, organisms, and information” (Pickett et al. 2013a, p. 11), which are important for sustaining cities as dynamic nodes on “extended multiple networks” (Weinstock 2013b, p. 92). For instance, Chapter 5 already outlined how the concept of flow was deployed at Evergreen Brick Works in Toronto to re-integrate the site into the city’s networks and successfully catalyse activity, which included flows situated in both mesh (such as transport) and matrix (such as water systems) based networks. More generally, the network infrastructure of the sociotechnical mesh is primarily a bound structure, acting as a closed, engineered system where carrying capacity and efficiency of flow are highly calibrated. In contrast, the socioecological matrix works through an unbound structure, where flows are more loosely directed along networks, while being capable of moving out-with the network and across patches or sites. Linda Pollock describes that a “matrix can acknowledge relationships between large and small scales operating simultaneously in a site” (Pollock 2007, pp. 102–103), which indicates that a socioecological matrix has a more open system of live media, organisms, or material, which can move across different spatial and temporal scales. In contrast, some networks will operate as “flat” structures, in that they operate at one scale or surface level and regulated schedule of durations, without any dynamic interactions beyond that, which is more characteristic of a sociotechnical mesh. Michael Weinstock observes that sociotechnical infrastructures can “exhibit some characteristics that appear to be similar to those exhibited by the branching metabolic networks of living forms, of which the most frequently studied is the “scale-free” power law ubiquitous in nature” (Weinstock 2013b, p. 22). For instance, urban ecologists Steward Pickett, M.L. Cadenasso, and Brian McGrath identify that human information flows that includes “informal networks, news media, and various formal and informal social networks and institutions” can involve “crosspatch, regional, and global connections” as part of a “highly mediated contemporary world” of “cell phones, the Internet, and social media” (Pickett et al. 2013b, p. 470). These mediated networks highlight that the distinctions between sociotechnical mesh and socioecological matrix can become blurred, especially in the progressive digitalisation of media networks. Infrastructures may be either impermeable, working within strictly limited network bounds, or interpermeable, allowing movement and fluxes in an unbound and open network. The bound, controlled, and impermeable structure of the sociotechnical mesh may often relate to the necessity to create secure networks, where transgression and other forms of interference are highly restricted. In contrast, the unbound, open, and interpermeable structure of the socioecological matrix may depend on a more heterogeneous mixture of constituent elements to enrich and diversify its content, as the comings and goings of materials, organisms and elements as well as people (Massey 1993). Through its unbound

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quality, the socioecological matrix can infiltrate the sociotechnical mesh, along the edges of transport and energy networks or in the nuances of large-scale industrial facilities, indicating that the socioecological matrix can be highly transgressive. The Ecological Energy Network is a strategic plan in the Netherlands to utilise the underused space along electricity networks for increased biodiversity and leisure. The strategy was proposed by a collaboration between LOLA, Fabric, and Studio 1:1 for an ideas competition run by the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) and the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation (EL&I), which aimed to stimulate innovative ideas about enhancing biodiversity, while being informed by Fabric’s involvement in the Rotterdam Urban Metabolism study (outlined in Chapter 6). The project highlights that infrastructural networks can be viewed as linear landscapes (Figure  7.1), with the potential of combining varying functions, such as energy supply, biodiversity, and leisure, through a coordinated approach to their management (Figure 7.2). The strategic proposal is that through this integration, the energy network, as a bound sociotechnical mesh, could also support a socioecological matrix, to become the country’s largest national park and act as a major ecological network. The Ecological Energy Network emphasises that linear infrastructural landscapes, including energy, transport, or hydrological routes, may offer the best and only opportunities to enhance ecological and social dimensions, but this requires considering their potential as hybrid landscapes. While many of these linear infrastructures, in particular high voltage power lines, are subject to restrictions for public access, the design team sees this as an ideal setting to enhance biodiversity by creating protected ecological niches and corridors (Figure 7.3). This indicates that the highly bound structure of sociotechnical mesh can provide beneficial conditions for the unbound processes of an ecosystem, creating an ecological network that runs through rural and urban landscapes, offering high levels of connectivity, while including areas for public access and leisure activities to enhance social value (Figure 7.4). Achieving this strategy requires linking power companies to environmental protection agencies, which has received enough enthusiasm to support the first stages of implementing the strategy. Traction: The idea of traction relates to the carrying capacity of an infrastructure and how it is configured to facilitate flows within the system. In a sociotechnical mesh, traction most often implies speed and efficiency, where acceleration of movement, degrees of control, and logistics of service are primary concerns, which are constantly upgraded as new modes of technical apparatus become available. In contrast, the design of a socioecological matrix is most often concerned with decelerating flows to establish habitats or places for dwelling; however, this is still concerned with carrying capacity to enhance system quality. In essence, both involve specialist engineering to enhance the performance of the system, whether man-made or organic, to facilitate or maximise flows and processes within the system. Conventionally, the sociotechnical mesh has been seen as the domain of rigorous engineering; however, ecological-based bioengineering is increasingly taking on the same levels of systems specification, such as wetland design or environmental restoration, although set in the context of

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Figure 7.1 The Ecological Energy Network, The Netherlands Source: Image courtesy of LOLA: The Ecological Energy Network

Figure 7.2 The Ecological Energy Network, The Netherlands Source: Image courtesy of LOLA: The Ecological Energy Network

Figure 7.3 The Ecological Energy Network, The Netherlands Source: Image courtesy of LOLA: The Ecological Energy Network

Figure 7.4 The Ecological Energy Network, The Netherlands Source: Image courtesy of LOLA: The Ecological Energy Network

The mesh and the matrix

often unbound or imprecise system dynamics, where overspecification may actually hinder performance. The sociotechnical mesh is an advanced engineered structure, predicated on efficiency, that often leads to a characteristic of standardisation, where replicated parts make up the traction system by which flows are conducted. This can often lead to the design of infrastructural space representative of advanced engineering, where principles and specification for network capacity are deployed as spatial qualities, such as standardisation, replication, materiality, and durability, which elevate engineering projects into expressions of architectural ingenuity and progress, focused around traction as the expression of technical efficiency. In contrast, the efficiency of a socioecological matrix depends on heterogeneity, as a quality or state of being diverse in character or content with a composition of dissimilar parts, where heterogeneity is seen as a good indicator of ecosystem quality (Andersson 2006), while increasing function and resilience (Fischer et al. 2006). While standardisation or replication may not be obvious characteristics of a socioecological matrix, underlying heterogeneity the attention to consistency and similarity in habitat composition across networks or interconnected patches provides a basis for traction, where flows of species, including humans, move between patches or sites that have traction through particular structural or conventional organisations that make up the patch. For instance, social identity, technical devices, or planting composition can interconnect particular flows between patches that may be geographically isolated, where similar characteristics or structural properties support particular forms of activity. Movement between patches may be influenced by the distance between supporting patches, or whether other patches provide enough supporting composition to facilitate movement to preferred or optimal patches. Traction in a sociotechnical mesh most often relies on a continuous structure, where any disconnection or break in the network will significantly disrupt the system. However, the socioecological matrix does not fully rely on continuous structure; in fact, it has been well documented that in most cases the matrix is fragmented and patchy, with high contrasts between patches of distinct composition. Rather than closely aligned, standardised parts, this diffused structure relies on the dispersal and distribution of similar habitat components to provide a level of connectivity between fragmented patches. The socioecological matrix can include spatial corridors, such as rivers, media coverage, or pedestrian routes, which act as linear patches to facilitate movement and enhance connectivity. This can also include the transgressive behaviour of socioecological systems occupying networks of the sociotechnical mesh, such as highways, sewers, and train lines, which offer considerable space to appropriate. At the same time, network infrastructures can hinder movement by creating barriers or conflicts in usage, such as animal roadkill on major transportation routes or rail lines acting as barriers to lateral movement. The landscape design by Vogt landscape architects around the new Allianz Arena stadium in Munich provides a good example of how traction becomes a key consideration in a proposal that also demonstrates hybrid landscape qualities. The new stadium, designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, required a landscape design that could support the movement of large masses of people

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attending sporting events, while at other times acting as a local park that provides a sense of relaxation for visitors (Figure  7.5). Responding to the site’s position on the edge of the city, Vogt’s idea was to take inspiration from the surrounding landscape, which is characterised by rich heathland habitats. What results is a landscape that manages to blend the functional aspects of efficient movement and connectivity between the stadium and transportation networks, while interweaving this within a robust matrix of planting that evokes the local heathland landscape (Figure  7.6), with elements of agricultural practice included through

Figure 7.5  The Allianz Arena, Munich, Germany Source: Image courtesy of Vogt Landscape Architects; photo credit: Christian Vogt

Figure 7.6  The Allianz Arena, Munich, Germany Source: Image courtesy of Vogt Landscape Architects

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sheep grazing to help maintain the heathland habitats (Figure 7.7). This provides a successful hybrid between landscape, park, and event space, where the traction required to move large volumes of people coexists with planting schemes that offer visual and ecological traction with the surrounding rural landscape. Anchoring: The idea of infrastructure is often emphasised as a network system, which places particular attention on the lines of flow and movement running through them; however, these systems require points or nodes of organisation that act to catalyse and distribute flows, which effectively anchor networks within particular regions or localised areas. The connectivity of flows may relate to how spatially or functionally continuous a network is, but equally how well anchored it is to its points or nodes of organisation. On this basis, we can describe an infrastructure as being extensive, in terms of their network range of flows, and intensive, in terms of the capacity of their nodes to organise and catalyse those flows. In the sociotechnical mesh, well-connected hubs primarily act as places of interchange, where systems of flow are transitioned from one mode of distribution or movement to another. This is where the extensive flow of network is catalysed by the intensive organisation of interchange, where goods, people, and information are transferred between networks that interconnect geographical scales, between local, regional, and global networks.

Figure 7.7  The Allianz Arena, Munich, Germany Source: Image courtesy of Vogt Landscape Architects; photo credit: Christian Vogt

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Cities can be seen as a complex of urban nodes that act to interconnect multiple networks, where connectivity with the sociotechnical mesh is essential to sustain an urban metabolism. In larger cities or strategically placed nodes, this may include multi-modal interchanges (Shannon  & Smets 2010), with transfers between interconnecting networks or places of exchange, such as market places, where flows of commodified goods, energy, or information are consumed, disposed of, or transformed and redistributed. Shannon and Smets identify that cities have progressively shifted from “a single concentration of high-rise development in the easily reached downtown to a rhizoid spread of edge cities along the major infrastructural axes.” They see that “today we are witnessing the growth of edge cities around highway exits, airport accesses and fast rail connections” (Shannon & Smets 2010, p. 15), as well-connected hubs that offer connectivity “across progressively larger zones, and ultimately, around much of the entire planet” (Brenner & Schmid 2015, p. 167). In regard to transportation hubs, Shannon and Smets describe that “the network is most strongly expressed at its nodes,” as the transfer point between local and global (regional) networks of mobility, while being the meeting place and point of public interaction between people and goods (Shannon & Smets 2010, p.  14). They illustrate that these transportation hubs become important architectural features in global planning, as the threshold between local and global cultures, where local character is often “emblematised at the entry point” (Shannon & Smets 2010, p. 36). For instance, as previously described in Chapter 6, the TGV Station, Avignon, designed by Michel Desvigne, provides a good example of how the development of a new transportation hub, alongside expanding urban edges, are anchored within a landscape framework that utilises components of the agricultural landscape, including fields, prairies, orchards, and groves (Figure 6.10). This framework not only anchors the new station within a landscape that resonates with the local character of its regional setting, but offers the spatial framework to anchor future urban development. The TGV Avignon design presents another example of hybridisation, in this case overcoming the common dislocation between urban and rural landscapes by deploying agricultural patterns as spatial framing devices for urban development, bringing a strong sense of regional character to the TGV transportation interchange. The increasing need to emblematise a sense of locality becomes a counterpoint to how transportation systems enable greater mobility. Weinstock sees that while “public and social space were once strongly linked to the traditional neighbourhood of the historical city, in which “local” was a bounded space, defined by proximity – what is “local” is more difficult to define today.” He attributes this to the fact that our social and work relations are spread over a larger area than in the past, which results in “an emergent sense of locality as something more personally constructed,” as a “patchwork of people and places united not by proximity, but by our ability to move between them” (Weinstock 2013b, p. 23). Combined with increased tourism and migratory populations, city planning has increasingly involved place making strategies beyond those of transportation nodes, but as the gateways into cities and regions, these spaces have a significant role in promoting regional distinctiveness.

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Intensive nodes are also important in the structure of a socioecological matrix. In particular, the growing provision of wildlife reserves that act as ecological hubs can be seen as intensive nodes of socioecological activity, providing an interface between people and nature. These are strategically positioned on the interchange of flows, such as the migratory routes of animals, while being most often focused around forms of wetland system. Wetlands are recognised as terrestrial biomes with high value ecosystem functions, rich in diversity, while offering other ecological benefits, such as carbon sequestration and climate regulation (Mitsch & Gosselink 2000). These ecological hubs offer favourable conditions to catalyse and help sustain the distribution of wildlife and other socioecological flows, while locally contributing to the global scales of migratory species, climatic and other atmospheric processes, and the growing culture of ecotourism and environmental education. From the perspective of landscape ecology, Sarah Taylor Lovell and Douglas Johnston suggest that “constructed wetlands can be designed into almost any site” while “the addition of features such as woodlots, natural woody hedgerows, riparian buffers, greenways, and parks can all contribute to landscape heterogeneity, improving the quality of the landscape matrix and conserving biodiversity” (Lovell & Johnston 2009, p. 215). This involves identifying the features of a site that can contribute to the landscape matrix, while considering how its specific design can enhance ecological performance to provide a wide range of ecological functions, such as water infiltration, water treatment, microclimate control, wildlife habitat, and biodiversity, as well as cultural functions, including education and visual quality (Dunnett & Clayden 2007). In many ways this points to the idea of hierarchy within infrastructures, where well-connected hubs act as primary staging posts along networks, while a range of smaller contributing points or nodes cumulatively support performance and help anchor the overall system into the landscape. Flexibility: An inherent characteristic of infrastructural flows is that they are seldom constant or regular, but characterised by a number of perturbations that arise from flux and disturbance that affect network systems. This relates to the dynamic condition of the system and the need to design in degrees of flexibility to absorb the effects of often complex patterns of system perturbation. To generalise, flux can be described as an emergent pattern arising within a system, which might respond to particular patterns of frequency, cycles, and seasonality, while disturbance relates to irregular and often discrete events that affects the system from an external force or event. In whichever case, systems engineering involves prefiguring infrastructures to be resilient and flexible enough to absorb the impacts of flux or disturbance. Shannon and Smets suggest that “infrastructure sustains a condition of continuous flux: it generates an urban dynamic and stimulates movement to the limits of its own capacity or the endurance of the settlement it has helped create” (Shannon  & Smets 2010, p.  14). The sociotechnical mesh is characterised by a relatively rigid structure that directs flows with internal dynamics and variability, while absorbing the pressure of internal fluxes by being robust enough to maintain structure after any particular pressure has occurred. However, it is also

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likely that the structure is not entirely rigid, with a series of contingent measures and adjustments built into its system structure to help alleviate pressure buildup. Flexibility is built into the system through structural adaptability, responding to levels or patterns of flux, to synchronise the system to work with, rather than against, foreseeable perturbations. This requires calibrating a system in response to its material volumes, to avoid a situation where unintentional flux creates an overload that places significant stress on the system, which in the worst case can result in system failure or collapse. For instance, traffic jams, flood damage, and power outages are examples of systems failure that result from flux overload. Brian McGrath and Steward Pickett see that “the landscape is a dynamic aggregate of changing components linked by fluxes of matter, energy, organisms, and information” (McGrath & Pickett 2011, p. 60). This alludes to the more unbound structure of socioecological matrix, where flux arises from the cumulative aggregation of constituent elements, where regulating fluxes in a socioecological matrix requires maintaining a level of heterogeneity that can absorb or buffer against any potential impacts. For instance, mixed planting buffers act as structurally complex ecological systems that support higher biodiversity, while beneficially serving microclimate, hydrology, soil and sediment retention, air cleansing, and noise reduction, providing a low-maintenance solution that can be situated in small or marginal areas of a city. This highlights that in regards to the functional efficiency of socioecological systems attention to structural composition is as important as scale or area size, where small-scale sites can support vibrant socioecological activity by having a strong composition. In many ways this highlights the difference between the more modular or homogenous composition of the mesh in contrast to the aggregated and heterogeneous composition of a matrix, although fluxes within both systems can take on a myriad of highly dynamic and complex patterns that defy easy generalisation. For instance, the Potsdamer Platz, designed by Atelier Dreiseitl, integrates ecological systems thinking within this highly dense commercial district of Berlin, providing a water management scheme that treats rainfall from the surrounding area (Figure 7.8). This includes a range of integrated systems, such as harvesting rainfall on roofs for toilet flushing, irrigation, and fire systems, while retaining large volumes of run-off into a series of pools and canals, where planting systems have been devised to filter and clean the water. Seldom are urban plazas or commercial districts described for their ecological quality; however, Potsdamer Platz incorporates a system of biotopes that act as organic purifiers, where excessive rainfall is stored in underground cisterns before being slowly discharged and filtered through a series of channels and pools with aquatic plants that filter the water. This creates a biofiltration system that enhances water and habitat quality, which has been engineered to absorb and filter seasonal fluxes, while disturbance in the aquatic system from undesirable algae and biofilms are filtered through sieves. In many ways the project personifies the value of designing with flexibility, where the creation of a sustainable urban waterscape contributes to an enlivened sense of urban life, while reducing the amount of fresh water usage in surrounding buildings and raising the water quality in public spaces. As with the Cloudburst project in Copenhagen,

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Figure 7.8  Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, Germany Source: Image courtesy of Ramboll Studio Dreiseitl

the design of Potsdamer Platz brings these hydrological processes into the visible fabric of the city (Figure 7.9). Stemming from an idea within landscape ecology, the role of disturbance is often seen as a discrete event in time that has a disruptive effect on the ecosystem and causes changes in the physical environment (Forman & Godron 1986; Turner 2005; Wilcox et  al. 2006). Examples of disturbance events range from the long-term effects of processes, such as fires, floods, economic downturns, or other natural or man-made events with significant impact. Disturbance can include any relatively discrete event that disrupts an existing structure (Pickett & White 1985) and leads to abrupt or possibly irreversible changes (Fry et al. 2009). Disturbance events are not necessarily negative or unpleasant, where disruption can cause positive effects and outcomes, such as natural succession or economic investment. Understanding flux and disturbance is seen as increasingly important in the creation of more resilient environmental systems, which requires providing the right levels of flexibility, adaptation, and elasticity to allow systems to absorb perturbations to retain the same basic structure and ways of functioning. On this basis, infrastructural design can work with the idea of continuous flux, where

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Figure 7.9  Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, Germany Source: Image courtesy of Ramboll Studio Dreiseitl

patterns of frequency, cycles, and seasonality are seen as characteristics of the system and the infrastructure is synchronised to adjust and absorb predicted flux. More irregular, unintentional, or abrupt impacts from disturbance might be harder to predict and absorb, although many infrastructures are robust enough to withstand significant levels of impact. If, in the worst case, disturbance results in some form of system collapse that is irretrievable, then a more radical form of resilience is required, involving adaptation to new structures. Integration: While there is an increasing understanding of the dynamics of infrastructural systems, the interdependencies and potential integration between differing infrastructural systems has received less attention (Weinstock 2013b). What emerges from the review of case studies in this chapter is that while each project may highlight particular concepts, i.e. flow, traction, flexibility, or anchoring, it is a case that all of these qualities are integral to the success of an infrastructural design, while the role of landscape architecture is to help elevate predominantly utilitarian structures onto levels that respond to social, ecological, and imaginative dimensions. One example is West 8’s temporary installation in response to the landscape setting of the Eastern Scheldt Storm Surge Barrier in Zeeland. The storm surge barrier is a notable example of sociotechnical infrastructure, deemed as a key feature in the Deltawerken (Delta Works) system, that comprises a range of dams and dykes along the Dutch coastline to protect against storm surge inundation and guard against catastrophic disturbance events, such as the North Sea flood of 1953, when an estimated 1,800 people lost their lives.

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While the Delta Works’ primary function is to act as a robust storm surge barrier, it was conceived to respond to the ecological dynamics of the landscape, in particular tidal dynamics and its estuarine ecology. Working with ecologists, West 8 responded to the interactions between birds and their habitat requirements by organising one of the artificial islands, which support the storm surge barrier, into areas of shells to create a rhythmic pattern of black and white (Figure 7.10). Based on the logic that for best camouflage white birds nest in the white shells and black birds nest in the black shells, the installation responded to ecological principles, while providing a strong visual encounter to punctuate the journey of passing motorists (Figure 7.11). West 8’s intention was to work with the interactions between infrastructure, people, and ecology in a playful, optimistic manner (Geuze 1995), drawing on the artificiality of the island and the rhythmic formation of the barrier structure as a means to integrate ecological dynamics with infrastructural components. West 8’s design plays with the tension between temporal socioecological dynamics, of the unbound migratory resting of birds and momentary visual encounter of motorists, set against the robust sociotechnical structure of the storm surge barrier. The project was only planned as a temporary installation that has now disappeared; however, what has happened in the Netherlands since the project’s duration (1990–1992) is a broad-scale temporal shift in land and hydraulic systems that has placed the perceived durability of the surge barriers into question. While the Delta Works were engineered to withstand a worst-case flooding scenario, this was calculated as a 70-centimetre (2.3 foot) rise in sea level; however, a recent study concluded that a rise of 1.30 metres (4.3 feet) could be expected by the year 2100, while it has been calculated that the land is sinking by 2 centimetres each year, which may actually be as a result of the Delta Works contributing to subsoil drying out. The Dutch government has set about tackling this issue, which will involve constructing new storm barriers and raising the height of dykes, but also recognising that other approaches are required. Simulated studies, such as the “Ergst Denkbare Overstroming” (worst possible flooding scenario), have indicated that the effects of combined storm surge with inland inundation from river flooding would have drastic impacts, potentially placing one-third of the country underwater. While this would be a rare “10,000year storm event,” lessons from the past have compelled the Dutch government to invest heavily in flood prevention measures. The simulation indicated that while the coasts needed protection, the biggest impact would be in the low-lying areas in the large Rhine River delta, where the country’s largest cities are located, with approximately 12 million inhabitants. In this scenario, it is as much about the drastic effects of flooding in the major river systems as the coastal storm surges that has been identified as the problem, where river flooding will play a decisive role in any catastrophic event, alongside the problems of increasingly routine flooding events. The government response was to devise the Room for the River programme, which works in tandem with the Delta Works, but rather than create barriers to resist the pressure of flooding, seeks to dissipate and absorb pressure by allowing more space for the river system. The aim of the programme is to allow areas

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Figure 7.10  Eastern Scheldt Storm Surge Barrier, The Netherlands Source: Image courtesy of West 8

Figure 7.11  Eastern Scheldt Storm Surge Barrier, The Netherlands Source: Image courtesy of West 8

The mesh and the matrix

along the major river catchments of the River Rhine and River Meuse to not only flood safely, but be designed to improve the social and ecological quality of the landscape. The programme sought to reverse the gradual restriction of river systems through the reduction of space between dykes and irrigation practices in polder farmland, where, rather than the build-up of hydraulic pressure through restricting and channelling rivers, the aim was to make more room to allow water to be retained in areas that absorb flooding or more efficiently drain flood water into the sea. This included working in 30 strategic locations, many of which were located along the branches of the River Rhine, such as the IJssel, the Waal, and the Nederrijn. For instance, at Noordwaard, depoldering transformed former dyke-bound farmland into an area open to high water retention, with an outlet channel to drain flood water direct to the sea, while being designed to improve the ecological and recreational quality of the area. H+N+S Landscape Architects designed one of the most complex Room for the River projects at Nijmegen. The project required creating a large bypass channel to reduce flood pressure (Figure 7.12), while constructing several new bridges to improve connectivity between adjacent urban areas and configuring these components within a new public park (Figure 7.13). The design engages the river flooding issues as a positive attribute, bringing the dynamics of tidal and seasonal fluctuations, alongside processes of erosion and sedimentation, into the expression of the park. An elongated island was created between the Waal River and the new channel, providing the basis over time for new ecotypes to form through the natural processes of the river. Incorporating the river dynamics was one of the main objectives of the design, allowing for areas and paths to become flooded to create the spatial expression of the river’s tidal and seasonal fluctuations (Figure 7.14 and Figure 7.15). The Nijmegen project demonstrates an approach to infrastructural design that is both robust, in how sociotechnical structures enmesh the dynamic conditions of the river to counter flooding issues, while at the same time generating socioecological potential through more unbound ecological and social qualities. This provides dual values, by elevating engineering beyond purely utilitarian concerns, where the development of infrastructure is contained within a park that resolves environmental pressures while offering social and ecological benefits. David Salomon describes that “infrastructure is big. It is utilitarian. It is efficient. It is expensive,” while it is often “envisioned and evaluated based on quantifiable analysis, not on its capacity to generate sensations and associations,” where “making infrastructure simultaneously efficient and inspiring requires a different way of thinking about, and working on, infrastructure” (Salomon 2016, p.  55). Shannon and Smerts see that “since the 1990’s concerted efforts have been made to move away from an infrastructure that was predominantly determined by engineering requirements” (Shannon & Smets 2010, p. 55), suggesting that “in order to function, fit and be acceptable, infrastructure needs to enhance the quality of the landscape” (Shannon & Smets 2010, p. 9), which requires engaging social, ecological, and imaginative dimensions as much as technological, operational, or system evaluations. As the projects in this chapter demonstrate, landscape architects have a key role, in seeing beyond a primarily utilitarian concern

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Source: Image courtesy of H+N+S Landscape Architects

Figure 7.12  Riverpark Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Figure 7.13  Riverpark Nijmegen, The Netherlands Source: Image courtesy of H+N+S Landscape Architects; photo credit: Rutger Hollander

Figure 7.14  Riverpark Nijmegen, The Netherlands Source: Image courtesy of H+N+S Landscape Architects; photo credit: Jeroen Bosch

The mesh and the matrix

Figure 7.15  Riverpark Nijmegen, The Netherlands Source: Image courtesy of H+N+S Landscape Architects; photo credit: Jan Daanen

for engineered efficiency, to consider the hybrid qualities of infrastructural design and how these extensive structures can become better embedded in broader social and ecological dimensions of the landscape. This can benefit from working with a more differentiated appreciation of infrastructural design, which is broadly encapsulated by the comparatively differing qualities of the mesh and the matrix.

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Chapter 8

Relational scales

While scale is a key factor in landscape architecture, very little has been written about its importance or purposeful use. As a strategic concern, using scale is a process of translating how a site and its interdependent systems work, informing a process of articulation that makes processes, systems, and relationships in the landscape tangible through visualisation. In many ways, advances in digital technology have facilitated a shift towards increasingly synthetic and hybrid forms of visualisation, while incorporating a level of precision and detail that previously was difficult to bring together. This has allowed designers to embrace complexity, where design has become more telescopic, sliding across different scales, systems, and strategies (Bélanger 2015). Rather than neglecting scale, we could consider how it acts as the organiser and expression of a landscape project, focused on tracing relationships and interactions within a complex mix of factors that a project site is set within. However, a question arises in the proliferation of digitally processed visualisations as to how and where the articulation of clearly stated scale relations are deployed. In understanding scale, one of the first challenges is to dispel some ideas that stem from prior conventions, in particular how scale was treated as a neutral metric of physical space, largely assumed as a predetermined set of levels, commonly described as local, regional, national, and global. Urban geographer Pauline McGuirk suggests that this reflects the acceptance of an “indisputable hierarchy of scales,” as though these levels are fixed universals, which she rejects on the basis that it limits our understanding of the various dimensions and dynamics of social and natural relations (McGuirk 1997, p. 481). From the perspective of ecology, Jianguo Wu and Ye Qi argue that “fixing the spatial dimension of landscape at a particular size is arbitrary,” warning that it might impede rather than facilitate the development of landscape interpretation (Wu & Qi 2000, p. 1). Human geographer Richard Howitt sees an issue in how “many of the metaphorical terms used to talk about geographical scale (local, regional, national, global, etc) have become naturalised as categorical givens and are no longer deliberately constructed for a specific analytical or political purpose – if indeed they ever were.” He sees that “they have lost their identity as analytical abstractions and have come to be seen as things in themselves to be dealt with categorically” (Howitt 1998, p. 50). However, he doesn’t fully reject these metaphorical scales but questions whether they can still have strategic relevance, which would

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involve explaining just what makes the term “national” an appropriate scale label in a particular circumstance. Howitt proposes that it requires addressing these relations precisely, for example, how relational, dialectical webs make the word “national” a sensible metaphorical label for examining certain sorts of geographical totalities (Howitt 1998, p. 52). So while the idea that these levels work as a pre-given hierarchy is rejected, a particular level could hold legitimacy when its relational significance is made clear. Urban theorist Neil Brenner describes that “a reification of scale appears to be built into everyday scalar terms (e.g. local, urban, regional, national, global etc) insofar as they represent distinctive socioterritorial processes (e.g. localisation, urbanisation, regionalisation, nationalisation, globalisation etc.)” (Brenner 2000, pp.  367–368), while Thomas Wilbanks suggests that a “reason that scale can matter is that the scale of agency – the direct causation of actions – is often intrinsically localised, while at the same time such agency takes place in the context of structure: a set of institutions and other regularised, often formal relationships whose scale is regional, national, or global” (Wilbanks 2006, p.  23). This suggests that particular organisations, decisions, regulations, and policies operate at these various levels, such as urban regulatory systems (Brenner 2000), decisions about land use (Wilbanks 2006), or other levels of governance or large-scale forces that can influence “local” site level conditions. For instance, tackling climate change and loss of biodiversity are seen as global imperatives that require inter-governmental coordination, which in turn informs national and regional level policies that strategically inform localised decisions and actions. This indicates that tackling complex environmental pressures, such as climate change, requires action on a range of interconnected hierarchical scales. Another challenge is to discern linkages across scales, where ecological processes, such as watersheds, habitats, and biodiversity, can be interlinked with governance hierarchies that affect ecological systems, such as ensuring landscapes are nested to national policy frameworks (Innes et al. 2010; Minang et al. 2015). However, working through these levels may involve interpreting a more asymmetrical process of influence, as opposed to any simplistic order of their suggestive hierarchy, where there is “no simple schema proposing an orderly ladder of scales from local to global” (Howitt 2002, p. 305). Geographer Sallie Ann Marston argues that “scale is not necessarily a preordained hierarchical framework for ordering the world – local, regional, national and global,” but is instead a “contingent outcome of the tensions that exist between structural forces and the practices of human agents” (Marston 2000, p. 220), which are set within more asymmetrical relational scales. The shift in appreciation of scale is evident in landscape architecture, where the strict orders of predetermined hierarchical scale is being replaced with processes of exploration, interpretation, and presentation aimed at evoking an enriched understanding of landscape dynamics. This responds to current imperatives to engage the characteristic complexity and invisibility of landscapes, where design can be seen as a revelatory process (Latz 2001), making visible spatial dynamics that challenge the interpretation of landscape, where thinking in terms of relational scales aims to reveal a complex articulation of a landscape’s

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contextual realities and possibilities. This emphasises that what replaces the use of strict predetermined hierarchy is a range of competing notions of scale, while the current practice of scaler tactics has proliferated beyond easy categorisation. To provide a greater appreciation of the strategic role of scale, this chapter explores a series of operative terms that bring a sense of how scale can be linked to the dynamic qualities of a landscape. Nesting: It might be supposed that in ecology, with its emphasis on understanding the dynamics of the living world, we would not find much scope for hierarchy; however, the use of hierarchical scale in ecology is broadly applied, albeit not predicated on any pre-given categorisation. Instead, hierarchy is described as nested scales, where “in many cases, smaller-scale mosaics are nested within larger scale mosaics,” where it is often helpful to think in terms of spatial hierarchies (Wilbanks 2006, p. 22). Urban ecologists Steward Pickett, M.L. Cadenasso, and Brian McGrath explain that ecological scientists refer to such nesting of systems as a hierarchy, although this does not mean a “fixed hierarchy of persons, like a chain of command, or a ranking,” but involves the need to understand a “system of interest based on the finer scale systems it contains as well as the systems in which it is embedded” (Pickett et al. 2013a, pp. 477–478). In ecology, nested scales are used to translate the organic interconnections between different levels of living systems and their structural complexity. Frederick Steiner describes that “living systems are organised hierarchically,” where what is whole at one level of organisation is a part at another, for instance “a cell is a complete entity, but only part of an organism” (Steiner 2016, p. 12). He sees this hierarchy as extending through scales, where “individual organisms are both simple and complex: members of larger species and variegated communities, which form landscapes and regions that are part of global systems and processes,” where “levels of biological organisation range from the organism to the biosphere” (Steiner 2016, pp. 12–13). The critical question is discerning what scale is relevant to a particular function or system, while establishing if a particular hierarchy is relevant and useful in its interpretation. Steiner proposes that to understand human ecologies, the most relevant levels of organisation can be described as “habitat, community, landscape, region, nation and state, and earth or ecosphere,” which present different, yet interconnected, scales of analysis, where “interactions that occur at one level, the habitat, for instance, are nested in other “higher” groupings, such as the community” (Steiner 2016, p. 13). This implies that hierarchy is useful as a loose structure of levels, rather than a rigid set of pre-given categorical levels, where interactions interlink between levels. A key challenge in this approach is to see linkages that are arrayed along a geographic scale continuum from very small to very large. This can be related to a growing appreciation of how microbial species have cumulative effects on large-scale environmental systems. For example, Sphagnum as a species of moss is a key component of wetland bog habitats that are recognised for their capacity to absorb and store carbon, which need regional and national scale planning strategies to increase their extent and significantly contribute to reducing global warming at the biosphere scale. This highlights the interconnections between levels, from cumulative species forming habitats, which require

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regional and national scale planning initiatives, with potentially significant impacts at global to biosphere scales. From the perspective of agroforestry, Minang et al. suggest that “identifying characteristic scales and hierarchical levels would be one of the most important starting points in analysing, understanding and predicting landscape systems” (Minang et al. 2015, p. 126). On this basis, it could be assumed that a project site is a nested structure; however this would oversimplify the reading of that site. What is more likely is that a particular site might have a range of social and ecological functions and systems, each of which are nested within their own sets of hierarchical structure; for instance, a stream nested within a watershed, a block of planting nested within a regional habitat network, or a social function nested within the provision of amenities for a district, which indicates that a design might require multiple scales in relation to the range of social and ecological systems active on a site. What a nested scales approach emphasises is that landscapes are made up of systems and functions that can be embedded in levels at higher or lower scales, which can help integrate sites within broader structures, organisations, and systems. A good example of multiscale practice that includes the use of nesting, amongst other scaler tactics (further outlined in Chapter 9), is Freshkills Park in New York. As a former landfill, this site was highly disconnected from its surrounding context, where the challenge was not only to integrate the site on physical levels, but to get communities to re-engage with it (Pollock 2007). Like many post-industrial sites, the development of Freshkills Park required a multiscale strategy, to not only address the dysfunctional condition of the site and its boundaries, but to change people’s negative perceptions due to its undesirable former use. James Corner Field Operations won a competition to design the park based on their concept of catalysing a new “Lifescape” as a long-term strategy to rehabilitate the site’s degraded land and transform the site into a major new park. Corner describes that the design aims toward the “dynamic staging and cultivation of new ecologies,” including the “ecologies of soil, air and water; of vegetation and wildlife; of program and human activity; of financing, stewardship and adaptive management; of environmental technology, renewable energy and education; and of new forms of interaction between people, nature, technology and life” (Corner 2005, p. 15). The broad challenge in catalysing this “Lifescape” strategy was to effectively transform a former landfill site, with all its negative associations and environmental issues, into an ecologically vibrant park valued by people. Field Operations’ proposal aims to reconfigure the landscape with an undulating topography and a rich mosaic of planting, to affectively shift people’s opinion from the limited public value of a waste landscape to something recognisably valued as an expansive pastoral landscape (Figure  8.1). In this way the design seeks to nest the site within a broader cultural image of virtuous landscapes, that of the celebrated pastoral North America, while being “thoroughly urban in its synthetic nature” (Czerniak 2007, p. 223). The design reflects an aesthetic experience of pastoral landscapes that is “vast in scale, spatially open and rugged in character, affording dramatic views [Figure  8.2], exposure to the elements, and huge open spaces unlike any other in the New York metropolitan region” (Corner 2005, p. 15).

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Figure 8.1  Freshkills Park, New York, United States Source: Image courtesy of James Corner Field Operations

The Freshkills Park design highlights that using scale involves nesting the site into networks that facilitate and encourage ecological and social flows, to bring life to the site and provide reinforcing conditions to catalyse its successful transformation. Julia Czerniak describes that the aim was to create “connections at nested scales, from the local site to the region, providing for flows of people, water and wildlife, as well as recreational and educational opportunities” (Czerniak 2007, p. 223). The framework paid particular attention to circulation and access, while punctuating the park’s ecological framework with architectural and infrastructural elements that support and animate activity (Corner 2005). In some areas public access will be limited or fully restricted, in particular in areas with sensitive habitats that need protection. This highlights that areas of ecological value are nested into broader ecosystems, such as the city’s estuary, where remnant habitats have sustained in marginal areas that need protection and space to evolve. For instance, the Isle of Meadows (Figure 8.3), a marsh island located at the mouth of the Freshkills estuary, has been designated by the city as a Forever Wild Nature Preserve due to its valuable wetlands and wildlife, which will remain off-limits to the public even when the park is fully developed. Scoping: While nesting emphasises levels, scoping involves interpretation of the extent or range that systems are active on, mainly focused on network linkages. This emphasises that although systems might be nested within a structure of observable levels, they are also organised and arranged through networks as structural systems that extend through landscapes and often across boundaries.

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Source: Image courtesy of Freshkills Park and the City of New York; photo credit: Daniel Avila

Figure 8.2  Freshkills Park, New York, United States

Relational scales

Figure 8.3  Freshkills Park, New York, United States Source: Image courtesy of Freshkills Park and the City of New York; photo credit: Alex Wall

This includes systems that might be highly extensive in scale, such as migratory routes, social networks, or hydrological systems, where scoping involves interpreting the scale of extent with a concern to reveal interactions within the landscape, in particular the physical and system linkages between a site and its broader context. Current thinking in ecology points to interpreting an enlivened quality of landscapes, seeing boundaries of ecosystems as permeable, where “it is important to know what flows across ecosystem boundaries” (Cadenasso et al. 2013, p. 9). While a site may be seen to have definable boundaries, from a system’s point of view the interactions between site and outer areas is dynamic, where flows of water, air, soil, or organisms are affected by edge conditions that serve as barriers, filters, or corridors (van Noordwijk et al. 2004). From the perspective of urban ecology, Grove et  al. suggest that outside influences and forces may be more powerful than internal dynamics in structuring and organising the biophysical and social conditions of a site (Grove et al. 2015). This implies that any site is interdependent with outside influences, such as ecological systems, governmental policies and regulations, or client or community interests, which can potentially influence design. However, many writers suggest that rather than the large scale influencing the smaller scale, it is a case where scales of site and its more expansive context can constitute or impinge on each other (Marston 2000), where regional territories and small locales “feed back into both scales from new design

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and planning interventions” (Berger 2009, p.  14), and “larger scale entities are at the same time contained within smaller scale entities” (Howitt 2002, p. 305). While a scaler approach using nesting and scoping is not limited to post-industrial sites, it is within these sites that re-integration with surrounding landscapes is most often critical. For instance, the Yanweizhou Park, designed by Turenscape in the centre of Jinhua, was significantly isolated in its position at the confluence of the city’s major river systems, where the Wuyi River and Yiwu River converge to form the Jinhua River, which have had a history of flooding issues. This area had previously been dominated by vast concrete flood prevention barriers, which were unsympathetic to the natural and visual qualities of this central urban area, while prior activity through sand quarrying had degraded the site’s naturally occurring wetlands. Turenscape’s aim was to propose a new framework that offered a sensitive spatial structure that avoided rigid barriers and an elevated dry park, in favour of a terraced structure containing water resilient native planting to absorb and slow down the flood waters (Figure 8.4). This ecological matrix acts as an artificial wetland, where planting benefits from nutrient-rich silt while helping to stabilise the terraced earthworks. The result is a thriving ecological system, which is better integrated with the natural dynamics of the river

Figure 8.4 Yanweizhou Park, Jinhua, China Source: Image courtesy of Kongjian Yu, Turenscape

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system by carefully calibrating the site in relation to its scope for making boundaries more permeable and bringing fluvial processes into the expression of the park. Another problem in the city’s history was how the river system dislocated several urban areas. Turenscape’s design resolves this through an elaborate network of elevated walkways (Figure  8.5), which flow out from the park to interconnect several areas on adjacent sides of the river, significantly improving pedestrian connectivity in the city centre. These elevated walkways are not only functional but also evocative, drawing reference through their vivid colours and serpentine form to dragon sculptures that are a feature of a local festival called Bandeng Long. The walkways support large volumes of pedestrians, including city residents and tourists, while helping to provide a vibrant identity for the city based on its waterscape. Overall, the design successfully transforms a problem space into a cultural asset for the city, which is largely predicated on integrating the site within broader cultural, social, and ecological systems at the scale of the city. In this way, a formerly isolated site, suffering from the symptomatic problems of degradation, flooding, and urban fragmentation, is now highly connected and active as a result of scoping out its various networks of potential. Layering: While the use of scale aims at evaluating the ecological and social dynamics of landscapes, some interactions can challenge interpretation, in particular the dispersal and distribution of systems across a landscape. This relates to systems having relative extent and spread, where boundaries are less clear

Figure 8.5 Yanweizhou Park, Jinhua, China Source: Image courtesy of Kongjian Yu, Turenscape

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as systems disperse and overlap, with high levels of permeability and diffusion. Layering offers an approach to interpret the relative extent of overlapping systems as a way to scale the spread and dispersion of systems and their overlapping distribution. For instance, to negotiate the extensive size and complexity of the Freshkills site, Field Operations interpreted the site as a matrix (Figure 8.6) that could be “deconstructed into three coordinated systems  – habitat (landscape), program (event areas and facilities) and circulation (roads and paths),” responding to what Corner describes as a “landscape framework that was flexible enough to accommodate change, yet sufficiently coherent and durable to shape future park development” (Corner 2005, p. 21), where each layer has its own strategic aims that are interrelated to the overall development of the park. For instance, “new pathways” are devised as a structure of routes through the park, working down from a hierarchy that includes a major arterial freeway running through the centre of the park, while the incorporation of “new programs” has been carefully considered to respond to the site’s ecological sensitivity, recognising its value as a large open and natural space that acts as an antidote to New York’s dense urban fabric. The most complex layer at Freshkills is “new habitats,” as this layer essentially deals with the remediation of poor soil conditions, while setting in motion the long-term process of establishing planting as the spatial framework for the park (Figure  8.7). Given the site is a landfill, its layering is significantly tied to the processes of capping and various treatment systems already operating on the site. Field Operations’ proposal worked from this existing structure to map out areas where an emergent planting mosaic could be established. This involved identifying techniques, such as strip cropping for soil renovation, to establish the best conditions for a mosaic of grassland, shrubs, and woodland areas to emerge through a coordinated spatial framework. Corner describes that this creates a landscape in transformation, to be viewed as a “legible landscape-in-process,” where planning coordination determines the broad scale spatial framework, with the long-term aim of establishing a “layered woodland that will naturalise over time” (Corner 2005, pp.  18–19). This process involves a range of management approaches, such as periodic mowing and grazing to maintain open grassland, a machine called an “imprinter” that creates a micro-topography that mimics the action of cattle hooves, phases of sapling planting to initiate shrub and tree growth, alongside self-organising processes of seed dispersal through the natural actions of wind and wildlife (Corner 2005). Field Operations’ use of layering allows them to separate layers to effectively make a complex project more manageable, although separation works to the objective of creating a fused structure, with strong interrelationships between layers, where “over time, the initial framework of inter-related habitat, program and circulation elements will spread and evolve into a layered and fully integrated park matrix” (Corner 2005, p. 21). This approach does not aim to design the landscape as a series of spatial compositions, but as an evolving framework, where interactions between layers creates alignments, juxtapositions, and overlaps that respond to the site’s context in diverse ways. This includes the proposed construction of an earthwork monument as a memorial to those lost in the September 11 event and the efforts of recovery workers in its aftermath. The design of

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Figure 8.6  Freshkills Park, New York, United States Source: Image courtesy of James Corner Field ­Operations

Source: Image courtesy of James Corner Field Operations

Figure 8.7  Freshkills Park, New York, United States

Relational scales

the earthwork monument references the size of the World Trade Centre towers, while offering an open, panoramic view of the city positioned on an axis that points to Lower Manhattan. More generally, the evolving framework of the park is strategically open to allow its management, by the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, to respond and adapt to the various aspects of its evolving “lifescape.” As indicated by the dispersed layering of woodland and other ecosystems at Freshkills (Figure 9.14), the layering of landscape systems can be related to the idea of ecotone, most generally described as the transitional zone between two or more ecosystems, where boundary distinctions are less sharp and characteristics from one merge with those from another. Ecotones have been recognised as frequently displaying greater biological richness than either of the communities they separate, as an area of “active interaction between two or more ecosystems (or patches of ecosystems), which results in the ecotone having properties that do not exist in either of the adjacent ecosystems” (Steiner 2016, p. 28). In ecology, ecotones have been recognised for many positive attributes, including favourable edge habitats, reducing the impact of wind, and being sources of evolutionary novelty and heightened biodiversity (Farina 2006), although some negative effects have been observed, such as an increase of animal predation (Fenske-Crawford & Niem 1997) and landscape fragmentation (Farina 2006). Generally, ecotones are seen as important ecological structures for the functioning of landscapes, where nutrients, water, spores, seeds, and animals move across these spaces, indicating that they contribute by facilitating flows across adjacent spaces that are more heterogeneous in structure. While the study of ecotones in ecology is far reaching, from a landscape design perspective, ecotones can be seen to offer both ecological and experiential qualities, as spaces with heightened diversity and interaction between overlapping systems. Notably, the word origin can be traced to the Greek word composed by oikos (household) and tonos (tension), indicating levels of structural tension are characteristic of ecotones, alluding to their potential to become both ecologically and experientially of interest. For design purposes, layering provides an approach to play with spatial tensions, such as aligning, contrasting, diffusing, or blending adjacent components or layers of the landscape, including topography, hydrology, planting, and built forms, where rather than approaching design through concern for compositional areas, layering provides a tactic of dismantling the landscape into independent layers, where there is an internal logic, content, and system of organisation to each layer, depending on its function or intended purpose. Enacting: The idea of enacting brings emphasis to how the use of scale can be focused around the relational interactions of actants, which can include people, animals, or objects, that play an active role in shaping the landscape. The idea of enacting draws attention to how actants are often set within a network of relations, which work across a more multivariate and shifting structure of interscalar relationships. Through the idea of enacting we can explore not only the role of one actant, but how combinations of actants, including people, animals, material, and technological and built elements, dynamically come together in the landscape. In this way, the landscape is considered the stage of enactment, involving var-

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ied human and nonhuman inputs, with the aim of evaluating how combinations will interact and produce emergent effects, reflecting what geographer Ash Amin describes as the “indivisible associations between nature, technology, objects, bodies, biology, and human thought and practice” (Amin 2007, p. 108). A good example of an enacted approach is the Oyster-tecture project by SCAPE, which uses oysters as the primary actants in a strategy for New York’s waterfront. SCAPE’s proposition is that oysters could become a strategic actant in an eco-infrastructure that contributes to the city’s storm protection and bay water quality, while revitalising oyster related industries (Orff 2013), indicating that oysters have both ecological and cultural significance (Figure 8.8). Kate Orff describes that “Eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) and Ribbed mussels (Geukensia demissa) provide numerous ecosystem services,” acting as bivalves that filter and improve water quality, while requiring a “spatially complex substrate and mosaic-like topography” that could help to mitigate against the effects of storm surges (Orff 2013, p. 317). While the Oyster-tecture proposal was a speculative idea in response to the Museum of Modern Art’s 2010 Rising Tides exhibition,

Figure 8.8  Oyster-tecture, New York, United States Source: Image courtesy of SCAPE

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Relational scales

SCAPE have worked hard to implement it, with elements of the proposed infrastructure currently being tested. The fabrication of the Oyster-tecture infrastructure is relatively straightforward; however, the greater challenge to its realisation are “regulatory hurdles” that restrict marine-based interventions, in particular the introduction of live animals into the harbour. The testing of the infrastructure has instead focused on the natural recruitment of Ribbed mussels, which provide similar functions to oysters and are the dominant species found in the harbour (Orff 2013). These smallscale tests are steps towards a more elaborate infrastructure that would integrate oyster and mussel production within a protective reef comprised of rock and shell piles and a network of fuzzy ropes that support shellfish (Figure 8.9). The project indicates that recognising the ecological and cultural significance of an actant requires working on numerous interrelated scales, including material fabrication, infrastructural design, spatial planning, and regulations, while setting this within the context of large-scale issues, such as mitigating against climatic pressures, all underpinned by collaborative input from various expertise, including designers, scientific experts, planning officers, and local participants. Enacting involves concern for how landscapes perform and are durable, not only on material levels, but as a set of relational combinations and interactions. This reflects what sociologist John Law describes as “a sensibility to the messy practices of relationality and materiality of the world” (Law 2007, p.  2), where social values and actions can be mobilised in the process of place making, while equally considering how non-human elements are integral to this. Pierre Bélanger suggests that “the new paradigms of longevity and performance,” which “decisively break with the Old World pictorial, bucolic, and aesthetic tradition of

Figure 8.9  Oyster-tecture, New York, United States Source: Image courtesy of SCAPE

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landscape design,” give landscape planning and design a “logistical and operative agency as a practice that deals with complex, multi-dimensional systems” (Bélanger 2009, p.  92). This reflects Corner’s view, that “individual agents acting across a broad field of operation produce incremental and cumulative effects that continually evolve the shape of an environment over time,” where “linear, mechanistic models prove to be markedly inadequate to describe them” (Corner 2006, p. 29). As urbanist AbdouMaliq Simone suggests, engaging this enacted sense of landscape requires “different senses of what is required and possible, different performances and framing devices, different vertically layered strata of articulation, and different ways of paying attention and of being implicated in what is going on,” where there is always “different reach and possibilities” in how landscapes are transformed by what “people, materials, technical and discursive instruments do in the passing” (Simone 2011, p. 356). In this way the idea of enacting draws attention to landscapes characterised by provisional conditions, where relationships between combinations of components are seen as provisional states of an evolving landscape. Enacting is provisional in that it explores how dynamic interactions and processes combine as a projective sense of what the landscape is becoming, requiring a more speculative approach, but as Oyster-tecture indicates, one that is based on a rigorous exploration of possibilities, drawn from varying expertise. Anchoring: The idea of anchoring offers a conceptual middle ground between seeing the landscape as territorially anchored and fixed while also relationally fluid and unfixed. It acknowledges that certain elements or structures within a landscape might have a greater sense of permanence, to offer a level of stability around which more impermanent, temporal, or system-based processes can be organised. One project that utilises this approach is Anchoring Terrain by Mathur and da Cunha, which responds to the historical morphology of Philadelphia as a test ground to explore future spatial trajectories. Mathur and da Cunha’s interpretation draws from the city’s historical evolution, referring to William Penn’s planning efforts in the 1680s to essentially anchor the city around its major river systems, the Delaware and the Schuylkill Rivers. They suggest that while this structure effectively anchored the city along river edges, the growth of the city defied any strict planning expectations. What they derive from this historical development is the possibility of seeing the city as an open and dynamic terrain, where, rather than interpreting landscape features as being within an urban framework and fixed plan, they instead become anchors around which the city can evolve. They identify three kinds of spatial anchors (Figure 8.10), including “railroads to creeks, avenues to trails, and edges to grounds,” to explore how these anchors can “initiate potentially transformative trajectories, vocabularies and identities.” Their aim is to explore a design approach to urban growth that initiates and cultivates multiple anchors and plural languages rather than a strictly conceived plan, which “opens possibilities more than it assumes certainties” (Mathur  & da Cunha 2013, p.  331). They suggest that this approach constructs a ground of development that is “intrinsically agile, tenacious and resilient,” as “qualities that are important in a time of increasing openness, complexity, ambiguity, and

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Figure 8.10  Anchoring Terrain, Philadelphia, United States Source: Image courtesy of Mathur & da Cunha

uncertainty, when foresight and control of singular entities like cities are even more elusive than they were in the 1600s” (Mathur & da Cunha 2013, p. 333). The Anchoring Terrain project offers a vision of how Philadelphia’s evolving fabric can be organised around a series of spatial structures that offer the grounds to extend, connect, and gather the more fluid processes of urbanisation. The proposition is that the city becomes oriented around these extensive physical anchors, offering the grounds to enhance the city’s operational infrastructure, where functions including hydrological systems, event spaces, high-tech and agrarian production, and housing and institutional centres are catalysed. For instance, the Railroads to Creeks strategy identifies that many of the original creeks have been subsumed into the city’s infrastructure and now exist as “sewers and drains beneath an altered surface” (Mathur  & da Cunha 2013, p.  333). They propose that rather than recover these creeks as some suggest be done, railroad cuts made in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries could be appropriated to engineer new creeks, using the topography of these cuts as a network of pools and streams to make places for biotic culture, treatment, and a number of opportunistic possibilities, while engendering a new architecture of surfaces that offers physical and programmatic benefits (Mathur & da Cunha 2013).

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Anchoring can be seen as a process to negotiate complexity by capturing strong correlations with the structure, position, and distance of observed physical conditions in the landscape (Harley 2002), which can be described as an analogical correspondence which utilises a more conventional idea of cartographic scale as “the relationship between the distance on a map to the corresponding distance on the ground” (Marston 2000, p. 219). In this way, anchoring provides structural reference points to a prominent and perceptible aspect of the landscape, such as a river, landform, or a network of open spaces. However, as demonstrated in Anchoring Terrain, it is not only a process of identifying these reference points but evaluating their potential as strategic grounds for an evolving landscape. Mathur and da Cunha’s work highlights that cities have most often evolved in defiance of particular plans and long term frameworks, where rethinking the planning process around spatial anchors provides greater degrees of strategic flexibility, enabling new trajectories of urban development by utilising existing spatial resources that are anchored in the landscape. Selecting: While an advanced use of scale may lead into complexity, as ecologists Jérôme Chave and Simon Levin suggest, “the art of developing models to act across widely different scales of space, time or organisational complexity involves more than just the inclusion of every possible detail, at every possible scale” (Chave & Levin 2003, p. 527). They see that using scale relationally is a critical process of selecting key relationships and interactions in the landscape, bringing emphasis to strategic issues, while subduing those of less significance. To help avoid an overload of information that confounds interpretation, Chave and Levin observe that “usually, only a few scales are relevant, each corresponding with one process that drives the dynamics of the system” (Chave & Levin 2003, p. 534), although Wilbanks sees that the challenge is in finding the relevant scales and how they are important to the questions at hand (Wilbanks 2006). Dealing with project synthesis may involve commencing with what Alan Berger describes as “wide generalists probing and scanning of tangential knowledge,” before identifying more specific aspects based on “compatibilities and synergies” (Berger 2009, p. 15), which implies that using scale is a selective process, of opening up a broad interpretation of a landscape’s dynamic systems, before being selective in targeting key strategic aspects on which a project becomes a propositional matter. This indicates that selecting is not just about reducing information, but involves dealing with scale as a critically selective and propositional matter, where the use of scale is determined by the query which one poses in the process of interpreting or designing a landscape. On this basis, using scale can be seen as an exploratory and selective process that frames questions, underpinned by inquiry into the relational dimensions and interactions of the landscape. Interpretation may begin with generalist, although fundamental, questions. For instance, Mathur and da Cunha suggest that many of their studies are initiated by seeking answers to seemingly simple but difficult and indeed fundamental questions, such as what is a river? Where is the city? Using visualisations referred to as “photoworks” and “photowalks,” including sectional drawings and collages, they construct and peel away the many layers of complex landscapes (Pevzner & Sen 2010). A design may work to propose speculative questions about

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new possibilities and interactions, which require selecting appropriate scalar tactics to best envision potential outcomes. In this way, selecting is also strategic in aligning processes of interpretation and design with issues that are pertinent to a landscape, while responding to broader imperatives to make landscapes more resilient to environmental pressures, such as flooding, loss of biodiversity, or urban fragmentation. Mathur and da Cunha’s entry for the Freshkills Park competition sought to question the premise of the design brief; of effectively transforming the site from “Landfill to Landscape.” Their argument was that this site had always been a landscape, where an approach to catalyse future development could be predicated on the question of “How could this historically closed-off site open a public face to the community?” and “What exactly is the community here?” (Pevzner & Sen 2010, p. 7). These questions informed their proposal to interpret the landfill site as a shifting landscape, which heaves and breathes and changes form, as opposed to something very fixed and definite. This sense of a shifting landscape underpinned their idea to explore the role of the designer as the creator of starting points, which evolve as the staging of social and ecological processes over time (Figure 8.11). The question of community becomes a strategic process of identifying diverse groups, including educators, ecologists, artists, city authorities, garbologists, etc, to form a “Dynamic Coalition,” where the landscape evolves by working with various publics on multiple initiatives (Pevzner & Sen 2010). This proposal works beyond a generic sense of public, to identify various coalitions of users who have vested interests in shaping the landscape, from which communities can arise around shared interests. While in Field Operations’ proposal for Freshkills the landscape is developed and the public is allowed to enter and use the site as actors in its “Lifescape,” Mathur and da Cunha’s entry seeks to identify with particular communities of interest groups to form strategic coalitions interested in developing the landscape as actants in a “Dynamic Coalition,” where any intentions about what type of landscape emerges is left open-ended. Both Field Operations’ and Mathur and da Cunha’s proposals for Freshkills set out time-based trajectories; however, while Field Operations works towards a definable, albeit strategically open, outcome, largely communicated through a conventional master plan, Mathur and da Cunha choose to suspend the idea of a final product to instead communicate a shifting landscape that “might evolve and extend in time” (Pevzner  & Sen 2010, p.  8). Both projects work with the convergence of multiple dimensions while deploying a multi-scaler approach to interpret this complex landscape, setting out visual trajectories of its strategic development. The projects in this chapter indicate that the use of scale is intrinsically linked to that of strategy, where each concept brings emphasis to an active process, summarised as: nesting and scoping as processes of exploring the potential interactions and network potentials between a site and its surrounding context; layering as a process to strategically dismantle distributed systems and explore spatial tensions; enacting as a process of tracing relational combinations and their provisional possibilities; anchoring as a process of correlating dynamic conditions around embedded spatial resources; and selecting as a process of exploring

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Figure 8.11  Dynamic Coalition, Freshkills Park, New York, United States Source: Image courtesy of Mathur & da Cunha

speculative questions. Put simply, the use of scale is not neutral and predetermined, but active and selective in working as a strategically relational and propositional process. All landscapes can be evaluated as relational, as the ground where many things converge and interact, where varied activity is often happening simultaneously, requiring a synthetic approach that includes multi-scale tactics. This involves working with a landscape’s dynamic qualities, its interactions, processes, and relationships, as a purposeful process to explore, reveal, evaluate, and interrelate possibilities, which indicates the vast combinatorial potential of scalar tactics, where no single scale is sufficient for comprehensive interpretation, nor for engaging the temporal quality of a landscape.

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Chapter 9

Enlivened temporality

As evident in many projects that tackle post-industrial sites, the recovery of these landscapes requires approaches that counter many of the environmental problems stemming from industrial activity, in particular contamination, abandonment, and social exclusion. More broadly, sociologist Barbara Adam suggests that the problem of the industrial age was its “imposition of industrial time on the rhythmicity and pace of ecosystems,” where “industrial time is centrally implicated in the construction of environmental degradation and hazards.” Her point is that industrialisation not only conditioned the environment, but had cultural influence over how we understand the temporal dimensions of nature, society, and the environment, which was largely limited by linear, mechanistic timeframes that conflict with the complexity and interpenetration of “cosmic, natural and cultural rhythms” (Adam 1998, Introduction). As evidenced by many of the pioneering post-industrial projects, such as Candlestick Point, Duisburg-Nord, or Freshkills Park, the environmental recovery of these sites is as much about the recovery of an enriched sense of temporality. In effect, these aspects of recovery are intrinsically interlinked, involving processes of remediation, rehabilitation, and re-activation through time-based strategies, where the “key conceptual tool for overcoming our current environmental problems is temporality, not spatiality” (Adams 1998; Meyer 2007, p. 80). The recovery and enrichment of temporality has largely been influenced by progressive ideas from the science of ecology. James Corner suggests that ecology helps to show “how all life on the planet is deeply bound into dynamic relationships.” He suggests that the “complexity of interaction between elements within ecological systems is such that linear, mechanistic models prove to be markedly inadequate to describe them” (Corner 2006, p. 29), where the “creative practices of ecology and landscape architecture construct or more precisely enable, alternate forms of relationship and hybridisation between people, place, material and Earth” (Corner 1997, p. 279). This points to the alignment of design with ecology’s generative potential (Czerniak 2001), where ideas stemming from the ecological sciences, such as diversification, instability, indeterminacy, and self-organisation, provide liberating metaphors for creative design processes (Weller 2001). Working through an ecological lens provides a stronger appreciation of how nature, society, and the environment that contains them is not only a matter of space, but fundamentally the context of temporal realms, processes, and concepts (Adam 1998),

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where site and its design are both “constituted as fields of relations rather than just merely the arrangement of objects on a surface” (Langhorst 2004, p. 76). An enriched appreciation of temporality brings with it levels of complexity, where these temporal realms, processes, and concepts are not simple and singular, but multidimensional (Adam 1998). Elizabeth Meyer suggests that “the enriched conception of temporality acts as a conceptual bridge between so many seemingly unrelated categories – body and site, ecology and industry, consumption and production” (Meyer 2007, p.  81). This implies the relational quality of temporality, which Adam sees as “marked by in/visibility, im/materiality, futurity and un/certainty,” where appreciating the temporal involves “emphasising rhythmicities, timings and tempos, changes and contiguities” (Adam 1998, Introduction). For landscape architecture, bringing emphasis to these temporal qualities can be expressed through their interplay with spatial structure, as reflected by Hargreaves’ idea of working with the enlivening tensions between the “made and unmade, or designed and undesigned” (Hargreaves 2007, p. 128). Temporality cannot be dissociated from spatiality, where one conditions the other as a process of relational change. However, current theory points to an increasingly elaborate appreciation of relational change, in which multiple structures, processes, and actions intersect, overlap, and weave together at various temporal and spatial scales, which emphasises the diverse combinatorial potential of temporality and relational change. This is evident in the many projects reviewed in this book, indicating that the scope of temporal ideas reflects the multidimensional quality of landscapes, whether it be the irresolvable complexities of abandonment and contamination; the social organisation of time through operative terms, such as flux, flow, or duration; the time-based trajectories of transitional or metabolic urbanism; or the open-endedness, indeterminacy, and spontaneity of ecosystems, amongst other conceptualisations. This indicates that working with temporality is more than creative expression; it is about engaging temporal dimensions that reinforce the social and ecological qualities of the landscape. To help navigate the expansive range of temporal-based approaches, this chapter outlines a series of operative terms and projects that bring emphasis to an enlivened sense of temporality. Differentiating: Considering temporality is no longer a simple dualism between short-term and long-term effects, but a more complicated array of temporal scales set along a broad spectrum; from the everyday and momentary rhythm of the experiential, set within an array of social and ecological formations, to the long duration of geological formations or extensive scale of climate change or extended urbanisation, all of which and amongst others, co-exist in the landscape. For the intentional purposes of landscape architecture, this broad spectrum of temporal scales can be differentiated into generalised categories. A good example of this is James Corner Field Operations’ entry for Toronto’s Downsview Park competition (1999), which presented a visual matrix to differentiate temporal processes (Figure  9.1), organised through three parallel timelines that cumulatively relate to their overall vision of “Emergent Ecologies.” The visual matrix includes objective phases of intensive site engineering set along a measured timeline of clearly demarcated phases. Underlying

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Source: Image courtesy of James Corner Field Operations

Figure 9.1  Downsview Park, Toronto, Canada

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this is a parallel timeline that follows an organic pattern, where emergent and more self-organising flora and fauna follow a pattern of increasing biodiversity, which can be cross-related with the measured timeline to identify how planting is distributed across the site and informs the emergence of the site’s spatial framework, while indicating key points for adaptive management in the future. Underpinning these timelines is a series of montages that offer an interpolated sequence of scenic snapshots, indicating how social programmes will incrementally be activated, while offering visual perspectives of the experiential qualities of the emergent landscape. Field Operations’ visual matrix provides a holistic framework to differentiate temporal processes, which are set along timelines that bring focus to the specific requirements of differing components, where site engineering works to a measured set of phases, emergent ecologies follow diversifying trajectories, and social activation and experiential qualities punctuate the framework at durational intervals. While the framework aims to differentiate these timelines, as a visual matrix that provides a basis to cross-relate and synchronise these co-evolving temporal dimensions, where site engineering informs ecosystem distribution, which in turn evolves the landscape’s spatial structure, while scenic snapshots indicate how these converge with social activity to provide a holistic vision of the emergent landscape. The project emphasises that while differentiating temporal processes involves organising them into general categories, this is not aimed at creating separation in the landscape but instead works to appreciate and align temporal processes in relation to their differing requirements, while setting this within a holistic framework where strategic interactions can be made tangible. Frederick Steiner suggests that “interactions are sometimes explained by the mix of uses that occurs in a space,” where most spaces “contain multiple uses and sometimes a startling array and juxtaposition of uses” (Steiner 2016, p.  33). He suggests that this requires viewing landscapes as dynamic entities, “defined by their interacting parts and their integrative whole,” where the “parts of the landscape are both cultural and natural; the whole forms a visual synthesis” (Steiner 2016, p. 86). Given these are temporal processes, interactions need to be defined and conceptualised through time, where the evolution of landscapes is an emergent structure of relational change. Urban ecologist Marina Alberti suggests that it involves seeing landscapes as complex systems, made up of many interacting heterogeneous components, where “interactions lead to emergent patterns that cannot be predicted from an understanding of the behaviour of the individual parts” (Alberti 2008, p. 93). Evaluating differing temporal processes can follow the general idea that their interactions will be either conflictual or complementary, or in some cases occurring in separation with no apparent interactions (Ruiz & Domon 2006, p. 70). Differentiating interactions responds to current ideas which recognise that diversity in cultural and natural systems can provide increased resilience and enrichment of the landscapes we live in, which is imperative for large-scale projects. If diversity results from both natural and social forces, then differentiating can help to bridge between these dimensions by working with the multifunctional

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make-up of a landscape, or what Linda Pollock describes as a shift towards understanding “multiple systems overlapping in a landscape” (Pollock 2007, p.  98). Alberti suggests that “landscape patterns are hybrid phenomena emerging from the interplay of human and ecological processes acting on multiple temporal and spatial scales,” where studying the interactions between humans and ecological processes requires considering that many factors work simultaneously at multiple scales (Alberti 2008, p. 13). This implies that while landscapes can generally be described as “social-ecological systems,” where social and environmental components are closely interwoven (Berkes et  al. 2003), many things can be happening simultaneously, where human and environmental systems interact in very complex, often nonlinear ways, on multiple scales of time and space (Holling et al. 2002). Paolo Bürgi’s design for visitor routes and viewing platforms at the Cardada tourist resort in Switzerland offers an example of a project that embraces temporality. Bürgi’s project, entitled “Reconsidering a Mountain,” began by posing the question: what do we want to find when we arrive at this mountain? Working with a range of collaborators, including an artist, geologist, botanist, and historian, allowed Bürgi to form a deep interpretation of the landscape’s cultural, geological, and botanical dimensions, such as how a birch woodland emerged from the abandonment of farmland by poor farmers emigrating away from the area, or how lichens indicate good air quality and the presence of eagles suggest low noise pollution (Fabiani Giannetto 2010). Bürgi’s concern was to work beyond the facilitation of tourists moving hastily through this landscape, as a symptom he describes as “landscape for consumption,” where experience is limited to a reductionist encounter of nature through mere panorama. The process of collaborative interpretation allowed Bürgi to identify various qualities of the landscape to inform a series of design interventions, with the aim of compelling a deeper appreciation of the landscape’s temporal qualities. Working from the arrival point at the cableway station in Cardada, his design includes various ambient and tactile encounters, symbols, interpretative texts, and play structures, offering a series of poetic encounters that enliven people’s experience of the landscape on the routes that lead to dramatic viewing platforms. The arrival plaza has granite slabs with grass growing along edges, forming an expression of transition from the urban to the natural landscape. A water fountain, located in the plaza and constructed from a large section of locally sourced oak (Figure  9.2), provides an ambient hint of mountain streams to evoke the presence of hydrological action in shaping this landscape. The fountain invites people to play with the water flow and discover subtle temporal processes, such as the release of tannins in the oak which gradually produce a dark stain on the wood. This careful attention to materiality is carried through the whole project, where raised walkways constructed from titanium and steel create an elegant but durable elevated walkway (Figure 9.3), providing tactile contact with tree canopies, before arriving at a cantilevered promontory that offers dramatic views over Lake Maggiore and the surrounding Alps. The route extends to a further promontory located at the 1,670-metre Cimetta Peak of Cardada’s mountain, which offers panoramic views of the sur-

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Figure 9.2  Reconsidering a Mountain, Cardada, Switzerland Source: Image courtesy of Studio Bürgi

rounding alpine landscape. Bürgi saw the opportunity to conceive this promontory as a geological observatory, which rests on a slim concrete disk, forming a strong geometric platform in contrast to the rugged mountain terrain (Figure 9.4). The disk is embedded into the rock formations, creating a contrast that accentuates both geometric and geological forms, fused into the platform. Bürgi’s aim was not only to provide a stunning platform to view the surrounding mountains, but incorporate structural elements as abstract expressions of the deep time of geological formations that shaped the surrounding Insubria landscape (Figure 9.5). This includes a range of abstract expressions about the region’s geological significance, including a red line that draws reference to the geologic fault line between the African and European tectonic plates, alongside geological samples from the European and African plates, which are inserted in a formation that represents the relative timeline of geological formation. In contrast to the abstract articulation of Field Operations’ visual matrix, Bürgi works more directly with the landscape, using collaborative interpretation to reveal subtle or large-scale processes, such as geological formation, hydrological action, and human cultivation, which he draws attention to through poetic devices that aim to trigger visitors’ curiosity about how temporal processes have shaped the landscape. In Bürgi’s project lies the aim of creating experiential encounters at the scale of embodiment, movement, imagination, and sensation, which Richard Howitt sees as bringing about a sense of being-in-the-world, which is also “inescapably being-in-time” (Howitt 2002, p. 308). Both projects highlight that engaging

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Figure 9.3  Reconsidering a Mountain, Cardada, Switzerland Source: Image courtesy of Studio Bürgi

temporality is about appreciating and differentiating the various processes that actively shape the landscape, whether interpreted through scales of either abstract or direct interpretation, which in themselves need to be differentiated. Aligning: On a general level, temporality is simultaneously cyclical and incremental, in that the landscape can include cyclical and routine fluxes and durations of activity, which are embedded in processes of incremental growth, emergence, and development. This highlights that interpreting temporality involves disentangling various temporal patterns that are embedded in the landscape, while seek-

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Figure 9.4  Reconsidering a Mountain, Cardada, Switzerland Source: Image courtesy of Studio Bürgi

ing to align design aims with how temporal processes contribute to complex change over time. One project that aligns design with a range of temporal qualities is Salines de la Tancada in Catalunya, Spain, designed by Estudi Martí Franch (EMF Landscape Architects). The site is a strategic component of the broader Ebro Delta, considered as an area of international importance for wildlife conservation; however, it has been shaped by successive periods of human activity, with salt production being replaced by fish farming, configuring an agrarian structure of ordered pools and irrigation systems to harness the natural resources of the estuarine system. This project is part of the European Union’s Delta Lagoon Life project, with the primary aims of restoring the ecological quality of pools and establishing the site as a cultural interpretation centre (Figure 9.6). The design can be seen as a process of re-aligning the site with its estuarine ecology, which involved reshaping the pool system. While the design largely retains the historical framework of the productive landscape, the strict boundaries of its former dyke system have been re-profiled to transform the dyke boundaries into diverse ecotones between sea and salt flats (Figure 9.7), establishing a marine ecosystem that supports birds, fish, and aquatic invertebrates. The transformation of the landscape had to be sensitive to existing habitats that supported numerous threatened species, such as the Spanish toothcarp (Aphanius iberus),

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Figure 9.5  Reconsidering a Mountain, Cardada, Switzerland Source: Image courtesy of Studio Bürgi

Figure 9.6  Salines de la Tancada, Tarragona, Catalunya, Spain Source: Image courtesy of Estudi Marti Franch; photo credit: Sergi Romero

Enlivened temporality

Figure 9.7  Salines de la Tancada, Tarragona, Catalunya, Spain Source: Image courtesy of Estudi Marti Franch

while creating a range of marine edge habitats to support a rich variety of salt tolerant halophytic plants, which are well adapted to the saline conditions and provide good habitat for birds, including various endangered species, such as the Kentish plover (Charadrius alexandrinus), the Collared pratincole (Glareola pratincola), and Little tern (Sternula albifrons). Enhancing the site’s biodiversity required aligning this reshaped landform with the various tidal patterns and seasonal fluctuations that effect water levels, which are coordinated through a series of irrigation channels and sluice gates retained from its prior productive use (Figure 9.8). This indicates that the current landscape is shaped by both human and ecological processes, where the ecological mosaic that naturally occurred in the estuarine area was altered into a productive system, creating the current mosaic, which is as much a cultural landscape as an ecological one (Figure 9.9). What results is a more patchy mosaic than would have occurred naturally, with pools left to naturalise or in other areas, such as a salt garden, designed to act as demonstration spaces to educate people about the site’s productive history and ecological potential. While the project’s primary aim was restoration of ecological systems, this included re-appropriating existing buildings to act as a museum with educational emphasis. To integrate these functions within this sensitive landscape, the design organises human access and activity in close proximity to the museum, where a series of lagoons act as micro versions of processes occurring at broader scales, allowing people to understand this dynamic environment while being set on one of several islands that provide a sense of being immersed in this “liquid landscape.” Ware describes that “the types of plants that flourish in a given area, subjected to the daily and annual tidal flux, storm surges and king tides, reveal the degree of wetness of that location, creating a whole new complex relationship between land, water and time” (Ware 2016, p. 76). EMF’s approach at Salines de la Tancada was to work with the openness of the site, both in terms of its spatial structure, by leaving the site open to the dramatic setting of the Ebro Delta, but also in terms of temporal processes that condition a diverse set of evolving patterns, set within the loosened framework of the former productive system. Geographer Marc Antrop suggests that “landscapes are composed of many different components which have their own dynamics,” while “many changes will occur simultaneously and continuously, all

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Figure 9.8  Salines de la Tancada, Tarragona, Catalunya, Spain Source: Image courtesy of Estudi Marti Franch; photo credit: Sergi Romero

Figure 9.9  Salines de la Tancada, Tarragona, Catalunya, Spain Source: Image courtesy of Estudi Marti Franch; photo credit: Catalunya Caixa

Enlivened temporality

at their own speed and magnitude” (Antrop 1998, p. 156). This dynamic is evident in the Salines de la Tancada project, where incremental growth is varied and different areas will evolve in relation to the diverse site conditions. This approach reflects the theory of multi-equilibrium, which challenges the conventional idea that landscapes evolve towards a point in time when a mature and stable landscape is established, to be superseded by the idea of multi-equilibria systems, as a “patch dynamics approach,” which emphasises that change in ecosystems involves “different types and rates of dynamism” (Grove et al. 2015, pp. 25–26). This highlights that working with the spatiality of a site can catalyse ecological and social conditions, where temporal processes are patchy and distributed, with varying rates and types of dynamism that evolve incrementally. Anticipating: Aligning and opening design to the processes of temporality may challenge the conceptualisation of landscapes, where processes, or the interactions between them, may evolve in uncertain or unpredictable ways. While this is part of the dynamic and living quality of landscapes, it requires planning and design approaches that anticipate how a landscape will evolve. Anita Berrizbeitia describes that to engage the inherent uncertainty in landscapes involves being “precisely open-ended” rather than “vaguely loose,” which requires an approach, aligned with ecological thinking, to understand the landscape “as a set of contingent and not fully predictable relationships between organisations” (Berrizbeitia 2007, p. 177). This implies that while landscapes may remain open to dynamic temporal processes, our understanding of their temporal qualities allows us to anticipate the relational changes that will occur, at either planning or design scales. In anticipation of long-term future changes, the Dutch Council for the Environment and Infrastructure (the Rli) undertook the Landscape Challenge 2070 study to explore how developments, such as urbanisation, agricultural intensification, climate change, and energy transition, will have a significant impact on the quality of the Dutch landscape. The study stemmed from concerns that decentralisation and deregulation had eroded the role of government in securing the quality of landscape. In response to this situation, the study aims to make recommendations on how to secure the quality of the landscape in the future and what role the government should have. The study was predicated on the definition of landscape as stated in the European Landscape Convention of 2000: “ ‘Landscape’ means an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors” (Rli Report 2016, p.  11; Council of Europe 2000). This reflects the history of landscape development in the Netherlands, where the landscape has been highly developed and reclaimed through a consistent interaction with natural conditions, particularly in delta, coastal, and polder areas. Karres+Brands’ contribution to the Landscape Challenge 2070 recognised that through the heroic tradition of dredging, land reclamation, and landscape building, the Netherlands has evolved by constantly working against nature, which requires great effort and maintenance, while often resulting in problems, such as flooding and degraded natural areas. By anticipating the challenges of future impacts, such as climate change, urbanisation, and energy transition, they

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propose that the Dutch attitude toward nature has to change. Their “Seven New Netherlands” proposal suggests that the “traditional attitude of the Dutch to nature seems untenable,” while it is essential to work not against nature, but rather with nature even more (Karres+Brands, in Rli Report 2016, p.  14). They propose revising administrative boundaries to a system that more effectively anchors future governance in relation to the landscape. This is organised around seven new areas that broadly characterise the transitions in the country’s natural landscape (Figure 9.10), including low areas of delta and river systems where new forms of agriculture can develop, such as aquaculture (delta land) (Figure 9.11) and wet crops (rivierenland); the concentration of compact cities in higher areas to

Figure 9.10 The Seven New Netherlands Source: Image courtesy of Karres+Brands

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Figure 9.11 The Seven New Netherlands: Delta Land Source: Image courtesy of Karres+Brands

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avoid problems of flooding; and the development of large-scale nature areas and energy production in marginal areas (Figure 9.12), where economic interests are less viable (Rli Report 2016). The Landscape Challenge 2070 study identifies that changes and transitions will happen, while their character and rate of change is unpredictable, as development is often intermittent and “periods of gradual change are interspersed with periods of rapid and profound change” (Loorbach 2014; Rli Report 2016, p. 14). The study also identifies that change and transitions are large-scale, which may require fundamental shifts in the attitude of national governance to “anchor the link between sustainability transitions and the landscape in environmental and planning policy” (Recommendation 1 of Rli Report 2016, p. 28). In this sense it is not only about anticipating transitions in the landscape, but identifying how attitudes and governance need to adapt in response to projected transitions and their potential impacts. Karres+Brands’ contribution indicates that this requires a new planning approach that differentiates regional character based on natural conditions and economic relations, where spatial development becomes more closely linked to the specific capabilities and opportunities of each region. They propose that “axioms that have developed through centuries of working against nature now have to be replaced by a spatial development on the basis of the natural system” (Rli Report 2016, p. 50). Nassauer describes that “ecological design invites the invention and realisation of new, resilient landscapes that visibly embody societal values, thoughtfully incorporate our best knowledge of environmental processes, and are adaptable to surprising change” (Nassauer 2013, p. 81). As the Rli Report indicates, aiming

Figure 9.12 The Seven New Netherlands Source: Image courtesy of Karres+Brands

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for resilience requires identifying and working with the capacity of landscapes to absorb and facilitate change, which requires levels of anticipation based on knowledge of temporal processes, as drivers of change related to their potential for growth, evolution, and adaptation. The report highlights that retrospective interpretation of a landscape’s historical evolution can help understand the ways future change may happen, which may already be predicated on established historical patterns. For instance, public workshops examined developments in the landscape from 1950 and looking ahead until 2070, which indicated the ways the landscape changed in a couple of generations (Rli Report 2016, p. 11). This highlights the importance of public involvement, aimed at educating people about possible changes and to draw on local knowledge, while recognising that society is intrinsically interlinked to transitions and with the quality of the changing landscape. Phasing: While anticipating the future evolution of a landscape can help to direct change and catalyse new conditions, phasing is a commonly adopted approach to create a projective framework of calculated timelines, where future design and management are set out in relation to the logical growth and development of the landscape. Each phase is an organised stage of strategic aims, which do not aim at predetermining the landscape, but suggest target outcomes for long-term evolution, while overcoming the problem of continuous change by identifying a small number of key states (Ednie Brown 2000). This approach is evident in Field Operations’ strategy for the Freshkills site in New York, which, due to its large scale and complexity, required a 30-year phasing strategy (Figure 9.13). Freshkills is nearly three times the size of Central Park, and turning a landfill site into a public park required a long-term strategy to not only transform the landscape but shift people’s perceptions from the negative associations of a waste landscape to the positive values of a public park. While the 30-year strategy aims to establish this transformation, phases beyond that will still be required, including the phasing out of environmental control systems when the waste has finally decomposed, alongside modifications through adaptive management and capital investments. Field Operations recognised these factors, proposing a “Lifescape” vision that identifies that the park will never really be finished or managed in a static state, but at the same time setting out clear objectives to deliver an extensive ecological restoration programme, which in 30 years will establish a mature biomatrix that acts as a spatial framework for a diverse programme of cultural events and activities (Figure 8.1). Given the scale of the site and phasing out of landfill operations, the strategy sets out five areas that will become available for development at different points in the future, while identifying differing qualities across the landscape, where the overall project becomes “five parks in one” (Field Operations 2006). The strategy sets out three phases along 10-year intervals, with phase 1 critical in initiating groundwork for the spatial framework, while providing safe access and public interest to build momentum for subsequent phases. Notably, this involves recognising that the park already has numerous spatial assets, including panoramic views of New York from earth mounds, contrasted by a sense of enclosure and escape in lowland areas where there are no views of the city, while the range of

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Source: Image courtesy of James Corner Field Operations

Figure 9.13  Freshkills Park, New York, United States

Enlivened temporality

vast open spaces contains a range of attractive natural settings, including a tidal creek and wetland systems (Figure 9.14). Some projects have been realised, with the tidal creek restoration completed in 2013 and a range of road and hiking trails allowing access through three park areas, including South Park, North Park, and Creek Landing. This follows a strategic aim to gradually open the park while establishing key components in phase 1 to entice further investment. The three phases create a logical developmental trajectory, described by Field Operations as a “growth strategy” (Field Operations 2006). Phase 1 works with the existing assets of the landscape within an ecological matrix that will evolve to provide the spatial framework for the park, while laying the infrastructure of paths, roads, and utilities to create the settings for public programming. The aim of this stage is to create the broad basis for spatial development, access, and circulation, as the formative steps in establishing the park and its usage. Phase 2 works on enhancing programme settings through investment in new facilities, which might include an ecological golf course, outdoor amphitheatre, marina, and cultural and educational centre, while managing the successional growth of ecological systems. Phase 3 projects that the ecological matrix will have become a vast complex of natural areas, requiring adaptive management at that stage, alongside enhancement of earlier-stage programme areas. While the

Figure 9.14  Freshkills Park, New York, United States Source: Image courtesy of Freshkills Park and the City of New York

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master plan seeks to bring spatial coherence to this complex matrix of social and ecological opportunities, the timings of phasing are evidently more challenging, such as the “destination feature” of the September 11 memorial mound in the West Park being delayed by on-going landfill operations. However, the aims of the strategy were to foresee such circumstances arising, where some projects, including Point Waterfront, Signature Bridge, and the September 11 earthwork, were identified as contingent on the remaining landfill operations. What the “Lifescape” strategy highlights is that phase 1 is critical in building the momentum and success of subsequent phases, largely related to establishing the spatial framework for future developments and providing the setting for programmatic opportunities. In this way the landscape framework has to be both robust and flexible, being “flexible enough to accommodate change over time and respond to unforeseen events, yet sufficiently coherent and durable to shape future park development and define its physical form” (Field Operations 2006, p. 50). At present the strategy is successfully transforming the landfill site into a vibrant parkland, with the North Park now officially open to the public, which contains a broad multi-use pathway, a seed farm, established woodlands, picnic areas, a waterfront overlook deck, a bird observation tower, and a bicycle repair station. This indicates that the aspiration to establish a parkland, with restaurants, cultural facilities, sport amenities, and other recreational uses, will take time, but the momentum to achieve the “Lifescape” vision has been set in motion. The scale of Freshkills highlights that while broad-scale changes in landscape happen over long timescales, at smaller scales many things may be happening that incrementally change the larger-scale framework at very gradual rates. This implies that although landscapes, as socio-ecological systems, may be inherently instable in that nature and society is never fixed, rigid, or deterministic, at a broader scale the overall landscape framework may be relatively stable. However, Farina suggests that the stability of a landscape could be an erroneous concept if used without a scaling perspective, where the stability of a landscape has to be scaled according to the process that we intend to describe. Farina sees that “at the landscape scale, generally, stability is manifested by complicated patterns that locally present frequent changes but at a large scale they maintain the same shape” (Farina 2006, pp. 234–235). Chris Reed and Nina-Marie Lister suggest that while some ecosystem states are perceived by us to be stable, this is not strict stability in a mathematical sense, i.e. inactivity or equilibrium, but is simply our human time-based perceptions of stasis (Reed & Lister 2014). Embedding: A significant challenge in engaging an enriched understanding of temporality is that political, planning, and economic systems are much less dynamic, while their timeframes are disembedded from the environmental timescape (Adams 1998), which results in temporal-scale mismatches where long-term planning needs conflict with relatively short political and economic cycles (Folke et  al. 1998; Young 2003). Notably, the “Lifescape” strategy for Freshkills had an extensive finance plan, outlining the significant capital and operating funds needed to realise its vision and sustain the park (Field Operations 2006). Given its scale and complexity, the proposed transformation of the former landfill site requires significant funds, around $100 million, to establish the broad landscape

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framework, while part of this investment is aimed at enhancing public perception about the future values of the park. In this way the finance plan was also geared towards attracting other funding, to grow enthusiasm and promote the park as an investment opportunity, which relies on changing public perceptions from an early stage. The finance plan indicates that growing the park is as much an economic as socioecological endeavour, where investment will be incremental and follow as adaptive and flexible an approach as the park’s ecological framework. This includes identifying ways in which the park can embed revenue-generating activity, such as waterside restaurants, golf and other recreational activities, and wind and solar energy farms, alongside investment in other facilities and programmes that help to activate the park. This indicates that for large parks, such as Freshkills, funding requires its own level of strategic consideration, while coming from multiple sources of stakeholders, including civic, cultural, and recreation groups, alongside private investors. While the strategy recognises that long-term development and sustained success will be reliant on the social benefits a public park should provide, it also requires identifying future challenges, such as delays to public access due to the phasing out of landfill operations. Another large-scale development that engages social values is Fredericia C, which is one of Denmark’s biggest urban development projects, based on increasing the urban area by 25 per cent and extending mixed use development on land previously occupied by heavy industries in the town’s harbour. Stig L. Andersson Landscape Architects (SLA) were commissioned to create a temporary landscape strategy that would catalyse public engagement in the area through temporary structures and spaces. Entitled “The New Order of Nature,” the project aims to embed a process of social activation within this large-scale urban development, where priority is given to public space and local participation before buildings and infrastructure are developed (Figure 9.15). While the ultimate aim is to transform the former industrial sites into a vibrant urban area, the project places emphasis on the role of its future citizens to become embedded in this process from the start, fostering a more democratic process of urban development. The logic is that by beginning with public space and opportunities for community activism, a more resilient form of urban development will emerge by prioritising social values and allowing socially active space to pre-condition the framework for urban development. While SLA’s project is described as temporary, it would be more accurately described as temporal and embedded, in that its purpose is to respond to the existing industrial sites, to initiate public activity, and to establish a spatial framework that will be incorporated into future urban development, while embedding people in this process. To achieve this, SLA’s proposal remains raw and simple, offering opportunities for the public to participate in the construction of new spaces while providing a range of amenities, including playgrounds and recreational opportunities, to encourage use (Figure 9.16). The project involved mapping out areas of existing planting, materials, and structures that retain expression of the former industry (Figure  9.17 and Figure  9.18), which responds to Fredericia’s identity being built partly on its role as Denmark’s largest port, but also on its cultural

198

Figure 9.15  Fredericia C, Denmark Source: Image courtesy of SLA Landscape Architects

Figure 9.16  Fredericia C, Denmark Source: Image courtesy of SLA Landscape Architects

Figure 9.17  Fredericia C, Denmark Source: Image courtesy of SLA Landscape Architects

Figure 9.18  Fredericia C, Denmark Source: Image courtesy of SLA Landscape Architects

Enlivened temporality

institutions, including the Academy of Musical Theatre and Fredericia Teater (theatre), forming a blended identity of being both an industrial hub and renaissance city. The ambition is to extend this identity into the former port areas, where the foundation of this ambitious urban transformation is driven by a landscape strategy that catalyses positive experience and participation. The Fredericia C project highlights an approach to embedding temporality by engaging social dynamics in processes of urban development, while SLA’s proposal challenges the predominant order in which large-scale urban developments are planned, promoting a socially adaptive approach as an alternative. Chave and Levin suggest that “economies, societies, ecosystems and the biosphere are prototypical complex adaptive systems,” where pattern emerges from the interplay between processes made up of localised interactions and diverse characters (Chave & Levin 2003, p. 529). The theory of “complex adaptive systems” is derived from understanding the organic nature of the living world, which is typically characterised by non-linear, self-organising, emergent, and unpredictable consequences (Cumming et  al. 2013). Notably, two of the projects outlined in this chapter, Salines de la Tancada and Freshkills, make explicit reference to “life” in their strategic visions, while almost all projects in this book demonstrate an inherent value in encompassing social and ecological dynamics within design. This implies that engaging temporality is about engaging life, where an enlivened appreciation of temporality connects design with the living world. This chapter provides one outline of key ideas that place importance on the appreciation of temporality and how it is multidimensional; it can be appreciated in abstraction or through ambient, poetic encounters; it is highly aligned with spatial conditions and in response to cycles and fluctuations in the environment; it incrementally grows, emerges, and develops, often in non-deterministic and uncertain ways; it compels us to adapt and through insight can be anticipated and organised, phased and embedded. Appreciating temporality can be inspirational, bringing expression to living qualities that make landscapes compelling encounters, such as the seasons, tides, wildlife, public events, and everyday activities. It can be expansive, in drawing attention to scales beyond immediate, perceptible grasp, such as the long-term processing of geological and hydrological systems, or the subtle scales of microbial and microscopic activity. The need for an enriched appreciation of temporality is also imperative, in countering climate change or the loss of biodiversity, for carbon reduction or to offset the impacts of rapid urbanisation or intensive industry, which require landscape architects to consider the complex interactions that intersect across a variety of spatial, temporal, and organisational scales.

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Index

3RW Architects: Ørnesvingen Viewpoint 17 abandonment 29 – 49 Adam, B. 179, 197 aesthetics 8 – 28, 29 – 30, 89, 92, 174; social aesthetics 106; see also de-objectifying; experiential; flow; flux; landscapes; nature; picturesque; scenic; wasteland; wetlands Agence Ter: Saint Ouen Parc 89 – 92, 95, 106 Alberti, M. 125 – 128, 130, 132, 134, 140, 182 – 183 Amin, A. 88, 99, 172 anchoring see scale Antrop, M. 188 – 190 Atelier Dreiseitl: Potsdamer Platz 150; see also Copenhagen, Copenhagen Cloudburst Backhaus, G. 18 Batty, L. 68 – 69 bbz Landscape Architecture: Terra Nova Biosphere Belt 110 – 112 Beardsley, J. 12 Bedau, M. 78, 86 Beesley, P. 86; Living Architecture Systems Group 86 Bélanger, P. 138, 140, 174 Berger, A. 165, 176 Bergson, H. 92 Berleant, A. 9 – 10, 28, 89 Berrizbeitia, A. 190 biopolis 86 biosphere 161 – 167 Brady, E. 15, 50, 59, 65, 89 Brenner, N. 107 – 108, 119, 138, 148, 160 Brunier, Y. 22 Bürgi, P.: Reconsidering a Mountain, Cardada 183 – 184 Burke, E. 50

Cadenasso, M. 141, 150, 161, 165 Callicott, J. B. 23 carbon reduction 122 Carlson, A. 8, 27 Chave, J. 176, 201 Chladi, E. 115 circular landscapes see landscapes Clemence Chan, E. 65 Clement, G. 76 commons space see rights to the city Copenhagen 121; Copenhagen Cloudburst 150 Corner, J. 10, 12, 16, 162, 163, 168, 174, 179 Creswell, T. 15 – 16 Cumming, G. S. 140 Czerniak, J. 14 – 16, 162, 163, 179 Del Tredici, P. 29, 32, 43, 46 – 48 de-objectifying 10, 27 – 28; immersive 13 – 14, 27 – 28; indeterminate 12 – 13, 27, 29, 65; open-endedness 12, 27, 64 – 65, 180; relational 10 – 12 Desimini, J. 98, 99 – 100, 105 – 106 Desvigne, M. 118, 148; intermediate nature 118; see also Michel Desvigne Paysagiste Dettmar, J. 29, 31, 63 Dewar, M. 139 Doron, G. M. 30, 98, 99 DTAH: Evergreen Brickworks 73, 89, 92, 141 Ecological Energy Network 142; see also fabric; LOLA ecosystems: biodiversity 186; ecosystem services 138; multi-equilibria systems 190 ecotone 171 Edensor, T. 31, 46, 49, 97 – 98 enacting see scale 219

Index

Epstein, D. 139 Estudi Marti Franch: Salines de la Tancada 186 – 190 European Landscape Convention 190 – 194 Evans, J. 140 experiential 16 – 28; staged experiences 16 – 17; symbolic experiences 17 – 22; unscenic experiences 23 – 28, 29 fabric 121 – 122, 142; see also Ecological Energy Network Farina, A. 197 Fertner, C. 107 – 108 flooding 153, 166 – 167, 190 flow 92 – 97, 121, 138 – 139, 140 – 141, 145, 147, 150, 152, 162 – 163, 180; see also infrastructure flux 89 – 92, 97, 118, 149 – 151, 180, 185 Franck, K. 99 – 100 Freeman, J. 69 – 70 Gandy, M. 23, 29 – 30, 33 – 34, 48, 73 – 74, 76, 97 – 98 Girardet, H. 121, 133 Gobster, P. H. 23 Grant Associates 79 – 86; Gardens on the Bay 79 – 86; Supertrees 80 – 86 Grosse-Bächle, L. 38 Gross Max 105 – 106 Grove, M. J. 165, 190

220

infrastructure 16 – 17, 95, 106, 107, 138 – 158, 172; anchoring 147 – 149; disturbance 140; flexibility 149 – 152; flow 141 – 142; integration 152 – 155; traction 142 – 147, 152 James Corner Field Operations 74 – 76, 78, 121, 194 – 197; Downsview Park 180 – 185; Freshkills Park 162 – 163, 168 – 171, 177, 179, 194 – 197; New York High Line 73 – 78 Johnston, D. 64, 149 Jorgensen, A. 30, 31, 50, 59, 97 – 98, 103 Kagel, M. 56, 59, 62 – 64 Kant, I. 53, 64 Karres+Brands: Seven New Netherlands 190 – 194 Kaufman, M. 113 Kennen, K. 67 – 69 Kirkwood, N. 67 – 69 Koole, S. L. 32 – 33 Körner, S. 31, 34 Kowarik, I. 31, 33 – 36, 38, 46, 59 Krinke, R. 59 Kwinter, S. 10

Haag, R. 71 – 73; see also Richard Haag Associates Halberg, K. 68 – 69 Hardy, H. 52 – 53, 64, 68 Hargreaves Associates 10 – 14; Candlestick Point 10 – 14, 27, 179 Hargreaves, G. 10 – 14, 62, 67, 180 Harvey, D. 99, 107, 139 Hemmings, S. 56, 59, 62 – 64 Hepburn, R. 8 – 9, 27 Hinchliffe, S. 48 H+N+S Landscape Architecture 115 – 116, 155; Buitenschot Land Art Park 113 – 116; Room for the River Nijmegen 155 Hobbs, R. 107, 109 Hodson, M. 139 Howitt, R. 159 – 160, 165, 184 hybrid landscapes see landscapes hydrological design 95 – 96, 150 hyper-nature see technology

landfill 162 – 163, 177, 197 landform 115 – 116 Landscape Challenge 2070, Netherlands 190 – 194 landscapes: circular 132 – 137; hybrid 140, 147, 155, 183; interdependent 122 – 128; interfacial 108 – 109; interspersed 113 – 116; metabolic 119 – 122, 180; multifunctional 182 – 183; peri-urban 109 – 112; temporary 99, 152, 198; transitional 116 – 119 Langer, A. 33 – 36, 38 Langhorst, J. 13, 63 – 64, 68, 71 Latz, P. 51 – 65, 160 Latz Partners: Duisburg-Nord 50 – 66, 67, 73, 86, 179 Law, J. 173 layering see scale Lefebvre, H. 103, 139 Levin, S. 176, 201 Li, K. 24 – 26 Lister, N. M. 197 LOLA 142; see also Ecological Energy Network loose space see rights to the city Lyotard, J. 64

immersive see de-objectifying indeterminate see de-objectifying

Machlis, G. E. 140 Madden, D. 108

Index

Mangelsdorf, W. 77 Marsh, W. 113 Marston, S. A. 160, 165, 176 Mathur and da Cunha: Anchoring Terrain 174 – 176; Freshkills Dynamic Coalition 177 – 178 matrix 140 – 158, 166 – 167, 168, 180 – 185, 196 mesh 139 – 158 metabolism 78, 139; Rotterdam Urban Metabolism 121 – 122, 128, 134, 142; see also landscapes Meyer, E. 14 – 15, 64, 76, 106 McGrath, B. 141, 150, 161 McGuirk, P. M. 159 Michel Desvigne Paysagiste: Bordeaux Parc aux angéliques 119; TGV Avignon 118 – 119, 148 Minang, P. A. 161 Monstadt, J. 86, 107 – 108, 125, 132, 139 multifunctional landscapes see landscapes Murungi, J. 18 MVRDV 135; Almere Oosterwold 125 – 128 Nassauer, J. I. 138 – 139, 193 nature 8 – 28 nesting see scale Norwegian Scenic Routes 17 Nye, D. 52 Odious Group 34, 41, 44 Ooze Architects: Kings Cross Pond Club 100 – 103 open-endedness see de-objectifying Orff, K. 172 – 174 Oudulf, P. 74 – 76 peri-urban landscapes see landscapes Pickett, S. 141, 150, 161 Picon, A. 79 picturesque 14 – 28 Pilon-Smits, E. 69 – 70 Planland 34; Nature Park Südgelände 33 – 49, 73 Pollock, L. 23 – 24, 43, 141, 183 Proap: Alcântara Wastewater Treatment Plant 113 Qi, Y. 159 Rademacher, S. 12 Rainey, R. 13 – 14 Ramalho, C. E. 107, 109 Ramboll + Ramboll Studio Dreiseitl see Copenhagen, Copenhagen Cloudburst Rancière, J. 8, 106

Ravetz, J. 107, 108, 109, 113, 116 – 117, 121 Reed, C. 197 relation see de-objectifying; scale remediation 67 – 70; bioremediation 69 – 70; hyper accumulator 68; phytomining 70 Rhodes, C. 70 Richard Haag Associates: Seattle Gas Works Park 71 – 73 rights to the city 97 – 106; commons space 103 – 106; loose space 99 – 103; transgressive space 97 – 99 Rink, D. 29, 32, 48, 103 Room for the River 153 – 155 Rowe, P. G. 10, 12 Saito, Y. 9 – 11, 15, 23, 27, 95 Salomon, D. 8, 88, 155 scale 147, 159 – 178, 190; anchoring 174 – 176; enacting 171 – 174; layering 167 – 171; multiscale 161 – 162; nesting 161 – 163; relational 178; scoping 163 – 167; selecting 176 – 177 SCAPE: Oyster-tecture 172 – 174; see also Orff, K. scenic 13, 182; see also experiential; picturesque Schmid, C. 107 – 108, 119, 138, 148 scoping see scale selecting see scale Shannon, K. 16 – 17, 67, 139, 148, 149, 155 Sheridan, D. 103 Shoard, M. 109 Sick Nielsen, T. 107 – 108 Sieverts, T. 109 Sijmons, D. 121 Simone, A. 174 Smets, M. 16 – 17, 139, 148, 149, 155 Snøhetta: Kvalhausen, Eggum 17 Sorkin, M. 86 spontaneous vegetation 29 – 30, 67 – 68, 73 – 74 stabilisation 67; phytostabilisation 67 – 68 stasis 197 Steiner, F. 140, 161, 182 Stengers, I. 88 Steven, Q. 99 – 100 Stig L. Andersson Landscape Architects (SLA): The New Order of Nature 198 – 201 sublime 50 – 65; ambivalent 59 – 62; imposing 50, 64 – 65; irresolvable 62 – 65; unsettling 52 – 59 succession 35 – 36 Susser, I. 98, 103 Swyngedouw, E. 125

221

Index

Taylor Lovell, S. 149 technology: hyper-nature 73 – 78; living technology 78 – 79 techno-nature 78 – 85; embedded 79 – 80; optimised 80 – 84; performative 85; responsive 84 – 85 Tempelhof Park 103 – 106 temporality 178, 179 – 201; aligning 185 – 190; anticipating 190 – 194; differentiating 180 – 185; embedding 197 – 201; phasing 194 – 197 temporary landscapes see landscapes Thrift, N. 88, 99 Tonnelat, S. 98, 103 toxicity 65 transgressive space see rights to the city Trepl, L. 33 Turenscape: Houtan Wetland Park 24 – 26; Yanweizhou Park 166 – 167 Tylecote, M. 30, 31, 50, 59, 98, 103 unscenic see experiential UN Studio 22 urbanisation 107 – 137

222

Van den Berg, A. E. 32 – 33 Van Valkenburgh, M. 76 Vicenzotti, V. 33 Vogt Landscape Architecture: Allianz Arena 145 – 147 Wachsmuth, D. 108, 121, 125 – 126, 133 Ware, S. A. 92, 188 wasteland 29 – 30, 74, 76; aesthetic 33 – 49 Way, T. 71 – 73 Weilacher, U. 53, 58, 68 Weinstock, M. 86, 141, 148, 152 Weller, R. 135, 179; Boomtown 2050 134 – 135 West 8: Eastern Scheldt Storm Surge Barrier 152 – 153; Schouwburgplein 17 – 22 wetlands 23, 149, 161 – 162, 166 – 167, 186 – 190 Wilbanks, T. J. 160, 161, 176 wilderness 29 – 49, 50; conservation 48 – 49; new 30 – 33, 50 Woodward, C. 65 Wu, J. 159 Yu, K. 26; see also Turenscape