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NEWS
Western and oriental traditions in Jinhua Architecture Park salient features are the wedge-like terraces jutting out from the steep bank and the steles forming the centre of Ai Quing Cultural Park. The planning for the central district of Jindong, which has been postponed for the time being, was prepared by Herzog & de Meuron, with whom Ai Weiwei has been in close contact since 2002. The river's north bank opposite Jindong was designed as an architecture park. It consists of a strip along the stabilised riverbank that is rarely more than 80 metres wide but altogether 2200 metres long. With a slight s-
shape, the park traces the curving line ofthe bank. Open space designs are no rarity in today's China; even the green strips bordering the motorways in Shanghai are elaborately landscaped. Nevertheless, according to Ai Weiwei, the green spaces are usually functionally motivated and pervaded by a certain monotony: they serve to improve the notoriously poor air quality and provide recreation for the population. Ai, on the
Fernando Romero's teahouse.
other hand, conceived of a type of park
In Jinhua, a five-hour train journey southwest of Shanghai, a remarkable Architecture Park has been created, combining western and oriental garden traditions. Its director is the artist and architect Ai Weiwei, who became widely known through his projects at the Documenta in Kassel this year.
View from Jindong Architecture Park across the River WuJlang.
6
'SCAPE
2/ 2007
The point of departure was a steep riverbank that required stabilising to
hitherto unknown in China. It is a park designed to sharpen sensory aware-
provide flood defence. The waterfront
ness, and a park that provides space for
south ofthe River Wujiang facing the
a large variety of activities; in short, a
urban sprawl of Jindong was designed
cultural park in the best sense ofthe
by Ai Weiwei as a public promenade; its
word, which is designed not least to
The elevated teahouses designed by Liu Jiakun.
sensitise people to the built environ-
bordered by low brick walls. Completing
from the Netherlands Fun Design, and
ics, he applied strategies familiar from
ment. His approach was to begin by
but also counteracting this strict geom-
finally from China Vung-ho Chang,
Minimalism in its Western form. Fernando Romero's teahouse crosses a
establishing a programme offunctions
etry is a planting concept that traces
Wang Shu, Liu Jiakun, Wang Xing Wei I
that should be accommodated in the
the striped structure with trees planted
Xu Tian Tian, Ding Vi I Shen Shu Vu, and
pond, thus combining two characteris-
park: from toilets through the custodi-
in a grid but that also prevents a broad
- also with a building - Ai Weiwei.
tic elements of Chinese gardens: the
an's hut and newsstand to the Internet
view across the ensemble. In consultation with Herzog & de
As a whole, the result is a charming
teahouse and the bridge. The building
ensemble of follies evolving from differ-
is a geometrically incisive, red concrete
rant. Altogether seventeen small pavil-
Meuron, Ai Weiwei called on a total of
ent design approaches. The varying
structure, in which platforms on various
ions or building complexes were inte-
sixteen international architects to
references to Western and Oriental
levels can accommodate small groups.
grated into the park landscape and
design the pavilions. From Switzerland,
traditions of garden design are particu-
The Baby Dragon pavilion, intended
cafe, gallery, coffee house and restau-
designed according to Ai Weiwei's
besides Herzog & de Meuron, designs
larly exciting. The elevated teahouses
primarily for children, was built by the
concept.
came from Christ & Gantenbein,
designed by Liu Jiakun, with their raised
Basel deSigners Herlach Hartmann
Herlach Hartmann Frommenwiler,
platforms exposed to the air and the
Frommenwiler.lts various openings
Parallel strips The layout consists of a system of
Buchner Brundler, from Germany Till
wind, adapt the basic elements of this
suggest the typically perforated walls
Schweizer and Erhard An-He Kinzel-
Chinese building type. However, with
of classic Chinese architecture - an idea
straight parallel strips running west to
bach, from the USA Michael Maltzan,
utility poles used as supports and drain-
that Herzog & de Meuron also picked
east, onto which is superimposed a
from Japan Toshiko Mori, from Mexico
pipes as railings, and with materials
up in their pavilion, the Reading Space.
network of routes at an angle to it and
Tatiana Bilbao and Fernando Romero,
such as steel, aluminium and synthet-
Hubertus Adam
Hedges and wild flowers welcome visitors at University of Warwick
The University of Warwick, which lies at the intersection of suburban Coventry and the Warwickshire Green Belt in England, is aiming to create a sense of arrival and an obvious entrance to their campus. The retained landscape consultants to the university, Churchman Landscape Architects, have designed planting schemes at the main entrance points,
start ofthe project impossible.
metres, allowing a tractor to carry out
transition between suburbia and the
taking into account the
Therefore, a solution was found in
trimming.
open countryside. As the hedges are
characteristics of the rural landscape.
planting. As sustainability is an
Situated outside the city of Coventry, with the nearest railway
In reference to the surrounding
still small, Churchman has planted
integral element of the university's
landscape, the hedges have been laid
wild flowers that refer to the local
Development Plan, the concept of the
out as blocks across the roundabouts,
flora, ensuring a visual effect from the first year. The plantings include
station 8 kilometres away, most
design is based on the absorption of
forming fields that echo the typical
visitors arrive at the university
the emissions of decelerating and
enclosures of the rural landscape of
buttercups, ox eyed daisy, and
campus by car. This offers the
accelerating traffic. Hawthorn is
Warwickshire. In contrast, the original
meadowsweet, oversown with annual
potential to project an image of
particularly suited for this purpose,
campus was laid out in an axial grid,
cornflower mixes. Over time the
progression along the arterial route,
with its dense branch structure that
which is reflected by the alignment of
hedges will dominate the wild
which Churchman has done by
can be clipped in the desired shape.
the hedges. Recent developments on
flowers, so the scheme will be
focusing on four roundabouts located
Small hedges have been planted in
the campus have disturbed the axial
constantly evolving. In the near
at key points. However, construction
parallel bands, and left to grow for a
pattern, so an intermeshing of two
future further layers, like light fields
of lightworks, wind turbines, or
number of years, maximizing carbon
landscape typologies occurs on the
and fine art, will be added to the
structures of art would require
storage. The distance between the
campus as well as in Churchman's
roundabouts' compositions.
planning approval, making an early
bands will eventually come out at 3
planting schemes, marking the
Joren Jacobs
2/2007 'SCAPE
7
NEWS
Successful restoration of African world heritage Djenne, a town in the Niger Valley in Mali, was granted the title of World Heritage Site in 1988. A large restoration project, involving Dutch architect Pierre Maas as supervisor, led to growing international recognition for Djenne, along with tourism. Pierre Maas' team is now expanding the project into the countryside of the 'Dogon Land~ Djenne is a town of mud. Lying close to the Sahara desert, it lacked stones and wood, and people started building with mud from the river. Sun-dried bricks provide the structure, which is then treated with a cover of fermented mud. This cover is gradually washed off during the rainy seasons, so yearly smearing is necessary - a recurring event, important for the local culture. In short, the city of Djenne and its buildings have developed organically. Despite thorough experience of
Sun-dried bricks are treated with a cover of fermented mud.
preserving their buildings, the inhabitants of Djenne are not familiar with the concept of restoration. 'A damaged building is usually repaired by just adding something new on the spot. Restoration means that a building has to be repaired to its original state: Maas explains, 'This requires skills that Malinese masons did not have, like documentation, technical drawing, or financial planning.' During the course of the restoration project Maas and his team trained local masons, and worked out a structure plan with focal pointsimportant buildings or building ensembles - that can work as a guide for future restorations.
Museum park With the help oftrained masons, the structure plan, and revenue from growing tourism, things are beginning to become organised. Maas was given the opportunity to expand restoration of Malinese heritage outside the town of Djenne, into the inner-delta of the river
DJenni, a World Herlta,e Site since 1988.
8
'SCAPE
2/2007
IN SHORT
DD
Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron have been awarded the Z007 Praemium Imperiale, which is intended to be the 'Nobel Prize' in art. It was first awarded in 1989 at the suggestion ofthe Emperor of Japan in recognition of artists' achievements, the influence which they exert internationally, and the way their work has enriched the world community. Herzog & de Meuron won the award in the category of architecture. Earlier Herzog & de Meuron were awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2001 and the Royal Gold Medal for architecture in 2007, which is awarded annually by the Royal Institute of British Architects on behalf ofthe British monarch. Ajuror of the Pritzker Prize noted: 'They refine the traditions of modernism to elemental simplicity, while transforming materials and surfaces through the exploration of new treatments and techniques.' One of Herzog & de Meuron's best known projects is the Allianz Arena soccer stadium in Munich.
Parc Central de Nou Barris in Barcelona has won the International Urban
Landscape Award l007, a competition that draws attention to the future of cities as regards demography, social stability and sustainability. The
A vlllale In the DOlon Land.
design of Parc Central was based on the assignment to create a connecting Niger, and into the Dogon Land, 'which
Djenne, tourism is bigger than ever.
gave rise to much trouble,' according to
Pierre Maas, who has been visiting
Maas, 'Unlike Djenne there are no
Djenne since the 1980s, says: 'Twenty
masonry guilds in the Dogon, no struc-
years ago,you would spot a lost tourist
tures. Therefore, our work is still very
once or twice a week. Now, there are a
much trial and error.'The area is 180
couple of dozens every day.' Maas does
kilometres away from Djenne, and
not think that tourism affects the
consists of homes that are built in and
authenticity of Djenne culture and
against the rock wall. Since conditions
architecture. 'The tourist and the local
were not always very good, villages
inhabitant remain two different
were gradually abandoned and fell into
worlds', he says. 'Of course it has some
disrepair. Different approaches to
effects, like street merchants selling
restoration were explored. Maas
rubbish, and an increase of hotel struc-
explains: 'One is a kind of museum
tures, which is a good thing. You also
park, where we picked out a few objects
see electriCity, cell phones, DVD, and
to be restored, and created a path that
television emerge, but I would not call
connects them. Another approach was
this damage. The local people are too
to restore buildings according to
proud and their religion remains very
instructions of the village elders. But
important. The local Islam contributes a
there, we are really doubtful about the
lot to the uniqueness of the town.'
correctness.' The most effective and satisfying approach involved more than
element in the Nou Barris district. It was completed this year and convinced the international jury by its function as a local recreation area and its unusual design. In addition, the jury also felt that the Parc Central performed an important integrative task in a rapidly expanding and multiethnic quarter of Barcelona. The International Urban Landscape Award 2007 is an initiative ofthe German bank Eurohypo in cooperation with the journals, Topos and Architektur & Wohnen.
The international competition best private plots 07 has been won by Jane Sarah Bihr-de Salis from Switzerland with a boundless garden consisting of clipped hornbeam hedges planted in different densities, providing spatial articulation to a garden which flows seamlessly into the surrounding fields. Photographs of the garden can be viewed on the competition's website. Best private plots was held for the second consecutive year. It invites contemporary design of private outdoor space that dares to seek out new, innovative paths and at the same time manages to assimilate ecological principles. For further information and news on 'best private plots oB'take a look at www.privateplots.at.
This year Zumtobel Group,an international lighting company from Joren Jacobs
Austria, has launched an award that promotes sustainability and humanity
restoration. Maas:'We laid out water
in the built environment. On 14 September this Zumtobel Group Award in
pipes, and improved the road system, so
the category'built environment' (the other category being 'research and
that people can stay in their villages.
initiative') was granted to the United States Federal Building in San Francis-
This approach works really good.'
co, designed by Morphosis from Santa Monica, USA, which was completed
Street merchants selling rubbish
tectural project that meets the current demands for sustainable living and
this year. The award recognizes the building as a recent outstanding archi-
Dogon Land is now as easily accessible as Djenne, the site is very popular,
envisages the needs of the future. The Zumtobel Group Award is presented once every two years. More information can be found at www.zumtobelgroup-award.com.
and tourist buses run frequently. In Joren Jacobs
2/2007 'SCAPE
9
NEWS
In September Antwerp and Copenhagen each hosted an international congress. The theme of the ISOCARP congress was 'Urban Trialogues, co-productive ways to relate visioning and strategic urban projects' while the IFHP congress addressed the 'Futures of Cities, impacts, indicators and implementations~ Keynote speakers alternated with parallel sessions and panel discussions. All kinds of presentations, dinners and events were offered and could be extended by a variety of post-congress mobile workshops and tours. The 43rd annual international plan-
The Future of Cities in focus in Antwerp and Copenhagen Bernardo Secchi and Paola Vigano. These projects combine long-term visioning with concrete actions in a complex and multicultural context. The highlights ofthe ISOCARP congress, found in the fringes ofthe five-day event, were the presentations of the results of the two Young Planning Professionals workshops and the Urban Task Forces, recently renamed as Urban Planning Advisory Teams. These teams
The ISOCARP Young Planning Professionals Mohamed Abdelhamled, Nadja Nillna
of international members were set up
and Jean-Yves Schyns focused with 'Play Grid' on the accessibility and
by ISOCARP to unravel a specific urban
approachability of the public spaces and buildings of the European Quarter by
problem or draw up a spatial strategy in
Improving the spatial and functional conditions for pedestrians and by allocating
a short space oftime in response to a
a virtual European museum.
request from a government or an authority. In the last year ISOCARP has
international experience enriching and
assignments. Their analysis and recom-
been asked to organise three Teams for
acquire a few new foreign friendships.
mendations were surprisingly to the
Provocative
strong on visioning. They succeeded in
ning congress of ISOCARP in Antwerp-
Rijswijk Zuid situated between The
with about 400 participants - discussed
Hague and Delft in The Netherlands, the
the triangle between visioning, urban
immediate surroundings of Schwechat
projects and co-production. Visioning is
Vienna Airport in Austria and for the
point, decisively presented and very
In the run-up to the ISOCARP
making strong and bold visions for the
congress, teams of young planning
future development of space and socie-
seen as a way offraming concrete
region around the seaside resort of
professionals from all corners of the
ty. What do we really want to achieve,
actions, resilient urban projects as a
Sitges to the south of Barcelona. All
world assemble and work together on
what ambitions do we have for profit,
way of changing reality in a sustainable
three Teams addressed the issues of
assignments in the hosting country. The
planet and people and what are the effects of climate change or rising sea
and qualitative way and co-production
strategic urban projects and develop-
cases this time were to draw and to
as a way of involving all possible actors
ment-oriented scenarios. It looks as if
write strategiC and spatial visions for
levels? One of the three groups that
in policy making and implementation.
the Urban Planning AdvisoryTeams
the introverted European Quarter in
worked on the case for Antwerp
This focus on strategic urban projects
have become a core activity of ISOCARP.
Brussels and the left bank of the river
focused on planet aspects and water
and feasible and development-oriented
Commissioners are satisfied with so
Scheidt, opposite the city centre of
management for the left bank as a vital
approaches was illustrated with local
much attention from an international
Antwerp. In less than a week the twen-
link in the urban river landscape of the
projects, such as the new Strategic
team of enthusiastic and erudite plan-
ty-five Young Planning Professionals
Scheidt, in particular. This resulted in a
Structure Plan of Antwerp, written and
ners and designers, while the celebrated
succeeded in working together and
spatial strategy that combined a
presented by the Italian planners
planners and deSigners find additional
overcoming the difficulties in the
resilient water system that allows a
aim was to promote the concept of
thriving on growth, technology and
for Housing and Planning and
housing and planning and to
full employment. Through an
ISOCARP will be organising the next
ISOCARP, the International Society of
improve the general standard of the
international network, ISOCARP
congress with the theme 'Urban
City and Regional Planners, have a
profession through the international
promotes planning, advance
growth without sprawl, a way
common history and common
exchange of knowledge and
planning research, theory building
towards sustainable urbanisation' in
background. Where IFHP is an
experience. ISOCARP emerged from
and education and brings the
Dalian, China (see www.isocarp.org).
umbrella organisation for social
the IFHP and was founded in 1965 by
planning debate into the public
housing professionals and
Sam van Embden as a global
realm.
architects, ISOCARP is a network of
association of experienced
IFHP, the International Federation
The congresses of ISOCARP tend
From 19 until 23 September 2008
The next IFHP world congress will take place between 12 until 15 of October 2008 in San Juan, Puerto
regional and urban planning
professional planners only. In those
to have a local touch as to content
professionals.IFHP was founded in
days, planning was a discipline in
and theme, and they stay close to
be 'Housing: Planning for an
1913 by Ebenezer Howard under its
the making. Planners were expected
the planning practice.IFHP
affordable and sustainable habitat'
original name of the Garden Cities
to create an adequate setting for the
congresses tend to tackle global and
(see www.ifhp.org).
and Town Planning Association. Its
new post war society, which was
general issues.
10
'SCAPE 2 / 2007
Rico. The theme of this congress will
Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), knowingly pointed out that the spoiled and arrogant western world lacks the decisiveness, flexibility and perseverance of countries in the Middle-East and Asia where completely new cities are developed and built. Referring to partial and occasional inundation of
recent competitions, including OMfJ:s
the left bank during periods offlooding
master plan for Rak Gateway, a city for
with an adventurous and attractive
150,000 inhabitants in Ras AI Khaimah,
residential area in a natural setting.
one ofthe United Arab Emirates, Reinier
One of the two groups that worked on the Brussels case attracted attention
de Graaf showed that strong and well conceived concepts have a larger
on account of their provocative analysis
impact on the thinking of the future
ofthe European Quarter as a schizo-
and sustainability of cities than a
phrenic, inhospitable and almost repul-
random collection of well designed
sive environment, just the opposite of
high-rise buildings. Where Jan Gehl
what the very navel ofthe open Euro-
focused on the pedestrians and cyclists
pean society and transparent interna-
in towns, the secretive elimination of
tional governance is supposed to be.
parking spaces and the public domain
This unmistakable analysis was
in the city as the place for meeting and
followed by the keen spatial strategy
observing people, Peter Newman plead-
'Play Grid' that enhances the accessibili-
ed for Transit Oriented Development,
ty and approachability ofthe pUblic
building in high densities with a high
spaces and buildings of the European
urban and spatial quality above
Quarter. The young planners proposed
stations on high quality rail networks.
to (re)develop three intersecting axes of
In the opinion of Peter Newman, Transit
the main avenue, a neglected river bed
Oriented Development is one of the
and an underground railway in order to
major solutions to a broad array of
create spaces and opportunities for an
growing problems like traffic conges-
urban landscape of connectivity and for
tion and global warming because it
the network and information society.
leads to dense, pedestrian-oriented communities with easy access to rail
Stunning Both ISOCARP and IFHP congresses were showcases for elegant and stun-
networks and thus greatly reduces the need for driving and the burning of fossil fuels.
ning projects, such as the ingeniously redeveloped central station of Antwerp, designed by architect Jacques Voncke,
Inconvenient The bottom line ofthe 51st IFHP
In 'Ravine City' Chris Hardwlcke restores and uses the natural ravines In Toronto for closing water cycles, sustainable energy production and urban agriculture.
and the transformation of industrial
world congress was sustainable urban
and harbour areas in Copenhagen,
development. In the plenary panel
designed by Adriaan Geuze and Sjoerd
discussions sustainable urban develop-
more to experience than agendas and
which was later adopted by the city of
Soeters.
ment was mentioned only in passing
principles. Chris Hardwicke, urban
Toronto when it commissioned a more
and addressed awkwardly, as if sustain-
planner and associate with Sweeny
in-depth research and design study into
able urban development is the incon-
Sterling Finlayson & Co Architects, &Co
the ecological network for the future of
speech on his resilient, safe, healthy,
venient remedy for the inconvenient
in short, ofToronto, presented his study
Toronto.
lively and attractive Copenhagen, near-
truth. The Copenhagen Agenda for
'Ravine City', which contains his vision-
With the exception of Jan Gehl, who gave both a glowing as well as a critical
ly all keynote speakers ofthe IFHP
Sustainable Cities must end this
ary proposal for an urban ecosystem
congress - with more than 800 partici-
awkwardness. The agenda considers
that will restore and enhance the natu-
Martin Dubbeling
pants - addressed the issue ofthe very
the cities as the key to a sustainable
ral heights and ravine system ofToron-
fast growing cities in the emerging
future and describes ten principles for
to. The project uses the continuous
economies of Africa, Asia en Latin
sustainable city governance, from
watershed and ecosystem ofthe
America. On the list of the twenty large
'rediscover the city', 'promote corporate
ravines as a model for urban infrastruc-
metropolises ofthirty years ago, only
urban responsibility'to'encourage
ture, and renews the connection to the
Tokyo remained. New York has made
passion in urban leadership'. This agen-
natural resources by closing water
way for Mumbai, London for Shanghai
da is an upbeat for the UN Climate
cycles, sustainable energy production
among others, Luigi Mazza, Han Meyer
and Paris for Lagos. Reinier de Graaf,
Summit that will take place in Copen-
and urban agriculture. 'Ravine City'
and Kristiaan Borret.
one ofthe six partners of the Office for
hagen in 2009. Fortunately, there was
started as a study project of his office,
The findings of the 43rd congress of ISOCARP are published in the ISOCARP Review 03 'Urban Trialogues, co-productive ways to relate visioning and strategic urban projects' (176 pages, ISBN 978-90755-24-529), with contributions from,
2/2007 'SCAPE
11
NEWS
The digital/uture 0/ the new city collaborative venture with Kees Christiaanse Architects and Planners and ETH Zurich (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich). A Kaisersrot model was used for an urban extension in Arnhem. Future residents were able to submit their own wishes or requirements, such as a plot next to water and a certain type of house, and the computer produced a model that met as many of these requirements as possible. During a round of negotiations with the residents, new inputs were fed into the model until an opti-
Building complex In Zurich, made by Kalsersrot.
mal outcome was obtained. The plan for De Draai in Heer-
When most people think of simulation models for cities they think of computer games like Sim City. These types of games and other, more serious simulation models are undergoing rapid development. The newly established International New Towns Institute in Almere, the Netherlands, organised a seminar on New Town Simulation on 10 and 11 October 2007.
Simulation models can make an
by equipping them with a memory and
hugowaard is a combination of the
important contribution to the design of
letting them react in different ways. He
design process and the output from a
new towns. There are a huge number of
argues that an action by one person,
computer model. Karres en Brands, a
simulation models. Some are mainly
through a snowball effect, can have
Dutch firm of landscape architects,
useful for research, others are used in
more influence than a whole planning
designed a landscape structure with
the planning process. The models are
department. His model does not gener-
sites for new housing. This time, the
usually based on one oftwo main
ate any definitive outcomes, its main
local authority's wishes and require-
working principles: some are based on
aim being to understand people's
ments formed the input to the model,
cells or building blocks, such as build-
motives better and to learn how to
which then generated outcomes for the
ings, greenspace and water, which can
influence, manage and use them.
different sites. The results of the
Individual requirements
final plan, but form the basis for the
computer model do not represent a
change; others work with agents that can take decisions and move around. Professor Portugali from Tel Aviv works
Alex Lehnerer makes computer
with both cells and agents. He tries to
models for specific situations. He does
make his agents as human as possible
this under the name of Kaisersrot, a
detailed design by Karres en Brands. Session chair Professor Taeke de long of Delft University ofTechnology (TU
Apeldoorn prepares for its landscape architecture triennial the event will prove that it has a right
In a period of one hundred days
to exist.
from June to September next year, the
Bert van Meggelen is the main
theme in Apeldoorn will be European garden and landscape architecture,
curator and together with Jandirk
during an event which is the first in
Hoekstra, the landscape architect, he
what is intended to become a three-
has drawn up a programme with a
yearly tradition. A number of Dutch
number of events which will attract
government authorities, funding
the general public, and exhibitions
bodies and private organisations have
and discussions for the more special-
come together to provide funds for
ist landscape architect. The Royal Mile
International Gardens and Landscape
is expected to be a great popular
Architecture 2008, which will have a
attraction - a flower border more than 1600 metres long crossing Apel-
budget of 7,000,000 euros for its organisation. With 400, 000 visitors
12
'SCAPE 2/2007
Radio Kootwljk: A wider view on cultural landscapes in Europe.
doorn, and offering well-known
Delft) was particularly impressed by the
form of serious computer games can be
3-D model Kaisersrot made for a build-
useful for communicating with non-
ing complex in Zurich. 'Before the semi-
professionals and are making an
nar I was somewhat sceptical, but the
increasingly important contribution to
model by Kaisersrot, which illustrates
learning processes.
the effects of meeting specific wishes
The International New Towns Insti-
and requirements for each storey, is
tute, which will open its doors on ,
really spectacular: Lehnerer says that
January 2008, wants to bring together
his models present no competitive
various different models in a NewTown
threat to architects, but De Jong has
Simulator. Besides its documentation
serious doubts.
centre, this will be one ofthe institute's
Another organisation that made an
key activities. It will be a discussion
impression was the Research Institute
platform and development laboratory
for Knowledge Systems (RIKS). This
for simulation models where students
institute makes computer models for
can be trained, researchers can experi-
use on an entirely different scale. Their
ment and models for practical applica-
treatments of GIS data are so advanced
tion can be developed.
that the scenarios and growth models
Annemieke Moister
they produce are used for the national spatial planning of the Netherlands and European regions.
The software is a tool. It does not gener-
Learning processes
framework for developing the urban
ate a design or a plan, but an underlying
During the seminar it became clear that the many models currently avail-
design. It generates the most efficient layout, within the given constraints and requirements and the individual wishes
able are all based on different assump-
offuture residents, and provides pOinters
tions, with their own focus and applica-
to the main outlines ofthe new develop-
tions. Simulation models can be useful
ment.
when making design decisions, drawing up rules and revealing the conseThe 3-D model
by Kllisersrot shows the effect of specific wishes lind IIqulrements_
quences of decisions. Models in the
border designers from the Netherlands and abroad about a few hundred square metres each for their own design. The exhibition on art and landscape titled 'The discovery of the Netherlands' is also expected to
feature international landscape architecture. The focal point of this part
Radio Kootwijk will be Eric Luiten. For the connoisseurs, according to
of the programme will be at Radio Kootwijk where the theme will be: a Wider View. This will be the home of exhibitions, debates, symposia and a
attract a lot of visitors. Another
summer school on the way European
Van Meggelen, there will be an exhibition in Het Loo Palace. There will be an overview of great monuments from the art of gardening, with many original design drawings: 'This must
will also be underlined when the annual World Conference of IFLA (International Federation of Landscape Architects) is held next year during the Triennial in Apeldoorn, and which will be organised by the Dutch Association for Landscape Architec-
special event is the 'Jardin d'ami'
countries are dealing with their
be an exhibition which the specialist
ture. The theme of this meeting of the
during which artists will be asked to
cultural heritage of landscapes and
transform various spots in the city,
threats to it. And what can you do
from the Czech Republic gets out of bed for'.
world organisation of landscape architects will be 'Transformations on
including a number of private
with 'green' Unesco monuments? Do
gardens. Apart from being an event for the
their offer opportunities for develop-
tion will also be organised for the
An international design competi-
ment or do they only represent obsta-
zone along Apeldoorn Canal.
general public, the Triennial will also
cles? The curator of the programme in
The event's international character
Water'. Maarten Ettema www.triennale.nl www.ifla200S.com
2/2007 'SCAPE
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NEWS
Fragile figurehead of Danish landscape architecture design language from its stuffy image and by using ovals and broad strokes in his designs. The design for the Karlplatz in Vienna and the area ofthe Aadalsparken housing complexes in Horsholm are good examples of this work. He was a master at designing from the genius loci, the spirit ofthe place, which he always studied in great depth first. Once he had meticulously gathered information about the desires and demands ofthe client, his proposals seemed to arise quite naturally. Almost all his designs exude calm and simplicity, despite the often complex nature of the problems. The Museum Quarter in Amsterdam can serve as an example; it has given many a designer a headache. He has been able to successfully conclude the project, although he has had to make a number of concessions - very often against his wishes. He saw the impos-
Anderssons larden at his summer house in Sweden.
ing nature ofthe Museum Quarter as its most important quality, and took
At her leaving party in the landscape department of the School of Architecture, a secretary once said to her assembled colleagues: 'Do look after him, he's not very strong.' That was twenty years ago. She was referring to Sven-Ingvar Andersson, who died on 27 July 2007 at almost eighty years old. A strong spirit in a fragile body.
Sven-Ingvar Andersson studied landscape architecture at the agricultural college in Alnarp, where he also studied history of art. These two studies gave
'SCAPE 2/2007
The project he loved most was without doubt the garden at his summer
sion, as his numerous lectures and
house in Sweden, where he spent many
papers clearly demonstrate.
hours with friends and family. Just once in a while, someone else was allowed to
landscape architecture, taking over
help him trim the 'tortoises', which
from the famous C. Th. S¢rensen, whom
stood up against the wall ofthe house.
he always admired. This admiration
The garden - where he united the Ital-
sometimes prevented him from taking
ian renaissance garden and the English
a more critical stance, as can be seen in
topiary garden in the simplicity ofthe
the book that he wrote with Steen
cottage garden - is a paradise. It
H¢yer about the great man. Still,
deserves to be inscribed in the ledger of
Andersson was able to move Danish
famous historic gardens, given statuto-
garden and landscape architecture
ry protection and opened to the public.
forward after S¢rensen had put the
14
Tortoises
him a broad perspective on the profes-
In 1963 he was made professor of
Sketch by Sven-1nlmar Andersson.
this as the starting point for his design.
For most of his working life he was a
profession on a very high level, but to a
teacher, somewhat to his regret
certain extent on a dead-end path. He
because the professorship left him little
reshaped S¢rensen's strict design
time to work on design projects and see
method into a looser form, with much
them through to completion. And that
richer planting schemes. He achieved
was what he enjoyed most about the
this freedom by releasing the organic
profession. His lectures, which he
COLUMN
Local change Predictions are for disruptions in the climate which will affect the prepared to the last detail, were very
After the funeral in Sl!)der Sandholm,
well attended. His language was
his birthplace, most of those attending
precise, his opinions were original and
the funeral visited nearby Marnas. The
he took firm positions in public
hedges had grown thicker, with large
debates. For instance, he was a fierce
holes in some places, and the topiary
and unequivocal critic of the siting of
'chickens' had lost some oftheir defini-
the new opera house in Copenhagen,
tion; only the part closest to the house
which the wealthy Maerks Ml!)lier had
was still in good shape. It was clear
gifted the city. His tegnebordsassistance,
that the garden was entering a phase in
or direct teacher-pupil contacts, were
which the master's hand was no longer
inspiring and confidence-boosting.
at work. And this was Sven-Ingvar
When he was asked a few years back
Andersson's intention. It was only
if he never said no to an invitation to
strange that he was no longer there as
deliver a speech, he answered with a
host.
firm no - because otherwise people soon forget you! That is not very likely
Lodewijk Wiegersma
in his case. His students will certainly neverforget him.
whole planet. We can already see changes in the perception of context, which from now on can no longer be considered a static framework for society and its conquering urbanisation to develop in. Instead, it is now the context that dictates movement and the people that have to adapt. The physical 'framework' is no longer simply a 'given' but a variable in motion, in process, capable of catching populations unawares with the massive scale of the changes it can subject them to. This given, said to be passive, has become active. Its status has changed from that of object to subject. The significance of this climate change depends on its being not only global but also operating on both global and local levels in closely interrelated ways. What emerges is the need to abandon the sum of specialised approaches that are all blind to each other for the benefit of a synthesising approach. The latter would make sense on the global level and be applied locally, overlapping the givens and integrating the parameters into a project while trying to develop key decisions that allow projections for the urban future. Applied research on the bioclimate of the city and the landscape can support these initiatives and promote innovative and effective solutions. This implies research that is not content with measuring the effects of climate change or with merely developing instrumentation that permits making definite forecasts and visualisations of the effects of global warming, region by region. Research should also and above all make every effort to pinpoint places defined by their structural, climatic and geographic specificity and, starting out from them, create experiments and guidelines capable of leading to pockets of resistance. I have just had an experience along these lines in Germany during a workshop funded by the Montag Foundation, which wanted to link the urban issues of the Kaln-Bonn agglomeration to issues of climate change. The proposition was to work with the forecasts and alarmist hypotheses of flooding in order to transform them into positive elements for a project and for upgrading the area. Preparing the land with a view to future floods obviously does not stop at hydrological considerations but becomes a structuring element for urbanisation, particularly as regards public spaces on the urban periphery - in this case, thanks to a network of flood able nodes linked to a pedestrian and cycling network and joining up all the residential blocks. Thus the urban set of themes becomes connected to the differen t states and vagaries of the river but without ever being endangered by them. Through these measures, the residents' feeling ofliving on the Rhine plain becomes reinforced as does their relationship to the river. The location acquires additional meaning and the global danger of climate
Aadalsparken houslnl complex In Horsholm desllned by Sven-1nlvar Andersson In 1'70. Source: Malene Hauxner,Open to the Sky. The Danish Architectural Press
change becomes local identity. We can adapt our creativity to a context that has become a source of differentiation and not a field of operations. This global climatic phenomenon, which leads to paying renewed attention to the context of place, can thus paradoxically bring about the return to the local. Hanri Bava
2/ 2007 'SCAPE
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These days we life faced with meteorological disasters, such as consecutive yurs of extreme drought In Australia and the Mediterranean, hurrl,anes oYer the United States and floods In Europe_ Scientists cannot confirm that these phenomena
For Ulrich Beck, climate change,just like terror· Ism, counts among the phenomena perceived as global risks that characterize our sodetles at the start of the twenty·flrst century. A global rlsk,ln his opinIon, Is an anticipated disaster, yet through
Is borderless,ln the senSI! of not respecting admlnl· stratlve limits. Water flows, floods and construe· tlons In the ScheIdt delta affect the Dutch as much as the Belgian territories situated on both sIdes. The logic of landscape architecture Is to trandorm,
are testimony of global warming; they tend to dasslfy them as random local phenomena. But momentous events remind us of the subject with Its global Impact, and this 11 a good thing, although perceptions differ In various places. On the one hand, the German sociologist Ulrich Beck observes that his compatriots believe In climate collapse almost like a religion, and Integrate It Into their natJonalldentlty. On the other, the physJdan Santi· ago Gangotena, dean of the San Frandsco University In Quito, Ecuador, denies the mere existence of climate change by Ironically dnslfylng the damage mankind causes to the planet as a perfect mental construction to support the political programme of AI Gore, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize In 2001. There Is more than perception; there Is also popular action. Spencer Tunick, an artist specialized In spec· tacular photo events Involving masses of naked people,jolned forces with environment activists of Greenpeate, operating on an International basis. His monumental photo Installation on the Aletsch glacier In Switzerland was Intended to dr wattention to the filct that this landscape Is as vulnerable as th naked human body, and In this precise case heavily threatened by climate change. Many questions arise: What are the filcb? Are they good? Are they bad? And last but not least: What do we do about the situation?
Its medlatlsatlon It becomes a major shock which concerns everybody, and y t excludes the Individual. It bears a cosmopolitan momentum, tearing down borders as It develops. He observes three types of readlons to thIs shock: denial (normal case), apathy and transformation. The last Is the way out: It creates the option to project something new. And just as the philosopher Hannah Arendt argues, every shock represents a new start, offers the opportunity to act, to cross borders, to explore freedom, and leads to total liberty of action. So climate change frees us from sticking with the systems of old. Climate change frees us from th stress that somethIng HAS to change, and offers us the position that something CAN change, Including the challenge that we are able to define what and how It will change. Accordingly, B ck vokes two premises to face a global risk successfully. First, to accept the fact that nobody can act alone as a new hlstorlcill key logic and second, that the global nilture of the threat Is not to be endured as a destiny but is a meta power play which we can enter, as states and as social movements, to merge Into a new cosmopolitan power, the only power that has realistIc chances to transform global Issues.
while resp ding the physical context and Inserting new elements Into ongoing natural and cultural processe.s.
The opinion of the scientific community Is summed up by Stephan Bakan, meteorologist at the Max Planck Institute In Hamburg, Germany: 'Scientists today are convinced that human Impact on the global climate will lead to an Increase of at least two degrees In the global mean temperature by the end of the century. Depending on our carbon dioxide emIssions, ev n an Increase of up to five degrees Is possIble, which would approximately cOrTespond to the total rise In temperature from the last Ice age to date. While ecologists consider a two-degree Increase to be marginally manageable by global ecosystems, any more warming could cause substantial and certainly undesirable global ecological damage. Climate scientists are therefore convinced that we will have to adapt to some unavoidable global warming In future while prey ntlng even greater changes at the same time.'
Landscape architecture and urban planning are filclng global Issues, like the processes climate researchers describe as significant. The subtroplcs are becoming dryer, the northern latltud s wetter. Rainfall Is Increasing In Incidental occurrences, but Is failing In annu I terms. The sea level Is rIsIng by 3mm per year. Planners or designers cannot deny these facts. This Is the reason why landscape archl· tedure, In particular, can turn the shock of the globill risk round Into a new start and come up with clear positions, new Ideals, and corresponding strategies and adlons. If we need a cross-border movement In order to support cosmopolitan power and transnational corridors of cooperiltlon, then landscape architecture Is best prepared to engender It. The premises of landscape architecture are similar In nature. Nobody can act alone; nature Is always as Involved as man. And landscape Is not nature which has to be endured but It Is a composition cre ted by dlff rent power play rs. Landscape
In this resped, the statement of the Frenchman Gilles Clement, featured In this Issue, Is as commonpl ce as highly programmatic: 'Fa Ire Ie plus avec, et Ie molns (ontre'. His recently published book Is consequently entltll!d 'Une ecologle humanlste' (A humanist ecology) and deals with ecological Issues as well as with the pleasure of life. lain Borden, professor of architecture and urban culture at london'S Bartlett School of Architecture, Is positive when he claims that mere survival Is not whilt we (an seriously strive for, but he defines a series of tactics for the 'good life' In his essay, which are the main f atures for the creation of 'truly dynamIc, healthy and enjoyable worlds' In an ever changing context. Directing our focus on a precise location led us to Invite Julian Raxworthy, the Australian landscape architect, to explore how Australlil faces the phenomenon of Increasing dryness In this country which Is accustomed to lush troplcallty. There Is more to transform than the technical approaches, he figures out, namely the design language that has to Incorporate diverse cultural Issues ilbout Iilndseape, Identity and colonialism: 'In fild, dryness Is not a singular Inue at all, but a myriad of other Issues, and as such the formal or aesthetic language to deal with (It) should not be Singular either.' Cllm.. te change Is a filct that designers and planners can tum Into an Inue for enterIng the power play of a cosmopolitan movement in favour of transformation. Lisa Diedrich
2/2007 'SCAPE
17
A field of cork oalu In Portulah thl. product I". landlce,. of major economic, loclal and .colollcal value l'lolnl to dllap,..r It)' the mlclcll of the century.
Adapt to the consequences!
D Florian Dup nt
18
'SCAPE
1/2007
There is public awareness of climate change but between awareness and action there is quite a big gap
This report is not afraid to say so: we must adapt to climate change. The facts must be accepted because the process is underway and will continue for several decades. Climate change can be combated on two fronts. On the one hand we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avoid increased global warming and the changes this causes in the climate worldwide. On the other we must make certain unavoidable changes because all our efforts will only produce results over the long term. This second challenge, though less noble, is no less indispensable and is based on the same scientific findings and knowledge. The dual battle against climate change is schizophrenic. It is therefore difficult to integrate and communicate. That is why we went around to various actors and asked them: 'What are you doing to adapt to the consequences of climate change? ' This sacrilegious question surprised them but in fact everyone is thinking about it in their own way. The problems it causes already dominate everyday life in various professions. Instinctive answers stand out. They demonstrate that some people are already active but ~at we all need more precise data, more structured procedures and exemplary projects. In each field each person is dealing with new parameters. These isolated acts form society's response to climate change. Some have practical answers, others more ideological ones. The Portuguese scientists sound the alarm about increasing dryness and the poor environmental management of communities. In parallel, the European Commission is trying to inspire action in its member states by its Green Book on adaptation to the climate issued this summer. By contrast, Jaime Lerner, symbol of ecological urbanism since his actions as the mayor of Curitiba, criticises the idea of adapting to this disaster we have created.
of new maritime shipping routes, but the baseness of the calculations is on the scale of the stakes. How sad it is also to see the United Nations consider creating a 'climate refugee' status for populations forced to leave their land when it is flooded due to rising water levels. Not dealing with it, however, would be to blame these people for being the living proof of our communal failure. Ecology - a movement that understands the world as a global and complex system after all- should take over this sorry subject. The panel of people we met shows that we are still in the process of crisis management. We must regain a grip on passing time and succeed in anticipating future events. Mountain territories, which are all very much affected, make the importance of a global vision, such as we are starting to have on the reduction of greenhouse gases and other environmental subjects, very obvious. Specialised expertise is emerging, notably in the United Kingdom and in supranational authorities, and political decisions are urging us to get a move on. The dimensions and the issues become jumbled, hurling a real challenge at us: to carry out an ecological revolution in the midst of an ecological disaster that is threatening both natural and social equilibriums. Every day you discover some crafty types who plan to make a packet off the disaster in progress. In this report, we have chosen to present you those who are going to cope with it. They are not fatalistic; on the contrary, these actors in urban and landscape environments are anticipating the future and saving us from the consequences of our mistakes. Climate change is not inexorable but we are caught in a trap for at least fifty years. Above all of course we must not succumb to an acknowledgement of failure which would wear down all the effort being made. But people are numerous and intelligent enough to handle both sides of the problem.
Philippe Bertrand, project head in the Municipal Department of the Environment of the urban agglomeration of Grenoble, France
Our primary objective is clearly to tackle the causes: the local climate plan commits us to stabilising greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption by 2010 and then to reduce them by a factor of four by 2050. ' Next we have several long-term considerations about how to adapt the city. One project, for example, tries to imagine the city at +4 to 10°C higher temperatures to see in what ways it would become unbearable and how people would have to adapt themselves. From the point of view of the message it is difficult both to fight for reducing consumption and at the same time to proclaim that we are adapting to climate change. The two are understandable but we must take a lot of precautions so as not unconsciously to put out the message that we have given up the struggle.
Ana Firmino, professor of geography and rural planning at the New University of Lisbon, Portugal
People here have not realised the seriousness of the problem for the future. The desert zones in the south of Portugal are spreading rapidly. Rural tourist developments and golf courses are making matters worse: the ground water level is going down and the desalinisation of the water in the Algarve is already being envisaged. People are always thinking about enlarging irrigated areas when they should be thinking about new species that need less water, such as African fruit trees. Even the town halls do not do it: they have green lawns that they water at noon. One study showed that there will no longer be any cork oaks south of the River Tagus fifty years from now because of climate change . Portugal is the world's prime producer of cork; that would be terrible.
It is distressing indeed to see investors speculating on the melting ice field and the opening
2/2007 'SCAPE
19
Knowing that trees are harvested after 60 or even 120 years, foresters are asking themselves what to plant!
Rainer Stange, landscape architect, Dronninga landskap AS, 0510, Norway
In Norway the tree line climbs 1.40 m higher every year. In a few years the main Hardangervidda mountain plateau, a large national park that is home to the last reindeers of Europe, will again be green with pine trees 5000 years after they disappeared. Of today's 2000 glaciers, 98% will melt in the 21st century. The noble trees such as lime, oak, ash, elm and beech will edge out the spruce and birch. In fact, Scandinavia will have the climate that central Europe has today. As landscape architects, we have already planted plane trees and robinia from the continent as urban trees and found that they are developing well. People are starting to grow peach trees and grapes in their gardens. In the south-western part of the country, where temperatures are strongly affected by the Gulf Stream, they are planting palms, fig trees and eucalyptus in sheltered sites because it almost never freezes in winter any more. In all our projects we try to collect rainwater in open systems to reduce heavy rainfall damage and erosion. We create new streams and basins, also to help amphibians and other endangered species to survive. It is Noah's Ark: because of the new mild climate with hot summers and short winters, Scandinavia and the Baltic countries will become major summer destinations for people from the south. In some years you can swim in +25°C waters in the fjords. Numerous waterfront and beach promenades will be developed on Europe's longest coastline, measuring 20000 km. Welcome to temperate Norway!
Barbara Helferich, spokesperson for the European Commissioner of the Environment, Stavros Dimas
On 29 June the commission issued a Green Book on adaptation to climate change in Europe which proposes measures at the member states' level. It is an appeal for more engagement, for the integration of these matters into existing policies. If we want to lower the costs connected to climate change we need to implement measures today. Certain member states are aware of this; others are lagging behind a bit. For the
20
'SCAPE 2/ 2007
time being we have done research, we have monitored current crises such as the fires in Greece and we have proposed consolidating cooperation as to civil security. Without that we do not have a very detailed view of the situation. Different kinds of problems become apparent: the lack of water in Greece, the floods in Great Britain, the invasion of foreign species which jeopardises the fishing sector. It is a question of prevention and of raising public awareness: a European policy cannot be made without the support of the citizens.
Jaime Lerner, architect, former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil
I quote Rene Dubois: 'tendency is not fate'. If you project tragedy, you will find tragedy. It is not a matter of turning a blind eye to the seriousness of the issue but of concentrating every effort on reducing the most negative impacts our civilization has on the planet. It is not to settle down and adapt to a negative scenario.
Marc Barret, ecologist at Biotope, a research consultancy on natural environments
Vincent Rolland, departmental counsellor (UMP party) for Savoie, Vice-President of the TarentaiseVanoise Assembly, France
Municipalities that live mainly off white gold (i.e. snow) try to maintain snow levels in years when there is not enough snow by making artificial snow. There is global thinking on a regional scale to prevent conflicting uses and to promote the shared resource management of water, whether for producing electricity or for domestic, agricultural or tourist-related needs, water sports or fishing. Then there is the issue of floods related to the changeableness of very heavy rainfalls. The plan of attack becomes concrete in the form of flood protection engineering projects. Agriculture can also be seriously affected. A monitoring and forecasting think tank is working on how to maintain fodder plant autonomy in our valley. We need to act to adapt but also to act to limit climate modifications caused in the past, if not to stop them. There is public awareness of climate change but between awareness and action there is quite a big gap. The problem is more cultural than ideological. It is therefore up to us, the communities and elected representatives, to take an exemplary approach and to provide incentives.
(www.biotope.fr). France
When we advise municipalities on nature conservation, we tell them that the natural heritage will change and evolve with the disappearance of certain species and their replacement by others. Where such succession is already present on a site, we draw attention to the need to preserve the new species' habitat because they are the ones that will be important in the future. Studies have shown that by 2050 there will be almost no more beeches in France anywhere except in the Vosges. The holm oak (ilex), which grows only in the Mediterranean region and along the Atlantic coast at the moment, will spread overwhelmingly. Knowing that trees are harvested after 60 or even 120 years, foresters are asking themselves what to plant! We are moving towards major changes in the landscape and the ecosystem but we are not adapting yet: we are at the stage of awareness, not of solutions.
Stephan Bakan, meteorologist at the Max Planck Institute in Hamburg, Germany
Besides continuing efforts to further increase our scientific understanding of the present and future climate system, the Max Planck Institute of Meteorology in Hamburg makes a major effort to inform the public about the basics and the consequences of global climate change. While the spatial resolution of a global climate model is too broad to allow reasonable applications for climate impact adaptation studies, we develop and operate nested high-resolution limited area models for studies of regional climate change. These results provide downscaled information for various branches of the economy and for regional planning purposes.
The tiny creek at Svinningen in Norway, designed by Dronninga landskap AS. The basins offer a solution to flood problems downstream.
Chris West, director of UKCIP (United Kingdom Climate Impacts Programme, www.ukcip.org.uk/), Oxford, Great Britain
We help decision-makers to identify and understand the impact of climate change and secondly we help them to adapt to it. We do that by providing scenarios and a set of tools to interpret climate change impact. Created in 1997, the UKCIP is a boundary organisation between policy-makers (government and research) and decision-makers. We have been working to expand an existing declaration launched in 1995 on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2005 we persuaded the councils to relaunch the declaration to include changes on adapting to climate change. Many authorities signed it and have begun to address how they will adapt to climate impact. In a similar way we work '.lith trade associations and professional
institutions. We provide a checklist so that people can identify their own impact and then adapt to it.
free to download and order from http://ec.e u ro pa.e u Iresea rch Iresea rc hoe ul Looking for references on climate change?
Florian Dupont is an urban designer in London. He is the editor-in-chief of URBAINE, a magazine about discovering and rethinking European cities.
[email protected] with thanks to Jean-Patrick Leduc
In connection with the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) provides an on-line Adaptation Planning database with information on case studies and projects that deal with climate change around the world. In several languages. http://ada ptation.biod iv.orgl
Note 1. Reduction by a factor offour refers to: Ernst U. von Weizsacker, Amory B. Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, Factor 4: Doubling Wealth - Halving Resource Use,A Reportto the Club of Rome, Earthscan, London 1997For quick but precise information on global warming, see the excellent feature issue of research'eu. This magazine published by the European Commission sums up global warming, its threats and solutions in an easily under-
Other helpful references: -Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: an international reference resource on climate change www.ipcc.ch/ - European Climate Change Programme: deals with impact and adaptation http://ec.europa.eu/environmentlcli matleccp.htm - UK Climate Impacts Programme (see above) http://www.ukcip.org.uk/
standable way. Available in English, German and French,
2 / 2007 'SCAPE
21
Harry Harsema and Mark Hendriks
D Water is the biggest threat - was the headline of a Dutch daily newspaper several weeks ago. The warning was accompanied by a strip of simulated satellite images showing the western parts of the Netherlands filling with water like a soup plate. From the lowest point just above Rotterdam, sea and river water was inundating large parts of the provinces of North and South Holland and of Utrecht at high speed. An area where nine million people live would become uninhabitable at one stroke, many would die and the economic damage to the country would be incalculable. A frightening doom scenario which is closer than many suspect, according to the makers of the images - researchers from WL Delft Hydraulics. Rising sea levels and extreme rainfalls and storms mean that the chances of a person in the Netherlands experiencing serious flooding have risen to as high as one in a hundred. This is many times higher than the chance of experiencing a terrorist attack or an environmental disaster. This is not only true for the delta area of the Netherlands and North-West Europe. Hurricane Katrina swept over the metropolis of New Orleans in the United States in 2005 with disastrous consequences. Of course this was a storm of exceptional proportions, but it was painful proof of the extent to which the levees in the densely populated Mississippi Delta had been neglected. Recently the north of England was stricken by flooding by one of the rivers, while Japanese cities had to be evacuated in November because rivers were bursting their banks. It is unavoidable that more and more urban deltas will have to take steps against the rising water.
Riverbeds Experts think that the inland waterways represent the greatest danger. Heavy rains and the faster melting mountain tops in the Alps mean that more river water is flowing faster through the riverbeds in North-West Europe. The urbanised delta of the Netherlands has an additional problem: as sea levels in the North Sea rise, the water level in the estuaries near Rotterdam and the Dutch province of Zealand increases, and as a result the rivers are not able to discharge the water into sea when discharges peak. The water chooses the only outlet: over and through the dikes, into the hinterland.
2/2007 'SCAPE
23
Red Deltas, a study by Must urbanism and RWS/RIZA into the force of attraction between cities and water: North-West Europe, Nile, New Orleans and Bangia Desh.
Havoc In the streets of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Bangladesh.
24
'SCAPE
2 / 2007
This had disastrous effects in New Orleans where the surface level had fallen by 0.6 metres since 1980 without any form of compensation. The floodwaIIs had been built based on outdated insights. The Netherlands Water Partnership - a joint venture between companies and governments in the field of water - is working on reducing the risk of flooding, in combination with landscape development. Ideas include a Dutch dike ring system with room on the inside for water storage and environmental development. Earlier this year, the Netherlands Institute for Spatial Research carried out a design study to examine approaches to the dangers of flooding; the study was not an exploration of the functional safety aspects of the various measures but in fact an examination of the spatial effects. It is not just about raising and reinforcing the dikes and dams or digging parallel channels and bypasses. Combating the water requires designing urban and other areas as robustly as possible so that the water causes as little damage as possible. This kind of design of urban and country areas with its focus on water demands a new architectonic approach. Raising the dikes must not only offer safety but must also produce a landscape with quality features, with as few negative effects on existing functionalities like living, working and recreation as possible. Robust urban planning must not only result in a safe city but also in attractive and lively neighbourhoods. The research institute has concluded that Dutch spatial planning takes too little account of these landscape and general architectonic and spatial planning aspects of rivers. The system is primarily preoccupied - and not entirely without reason - on the safety aspects
provided by hydraulic engineering: if the dikes are high enough we don 't need to worry.
Water strategy
The 'soup plate model' of WL Delft Hydraulics.
This is the reason that the Institute for Spatial Research is advocating a water strategy. Civil engineering terms like inside and outside the dike are left to one side. The entire hinterland is divided into risk profiles, on the basis of distance from the dikes, the presence of obstacles, soil type, the pattern of land division and infrastructure. The ideal mix of spatial uses must be sought for each profile. And the mix must be designed at an urban planning and landscape architectonic level. This is the only way in which a plan will be developed that will provide a functional area - guaranteeing safetyas well as one which is better in terms of quality. In other words, strong dikes in an attractive dike landscape . The Dutch government is in fact acting relatively progressively in comparison with other countries. The 'Room for the River' policy combines water storage measures with attempts at spatial quality. Although at first glance the qualitative interventions do not seem in proportion to the hydraulic engineering interventions. The construction of a bypass in De ljssel near Zutphen, for instance, creates a wonderful opportunity for developing a new urban front, but administrative uncertainties and protests from surrounding villages have meant that the dikes have been moved in such a way that any chance of quality urban expansion has vanished into thin air. Architecture has lost out to civil engineering here. In other deltas there has not even been discussion of an architectonic approach to water safety. Take the delta of Bangladesh, for instance . More water flows through it than in entire Europe. Water from the three colossal rivers of the Ganges, Meghna and Brahmaputra streams through the country in enormous arteries, originating in the Himalayas and flowing into the Bay of Bengal. Once a year, at least, the monsoon floods a quarter of the Bangladesh landmass. North-West Europe and Bangladesh have basically more in common than would be expected: both are indispensably dependent on serious water management to allow reliable food production and safe dwellings. The big differ-
ence: in Europe we are endowed with the economic and technological means to master the enormous challenges of the floods Bangladesh features nothing comparable. Only an effective disaster control can prevent the worst, but it doesn't exist yet. Landscape architecture, as practised in the western hemisphere, is a deluxe discipline. It flourishes in times of peace and economical prosperity. The attempt is to find out what kind of basic demands a landscape architect might meet in a big city of one of the poorest countries in the world . Bangladesh is considered to be a state in temporary solution; landscape architects are experienced in temporary arrangements. By going to Bangladesh, designers can take a look into the history of North-West Europe, when there was no water management - and they can also look into the potential future, when large areas might be left to the arbitrariness of water forces. The Nile delta in Egypt is also particularly vulnerable to the effects of global warming. A relative rise in sea-level of one metre would submerge much of the delta region within 30 km of the coast during the next 100 years. Rising sea levels would have a significant longterm impact on physical, biological and socioeconomic conditions of the Nile delta. To protect this very important coastal region, numerous water defence strategies have been intensified along the beaches of Alexandria and the vulnerable delta shores to combat beach erosion. These strategies are mainly technical solutions, including protection works such as an inlet lagoon and harbour jetties, groynes, seawalls, detached breakwaters, as well as beach nourishment. Along the Alexandria coast, for example, the government prefers beach nourishment as its response in order to mitigate erosion problems and to maintain wide recreational beaches. Work is still taking place on modifying and reinforcing some of these structures. Unfortunately, no national mitigation and adaptation strategy for the rise in sea levels has been outlined in Egypt. That's why several important decisions are necessary for sustainable development of the region. These decisions include the initiation of a large scale plan for development of this region based on a coastal defence strategy. This strategy should focus on protecting and developing
2/2007 'SCAPE
25
The wetlands of H+N+S: suitable for recreation and flora and fauna.
Swimming in the new water basins.
Model of the polder plan of H+N+S Landschapsarchltecten.
natural protections like natural dune sea walls, wetlands and adding structures such as levees, floodwalls and flood gates, in addition to integrating the urban development, tourism and industry within the land use patterns and urban water planning strategies.
Design studies The architectonisation of measures for urban flood management is however a much studied theme, as can be seen by the many design studies produced in recent years. For the Rotterdam Architecture Biennale in 2005 international designers looked for the new water city of the future. The Naar Zee! design workshop of the Netherlands Institute for Spatial Planning worked out scenarios for the North Sea coast.
26
'SCAPE
2 / 2007
Many studies have been made of ways of introducing technical measures such as compartmentalisation, creating collector basins and parallel channels for Dutch polders and riverlands in such a way that they will also act as quality and architectonic impulses. Combined they present an interesting spectrum of design strategies for the spatial approach to flood risks in delta areas. H+N+S Landschapsarchitecten have produced a design solution tailored to the Dutch delta. They designed a landscape planning regime for the green polder area at the heart of the Randstad in the Netherlands. It is their attempt to come up with answers for pressing problems like the rapidly declining agricultural sector, urbanisation, the lack of space for recreation and, of course, the water problems
The layer approach for Zuldplaspolder.
Stilt houses by MVRDV in the flood area of the Ussel near Kampen. Right: A bypass near Deventer creates room for living and working on a mound.
themselves. In this approach, the plan makers allocate a structural and dominant role to water management to realise an expansively designed wetland with qualities which make it attractive for living, leisure activities and flora and fauna. There will be room for storage of flood loads, salt seepage water and fresh water to rinse out the salt groundwater from time to time. In addition to new interim storage basins, the areas of land reclamation in the Netherlands, which are the lowest areas, will be assigned a new role as basin for urban water storage. H+N+S propose to build compartments to the north and the south of the Oude Rhine, for example, and to build a second ring of dikes behind the row of dunes, probably with opportunities for building houses. There is less urgency for the peat areas. The designers think that they must keep their finger in the dike. With the disappearance of agriculture, the forty thousand hectares of water surface proposed in the regime can keep the Green Heart open. H+N+S with Palmboom and van den Bout Stedenbouwkundigen also carried out design studies into the layout of the Zuidplaspolder. This area situated between Rotterdam, Gouda and Zoetermeer is one of the lowest-lying points in the Netherlands but despite this is on the eve of major spatial transformations. The pressure from urbanisation - housing, office development and greenhouse building - is high and inevitable, in the eyes of many. This is the reason that both firms think that a landscape
has to be created in time, one which can incorporate these claims in a way that provides quality and takes the rising water levels into account.
Lowest pit Adriaan Geuze, their colleague and landscape architect, has been fighting a veritable crusade for months to prevent further building on the Zuidplaspolder, which he calls the lowest pit of the Netherlands. It is high time that managers and planners became aware of how low our country lies in relation to the sea and the rivers. We have to show respect and stop flouting nature and water, according to Geuze. And this is what makes the strategy of H+N+S and Palmboom and van den Bout interesting. They give priority to landscape, geomorphology and water, and brush all possible claims to one side for the time being. In their Structure Image of the Zuidplaspolder they have searched for an evident and self-evident composition, with a tight basic geometry and clear imagery. A configuration that does justice on a large scale to the polder landscape and its location in a wet and low-lying delta. The designers fall back on a classic layer approach. Water and soil determine what is and what is not possible in the Zuidplaspolder. The same applies for the fragmented infrastructure which criss-crosses this area. The two layers will determine which occupation pattern (claims) will be possible in the end. The differences in ground water level and ground support will
once again be taken as point of departure. To the north the flat clay soil with substantial sand strips, in the middle unpredictable katteklei [cat clay 1and to the south the low-lying and wet peat. Each zone will be given an appropriate water system: a coarse discharge system for the clay, a pattern of ditches for the katteklei and meadow, hay land and marsh for the peat. This use makes it clear that the greatest scope for functionalities will be in the northern part, from greenhouses to intensive urban land use. Rural living environments will be possible in the katteklei area combined with an ecological and recreational landscape park. The south has the fewest possibilities: a water-rich nature park, with some floating housing here and there. The study has had little impact on provincial and local authority policy for the polder so far. Executives work with a technocratic structure plan, where there are very few echoes of the architectonic and landscape choices of H+N+S and Palm boom and van den Bout. Administrative boundaries have primarily defined the layout of the landscape instead of the ground and the water. Meaning that Adriaan Geuze's concern may not ultimately be unfounded. The second Architecture Biennial took place in Rotterdam in 2005 under the direction of Adriaan Geuze and produced a valuable collection of design ideas with an emphatic connection with urban areas. The studies for Rotterdam City of Water 2035 were spectacular, offering perspectives of new
2/ 2007 'SCAPE
27
Model for HafenClty.
Hamburg, Inner city.
water-living environments with promenades and harbours and with transport over water. Rotterdam South is going to become a city of waterways. All the gardens lie on water and everyone will have their own jetty. Many solutions will be found in the immediate vicinity of the river city, in the neighbouring lowlands. MVRDV thought of a solution for flooding in the IJssel delta near Kampen by constructing an overflow. The houses in the 5300 ha flood area were going to be protected by raising them on stilts to 50 cm above NAP, which would result in an exceptional housing landscape. The area will have the characteristics of a marsh so that it will be a spectacular and varied living environment with important natural aspects. Gregg Lynn and West 8 consider that the expanded river forelands provide enough space for bypasses in this same River ljssel, but further upstream. New strangs in the ljssel can store more water and room could be found for a new settlement with facilities and houses on a moand, linked to the ljsseldijk by bridge, and several enclaves with flood housing. The 'surprising city with a sparkling living environment' is so attractive that the hydraulic and ecological investments will be amply recouped, the designers argue.
Management
Mediterranean atmosphere on the Magallan terrace.
28
'SCAPE 2 I 2007
Flood protection is not just a question of design but it is also about crisis management. The inner city of Kampen is already protected by a new flood dam, part of which will be constructed of mobile sections. The historic townscape and the view across the river will be affected as little as possible. When there is a flood warning, the Flood Brigade made up of two hundred enthusiastic volunteers will be
Marco Polo terrace.
responsible for placing the sections. This will have to happen quickly since the town can be under water within three hours. The German city of Hamburg is a good example, and is also cited in the study made by the Netherlands Institute for Spatial Research: it is situated more than one hundred kilometres inland between the Elbe and the reservoir of the Alster. The city is not so much vulnerable to high-water peaks but to storm surges, which can cause the lower-lying parts of the city to be inundated within six hours. The last time this occurred was in 1962 and it cost the lives of more than 300 people. Against a background of climate change, the authorities are bearing in mind that levels may rise by several tens of centimetres and consequently the barriers are being raised by this amount. Hamburg has a rather unusual protection regime which is made up of public and private water protection. Some parts of the city and some buildings are protected under private schemes outside the public barrier. The city is not assuming that complete protection will be offered, and some parts may be allowed to be flooded. Solutions are to be sought in a cleverly designed combination of higher level escape routes and areas safe from flooding with an equally sophisticated warning system. This means that the lower storeys of the
houses in the risk areas will not have a residential function and will be built to withstand the pressure of high water. Some areas may not be lived in at all. In addition no outdoor activities may be organised outside the public water protection areas in risky seasons. New carefully designed water barriers offer views of the old harbour; some parts have Wellenabweiser to act as breakwater, making lower walls possible.
Climate durable metropolis In the prestigious HafenCity project, acquired insights have been applied in a 150 hectare area in the embankment zone immediately next to the old inner city of Hamburg. The project must offer homes to more than ten thousand residents and create forty thousand jobs. The idea of a high dike round the entire area was relinquished because this would take up too much space and was impracticable from an investment point of view. In a phased line of approach, some parts of the site will be raised, others will not. Old islands and existing embankments will be incorporated in the design. New buildings will be flood-resistant and can be used as homes if certain conditions are complied with. This mix of strategies presents many advantages for flexible spatial planning. Tackling the risk of flooding has led here to innovative urban design. The central position
means that the area can be designed as a lowtraffic area, with a high density of pedestriansonly streets. The buildings on the embankments jut out over the water like balconies. The existing, attractively renovated embankments, and the new escape routes, raised promenades and bridges offer an exciting versatility of views over the dynamic water. The new water city is being designed by a choice selection of international architects, urban planners and landscape architects. Herzog & de Meuron designed a new concert hall on Kaispeicher A which will function as a beacon. The Spanish team of BB+GG arquitectes won the design competition in collaboration with Beth Gali for the design of the eastern section, the Ubersee quarter and the Magdeburg Harbour. Enric Miralles and Benedatta Tabliabue had been chosen earlier to design the public space in the western part of HafenCity. It seems that climate change is already being anticipated: the embankments in Hamburg are acquiring a Mediterranean character. They are being constructed as terraces, as an answer to the water dynamics in the area, and have names like Marco Polo Terrace and Magellan Terrace. The new climate-durable metropolis is taking shape on the banks of the Elbe. With thanks to Shady Attia and J6rg Rekittke
2/2007 'SCAPE
29
The Free West scenario: new islands protect the coast.
The power of the sea at the Dutch North Sea coast sea, for example for wind parks, while
and the new culture of experience
for Spatial Research organised the
in
overfishing and climate change are
were viewed as parts of a wider
salination and land raising, no longer
design study Naar zee! Ontwerpen
threatening the marine ecosystem.
picture.
taking a risk management approach,
2002
the Netherlands Institute
but working in the Dutch tradition of
aan de Hollandse kust (To the sea!
How can these gathering storm clouds
Designing the Dutch coast), in which
over the North Sea be transformed
a utopian exploration of all these
young designers expiored new
into constructive ideas for a new
factors. The study introduced a new
aquatic engineering works. Deltafica-
perspectives for the Dutch North Sea
coastal landscape?
sort of planning based on a desire for
tion leads to the creation of a delta
coast. This area is coming under
The design study resulted in a new
To the sea! undeniably succeeds as
strategies such as siltation, flooding,
blending the utility and beauty of
more sea and more coast - a radical
with a dynamic landscape, as it used
change in thinking indeed. Instead of
to be in the west of the Netherlands-
increasing pressure from population
concept: a series of related ideas for
growth, economic growth and
the future of the coastal zone that
shortening the coastline to keep the
and as it could be again. This time not
increasing mobility. During the last
broke with the traditional techno-
sea at bay, the designers opted for a
for nostalgic reasons, but driven by
century the coastline has gradually
cratic policy approach in which the
longer coastline that would literally
climatic necessity.
give the sea and the Dutch delta more
shortened, partly due to the construc-
influences acting on the sea are either
tion of the Delta Works. In the mean-
ignored or addressed on a sector by
room in future - an approach they
time, the mounting development
sector basis. Climate change (with a
called 'from deltafixation to deltafica-
deltafication as the common leitmo-
It led to three scenarios, with
pressures on the land have led to
sea level rise of two metres in 200
tion'. They argued for the reintroduc-
tif: 'Free West', 'Holland at its Longest'
increasing interest in the use of the
years), mobility, energy consumption
tion of forgotten landscape planning
and 'High East'. 'Free West' involves
30
'SCAPE 2 / 2007
Holland at its longest.
The long-distance footpath in the High East proposal.
the creation of new islands off the coast using the power of the sea. The islands act as breakwaters that protect the coast and shift under the
lying west and the higher ground in the east, which winds its way for four hundred kilometres from Antwerp in the south to Nieuw Bertha in the
influence of the waves and currents. Along the 'Westland fringe' there is room for four thousand luxury homes in the salty environment. The islands
north. A new long-distance footpath, the 'Sea level path', runs along it, marked by beach posts and virtual signposts. Whereas the first two
that appear spontaneously before the Zeeland coast and the Razende Bol near Texel are the precursors of a
scenarios make use of the actual dynamics of the sea and coast, the
future Holland 'sealine', or natural
The Free West scenario.
third scenario is conceivable only if the Dutch delta floods once again.
flood defence, which is presented in the 'Holland at its longest' scenario.
Marinke 5teenhuis
The third scenario, 'High East', consists of a new inland coastline along the boundary between the low-
Marinke Steenhuis is architecture historian and editor of Blauwe Kamer
2/2007 'SCAPE
31
Erosion of the Costa de Caparica, 2006.
Coastal, urban and social erosion in Lisbon metropolitan area In the winter of 2006, the collapse of the sand dune system of Costa de
of an exposed sand dune system. Costa de Caparica is an extensive
A complex system of social,
into unequalled suburbia as a result of the influx of people returning from
commercial, religious, sport and other
Caparica, south of Lisbon, was partly
coastline to the south of Lisbon,
Portugal's African colonies after 1974
facilities has developed over the last
due to the force of erosion - a natural
inserted in a metropolitan region of
and its proximity to Lisbon. After the
30
phenomenon that is expected to
less than 3 million inhabitants. It runs
integration ofthis migrant popula-
ate, over the most important and
increase considerably during the next
in an arc approximately twenty kilo-
tion in the central city, other
attractive recreational area of the
years, creating an urban agglomer-
decades as a complex effect of global
metres long facing the western sun,
emigrants started appearing from
entire metropolitan region of Lisbon.
warming, climate change and the rise
winds and the Atlantic Ocean, with a
Africa, Brazil, and Eastern Europe,
This means that something like as
in sea level. This catastrophic event
coastline that was defined as a
occupying houses but also in impro-
many as 300 000 people move each
brought back climate change into
coastal cliff progressively becoming
vised camping nuclei in the pine
weekend from the region to this area
public awareness and proved that
fossilized. It has created one of the
woodland which had developed in the
during the hot season, with inevitable
current landscape planning initiatives
most attractive beach coastlines, with
sand dune system. On the basis of the
congestion of highroads, bridges and waterways as they try to access the
are the condition sine qua non for any
a sand dune system that stabilises an
system of sand dunes and the fossil
further development of the urbanis·
inner zone of sediment soils of great
cliffs, the area was designated a land-
area. Other kind of problems are also
ing coast. Only the conceptual tools of
fertility.
scape Protection Area and was includ-
emerging, related to natural dynam-
landscape architecture and planning
Since the beginning of the twenti-
ed in the National Park System, so
ics: the changing of the sedimentary
are able to develop spatial models to
eth century, it has progressively been
that planning and management tools
dynamic of the Tejo river, as a result
solve the ever-increasing conflict
transformed from a small fishing
would be available for this problema-
of the massive construction of dams
between leisure uses and the fragility
village, into a holiday village and now
tic area.
along it, combined with the cyclic
32
' SCAPE 2 / 2007
To ilVold further erosion, the urbanization of the fragile dune landscape at Costa de Caparlca has to be reorganised. In a plan drawn up by Provldencla and Global, the
pressure of storms from wind and sea, have brought the dune system and the dam protecting the urban agglomerate to almost break-down. The evident phenomenon of the rise
plans and designs, some of which are already under construction. Several firms of landscape architecture and architecture were brought in to devel· op concepts and proposals which
in sea level is an obvious concern of the public authorities, when considering the outlined social, urban and natural context.
were submitted in public competi· tions: Three teams composed by architects and landscape architects developed plans for urban and natural beach areas (Santa·Rita and Cubo Verde, Providencia and Global, Baixa and Global), while two other teams proposed a new pinewood park (Global and Ines Lobo architects) and developed planning tools to re-organise agricultural reserve land and urban frontages (Camillo Cortesiio architects and Proap landscape architects). While the pinewood park plan aims to restore woodland structures and draining systems, introducing paths and other elements and incorporating new housing elements, urban beach projects aim to restore the urban quality of the first embankment, its equipment, and parking areas. The beaches included in the Landscape Protection Area were developed according to strategies of dune rehabilitation, the placing of tourist facilities, and the moving of the present chaotic parking areas to an extended structure of stone pine which will form the new edge of the pine wood· land that follows the sand dune vegetation. The old beach tram system will be reorganised, and a new cycle path will follow the wonderful white sand beaches which offer the metropolitan population its major public space.
The environment and planning authorities have developed a programme of public investment in urban environmental quality called 'Polis', which will use funds from the EC to qualify the environmental aspects of the urban system. One of these programmes was applied to Costa de Caparica in the year 2000; it was based on seven plan areas over 650 ha and had the aim of clarifying the situation and providing rules for land use and property problems. The landscape and urban models for the plan areas represent the proposals of the seven teams who had been chosen by competition; some of them tackled the problem of coastal erosion directly, since the dune system in the north ofthis area had collapsed during the winter of 2006. The different approaches from the urban centre of Costa de Caparica to the north and the south were characterised according to the typologies of 'urban beach', 'transition beach', equipped beach', and 'pine woodland park' and 'urban-rural front'. The different spatial models and the underlying reasons were presented in a perspective of landscape and urban models of space at public and administrative level, and faced the natural phenomena of coastal erosion, the conflict between intense use of the beach recreational system, and the fragility of the sand dune system. Landscape architecture, planning and architecture were used as major conceptual tools to deal with this increasing problem of natural, social, urban and political erosion, producing
loao Gomes da Silva Joao Gomes da Silva is a landscape architect and explores the transformations in landscape due to global changes in economy and society. He is a partner in Global arquitectura paisagista, Ida, and associate professor at the architectural department of Universidade Aut6noma de Lisboa, Portugal.
[email protected]
Northern coastal strip could .achieve the transition between the cit, and the be.ach ('transition be.aches', top) by Installing new urban and touristic neighbourhoods Instead of the e.lstlng squatter and camping settlemenls. For the adjacent cOollStal ship to the South ('equipped be.aches'). aalu and Global sugge.t to withdraw the chaotic parking lois at the beach and Install an arc of stone pine at the edge of the eJilsting pine woodland to host new parking facilities.
Melting ice puts arcti~ CI Troms. - located on an island - is rapidly expanding onto the mainland.
The city has been Irowlnl at an average of 6 per cent a y..r, especially since the establishment of the University of Troms. In the '9705. Prospects for the city are good; climate chanle will open up new sea routes and create a more habitable north.
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Also on the permafrost soils of northern Russia, big changes are taking place at this time. Major areas are thawing, destroying roads and buildings that rely on a solid foundation of frozen soil. Now they are slowly subsiding or simply collapsing, and the region is changing into a giant wetland. In the middle of this northern arena is Tromsq), an expanding city of 65,000 inhabitants, which is located at close to 70 degrees latitude in the remote part of Norway, where the winter sun disappears for weeks on end. Here climate change means a change of the landscape. In the coming decades the white scenery will begin to change into a green one. Recently the city has teamed up with two other arctic cities - Kiruna in Sweden and Oulu in Finland - to participate in the tenth Venice Architecture Biennale that took place in 2006. Norwegian architect Knut Eirik Dahl, who has been living in Tromsq) since 1971 and is involved in organising the exhibition, explains:
The climate is changing. The extent of these changes is still debated, and governments around the world are hesitating about what measures to take. The Arctic region, however, is a clear showcase for the inevitability of what is to come. Here are some examples. The south of Greenland is turning green again. Farmers are experiencing longer growing seasons. Agriculture is increasing and yielding bigger harvests every year. At the same time in Greenland, reindeer herding is getting tougher, while the herds are migrating further north. Helicopters are needed to locate the cattle and move them to the pastures.
Museum of Finnish Architecture, who were in charge of the exhibition, did not see what we saw.' It seems, as the principle goes, that something bad, like the New Orleans flooding, has to happen first before a prediction is really taken seriously. It holds sense for Tromsq), because no great disasters have yet occurred. Tromsq) is even participating in the competition to host the 2018 Winter Olympics which, naturally, would not be possible without snow and cold temperatures.
'During the dialogues between the Nordic participants on how to present the 'Arctic Cities' theme at the Biennale, the Swedish architect Anders Wilhelmson came up with the proposal to fill the Nordic pavilion, designed by Sverre Fehn, with a giant block of ice. The ice would then gradually melt during the time of the exhibition, creating a symbolic reference to climatic changes in the Arctic.' If this had gone through, the Nordic pavilion together with the American pavilion, which pictured the
The situation raises a question: what is happening in Tromsq), considering all the talk about melting glaziers and rising sea levels? Some answers are given by the research of the Norwegian Polar Institute, which is located in this city. Jan Gunnar Winther, who is the director of the institute, explains that despite the predictions of sea level rise 'in Norway there is not such a big problem. Of course there are cities close to the sea, like Bergen and Oslo, but they are mostly situated on slopes. The largest effect will be in flood areas around the world, like the Netherlands, Bangladesh, and indeed New Orleans. In Tromsq) we have a few buildings very close to sea level, but most of the building mass is well above it.' Winther predicts that the
New Orleans flooding, would be the only participants paying attention to climate change. 'Unfortunately it didn't come off', says Dahl, 'The
biggest changes for the area will be dealing with temperature and precipitation. 'Due to the increase of temperature, the tree line will move
up to higher altitudes but also migrate further northwards', explains Winther, 'like in Greenland, in the northern-most county of Finnmark, it will change the conditions for reindeer herding of which there is an important indigenous tradition.' Sami people live in these remote regions, and they are expressing concerns about climate change, like the spokeswoman for the Canadian Inuit people who was invited as a speaker on the United Nations Environmental Day, held at the University of Tromsq) this year. "The indigenous peoples of the Arctic live in close contact with nature, and although we are very resourceful, at some point in time we will no longer be able to live the way we used to do for centuries', she said. The Sami and Inuit people are confronted with climate change well before the inhabitants of the urban regions ofthe Arctic are aware of it. Together with a rise of temperature there will be a change in precipitation from snow to a combination of wet snow and rain. From this time on the snow depth will gradually decrease. 'Most probably not in 2018 with the Olympics', says Winther, 'but towards 2050 the effect will be very noticeable.' A good example is the Tromsq) building code. Builders have to adhere to a characteristic snow load, which is established based on measurements of snow fall. These regulations will become less strict, because the snow fall is decreasing,
2/ 2007 'SCAPE
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In an attempt to draw attention to climate change in the Arctic, the Swedish architect Anders Wilhelmson proposed to fill the Nordic pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale with ice. It would give symbolic expression of what will be happening In the Arctic in the coming decades.
and the snow is melting faster. This has great impacts when it comes to building and transportation. According to Knut Eirik Dahl: 'If you look at the most recent statistics from the Polar Institute, but certainly also
the knowledge and competencies we have to strive for a sustainable development of the city and the region? At present, heSitatingly, it is
from the United Nations, you will
going both ways.
conclude that the icy Arctic landscape
Knut Eirik Dahl, who talks regularly with Jan Gunnar Winther, and
that shaped and created Troms9l now disappears, and another landscape appears. The city is literally relocated.' Nevertheless, most ofthe recent plans for the city do not anticipate the projected changes. The new harbour terminal designed by Spacegroup and West 8.
are getting more accessible with the melting of the ice? Or do we utilise
Troms9l has opened the shutters to the outside world with participation in the Biennale, and the hosting of the United Nations Environmental Day. Furthermore, with the Norwegian Polar Institute and the university, Troms9l has put itself on the map of knowledge and competencies on the Arctic. Now it increases the pressure on itself even more by competing for the Olympics. Since recently the city has become known as Polar Capital City of
university director Jarle Aarbakke, asked the latter concerning Norwegian dependency on oil and gas: 'How can it be that we have all this knowledge in TromS9l, and still we are not taking up the challenge of climate change?' Aarbakke gave an example: 'There is a Norwegian company called REC, which is making solar panels. They are flourishing economically. Their success is because of the German economy, where everything is clear for buying sustainable products. There is no green market in Norway yet. But when such conditions arrive, our attitudes will change.' Joren Jacobs
Norway. It is a position that draws attention to the city. Both Winther and Dahl belief that TromS9lshould set an example for the whole country, or even globally, on how to deal with climate change. While the city will
Troms. city hall and public library: builders have to adhere to a characteristic snow load.
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'SCAPE 2 / 2007
The article is based on an interview with Knut Eirik Dahl, who works as a professor of architecture at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. In Trams(/) together with Kjerstin Uhre he runs the office Dahl & Uhre Architects. Dahl has
continue to grow because the
been involved with the Venice Biennale
environment is getting more habitable, a fundamental and difficult question arises. Do we go for the Barents Sea's fossil fuel reserves, that
and plays a central role in the public planning debate in Trams(/). See www.northerngateway.nofor more information.
The drought Australia now faces is leading to shifts in the perception of the continent, of Australians and the world. The ideals of lush green landscapes are making way for landscape designs in which dryness is a quality of the design.
D Julian Raxworthy
On a map of the world, Australia is enormous, and seems empty because development is concentrated around its edges. Its heart must be red, in the cultural projections of the world from images of Uluru, 'the Rock' , set in a flat desert with no relief. Of course the country is not really all desert - surely? - with low shrubs pretty much throughout. Inhabitation seems to cling to the edges where the continent feels microclimatic effects from the adjacent oceans and edging mountain ranges, which screen the population from the real state of the environment - dry, harsh, amazing and unique. Australia is rightly proud of this harsh difference from its edges, but prefers the harshness to be 'out there'. At the moment however, the country is pretty much universally in drought, and the contrast between green and brown, that it has celebrated, even built its identity around, is
disappearing to become brown throughout. With the browning of Australia, some areas, such as tropical Queensland, are having their designed public landscapes and gardens revealed as an elaborate mythology, a landscape fraud. Queensland is seen as a tropical, palm-clad paradise, but is increasingly revealed as tropical in climate, but not tropical in terms of availability of drinking water. Queensland is on level-5 water restrictions with reservoirs down radically, and level 6 is predicted. These water restrictions have serious implications on the landscape, which is seen as a water indulgence compared with the necessity of household uses. In the last year these restrictions have moved from allowing hosing only at night; to at night only on 2 days of the week; to with buckets only; to now no watering, only the use of water that can be caught and
9 /2007
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37
Dry palms in Queensland: they survive, but don't look down at the ground.
recycled from household uses such as showering. Now even showering is restricted to four minutes. Surprisingly the palm trees are surviving, giving an elevation oflushness, so long as one does not look down at the ground, which is now denuded of grass (the favourite greensurface covering for Australians), and most other vegetation is crispy. The drought is now revealed as the benchmark condition of Australia, and the landscape architects had better start dealing with it. Even as the various state governments of Australia (each dealing with their own levels of the water crisis) propose specific water-saving solutions, it is only through advertising that the real properties of water are being dealt with. Punitive advertisements chastise citizens for wasting water, suggesting they are 'water-wasters' (a brand new type of 'bad' person) or simply as un-Australian (a more established type of bad person). These educational ads on bus shelters use graphics made from cracked earth to make us FEEL the dryness that is coming, desiccating us, because only if we feel it will we deal with it.
The quality of water Water is measured on a graduating scale of wetness, with more water being regarded as more positive. Wet is green, bountiful and quenching. When water is present, it is always a quality. When we imagine the qualities of water, we imagine being sensually immersed in it, the
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feel of it against our skin. While water has all these sensual qualities however, of itself it is almost entirely without qualities. Water is an odourless, colourless liquid - the very quality of nothing. At the same time as being nothing, though, it is the fuel oflife, and it is testament to the revelation of nature that life has adapted to run on something so seemingly neutral. If wetness is about qualities, then dryness is about quantities, because we want to know if we have enough of it to survive. Scarcity of water makes water seem like a quantity, but even as water is a quantity, it is also always a quality. Dryness is not the opposite of wetness, it is totally different. Dryness is a quality of quantity, because as water evaporates or transpires, it changes the constitution of organisms. Plants crisp, people dehydrate , movements slow, and then ... Dryness can only be appreciated as a quality, rather than a quantity, when we can see it from a perspective of water richness, which is the romance, the eidetic potential of the oasis. However, in the oasis, it is the dryness of the desert that provides the contrast to the lushness of the oasis, without which the oasis would be palm jungle. To appreciate dryness more than wetness seems ludicrous, and negative - appreciating a glass half empty rather than a glass half full. Yet for Australia to find a long term solution to the issue of water it has to recognise that water is not just another factor to be dealt with in design - it is the substance without which no other factor
exists. No technical solution alone will change the situation, because what is required is a complete change of cultural perception of the natural environment of Australia. To appreciate the qualities of dryness we must assume that we can survive, but that we will never have an excess of water again. Perhaps it will never rain again, so we may as well surrender ourselves, and embrace dryness. The landscape of Australia and some of its stereotypes might provide clues to how this might be done.
Shifts in cultural perspective Some of the most productive cultural periods in Australia's history have been accompanied by successive re-discovery of the Australian landscape. At the time of the Federation of Australian states in 1901, newspapers regularly featured illustrated supplements about Australian flora and fauna, and flora motifs began to illustrate publications, and children's stories started to feature Australian animals. This period represented an acceptance that Australia was not England (which had deported the convicts to the 'timeless land'), but maybe that was also a sort of liberation. Later, in the
1980s and 1990s Australian rock band Midnight Oil produced numerous albums that were themed around the real qualities of the Australian landscape, with titles such as 'Diesel and Dust'. In recent times Australia has been more immersed in developing and celebrating its cities, their new urbanity and their culture, rather than looking to the landscape for cultural definition. Yet it is probably the indigenous landscape that again will provide the source for landscape architecture to create a new language for 'dryness'. Landscape architecture in Australia also experienced a renaissance which developed from rediscovering the Australian landscape, pioneered in the 1940s by garden designers such as Edna Walling. In the 1960s and 1970s, Australian landscape architects, including Bruce Mackenzie and Harry Howard, defined a landscape design language that used materials and plants from the indigenous Australian landscape. Parks produced by these designers featured eucalyptus trees, native grasses and shrubs and timber edging, and used a variant of the English landscape park as the design language, with an emphasis on tree clumping
and mounding. Perhaps the most clear design exemplar of these projects was Bruce Mackenzie's Long Nose Point Park, on Sydney Harbour, from 1974. The design zones the site into clear functions with simple materials such as grass and gravel, and then planting is used between these zones, with native gum trees and shrubs. The understated design works much like the natural bush land on the harbour, which is austere but, in being austere, emphasizes the incredible beauty of Sydney Harbour. The design carefully worked with the existing site, which had been in use as an industrial area, by grading earthworks around the platforms, and keeping tracts of the sandstone bedrock as paving surface and rock embankments. The epiphany of the project is where the park meets the water with a point made of rock walls, and with occasional She Oaks (Casuarina glauca) emerging from sparse gravel. The design is a moment of fusion with diverse design traditions: the environmental frameworks of Ian McHarg; functional sitediagramming inspired by Eckbo et al.; the sense of the composed view of the English landscape garden; the scattered poise of the Japanese garden, unbalanced but precise; but all brought
Long Nose Point Park in Sydney by Bruce Mackenzie from '974. The park is sustainable and requires little irrigation.
2/2007 'SCAPE
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Lon, Nose Point P.rk looks like .n Austr.lI.n I.ndseape.
together in an utterly Australian manner. It looks like it has always been there, and this was always the intention, but for devastated sites such as this invisibility was no mean feat. These projects together comprised Australia's first true landscape design form language. The projects were sustainable, requiring little irrigation, despite intensive and brutal public use, combined with maintenance regimes that sought to make gardens out of these native landscapes, and over time made them appear harsh battlegrounds. While these parks looked like the Australian landscape, the garden in Australia was always supposed to be a tonic, a relieffrom a landscape that was fearsome and inhospitable to European eyes accustomed to green rolling pasture. Over the last 10 years, the level of design discussion, and the quality of design projects in Australia have increased, and the seemingly naturalistic or picturesque landscapes of 'the Bush School' (as it was sometime called) were derided as being undesigned, their produ-
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'SCAPE
2/ 2007
cers even characterised as anti-designers. In retrospect, these projects undoubtedly do have their own design language, but it is one of a studied formlessness, still misunderstood and beyond comprehension, but a design language nonetheless. As this seemingly endless drought takes its toll on the public (and the private) landscape, it is these bush projects that remain closest to their designed intention. Their dryness, which was previously one of their least desirable qualities, has become an indicator of the direction that landscape design must take in Australia if it is to produce projects that can survive. Culturally, this is potentially a return to the fly-swatting, squinting Aussie - sun-burnt and loving it - that this same period, the 1970s, celebrated.
A different design language In many respects, the profession of garden design, rather than landscape architecture, has been pioneering responses to dealing with a
reduction in water in the landscape, and defining an appropriate design response. In the 1990s, two garden design 'styles' were pursued in Australia with this in mind, Xeriscape and Tuscan gardens, which looked to California and the Mediterranean respectively. This type of response examined plant material from other climates and microclimates around the world that could grow in similar environmental conditions to those found in Australia. Xeriscape, from the Greek, xeros 'dry', was a style that featured desert plants such as succulents and cacti, plants that had adapted to low levels of water through mass storage in foliage and stems and reduction of transpiration. With this plant palette came gravel and pebble mulches, already familiar from 1950s Modernist gardens such as those from the popular Sunset Garden magazines. The Tuscan garden was also based around plant use, this time substituting herbs such as rosemary and lavender. This style, like Xeriscape, also had an accompanying hard landscape language, which included 'Tuscan' materials such as terracotta tile and pots, even mosaic. Neither of these 'styles' was adopted by landscape architecture, both staying in the realm of garden design, precisely because they were 'styles'. Garden design has long been defined by the use of 'style', an approach which attempts to copy places or historical periods. Stylistic gardening gains value not through design inno-
c
'"" ~
----------~------------------~------~--~--------------~----------------~ ~ Raglan Street In South Melbourne, designed by Site Office, 2007. This Mediterranean garden engages with the conditions of the climate.
vation, as landscape architecture ideally would attempt to do, but through accuracy of mimicry. A 'styled' garden attempts to be a rendition of the original, even if, as in the case of the Tuscan Garden, the style has no real similarity at all to what really exists in the places it attempts to mimic. The net effect of these styles, and the reason that stylism failed to make the change it needed to make, is that the mimicry agenda dominates at the expense of innovative adaptation through design, which would allow these styles to better 'adhere' to the landscape in Australia. From Xeriscape came a widespread use of succulents, though more in the gardens of landscape architects than in their landscapes per se, as well as a rediscovery of mineral mulches. From the Tuscan garden, perhaps better described as the Mediterranean garden, comes a much more useful precedent, drawn from the cultural history of the west. In an eidetic sense ,
the dryness of the Mediterranean is a harsh light that is also bountiful, the gnarled olive tree surrendering sensual oil. What is appropriate about the model of the Mediterranean garden is not the Mediterranean per se, but an aesthetic or material language that is appropriate to the climatic conditions of the place. This language can be learnt though observation of the undesigned landscape, as Mackenzie did, but the challenge is to refrain from creating naturalism and this requires abstraction. A recent project for a reserve in Raglan Street, South Melbourne by Site Office demonstrates how such a language might work, even while the project is not 'about' dryness. Located on a street closure, an angled curving timber wall separates the reserve from traffic making a space in an intersection, inside the nexus of which a deck, a shade structure, is located. These two measures are important
2/2007 'SCAPE
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-
Grey-ness In Raglan Street.
because they engage with the conditions of the climate by shaping a microclimate, the structure recognizing Melbourne's potential for burning hot summers, and the untreated timber wall showing a patina of dry-ing, as much as dryness. The vegetation of the existing tree and the indigenous plants set in granitic sand set a colour palette of grey-ness and grey-blueness that reflects the real colours of the native landscape unpretentiously, a benchmark. Historically the default material for public spaces, the grass at Raglan Street, is concentrated into a small
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'SCAPE 2/ 2007
area with the trim of sand and grey planting around it, making it special, a distinct surface for use, a gaudy green foreground in contrast to the subtle colour palette of the bush that Australians both love and hate.
Landscape architects' response to the dryness In landscape architecture, the primary responses to the water issue have generally been of a technical nature, the most dominant response being Water Sensitive Urban Design
(or WSUD). WSUD provides methods for conserving or reusing water in urban situations. It is effectively an 'overlay' on top of existing urban design and streetscape practices, so it does not change the design methods or operations fundamentally but is an adjunct to existing ways of designing in the urban context. Common features ofWSUD include mechanisms to allow surface water to return to the aquifer, including permeable pavements and grading solutions that direct surface water to planting areas. In Australia this has led to the development of certain characteristic formal configurations and qualities: vegetation becomes aggregated into masses (rather than individual trees). Reeds and grasses are planted in swales who can be used for car parks to drain into. This has given WSUD a particular 'bushy' quality, a little ragged. To counter this, designers have juxtaposed the loose and unkempt form of the reeds with straight-edged concrete forms against which the organic difference becomes ornamental. The necessity ofWSUD is unquestionable, making previous urban design practices seem wasteful, but as a positive response to dryness, it is still an applique on existing 'wetness' based methodologies. It begs the question 'if we had to redesign urban design as a practice completely from scratch, on the basis of valuing dryness, what would it look like?'. It may look exactly the same but such a paradigm shift is nonetheless what is required. The central tenet of a water-sensitive approach is to catch and clean up what water there is available, and then hold and reuse it. The central tool for this is the ubiquitous 'designed wetland', a carefully organised hydrological mechanism that directs water through a series of stages using speed, water depth, oxygenation, and light to make dirty water clean. One ambitious project of this type is the Royal Park Wetland, in Melbourne, by Rush Wright Associates, which collects all the urban stormwater from an enormous urban catchment area and cleans it before it is discharged into the bay. The language of these projects generally tends toward replicating the form of a natural wetland, but in this project RWA have exaggerated that language to become blatantly zoomorphic - the biomorphic motifs of Noguchi and Burle-Marx on drugs, with a nod to Smithson's Spiral Jetty. This form, however, is an aerial
A water-sensitive approach In the Royal Park Wetland. The urban stormwater is collected from an enormous urban catchment area. It will be cleaned before it discharges into the bay.
effect and on the ground level it is felt more subtly, like Hargreaves' idea of 'the fuzzy edge'. In the context of a language of dryness this project demonstrates that the landscape is more like a mosaic, with a uniform background of the dry making the moments of moisture, again like an oasis.
The theoretical problems There a.re some theoretical problems in attempting to establish what an aesthetic or formal language of 'dryness' might be for Australia. The most basic of these is that to ask such a question is to expect an issue to be visibly recognisable in a design outcome. This expectation is the same as, for example, expecting structure to be visible in a building, which is to say that expecting dryness to be visible in a design
Royal Park Wetland in Melbourne by Rush Wrisht Associates.
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An aesthetic move toward embracing dryness: Cranbourne Botanic Gardens In Melbourne by Taylor Cullity Lethlean.
language is a kind of Modernism. It's a 'form follows function' (or issue) type of argument, which might hijack the conceptual and formal development of potentially complex, deep and multifaceted projects, and instead hinges them around a single issue - in this case 'dryness'. In fact dryness is not a singular issue at all, but a myriad of other issues, and as such the formal or aesthetic language to deal with it should not be singular either. What is needed is a whole new design sensibility, where sensibility is understood as feel or, as was famously said in the great Australian film 'The Castle', a 'Vibe'. If we start to mentally overlay Xeriscape, Tuscan style, WSUD, and 'the Bush School', and then a thousand project-specific objectives, we might start to visualise this language. The technical approaches to dryness will only form part of that language, so it will be more than the sum of its parts, incorporating this technicality as well as diverse cultural issues about landscape, identity and colonialism - that is, all those things that make up the disappointing, wonderful, complex reality of being Australian.
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The Cranbourne Botanic Gardens project, in Melbourne, by landscape architects Taylor Cullity Lethlean is an important exemplar in the aesthetic move toward embracing dryness, even while it is an extreme caricature of what the landscape is really like. This project continues the indigenous landscape movement initiated by Bruce Mackenzie, et al. in the 1960s to 1980s, but rather than attempting to design an undesigned landscape, copying the natural, the Cranbourne Botanic Garden instead represents the myth of the landscape. The project centres, physically and metaphorically, around an area of bare sand, making reference to 'the Red Centre', not really the centre but truthfully nowhere apart from 'outback'. The material for the area is red sand, with areas of other sands and spinifex grass. While the area is an exaggeration (there is very little of this red sand landscape in Australia, and even less that has no plants), the project recognises that it is the power of this image that is significant, not its accuracy. This image has proved pervasive, and already this project has become a strong 'brand'
for the Australian landscape. Its importance for a move toward dryness is obvious, but is worth saying out loud. By recognising that this landscape is beautiful but harsh, and that at its core it is dry, we move closer to seeing the quality of dryness as an identifiable material specificity of this place. Julian Raxworthy is landscape architect and critic in Australia. He is also senior lecturer in landscape architecture with the School of Design. Queensland University of Technology. Australia.
[email protected]
2 I 2007 'SCAPE
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Gilles Clement is one of the most famous personalities in French landscape architecture of today, but he is not a typical French landscape architect: he calls himself a gardener, he has no office, he talks about ecology, and he is an obsessed traveller to the most remote regions of the world. His French colleagues look at him with distance but admire him for his freedom of mind and movement. Clement introduced ecological thinking, humanistic ambitions, written poetry and new concepts into the French profession. In the international panorama, he is one of those who dare to step beside, who irritate and inspire at the same time, and who enter the global political debate.
D Lorette Coen
Gilles Clement hides from anyone who tries to come too close or catch hold of him, to define or restrict him too much, although he never disappears entirely. He bursts out of any narrow confines, slips away and moves off elsewhere but comes back. He is a storyteller whose medium is both words and gardens. A landscape designer? No doubt about it - has he not created some of the greatest contemporary French works of landscape design? An artist? He refutes that. An author of over twenty titles, indisputably a writer? Yes. But it is his title of gardener that he cares about most. He is a gardener, in both the literal and the figurative sense, because he teaches, writes and criss-crosses the planet in order to see and learn, speak and make plans. Le Jardin planetaire (The Planetary Garden), his exhibition in the great market hall of La Villette in 2000, earned him an unusual degree of stardom for this field. He took this in his stride, his fame grew, and his project of writing in words and plants continues to progress. His influence, already profound, is spreading. His Manifeste du Tiers pays age (Manifesto of the
Third Landscape) found a universal echo. Gilles Clement is one of the most influential Frenchspeaking personalities of our times. In a subtle way, his ideas have spread far beyond the boundaries of the country and of the garden. As for his audience, he has just finished sizing it up. In a communique on the day after the triumph of Nicolas Sarkozy in the French presidential elections, he denounced a political vision that he considers destructive. He 'is cancelling all the commitments [hel made with public and private services on French territory with the exception of official or unofficial authorities where there is ascertainable opposition.' Completely unexpectedly and sounding like an 50S, coming as it did from a famously independent spirit, the message is finding an echo the sheer scale of which is surprising. 'A seed of resistance', the daily newspaper Liberation commented.
Organic pesticide It is a seed which is only too pleased to grow. The next gesture was the inauguration of a tiny
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Three avenues for exploring the universe of Gilles Clement, his gardens, books and other works: - www.gillesclement.com - Louisa Jones and Gilles Clement: Gilles Clement, une ecologie humaniste. Aubanel, Paris, 2006 - The Cesar Manrique Foundation, Spanish institution situated at Lanzarote (Canary islands) is currently preparing a show on contemporary 'Great European Landscapes' at its main site in Taro de Tahiche. The show is exploring how and with which contemporary architectural languages European landscape architects treat
their long term projects. At the same time, the Foundation will dedicate a second exhibition to Gilles Clement, at their show room in Arrecife, the island's capital town. This show interacts with a project Gilles Clement is currently installing on the island. Cesar Manrique Foundation, Lanzarote, Spain, and Lorette Coen: 'Great European Landscapes' and 'Gilles Clement'. Two exhibitions on display from 28 February until 27 April 2008. www.fcmanrique.org
garden in Melle, the outcome of an art commission but designed to be long-term. It comprises an aquatic garden - 'micro-lagoon, referring to the need for treating this region's polluted waters and for teaching a programme of agricultural management that respects the environment' - and a nettle garden. Carved out of an existing field full of Urtica dioica, it consists of a platform and a pool where a slurry of stinging nettles can be developed and used to avoid the use of treatments and pesticides. This project, however, is banned under the Agricultural Appropriations Law, like many artisanal and organic products. Enter Gilles Clement the political gardener. The next step - of a different magnitude - is taking shape in Cagliari, Sardinia, where the governor has decided to apply a recent law for
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the protection of historic sites which has never before been implemented in Italy. Having read an Italian translation of Clement's Manifeste du Tiers paysage, he suspended construction measures which would benefit property developers and owners, and called for a park project for the Tuvixeddu hill. This return to the public domain is on a scale quite exceptional for Europe and quite unlike the privatisations favoured everywhere. Perhaps it is the beginning of a vastly innovative policy, hopes the enthusiastic Gilles Clement, eager for signs of a reversal of trends in favour of what he calls the planetary garden, 'this country without borders '. Neat in his jeans, his blond hair a mess, his features craggy, he is one of those motorcycle cowboys. Those who suddenly appear, take off their helmet and put down their worn-out bag, and then quickly leave again to continue telling their story down the road. From the infinitely small to the very large scale, from botany to geopolitics, from the music of words to that of the stars, this globetrotter cultivates his planet and everywhere gleans the unintentional art visible only to someone who knows how to look.
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He savours words so much that one might easily suspect that he makes them a criterion for taking on future projects: La Ficelle (Lausanne), l'Arbre-Ballon (Brussels), the Ti:Jean garden (La Reunion) , the Pam pie mousses (Grapefruits) garden (Mauritius). Public spaces, private gardens and large numbers of studies: over more than three decades, he has produced a varied and abundant oeuvre punctuated by books, exhibitions, radio programmes, not to mention everything that Gilles Clement, astonishing as his ventures are, classifies under 'miscellaneous' for want of a better term. Such as the tapestry he realised for the multimedia library in Felletin, which interprets what he calls the third landscape. In the late summer of2007, the gardener,just back from Australia, is gardening at La Vallee, clearing the brushwood and trimming away everything in his private garden that has made it confused and ill-kept. La Vallee is a plot of abandoned land he bought in 1977, where he built
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La Vallee: the garden of Gilles Clement and 'the point of departure'.
his house with his own hands, tucked away in the trees on the slope. Like the garden around it, it became the diametrical opposite of the family home, plain and all flat a few hundred yards away. At the foot of this fallow site, a brook traces its course to join the Creuse, the river that lends its name to this departement right in the middle of France where Gilles Clement was born in Argen ton in 1943. La ValIee is the place the gardener always comes back to, to experiment, to learn and to find himself again. There he writes, reflects; his family and his friends catch up with him. Using La Vallee as the point of departure, he gives material form - also in words - to what he calls the Jardin en mouvement (garden in motion). This is a way of thinking, a method, an expression that first brought him to the attention of the public. He says: 'The garden in motion takes its name from the physical movement of plant species on the land, which the gardener can interpret as he wishes. Flowers starting to sprout in a pathway confront the gardener with a
choice: to keep the path or to preserve the flowers. The garden in motion advocates preserving the species once they have decided on their choice of a site.'
The pattern changes In a very quiet and simple way, this radically changed the profession oflandscape architect. It suppresses his role of lord and master over nature and confers the formal conception of the garden entirely into the hands of the gardener. 'The pattern of the garden, changing in the course of time, depends on who does the maintenance; it is not the result of a design in the studio done on drafting tables.' Yet, no confusion at all is possible with a garden which has been returned to a wild state. On the contrary, the garden in motion calls for consummate patience and considerable knowledge. Plants that have come from elsewhere and like his biotope all have the right to settle there. First described in an article in 1985, this method of garden management, which is inspired by
2/2007 'SCAPE
51
PORTRAIT
neglected sites and is essentially about encouraging an abundance of vegetation while adding one's own modulations, is spreading all over the world. In France, meanwhile, after a long dormant period, the world of the garden is bubbling with excitement. Interest in historical gardens, of which Jack Lang launched an inventory, restorations, competitions such as that for Parc de la Villette, and large public commissions exemplify the trend. There has been more reflection on public space, and public interest in plants has developed and diversified. The landscape architects on the teaching staff at the Ecole du paysage de Versailles, of which Gilles Clement is a member to this day, were the major players in this evolution. But the man who invites his students to favour imagination, feelings and experience, and whose idea is to work in the garden with bare hands, as well as mastering plant vocabulary, plays a special role in the discourse. On the one hand there were the landscape architects, on the other Gilles Clement led by biological inspiration to reflect upon movement. 'Looking at fallow land, I am not only fascinated by the energy of re-conquest. I also try to figure out how I can fit into this powerful flow.' Ecologist before the word really caught on? He does not like the expression 'full of tension and misunderstanding' and would never use the term 'sustainable development'. He bases his position on the work of sustained observation, patient experimentation, and knowledge fed by all sorts of cross-disciplinary relationships. This complements the knowledge he acquired during his constant travels - to which Algeria, which he saw as a child, South Africa which he saw as an adolescent, and Nicaragua as a development aid volunteer, constituted the prologue. His attitude is the opposite of that of the specialist. Agricultural engineer and landscape architect educated at the Ecole nationale superieure d'horticulture before it became the Ecole du paysage, Clement recognised his own botanical and entomological knowledge. This earned him the right to give his name to a butterfly of the Saturniidae family: the Buneaopsis clemen to
discovered on the cliffs of Cameroon. It also enabled him to participate in the extraordinary scientific expedition of the treetop raft suspended from a hot-air dirigible with teams of researchers exploring the forest canopy of Gabon fifty metres above the ground. In any case, his career path resembles that of the natural scientists braving storms or plunging into jungles to bring back mysterious species, notebooks full of notes and very detailed drawings of animals, plants and insects.
Plants and architecture He keeps company with them, those savants of the Age of Enlightenment and of the 19th century. In 2005, with Jean-Baptiste Lamarck accompanying him during an ocean crossing in a freighter, Gilles Clement wrote 'Nuages' while waiting to reach Clos Apalta in Chile, a 134hectare vineyard, where he was commissioned to realise a garden. He had paid tribute to Lamarck, who overthrew creationism fifty years before Darwin and founded meteorology, in a landscape a year earlier, when he translated
Lamarck's ideas into a Garden of Evolution adjacent to the Valloires Gardens, one of his first major projects (1987-1989). He undertook a similar commission around an abbey reconstructed in the 18th century, where he conceived a composition in the form of a plant cloister containing a precious collection of shrubs. He combined this ensemble of spaces arranged in response to the architecture with a learned diversity of plants. In this place, as in other historical sites, there is no point in looking for reconstitution or rigour. Instead, one finds interpretation and freedom. It is in the nature of a garden to move; the unpredictable is therefore both expected and encouraged. The unforced exploitation of the properties and distinctive characteristics of each site, and the balance between structure and movement, both planned and random, make up the specificity of Gilles Clement's realisations. These can be very small, such as the 600 square metres of the Fontaine d'herbe de la Drac in La Reunion (2003-2004), or very large, such as the fourteen hectares of Andre Citroen Park in Paris (1986-1992-1998).
On the site of the former Citroen factory, Gilles Climent and architect Patrick Berger won first prlle In the competition for Park Andri Cltroin In '985, like the team of landscape architect Allain Provost and architect Jean Paul Viguler. Under the guidance of Allain Provost, both teams created the park, which was oHldally opened in '99:1, In a densely populated area of Paris as a piece of open urban space with the outstanding contrast of a central multifunctional lawn and a series of quiet contemplative 'serial gardens'. 52
'SCAPE 2 / 2007
These two gardens have one common denominator: they arose on ruins, one following a fire and the other on a derelict industrial site.
Recent projects The first large-scale planning project since the major works by Jean-Charles Alphand under Napoleon III, the Andre Citroen Park represents a landmark in the history of Parisian urban development. With the architect Patrick Berger, Gilles Clement decided to create a manifesto of the garden in motion he experimented with at La Vallee and of which he teaches the basic principles. 'We decided that this new view of nature and, consequently, this new position of man with regard to nature, would constitute the conceptual basis and the argument of the park.' In fact, the team (completed by general delegate Allain Provost and architectJean Paul Viguier)
succeeded in a skilful union of the artificial and the natural. From the free handwriting of the garden in motion bordering the Seine, the garden follows an increasingly devised script the further it moves away from the river. The main traffic route and the perspectives express monumentality in contemporary terms, while the architectural elements articulate the space in the serial gardens with a very sophisticated profusion of plants; the colours sing. Another resurrection is the Rayol estate in the Maures massif. These twenty hectares left abandoned on the Var hills and re-appropriated by the Littoral Nature Conservancy were entrusted to Gilles Clement in 1989. He made the site the starting point for intensive worldwide research with the aim of setting up an index of the whole planet. His idea is to combine the landscapes of various distant
2/2007 'SCAPE
53
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regions, in which the climate is similar to this corner of the Mediterranean, in order to observe evolutions and transformations in them. 'In what way can landscapes that are biologically similar but different from the point of view of form shed light on the relationship between habitat and evolution?' the planetary gardener asks himself. At the outset he imagined a southern garden, that is, a collection of the landscapes of the southern hemisphere. He foresees a South African garden as well as New Zealand, Chilean and Australian ones; and for later he envisages the flora of California, of the Canaries and of China. Fire became the theme of observations carried out at Rayol par excellence: 'how to live with the cataclysm?' An evolutionary project complemented by a major educational component, it is also the one that holds Gilles Clement's attention most closely. He monitors it and intervenes quite regularly.
Deborence Island, created between 1990 and 1995 in the heart of urban territory, provided the occasion to develop Clement's reflections further. Close to the arrogant architecture of Euralille, where the fortifications ofVauban once arose, there now stands a rock constructed from the hill of earth excavated from the TGV station; its exposed front resembles an unassailable cliff. The cliffforms the central element of Henri Matisse Park, made inaccessible but visi-
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Similarly, Climent composes the garden of Domalne du Rafol on the French Mediterranean coast with species collected from those biomes all over the world which are born of fire
54
'SCAPE 2 / 2007
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ble in plain view. and it is topped by a forest of the future that develops without help or gardening and serves as a 'matrix', as a supplier of seeds for the entire surroundings. Not erected without some very intense struggles, the island became a territory that welcomes diversity, constituting an inviolable part of the third landscape. This is its definition according to the gardener: 'The third landscape - an undefined fragment of the planetary garden - designates the total amount of the spaces where man leaves the evolution of the landscape to nature alone. It concerns abandoned urban or rural areas, spaces in transition, brownfield sites, swamps, moors, peat bogs as well as roadsides, shores and riverbanks, railway embankments ... Added to the ensemble of neglected spaces are the pieces of reserved territory. These are the de facto
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The shape of Derborence Island within Henri Matisse Park In L1l1e refers to Antipodes Island In New Zealand, right on the other side of the globe and a secret place Just as Ina"esslble as this fragment of a 'Third Landscape'.
2/2007
'SCAPE
55
Prlnclple of elaboration of an undecided landscape and scenolraphy for the 'Third Landscape' at Derborence Island, Pare Henri Matisse in Lille (colla Ie by Atelier Emprelnte).
reserves: inaccessible places, mountain tops, uncultivated places, deserts; and the institutional reserves: national parks, regional parks, 'nature reserves'. This concept, which originated on the occasion of an art commission from the Art and Landscape Centre of Vassiviere-en-Limousin, was subsequently developed during the drafting of a landscape charter at the request of regional authorities. In 2004, the phrase - which to French ears echoed the famous pamphlet about the Third Estate issued by Abbot Sieyes during the French Revolution gave its name to the title of his sensational 'Manifesto of the Third Landscape'. Two years earlier Gilles Clement had been invited to be part of architect Philippe Jonathan's team which a group of municipalities around Lake Tai had brought in, and Clement had produced a study titled 'The Planetary
56
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2 / 2007
Garden of Shanghai' . This ended in a series of recommendations which aimed at the rehabilitation, the enhancement and ecological management of the huge region around the lake where about eighteen million people live. The recommendations were immediately put into effect by the sponsors. Since then, frequently confronted with largescale projects, the gardener has refused to have a studio and instead forms his teams according to the way in which projects develop. Now people come to him from all over: Essaouira, Tripoli,jeddah, names that sing the way he likes them and that make him travel. just like the poetry of the names of plants that invite him to garden. So comfortably articulate, elegant, and with an old-fashioned touch, he is a charmed charmer.
Lorette (oen is a critic, writer, film and exhibition maker specialized in art and landscape architecture based in Lausanne, Switzerland. She works for the Swiss daily Le Temps, is president of the Swiss commission for design and member of various Swiss and European professional juries.
[email protected]
Smooth lines, valleys and wild areas, tall grasses, an informal plan of
Garden of the musem of the Quai Branly
sinuous, winding paths, some trees which give the impression of an arboretum. This is the garden ofthe museum of the Quai Branly in Paris. Next to the Eiffel Tower, this new prestigious project of a national museum of cultures is surrounded by a beautiful garden, designed by Gilles Ch!ment in collaboration with Nicolas Gilsoul and Emmanuella Blanc. The design has Clement's own ideas of space, gives a feel of nature, is in some ways in contrast with the straight angles and boxes of the building, and yet has the same playful and colourful expression and mood. The garden organises the entry of the public in an informal way, gets them out ofthe hectic of Paris and swallows them in a sea of nature, presenting then a garden under the building, like an intriguing landscape of caves in the mountains. But there is a terrace, one can drink coffee and wine, and there is the actual entrance to the museum. In this world of plants and curves, there are separate boxes and spaces for the individual· sometimes the materials and construction surprise· but they are always in tune with this new modern landscape.
The garden of the museum of the Quai Branly, designed by Gilles Clement In cooperation with Nicolas Gllsoul and Emmanuella Blanc.
Harry Harsema
2/2007 'SCAPE
57
The twelve-cornered stone
New brownfield site
The yellow flower
The twel"e-cornered slone II dted al
Thh photo lIIult,.tes two
The lad)' In yellow look •• t flowers
an e .. mple In writ In" about the
remarhllie phenomena very wello
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technical proweu of the Inca. In
the Immediate ,,·conquest of "cent
Jux..apolltlon II conveyed In the
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58
'SCAPE 2 / 2007
authorise construction In the lIeds of
but which c:ould .Iso be s""tly
tor,entlal rive".
anima tin, the bloomln,lunflowe".
local tourism Th. r.d crabl on the 1,1.lld of
51nll.,o (which look .Ir.. d)' cooked bul .,. vef)' much .11.,.) Imm.dl.t.l)' m.d. m. think of tOllld tou,flt. on the b•• ch •• , Clptur.d durin, the I.rn. rno.,.m.nl low.rdl th. . .t.r .nd In the 11m. l umm.rtlm •• tupor.
Involuntary art: scarl'crows In rice paddles Wh.n the ric. I. rip., the 1.lIn.n •• t up pilltic b.,. flII.d with
,IIH.rln, .hlp. In Ih. ,Ic. p.ddl •• to chll •• w')' pr.d.tor blrdJ (Iurun, p.dl). From m)' point of .,I.w, the pur.l), funcilon.I .ph.m.ral Inll.II.tlon I. on the •• m. I.vel ., .rtworlo IIl.t .0lft,IIIft •• occup)' n.lural.p.c •• In .n .buJlv. rn.nn.r.
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Involuntary art: ZAC Rive Gauche
It would b. unllkel, .nd •• p.n.ln to •• k • bl.ck.mlth to Ift.ka • ,rill. th.t II this .I.bor.t •. lukin, up • • truck u •• t ••• lCulplur ••
2/ 2007 'SCAPE
59
PORTRAIT
Garden in M otion: Jule5 Rleffel
Referrlnllo the treetop raft
School In Saint Herblaln I. the flnt In
suspended on the tree canopy of
an educatlonallnslltutlon.
troplc.al forests, the fleld raft I, on
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the level of Ihe I,a" canopy (canopy
area (6 ha), It Is now the subJed of
de,llnates the Interface between
,ulded toun bJ the pupils. They
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have even worked on makln,lt. The
canoPJ). From this platform I can
concept of the Garden In Motion,
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ve" badlJ received by Institution,
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of a,rlcultural education - which are
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supported and Informed bJ the
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lobble, of aarlbu,lne,s - has now found a place and a demonstration site capable of modlfyln, the destructive cu"ent pradlce. of rarden maintenance and a,rlculture.
The great crossing
Works bJ Thle", Fontaine emanate a stranle and radical poet". Sea urchin. had the time to settle on the shoes of someone who spent so much time cro"lnllhe ocean •• (Fontaine come. from the I.Iand of Reunion).
60
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2 / 20 07
The field ra ft
The Gnden In Motion at Jule, RI.Hel
Gauzy Llvln, on hlwthom blos.oms, the m.mber of the PI rid .. 'Imlly known In fr.nch .. the Gflnd Gil' (sr'lt ,IUay on.) beeluse of the trln'plr.nq of Itt front win •• I.. on. of the mo.t .1"lnt bUUI,fII ., Without Iny .mb.llllhmlfth whlho.ver, only bllCk vlln. on I whit. blCk.round,lt .lId•• like the mountlln Ipollol-It's the onllUke b.st,
ESSAY
Thirteen Tactics f r the Ciood Life Beyond life only, what Is a good IIfe1 Some things designers have to accept and explore all the time In order to offer the joy of the uncertain, unpredldable, constantly changeable, surprisingly unique one may find In cities and urban space. Extrapolating from Inventive 'Good Life' techniques and projeds shown at the New York based Van Alen Institute In 2006, a series
of tadlcs sUllest how to create truly
dynamic, healthy and enjoyable urban worlds. Cities are massively contributing to climate change and will massively suffer from It If we don't adapt them and master the change with cleverness and sensitivity.
lain Borden
62
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1 / 2007
Cenu-al to the 'Good Life: Design For All' project is th proposition that architectu re and design are not just about isolated building - or eminent architects but are al 0 about urban pace and agents of all kind, being illlimatel conn CLed with the fabri and machinations of city li~ , Thejo of th city are then not confined to the int rior of buildings, or ju to the \\I'a that they have been conceived, bUl are rather an expanded field which incorporates the full rdnge of pos iblc architectures - that, i ,all kind of obje ts, in ertion , space, practi e ,idea and emotion, To understand Lhi view of architecture and urban life w mu t, therefore, consider the radical propo ition that the relation between de ign and our experience of citie is nOI ingular, predictable or even readily under tandable, but i in Lead complex, unpredictable, and con tantl changeabl , This i not an ea y condition to a cept, but accept it we must. o how to try and comprehend Lhi notion of urban space and cit life as inherelllly unstabl and dynamic? Particularly relevant here are the thoughts of the French philo opher Henri Lefebvre on the s cial production of space, the veryda and the politics of Ule city, ln hi I umerous writings, Lefi bvrc, in -hort, pr p that ocial pa e is a social product, made by u through our own practices, codes and experience ', rban space, therefore , i not just abolltthe great monuments of the city, but the place where we g aboUl our veryda live - where IV work and commute, where we find pa sion and illlimacy, and where we find maller, bod y- cale pace , Politically, the under! ing ont ntion here i of the right to the cit as being something which should be open to all peoples, of whatever age, gender, clas ,ethni ityor exualit , Indeed, one of the entral aim of urban liC hould be to not only tolerate but ce lebrate and encourage differen e, reating a multitude of experienc , qualities and spaces, This kind of urban -pace i ', then, diametrically opposite to the space of profe ionals drawings, geometry, tatie objects and triet urban manage r - it i a pace of Ouid dynamic , llbject to constant chang not ju t in its form and u but in the very und rstanding that p ople - all of tiS, notju turban and de ign profe ional - have of citie, pa e, that is, which is pro isiollal and significant, inclusive and ye t varied , political
Maybe the problem of the growing consumption of space wi I go away by itself
and familiar, intense and subtle, exciting and calming, beautiful and stimulating. This is what Lefebvre called 'differential space', a celebration of the sameness and difference between us all, a machine of possibilities where all urban citizens are free to express and develop themselves to the utmost of the potentials, desires and abilities. How then might this kind of space by constructed? This is where the Good Life steps right in, suggesting a myriad of designs, spaces, events, ideas and experiences whereby city residents can help to create truly dynamic, healthy and enjoyable worlds. What I wish to do here is to extrapolate - partly from Lefebvre and other urban theorists, partly from the Good Life projects, and partly from other similar projects world-wide - and in doing so propose a series of tactics - thirteen in all- which might be re-used by designers, thinkers and urban residents of all manner of cities.
Temporalities Ever since the nineteenth century when the demands of the railway system and industrialized production led to the imposition of standardized time and regional time zones, capitalism and the modern city have increasingly marshalled us into various forms of schedule, appointments, meeting slots, diaries, calendar dates and windows of opportunity. This is a regime of linear and artificial time , regulated by computers, management systems and social conventions. Yet other times are also possible - times of the body and nature, times of moments, circularity, indeterminate length, and movement. And nowhere are such times more evident than in our parks and open spaces, which allow for romance, hand-holding and even more overt displays of sexuality, which foreground the seasonal cycles of nature and weather and which allow for people to make up their own durations, from the momentary to the lengthy. Public spaces insert different temporal rhythms into the city; as a bank of different kinds of temporality, parks are one of our most precious resources.
Performance Cultural expression and, in particular, the related act of criticism are often confined to the codified realms of texts, buildings and physical artworks - those productions which speak of authority, and which imply a sense of stature and permanence. Yet, as theatre, dance, poetry and music all tell us, there are other ways of being critical, of saying things without writing things down or of making objects in space. The Good Life of the city should incorporate all manner of spaces where people can gyrate, glide and rotate, mime, perform and declaim, climb, descend and traverse that is where they can act-out their opinions. Street poets, graffiti artists and skateboarders already know this much, and their actions should be encouraged and celebrated - for it is here that cultural acts can be performed, witnessed and heard.
Media City spaces are often thought of too simply, as being just parks and plazas. But what are parks and plazas if not meeting places, or rather potential meeting places, where glances, touches, smiles, words, gossip, observations and opinions of all kinds have the possibility of being transferred? City squares are information and relationship exchanges, allowing data and people alike to shuttle around in restless patterns of movement and co-presence. This condition can be intensified further by bringing in non-physical spaces into our cities, that is through screens, wireless networks, display boards, downloads and uploads, text messaging, podcasts and broadcasts of all kinds. In this way, cities become at once real and virtual, physical and ethereal, concrete and imagined - truly composed of media of all kinds, and accessible at all times. The city is consequently transformed from a dead archive - where information is deposited and forgotten - into a living flux of information and communication.
Remembering Choosing who and what to remember in cities is an important historical, political and cultural decision. At times we choose to remember those great events and figures who help to define our nations and most commonly-held
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ESSAY
The identities of our city spaces, like those of its inhabitants, should be multiple, diverse and dynamic, energetic, ephemeral and hybrid
beliefs. And at other times we choose to remember those figures and events which are embedded in our everyday lives but which stilI, thus, help us to find, as Georg Simmel called it in The Philosophy of Money (London, Routledge, 1990), 'in each of life's details the totality of its meaning.' Hence the need for memorials, statues, plaques and festivals, and also minutes of silence, badges, markings artworks of all kinds of format, scale and technology, all of which help to recall that which is at once ordinary yet extraordinary. In doing this, we create a different kind of monumental city, and a differing kind of remembering - a testament to the struggles, remarkable spirit and lasting achievements of everyday urban citizens.
Quietude So much of architecture and urban design is directed at the monument and the landmark - iconic objects which can be seen from afar, lending instant recognition to a whole city. Yet much of urban life is focused on more quiet aspects of the city, projects which speak gently and converse with us as friends might do during a Sunday promenade. I am thinking here of benches, ledges, walkways, simple squares and meeting places - all of the most incidental of architectures - yet also of shops, libraries and cafes, and even of museums, galleries and theatres that do not seek to proclaim their presences with an immediate and unavoidable declamation. Compared to the architecture of shouting, these other, more retiring designs are like asides, off-stage whispers which create a complex atmosphere on the urban stage, and a rich texture of architectural fabric.
Uncertainty and Risk Some things we need to know: water supply, traffic flows, demand for housing, energy supplies, and likely climate change. But there are other things which we need not to know, things which should remain uncertain, unclear and unknown. Our city spaces therefore need to be dual in character, spaces in which we encounter otherness and sameness, where we are at once confirmed and challenged - and this comes from not being certain, from not knowing everything around us, from a degree of surprise and the unusual as we go about our everyday lives. We need a city which we do not know, which we do not understand, which have not yet encountered, which is simultaneously, strange, familiar and unknown to us. This is public space which is always a surprise, a unique place, a stimulation. This is the acceptable and indeed desirable risk of not always knowing what lies around the corner.
64
'SCAPE I! 2007
Provisional Identities How do we define ourselves? Am I black, white or yellow? Are you gay, straight of bisexual? Is he a football, hockey or opera fan? Are we Italian, Bolivian, American, Korean or Kenyan? Is she a feminist or a socialist? Are they Conservatives, Democrats or Greens? Do not seek to answer these questions with any certainty or confidence, for no longer do many members of the global community seek to proclaim permanent memberships of any solely-determining form of identity. No longer do we have a single identity which lasts relatively unchanged throughout our lives, but rather we have - or can have if we so choose to recognise the opportunitymultiple identities, fractured identities and provisional identities which shift and mutate according to our age, body, city of residence, cultural tastes and general attitude. In short, just as our lives shift in pattern and composition from year to year, week to week, even hour to hour, so too does our sense of who we are, who we might be, who we desire to be. This is the way people are constantly being re-constructed and re-imagined in cities today, and this is the way that cities must then be designed - not for predictable, monolithic sectors of the population (for these sectors are often but mirages, projections of the viewer rather than a true representation of the city), but for various different and competing tastes, opinions and outlooks. The identities of our city spaces, like those of its inhabitants, should be multiple, diverse and dynamic, energetic, ephemeral and hybrid.
Fluidity Boundaries mark social categories in space, inscribing the edges of territory, possession, authority, association and even opinion. Although undoubtedly necessary to demarcate our private homes and places of work, such boundaries do not always have to be frontal and brutal in their expression, not always challenging and confrontational to those who negotiate them. Boundaries can be thick, complex, gentle, staged, gradual and even invisible, using scenography, texture, materials, technologies and all manner of modulation in order to suggest to city dwellers whether they should, or should not, traverse the boundary in question. In this way, we ourselves are asked to regulate our behaviours in a subtle and responsible manner - which is much better than being immediately faced with an intimidating gate, guard or sign. Fluidity, not obstacles, is the key.
Architecture in this way is like a seasonal flower, beautiful in -ts very ephemerality and provisional presence .. and appreciated in the knowledge that it wi I, very soon, be gone
Interventions Architecture, by its very nature, tends towards colonisation and domination - that is, it takes over a particular space, imposing by its materiality and arrangement of space a certain social order that prevents other activities from taking place. And of course we need such domination; we need the security of hospitals, homes and schools, of offices, factories and airports. And at other times we need different kinds of architecture, those which appropriate rather than dominate, those which intervene and attach rather than impose and replace. We need architectures of an impermanent and temporary nature, which appear for a few weeks, days or even hours, which do whatever it is that they need to do, and then disappear without leaving a trace, except, that is, in the minds of all those who witnessed it. Architecture in this way is like a seasonal flower, beautiful in its very ephemerality and provisional presence - and appreciated not only for what it provides, but also in the knowledge that it will, very soon, be gone.
1
Play Play is no laughing matter. Seemingly silly and superficial, play undoubtedly invokes the childish delights of being mischievous and of testing the boundaries of acceptability. Yet underlying its surface veneer of infantilism, play is much, much more than that: it tells us that aggression in cities is latent and not always detrimental, that being ridiculous is okay, that all of us are in some way children at heart, and, above all, that our urban spaces are there not just for the purposes of work, tourism, retail and all that supposedly important stuff, but for also for having fun, for letting go, for, in fact, being ourselves in our full range of emotions and bodily extensions. Play is serious fun, and we should all be able take part.
Active Health If play is what we should do, then how does this occur? Here we have much to learn from children, who often see no separation between their worlds of imagination and fantasy and their worlds of routine and chores. Rather, play exists everywhere, at home, in the schoolyard, in the back of the car, and at all times of the day. This provides clues as to how adults might stay healthy in cities, where too often healthy activity is solely confined to the self-conscious gym or regimented sports field. Active health means being energetic in all parts of our lives, bicycling rather than driving, walking up and down stairs rather than using the elevator, strolling rather than standing, standing rather than sitting ... In this way health becomes part of the incidental elements of city spaces, as walk-
ways, stairs, bicycle routes, skating and running paths, all of those spaces where the body can be allowed to work just a tiny bit harder. Health activity is here fully embedded within the Good Life of the city, not zoned out into isolated spaces and times.
Active Thinking Healthy citizens have healthy minds as well as healthy bodies, and the Good Life needs to be promoted in our thoughts as well as in our muscles. Hence the benefits of having all manner of architectures which provoke questions, which ask us to contemplate the world around us in a provocative and interactive manner. This is the very opposite of the shopping mall- where too often the only question we are asked is as to which commodity we should buy next - and is now a place where we are asked about politics, ethics and morality, about the environment, nature and climate, about friend, families and desires ... not in a heavy-handed or challenging way, but in the same the way that such questions arise in music, films, artworks and culture of all kinds. Our architecture, like all of our arts, should be a catalyst to thought, a prompt to puzzle over our cultures and cities.
13
Emotions Nor do such thoughts always have to be logical, rational or considered. Our emotions too should be nurtured and cultivated. Hence the need for city spaces which make us glad and sad, happy and doleful, excited and calm, delighted and disgusted, pleased and angry, sympathetic and dismissive, intrigued and repelled, energised and relaxed. It is after all, the quality of emotional life which, for many city dwellers, lies at the heart of their urban existence. Without a full range of emotions - that is, without a full range of the meanings and possibilities of how it feels to be human - we are as yet unfulfilled, and the Good Life is yet to be achieved. lain Borden is Head of the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where he is Professor of Architecture and Urban Culture. His recent publications include Manual: the Architecture and Office of Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (2003), Skateboarding Space and the City (2001), The Unknown City (2001) and InterSections (2000). This text has first been published in the catalogue of the exhibition 'The Good Life: New Public Spaces for Recreation', curated by Zoe Ryan for the Van Alen Institute, New York (www.vanalen.org).
2/2007 'SCAPE
65
A line alone does not make
it a boulevard The word is French, the space is Parisian and its origin is in nineteenth-century town planning.
needs to be more popular. But is it still a boulevard?
Anyone talking about a boulevard has in mind the first movies of the Lumiere brothers, who filmed
Julian Raxworthy has his doubts, and specifies
the gentle movements of pedestrians and horse
them in his review on Prags Boulevard in Copen-
carriages moving past well organised facades on
hagen, a street running from an urban centre on
the straight, broad and tree-lined streets of Paris
Amager peninsula towards the beach, through a
which Baron Haussmann had cut into the chaotic
mixture of industrial areas and housing neighbour-
medieval town centre to facilitate access and
hoods. Landscape architect Kristine Jensen trans-
control of the city, and to provide generous public
formed it into a linear public space by using bold
space for (bourgeois) leisure activities. Times and
design elements and installing public facilities
towns have changed. Today's movies show
along its length. This project is popular and magni-
congested traffic arteries, a puzzle of facades and
fies the long straight line. However, Raxworthy
street furniture, the fast movements of cars, buses,
feels a boulevard needs more: 'The boulevard, as a
tramways, motorbikes, bikes, skaters and a multi-
typology, is about celebrating infrastructure. But
tude of pedestrians. Is the boulevard an outdated
Prags Boulevard could easily seem to be a bike or
instrument of urbanism in this scenery? Nothing
pedestrian path at the back of housing. Much of
could be further from the truth. Various contempo-
the project seems to be about trying to recast its
rary urban transformation projects in Europe show
'back-ness' as 'front-ness'.' A boulevard of our time,
that the boulevard still seems highly attractive to
just as in nineteenth century, needs main move-
landscape architects and urban planners alike. They
ments. If you have them, create a boulevard. If you
have incorporated it in their designs as a remedy
don't have them, attract them.
The 'Riera' of Sant Cllment_
for urban dysfunctionalities, where it acts as a promise to fill the open spaces with urban life, and elsewhere knits growing neighbourhoods together.
This is happening in the case of the Rambla de Sant Climent in Viladecans, a southern suburb of
One gets the impression that the boulevard stands
Barcelona. Here, the architects Battle i Roig
for the urbane in general. Why has it kept its
designed a boulevard that is waiting to celebrate
continual attraction over the past 150 years, which have been characterised by major social and spatial
the future 'front-ness' of the massively growing
changes in European cities? What is its future?
extension, and by installing new infrastructural
town, by elaborating a masterplan for the urban facilities specifically along an infrastructural
'The (Parisian) boulevard is an instrument to transform the urban texture,' writes Catherine
element of the existing landscape - a dry river course called Riera de Sant Climent that seasonally
Visser in her review of the new Bijlmer Boulevard
drains water from the mountains to the sea. Here,
in Amsterdam, 'through the design of its intersec-
the boulevard returns to its Mediterranean origins, says Jaume Carmi, i.e. the transformation of a riera
tions, it reconciles the old and the new.' A task that was a 'tour de force' in the case of Bijlmer, as she notes, because the urbanist Rein Geursten had to deal with a raised freeway through this 60S high-
Bljlmerdreef In Amsterdam.
into a rambla: 'One should consider the 'Riera' as a dry river and the 'Rambla' as the old river bed that has been transformed into an urban avenue suit-
rise social housing area of ill repute, the 'capital of
able for taking a relaxing stroll. A 'Rambla', precise-
Caribbean Holland', where he wanted to connect
ly because it is an old river bed, has both a width
the floating space of the 60S to the transformed
and vegetation.' What is true for the Mediter-
highway. A task that was half solved, according to
ranean cities could be inspiring for others. The
Visser, as the urbanist managed to install comfort-
boulevard of the twenty-first century can celebrate
able public spaces for strolling and shopping but
the logics of the existing landscape.
failed to address the local neighbourhood. A boulevard is bourgeois - the twenty-first century version
Lisa Diedrich
2/2007 'SCAPE
67
It's all about length.
The skate ramp at the end of Prags Boulevard.
Prags Boulevard in Copenhagen: from run-down strip to boulevard it to 'run parallel' to its existing illicit uses, using a
and which spill over from the path, becoming spaces
spine running east-west between the historic cities
'light touch' of insertions. While it would be hard to
to be passed through. The final element is to link the
Prags Boulevard will form a 2km long pedestrian of Copenhagen and Amager.lt is located on a some-
describe the project as truly light in its touch (graph-
adjacent spaces that intersect with the project
what run down site, which accommodated illicit
ically, it is a very bold scheme), there is no doubt
through the creation of a juxtaposed perpendicular
functions such as casual drug use and drinking, as
that it is parallel: in terms of use it runs alongside
direction.
well as sheds for squatters. The renovation of this
rather than against existing uses; in terms of its type
site by the city of Copenhagen forms part of the
it's all about length, like a boulevard, although it
Any piece of infrastructure must, above all, form
Holmbladsgade renovation project, and a two-phase
clearly differs from a boulevard in other respects.
an unwavering foundation for function, and in Prags Boulevard this is done by creating a surface that
competition was held in 2001 to develop a green area and meeting place, transforming it into a place
The project comprises three compositional
represents a consistent element. Along its length the
that residents would want to visit rather than avoid.
elements involving movement and geometry. The
surface is made of a simple and cheap bitumen
The designer, local landscape architect Kristine
first is to establish a consistent linear character
treatment, and painted with apparently random
Jensens recognises that though the site is linear it
along the surface of the path, forming its foundation
small dots. Set against this randomness are consis-
'has no traffic importance', though as she notes 'we
- this concerns the language of detail for the path as
tently spaced lime green lamp posts which march
like the project because it runs straight east west
an infrastructure. The second element is the creation
along the entire length of the project. These two
from the city pulse to the water of 0resund'.ln
of functional nodes, such as seating or play areas,
elements establish a brightly coloured, bold and flat
developing the project, she has attempted to allow
which are distributed along the length of the project
graphic language, the dominant theme of the proj-
2/2007 'SCAPE
69
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ect. Though superficial, this treatment gives an air of boldness to what is otherwise a low-budget project. In addition to the functional consistency the treatment gives, it also creates a background against which the other insertions can come to the foreground; its consistency acts like a metronome. The boldness of the project may also be necessary because the project starts near a cemetery; the colours counteract the general drabness which surrounds the project, the juxtaposed colour and graphic becoming almost surreal. As well as addressing the linear direction of the movement of the 'boulevard', Prags Boulevard intersects with a number of streets or walkways that terminate at the path all along the length of the boulevard. Where this occurs screens made up of poles are located along the section of path visible from the perpendicular street. The name of the intersecting street is given in a stylized computer text on these screens. This creates a Moire effect, spread across a number of poles. The screens both
terminate the street and are visually permeable so that a relationship through or across it is main· tained. The use of the street name is obvious and of questionable meaning or function within the project. However as a graphic, the text is consistent with the general super-graphic feel of the project, and is executed with a disposable robustness which corresponds with the language of the project generally. A series of different uses are distributed along the length of the strip which are like bulges along the path. They attempt to provide a pause in movement along what otherwise is a transit space. These functions include planting areas, seating areas, playgrounds, a couple of community buildings and, at the terminal point, a skate ramp. Building on the graphic approach, these areas use a language of circles, dividing the circles into strips to mimic the signage screen treatment, discussed above. These are given a contrasting colour treatment. One planting area is made up of stepped stainless steel planters with rounded, or chamfered corners. This
type of geometry has a retro feeling to it, reminiscent of Seventies architecture or of the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film 2001: a Space Odyssey, hinting at the source language of the project. Two notable community buildings join the site, both designed by Dorte Mandrup architects. The first is a glazed pavilion box, high up on piloti which resemble chop-sticks; the second is a transparent sports centre of acrylic. Both ofthese projects are part ofthe same re-development scheme but are separate, if complementary projects. Together all these nodes add a sense of great diversity to the length of the project The boulevard, as a typology, is about celebrating infrastructure. In a boulevard all functions are secondary to the infrastructural function and thus everything addresses the boulevard. Landscape glorifies a boulevard to signify its importance. While Prags Boulevard is undoubtedly a linear project,like a boulevard, it could just as easily be seen as a cycle or pedestrian path at the back of housing. Much of the project seems to be about trying to recast its
2 / 2007 'SCAPE
71
11111111111
Deslrn for the ramp skatlnr ar.a.
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DeslrR for The Stare.
'back-ness' as 'front-ness', through an intensity of activity and elements. All of these acts are acts that a boulevard also accomplishes, but they do not, in themselves, make a boulevard. The moniker of 'Boulevard' is thus a client aspiration rather than an urbanistic fact. Prags Boulevard is not a boulevard. Whether it is a boulevard or not, there is much that is noteworthy in this project, not least because it moves away from the inherent elegance and austerity that one sees in much Danish work. As the urban design language of Copenhagen has become more and more slick and carefully detailed, such elegance has begun to border on laziness. Prags Boulevard, by contrast, together with some of the work of SLA, seems like a return to the design language of the earlier masterworks of Modernist Danish landscape architecture, which alongside their elegance had humour, whimsy and a little looseness. Julian Raxworthy
72
'SCAPE 2/ 2007
The boulevard is an urban space were large scale and traffic intensity mix happily with the characteristic of the small scale.
Bijlmerdreef in Amsterdam: how to transform big infrastructure into public space Over the last decade, there has been massive redevelopment of Dutch post-war housing districts, involving the demolition and rebuilding of houses, the transformation of public space and the improvement of services. In Bijlmermeer, the most infamously famous new town of the Netherlands, the office of Rein Geurtsen & partners designed both the transformation of F-buurt, one of the neighbourhoods, and the market area. The desolate piece of infrastructure that separates the two inspired them to
dikes and platforms dissected the area and the only access to the 13,000 apartments in the development was by two-storey parking garages and pedestrian corridors. This grandiose plan was so radical and simplistic that it gave rise to much controversy from the very start. Problems concerning safety, maintenance and exclusion were ultimately the reason for giving up the initial idea of Bijlmermeer and starting all over again, 20 years after it was built.
to wholesale demolition of flats and parking garages, the transformation focused on differentiation in housing types, the correlation between built space and public space and the hierarchy of public space.
create a new central urban space: a Bijlmer boulevard. In 1966 Bijlmermeer, a quiet polder on the south
By then, the fear of overall monotonous planning was so deep-rooted that the city authorities and the housing corporations, united in a project bureau,
element of Bijlmermeer, the quality of which lays in its capacity to give structure and allow easy
side of the city, was propelled into urbanity after annexation by the city. In the following years 11storey blocks organised in a grand honeycomb pattern were built in the polder. Highways built on
divided the transformations according to neighbourhood, thus creating a framework for differentiation at the outset. Development on a smaller scale brought new dimensions to Bijlmermeer.ln addition
The network of highways is the only overall structure that survived all these 'back to normal' exercises. In their initial research, Rein Geurtsen and partners identified it as the most important durable
motorised accessibility The huge scale allows the special urban quality of Bijlmermeer to be best retained, permitting a dynamic vue d'ensemble. At the same time the immediate vicinity of the highways was a source of
2/ 2007 'SCAPE
73
REVIEW
Stairs bring the lower public space of the neighbourhood and the market up to the level of Bljlmerdreef.
many problems. Due to its raised position and defensive design, the highway formed a barrier between residential areas, creating unclear public space below it and allowing no other use of the highway
Stumbling on the Bijlmerdreef highway in the middle of their design area, Rein Geurtsen and partners not only accepted it as a large-scale structural system but also appreciated its double level, seeing
a necessity. Lowering or obliterating the heavy concrete table construction supporting the highway and blocking all communication between F-buurt and the market square would not only have been
than by motorised traffic. Although the position of the highways was not altered, the transformation of neighbourhoods endeavoured to solve the problem either by doing away with the double level, by making the wasteland underneath the highway a functioning public space or by transforming the autonomous highway itself into the highest echelon in the hierarchy of public spaces. The large variety of resulting sections constitutes a building catalogue of 'how to transform large infrastructures'.
it more as an opportunity than a threat. They defined the raised highway as one of the key elements of longue duree (along the highway they
too expensive but would also endanger the parking system for the shopping mall there. Qualifying it as a longue duree element made a positive appreciation possible. The adjacent public space was raised to the level of the highway enabling an overall perception of the surroundings, and finding a new use of the concrete underworld as a closed parking garage created parking areas at low cost, on a terrain where digging the ground is expensive. To reinforce the new importance of the raised highway as centre-
74
'SCAPE 2 / 2007
define the fragments of blocks and some trees as such) because it introduces the third dimension in the public space of Bijlmer, thus referring to the archetypical Dutch polder landscape with the dyke as raised edge. Bringing this cultural historical case appraisal and the financial reality together, they argueed that preservation of the raised highway was
Cross section of the transformation of the Bljlmer boulevard.
The former highway dissected the area.
A detail of the urban plan for Bijlmermeer and the Bljlmerdreef.
2/2007 'SCAPE
75
Bijlmerdreef with eight-storey housing and undergound parking.
piece of the public space network, Rein Geurtsen called it a boulevard. This turning inside out ofthe existing situation engendered a chain of decisions about the programme, public space and building typology. The programme for the area expanded at the suggestion of the designers for more housing, a new town hall and sporting facilities. The client was persuaded to accept eight-storey housing to accompany the boulevard, which was daring rethinking in the light of the demolished blocks. The use of the boulevard, a conventional urban typology, as reference in the Bijlmermeer transformation seems both appropriate and farfetched.
the way in which Rein Geurtsen managed to implant the idea ofthe boulevard in the minds and hearts of his clients and in doing so he has brought about a radical transformation of the space. As far as the designer is concerned, he uses the reference not because it is classical, but because it is a hybrid complex figure, He views the boulevard mainly as the urban space where the large scale and traffic intensity mix happily with the specific characteristic of the small scale, the pedestrians, programme and transversal streets, If this, in itself, is appropriate for the Bijlmer area, so is another aspect of a boulevard. The (Parisian) boulevard marks a transformation of
Transforming Bijlmerdreeffrom a segregated piece of car infrastructure with a grim concrete underworld into a public space is a conceptual daring shift
the urban texture, reconciling old and new in the architecture of the buildings on its corners and in the design of the crossings, It is clear that these are the two aspects specifically achieved by Rein Geurt-
echoing the transformation of a restrictive military object into an infrastructure of leisure, commerce and speed which occurred after the conversion of the enceinte de Louis XIII in Paris. One can marvel at
sen in his plan, The angles are indeed carefully designed. Stairs bring the lower public space of the neighbourhood and the market up to the level of Bijlmerdreef. They are wide and leisurely spaces with
76
'SCAPE 2 / 2007
a ramp cutting diagonally across and a statue adorning the top. The transposition of the reference on the ground is definitely a tour the force; it confronts an imagined space with the resilience of existing textures and structures. This clash has been so strong on Bijlmerdreef that an interesting and worthwhile new form emerges. The tour the force also implies that other qualities, themes and continuities have been ignored. Other aspects of Bijlmermeer could be valued for their longue duree properties. The first is the particular social and culture humus laid down by four decades of habitation. Bijlmer is famous as the capital of Caribbean Holland. Greater accommodation to this could have been made in the public space and the functional lay-out of the neighbourhood. Instead more conventional shops feature along Bijlmerdreef.lt is the question whether these shops meet the needs and the economic capacity of the original inhabitants. In this, the critique of Emile Zola in 'Le Bonheur des dames' on the negative
A new urban space is created along Bijlmer boulevard.
The market area and the F-buurt have been redesigned by Geurtsen III Partners.
impact of the boulevards on neighbourhood activi-
intervention is very restricted as to space. Measured
and trees and confined playgrounds. The materials
ties is still true. The tour de force turned the highway
against the many kilometres of avenue, Bijlmer
are carefully chosen: bricks on the market square and epoxy on the boulevard strengthen the specific
into a public space, but has possibly obliterated
boulevard is an incident. You can see this when you
other possible options and more informal configura-
drive over it, and even more when you see the traffic
atmosphere of these spaces. The superposition of
tions. The strong overlay of new urban form has
symbols that adorn the space: high speed has to be
the first level square, the boulevard, the ground floor market square with adjacent buildings and the
made it difficult to see the identified elements of
controlled as the public presence on the 'dreef' still is
longue duree as more than isolated fragments. The
an abnormality. Thus pedestrian crossings are
residential square in F-buurt form a huge cross that
boulevard is a new ground level, stairs and under-
announced with many safety devices; lights, signals,
figures as a new monumental centrality in the
ground parking are indeed the result of the city in
signs and height differences between sidewalk and
Bijlmermeer. It points to the wider surroundings,
two levels but this is never visible because the upper
road are made very high, preventing you from cross-
linking the shopping mall, boulevard and market to
level is closed off from the ground floor with the
ing in an informal, non-regulated way. Be it recog-
the green hart of Bijlmer, the new Bijlmer park. To
residential housing. Also the megastructure is no
nisable or not, the question is whether the use of
stress this centrality the town hall was built on the
longer the dominant rhythm along the infrastruc-
such a strong typological reference in urban trans-
market square at the suggestion of the designer
ture, since it is so encapsulated that only those who
formation really benefits the spatial quality of the
together with other public programmes and more
know recognise it as the fossil of a former urban
space.
high-rise housing.
vision. Some trees are still standing, others are new
Rein Geurtsen and partners supervised the design
Catherine Visser
additions but the lush green space of Bijlmer with its
of the public space, which was carried out by Lucas
sometimes dangerous freedom is never visible. Yet,
van Heerwaarden, Jasper Pijls and Zeger Wouden-
the supergrid of highways still functions as a coher-
berg. The result is a set of differentiated formal
Catherine Visser is partner in DaF-architects, Rotterdam
ent infrastructure.
spaces, restricting possible uses with strong spatial
and researcher at ®MIT, technical university of Delft.
Like all the transformations in Bijlmermeer, the
elements like high curbs, raised borders with grass
[email protected]
2/2007 'SCAPE
77
When the river is dry, the boulevard offers a lower level for relaxing strolls.
78
'SCAPE 2/ 2007
Different bands of vegetation and paving.
Between the hills and the sea.
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v v
~ ~
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I I I
Urban elements, water system, green structure, new buildings.
The municipality of Viladecans is one of about
cy to decline, a logical consequence of the conver-
What had to be considered was the transformation
thirty areas that make up the immediate metropoli-
sion of the metropolitan centre to a service sector,
of the riera into a rambla. Since these two words are
tan belt around Barcelona. Its location close to the
which led to a fall of 5% in the population of 1.7
specific to Mediterranean culture and cannot really
airport in the delta of the River lIobregat, some
million of 20 years before.
20km from the centre of Barcelona, has allowed its
However, the aim is not to evaluate growth solely
be translated, a clarification of their meanings is essential at this point. One should think of the riera
population to expand continuously since the middle
in absolute terms, but also in qualitative terms
of the twentieth century to the present day. Over the
concerning the process undertaken. The develop-
has been transformed into an urban avenue suitable
course of this period, it has changed from an agricul-
ment of Viladecans could have been like any other
for taking a relaxing stroll. These ramblas, precisely
as a dry river and the rambla as the old river bed that
tural village to one of the industrial towns of the
uncontrolled growth in the metropolitan outskirts.
because they are old river beds, are comparable in
Barcelona Metropolitan Area. Information from the
However, this has not been the case, thanks largely
both their width and vegetation to boulevards in the
Catalan Statistical Institute (IDESCAT) provides
to the urban development project implemented
rest of Europe.
conclusive evidence of this. The total population of
along the course of the Riera of Sant Climent.
Viladecans grew from 44,348 inhabitants in 1986 to 61,168 in 2006, while the population of the metro-
In the second half of the 1990S the Riera of Sant Climent was still a dry river course through which
It must be emphasised that the urbanisation project itself is, in fact, the sum of a number of
politan area as a whole remained stable during this
surface water only flowed in times of torrential rain.
projects by distinct authors and a variety of public
period. In fact, the population of the municipality of
The riera divided the urban core in two and commu-
and private developers. It was here that the local
Barcelona itself was already experiencing a tenden-
nication between the two halves was complicated.
government of Viladecans judiciously decided to
2/ 2007 ·SCAPE
79
The upper part of the 'Riera' opens up views onto the hills. Blue asphalt Is used for bicycles.
commission one single team of architects for the project (the streets and public spaces which included both parks and squares). The residual dry river bed had to be converted to form the backbone of the town. In view of the size of the project (2,400 metres long), the team of Enric Batlle and Joan Roig clearly opted to control the type of transversal sections. Their summarising sketches ofthe project, with a fragment of the planting, the transversal section type and its volumetry, are represented in the three-dimensional model which shows the ways in which they aim to control the urban process through these instruments. The concept of spatial control can be best seen in the transversal sections, by way of linear borders of distinct textures: the pathways of blue asphalt for bicycles, and the use of wood in the paved surfaces in rest areas, for example. All of this is unified in a general planting design that gives lineal continuity to these different bands of vegetation and paving. The width of the riera is fully exploited for hydraulic purposes in the upper part ofthe urban centre, where the riera is uncovered and incorporated into a winding linear park. Two streets border the park, one taking in the already existing buildings while the other delimits the new urban fa~ade. The central section of the riera has been covered and canalised along a length of 800 meters, using an
underground concrete conduit. Here the size of the pavements and the urban furniture, such as pergolas, fountains and benches, indicate that we are in the centre of the town. Finally, the intervention ends in the section of the riera where the river bed reappears. This becomes the scenic motive of the urban park which faces the southern access infrastructures (railway and motorway) along the coast towards Barcelona. This section compensates for some of the inconvenience of disproportionate residential use in the upper parts of the development zone. In fact, this is where the mixture of uses as residential, service sector and clean industry areas is more appropriate for the intensity of urban activity. To sum up, we must mention two main reasons why this process has produced such urban quality. Firstly, the local authorities have successfully been able to create a connecting thread between a number of urban plans and thus provide homogeneity to what could easily have become an area with little interconnectivity. Furthermore, the merit of architect Serafin Presmanes and his team of munici-
relationship one has to go back 30 years. It was at that time they all met as students at Barcelona University School of Architecture, where Oriol Bohigas was Director. Afew years later, at the beginning of the '980S Bohigas was to join Barcelona City Hall to take charge of its urban policy. His work there culminated in the spectacular transformation of Barcelona for the '992 Olympic Games. Over time, the working methodology of those times has become identified as the Barcelona Model. It must also be pointed out that the work of Batlle and Roig in Viladecans, together with the support of Presmanes, is one of the best examples of the implementation of the Barcelona Model in its metropolitan area. JaumeCarne Jaume Carne is an architect who specialises in urbanism. He has worked with Barcelona Regional since 2001. This public company develops urban strategies in relation to urban planning. infrastructures, mobility and environmental aspects.
pal service engineers must also be mentioned. Secondly, the mutual understanding between the client and the architect must be pointed out. The symbiosis between Presmanes in his role as the institutional client and the architects has worked perfectly. However, to find the roots of this excellent
2/2007 'SCAPE
81
BOOKS 6 MACAZINES
The diverse lives of landscapes Europe's Uvlng Landscapes was
The European landscape Is rith and
The goal of Europe's living Land·
the 'cheese landscape' of Saint
scapes is to describe the lives of land·
varied. The farmers take care of that
written by a diverse group of land·
Or rather - they used to. The ricnness
scape ecologists concerned about the
Flevopolders In the Netherlands and
scapes and In doing so to inspire Ideas
of the European landscape, In terms of
lack of a European landscape policy. In
the \lychodne Karpaty in Slovakia.
on how these landscapes can Jive on.
biodiversity and landscape values, Is a
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landscape and ecological values.
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years much of this was destroyed
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the most sustainable solution. While Europe's living landscapes may not
farming, and money Is undoubtedly
structure and urbanisation - have a
socia· economic and more - and what
one of the reasons. In Europe'S Living
considerable Impact on the landscape.
Is being done to develop and manage
provide a recipe for the future, it does
Landscapes - Essays Exploring our
but the landscape is not considered to
them In a sustainable manner.
show that the variety In Europe - of
Identity In the CountrySIde two maps
be a European Union (EU) responslbill·
are displayed sIde by side. one show-
ty.
Ing the distribution of farmland with a high nature conservation value and
people, farming styles,landscapes, The descriptions (ontain much
The authors fear that the land·
food, traditions, planOlng and more essential for sustaining this very
Information on how the landscape
IS
has been formed by traditional farm·
same diversity.
one showing the economically less
scapes of the new member states of
Ing practices.The oak trees In the
prosperous parts of Europe. The green
the EU await the same fate as that
dehesa system il fe a source of fodder
areas on the one depicting farmland
which befell the landscapes of the
for the pigs and goats, and of course
EJsays ExplorIng our IdentIty In the
Europe's Living Landscapes-
with conservation value tend to coin-
older member states. 'In Poland the
the cork oaks also produce cork. Vine·
Countryside. KNNV Ultgellerij. ISBN
cide with the economically more
average farm size In 1996 was less
yards and olive groves ar found on
9050112581, €49.95.
marginal regions shown on the other.
than eIght hectares, which Is totally
the terraces of Malta. And the land· scape of the French Massif Central Is
Northern France and the South West
unviable In a European context That
of England are white areas on both
means the landscape In Poland and In
Itself the best advertisement for the
maps; much ofthe less populated
other new member states such as
Salnt-Nectalre cheese. Urban settle-
100
definitions
areas of Spain, Portugal. Greece and
Uthuanla, Romania and Bulgaria,
ments are not left out. either. On
Southern Italy are coloured in.
where most landscapes contain high
Malta, urbanisation is a major threat.
deconstruction, energy,ldentlty, Inventive analysis, matrix, memory.
What is landscapel Choreography,
biodiversity and high landscape
But a clear and simple metaphor IS
values. will Inevitably undergo a
stili a good way of ensuring the green
neglect, rehab IItatlon. unt dy mass,
fundamental change over the next
open spaces within an urban environ·
thera py. tradition.These are Just a few
twenty years. The eu lacks a vision for
ment have a lasting place. The
of the terms used In Landscape + to
dealing explicitly with the effects of
'fingers' of Copenhagen are one
label the hundred definitions In this
this change on the landscape as an
example, the Green Haert of Randstad
Integral concept:
Holland Is another. Copenhagen fans Into the surrounding countryside like
Nevertheless, Europe's living Land·
--
an outstretched hand. a consequence
scapes is not Just a polemic on the
of a plan dating from 1925, combined
need for more landscape ecology In
eleven years later with plans to ensure
poliCies. That would be too much of a
the Inhabitants had access to land·
good thing. The charm of the book Is
scapes, forest. lakes and the coast.
the 21 descriptions of regional land-
Which Is why eighty per cent of
scapes, which provide an attractive
Copenhagen's residents now live
overview of the enormous variety and
within a kllom tre of an open green
richness of European landscapes,
space. Tne percentage in the Randstad
which include the terraces of Malta,
is 74, but only 47 per cent in Milan.
the dehesa (tree pastures with oaks)
Stockholm Is top orthe pile at 97 per
In southern and western Spain and
cent.
~~ "'''''\!\/' L .:-STAJIA.L.LIt-J .,\'.1 !'Vtl · .... STlOlIJiDE S50N ,"~' .1,,1, ,.\,,' ','·,"'; CARMElOBAGlI'iO ' ',p. I .JOAOIBElLMUHT .~' ',1: ~;I'I " • '( AARO aE'TSKY ' 11 I ~··'-:"··I j~·SlfVfBOWK£TT _.r.,· "-";"'i' '1n ... ,)~! f •• - '. t PAOl08URQI ; 11M,'! '" : ' .'.'! )::Al NEc..UOUEUN _, :. ! '.;,.! ,.,t', rOANE L.ACOl.AFflUoK::. SCH1 \I' Hl. .... _,·;:,·.J.lMESCOfHiEn l"'II·I:F ::·.: .....\:·11
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aIAHP'[AODOHIN ~' ''':'''.)I~'t ".i'I., ..... I!€TrlQUE~A . 'ICHo\!;Ol • r ·)I ......... TER'ESAQAU .IZARO . '.'.f,,··,l, :1
'PC MAHUElGAUSA· 'U;I', ~ '~'f'H( "_.:Pl,'! MAAlAGOV N I.. T f ;1:~;; (,~. (I /' '" lAWAE"'CEHAlP~lH ." I A', /<, IPf H· ,l·l ALIIERTOIACOVOIII ~.'Ir' 11101 l :,..,. ,{lI MM Attsa.tIA r',1 ~111""f ·,A',-: lUCI[N'lII.nOll j'f ' I jl~ ..... !
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82
'SCAPE I /2007
WOlFPRI
,1::! i' IlKUANOf1[
ASRUUY I.',.~.'IIII',J,',.\"; 'II ! JACOU( II <'~II,I ""'I,!·. MARC1A(IO I"',!'"
SS IMON ,', :':lll~: ,,*
HUOOW('
AND MORE
Landscape Architecture Australia Landscape Architecture Australia started life as Landscape Australia under the editorship of Ralph Neale in 1979, as the official national journal (and now magazine) for the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AI LA), and has come from being a home-edited journal to be, by 2000, a fully fledged quality commercial publication and that is now published by the high profile publishbook, written by a selection of Inter-
The author's approach Is absolutely
national authors. C;ood for deciding
original, Delbene focuses his attention
which definition suits you best.
on the 'secret town'. Stubbornly
Landscape + - faa Words to Inhab-
It It. Gustavo GIII,ISBN 8425221750, €33·65.
Changing Barcelona
ing house Architecture Media alongside other key antipodean and Pacific Rim design journals. The transition, in 2006, to Architecture Media was used by AILA as an
avoiding any linguistic temptation to
opportunity to reposition the publication in response to the growth of both
Identify or classify Indefinable styles,
the profession and those landscape-watchers interested in the profession.
he focuses Instead on the 'backstage',
Landscape architecture and urban design in Australia had matured to the
the less striking aspects, what we
point where it was seen to be of interest to a wider Australian public. The
might call the Infrastructural network.
name change to Landscape Architecture Australia was accompanied by an
the underlying substratum of what Is
editorial shift to encompass that broader audience whilst retaining appropri-
visible, what most usually strikes us.
ate professional rigour. Distribution was moved beyond specialist bookshops
Barcelona has always been the
This book Is Intended to lead the
subject of a considerable number of
reader along potential Interpretative
publications both specialised and
paths and hints at OJ complex and yet
scape Construction and Site and Regional Planning', and reflected the indus-
generalised. In the past decade the
well-artic:ulated vision of reality. In
try's developing sense of, and aspiration to, a national design character. Arti-
amount of books published about the
this way the author refrains from
cles of the time covered technical issues on the use of Australian plants,
city has been quite extraordinaty and
dwelling upon detailed descriptions
has coincided with an equivalent
that could perniciously fragment the
mcrease In mass tourism. Another
account and would frustrate a
book has just been published, illus-
comprehensive vision of the town as a
trating th virtues of this 'wonder
whole.
town', 50 can another book tell us anything newlls It really necessary to add one more book to the Incredible variety of holographic texts singing
critical approach, which Is now much needed in a context where there Is an urgent need for more attentIve and demystifying critical commentary. Antonio Pizzo
The late 1980s saw the journal adopt the motto 'helping you to make Australia a better place in which to live' - in which more acutely critical
can-do idealism. In any case, the sense it carried of old and top-down stewardship marginalised many emerging professionals. And while the articles from this era favored descriptions and travel notes over highly critical design pieces, the journal did provide landscape architects in Australia with a sense
national and international projects. A change in subtitle to 'Landscape Architecture, Land Use Planning, Urban Design and Landscape Construction' recog-
lous classification of how Barcelona
Is indeed worthy of praise.
distinctive soils, and surveyed the growing number of local projects and practitioners.
of their own place within a broader history and a consistent flow of both
The answer Is yes: Delbene's scrupu-
frantic contemporary Interventionism
The 1980s publication carried the subtitle 'Landscape Architecture, Land-
observers might see the great themes of Australian mateship and diggers'
The,>e are the first signs of a new
the praises of this Mediterranean city?
h s been reinventing Itself through
to newsagency magazine racks.
G1uomo Delbene, Borcel/ono. TrOllS/armor/ani conlftmporonee. M eltemi edltore, Roma 2007. ISBN
nised the increasing urban nature of the profession. The following years saw a change in those who contributed to the publication.ln its initial decades the contributors to the journal had been almost
978,88-8353-542-0, € 28,In Italian.
exclusively industry professionals, the leaders of their field. By the early
The book wili also be available In an
1990s, a younger generation of practitioners and students was writing for a
extended Spanish version end of
publication that sported an updated look to reflect a new editorial direction.
2007: Proyecto BC N.AJuntament de
Barcelona Publisher.
Around 2001 the journal moved to Universal Magazines and entered its current period of high-quality print production and graphic reproduction. The front motto disappeared. Then Kirsty McKensie brought to the editorship a breadth of connection to other design disciplines. The content continued to evolve, with more critically-based articles seen in the mix of general articles. The wider design community had become involved, and a greater sense of openness prevailed as to what landscape architecture encompassed. Australian landscape architecture had grown to include a strong culture of writing and critique, with an emerging class of academics and educators whose experiences were no longer tied to day-to-day professional practice. Landscape Architecture Australia is now an international publication that reflects the broadest scope of what landscape architecture can be seen to represent today.
Kirsten Baur with Adrian Marshall
2/2007 'SCAPE
83
PRODUCT to look at, making the bench ideal for a free-standing position. The timber elements are made from louro gamela, but other types of FSC wood can be ordered. The final question is how big 'Big' actually is. The Big Bench is 3-60 metres long, with a back height of a bout 80 centimetres. To try it out foryourself,you will have to go to Grijsen in Winterswijk, the Netherlands. It cannot be seen anywhere else. More information: www.grijsen.nl
Efficient There is a widespread desire for greener towns and cities. But the fact
Materia's Inspiration Centre In Enter, the Netherlands.
is, trees frequently have to compete for space with parking places. The
Informative Materia has the largest materials
find out where you can have a photo
tion process, which normally takes
print made in concrete, or who makes
hundreds of years, to producing a hard
of systems to resolve this conflict is
translucent concrete. But because a
material in just a few days. The tech-
therefore particularly welcome. The
appearance on the market of all sorts
database in the Netherlands. Its
picture on a website is never the real
nique was actually developed for the
Silva Cell system is one example. It is a
website offers access to more than
thing, Materia has opened an Inspira-
road and hydraulic engineering
modular stacking system of plastic
1500 innovative materials. You can
tion Centre at its premises in Enter
sectors to harden sand foundations
units resembling light crates which
search for materials by property,
(Netherlands), where all its materials
and embankments to prevent subsi-
are buried in the ground and can bear
designer or manufacturer using the
are not only on display but, at least as
dence. But it might also be used to
traffic loads. They are easy to position
Material Explorer. For each material
important, are there to be touched
make scale models: a fun day out on
and do not have to be attached to
there is a description of sensorial
and felt. Materia also publishes a
the beach with the whole office, or
each other. The units are filled with
properties, such as flexibility or
newsletter on the latest innovations to
the family.
soil, through which the tree can freely
translucence, as well as technical
become available. An example from
More information: www.materia.nl
root. They have many advantages.
properties such as weather resistance.
the latest newsletter: sand that
To go directly to the search facility: mate-
They create more space for parking
rialexplorer.com
You can follow links to manufacturers'
through the addition of a liquid
websites for more information on
containing bacteria (BioGrouting)
places because the paving can be brought closer to the trees, and
applications. For designers this
becomes as hard as sandstone. The
amounts to an interesting digital
'nutrient stock' feeds a process in
library full of valuable information
which the sand grains 'grow'together.
The firm Grijsen park & straatde-
and a source of inspiration, if only to
The additive speeds up this cementa-
sign is fond of big and sturdy. Which is
Big
designs for parking places and public squares can be greener. The trees benefit too: the roots are better protected and the uncompacted soil
handy, because designer Wim Poppinga has the same preference. They have come up with the Big Bench. The Big Bench has a seat and back made of sturdy wooden slats on a cast aluminium frame. The corners of the support profile give the bench its sturdy character. The timber is untreated; the aluminium can be left plain or powder coated with a colour. A nice detail is that the top plank in the back and the front plank of the seat run across the full width of the bench (Le. not between the aluminium supports). The back is also attractive
The Sliva Cell system.
The Big Bench.
84
'SCAPE
2 / 2007
can be fitted into dikes and quaysides. The products are highly adaptable to a wide range of situations and stand out for efficient use. A couple of men or women can erect a whole dam within a few hours, which is considerably quicker, lighter and easier than shifting sandbags. The newest product is the Dutchdam-Delta, a foldable dam that can be clicked together quicker at high water. Aluminium braces at the back keep the structure upright, but there are no nuts and bolts in this dam. Designer Corne Rijlaarsdam was also behind the earlier Dutchdam-Duplo, which can hold back eighty centimetres of water. These dams have already been used Extra long and elegant pavers by Wienerberger.
along the river Liffy in the centre of Dublin. The new folding Delta version
can absorb more water, which makes
sions. The long format bricks (approx.
as guidance for blind people. Other
the system act as a water buffer. And
240x80x60 millimetres) are made
patterns are possible, depending on
retain up to two metres of water.
that is good for the urban ecosystem
using a wooden mould to shape the
the size of the order. These bricks
Besides the feeling of security these
in the city. The Silva Cell system can
clay into bricks before being fired. A
allow markings for the blind to
products give, there is also an aesthet-
resist pressures from heavy vehicles
little longer still, the street paver
become an integral part of the paving,
ic reason for choosing them. Both
model (approx. 300X1oox52 millime-
rather than having to break the colour
products can be stored entirely in the
tres) is made in a brick press. The
in the brick pattern.
quayside or bank. The only visible
More information: www.wienerberger.nl
element remaining is a strip of
up to 18,000 kilograms. Is there a future for the street tree? More information: www.greenmax.eu
Extra Large Brick paving is not generally consid-
bricks are cut from a long strip of clay and fired on a flat surface, which
aluminium, which can be used as a
makes the surface of the bricks a little
footpath or cycle path, thus retaining
smoother and more even. These sizes allow the use of different patterns
Dry Excessive rainfall, swelling rivers-
ered to be a fast moving field. All the
and layouts to create a different
more special, therefore, when new
appearance in the surface of streets
without more innovative flood protec-
brick pavers come onto the market.
and squares. The long size comes in a
tion. A new solution to this old prob-
Wienerberger is adding two longer,
broad spectrum of dark shades.
lem, now highly topical because of
elegant bricks to its gamma Terca
is available in various heights and can
More news from Wienerberger:
the view of the landscape. More information: www.dutchdam.nl
the Dutch will not keep their feet dry
climate change, is the Dutchdam. The
brick paver series. The extra long
street pavers with an embossed
company of the same name designs
pavers can be supplied in two dimen-
pattern of spots, diamonds or crosses
and builds folding flood barriers that
Ginette 810m Ginette 810m is ontwerper open bare ruimte en wetenschappelijk hoofddocent aan de Hogeschool voor de Kunst te Utrecht. www.blom-moors.nl
[email protected]
Dutchdam-Duplo along the river L1Hy In the centre of Dublin.
2/2007 'SCAPE
85
Surabaya - after Jakarta the biggest port in Indonesia - was until '947 an important naval base and centre of Dutch colonial power. At the beginning of the twentieth century the Dutch extended the city according to European town planning principles and techniques. The population of the city, then still called Soerabaja, grew from 150,000 in 1905 to 400,000 in 1941, the year this map was made.
Unfinished Soerabaya black-and ·white line of the port rail-
roads, one going east, the other west:
for Dutch residents along the Tanjung
from a topographical map on which
The section of map depicted here is
way at this point bends around the
the Tanjung Perak Barat and the
Perak Barat.
details were added In '945. This Infor-
Krambangan district, in the western
Tanjung Perak Timor (barat means
mation was obtained from Allied
part of the old city. The modern era is
west, timor east).
reconnaissance flights that had taken
represented on the map by Tandjoeng
A striking detail Is the relatively
Surabaya has grown enormously since colonial times. The Goebeng district has crossed the railway and ,
place until June '944. The original
Perak, the airport zone just south-
empty area between the port and the
map (scale 1:50,000) was published in
west of the port complex, built
city, the western part of which Is
now as Gubeng , has spread rapidly
1941 under the title Java en Madoera
between 1939 and '940. The map also
squeezed in between the new airport
eastwards. More than three million
by the Topografische Dienst in Neder-
reveals that the ' military establish ·
and the TanJung Perak. At the begin-
people now live in an urban region in
lands -Indie. In those days the urban
ment' has considerably expanded. A
ning of the '920S the Dienst voor het
which the old Soerabaya and other
area extended for more than twelve
large area around the eastern docks
Havenwezen, Departement der Burg-
places such as lamongan and Mojok-
kilometres, from the port and the
has now been developed and a new
erlijke Open bare Werken (the public
erto have coalesced to form
mouth ofthe river Kali Mas at the top
peninsula has been reclaimed. The
works department of the port
Surabaya. The map does not show the
of the map to Wonokromo at the
map shows Soerabaya at the height
authority) drew up plans for the
complete picture, though. While the
bottom.
of Its colonial expansion. In the
extension of the port to the south-
row of houses along the Tanjung
Bovenstad (Upper Town), which clings
west. The plan was ambit ious
Perak Barat still stands, Soerabaya
The key is simple. The urban area is coloured light red, the roads dark red.
to the meanders further up the Kal!
because the city's economy had
has not become a big European city.
The Kall Mas and the canals In and
Mas , the extensions dating from the
grown rapidly In the previous few
That could never be, because
around the city are shown in blue, as
1920s are complete. One of these is
years, with the completion of the
Surabaya is in Indonesia.
Is Oosterwater (now called Selat
the Goebeng neighbourhood , on a
Amsterdamkade and the Rotter·
Madura), the bay that separates
branch line of the tram network.
damkade, and the development of
Surabaya from the island of Madura to the north. The parks and other green spaces, In green, are found
Soerabaya Is a linear city. The river Kali Mas has been joined by canals
Perak. With the exception of the new airport, little of these plans was actu -
mainly at the edges of the city and
and railway lines, all built to connect
ally built because of the recession of
some in nearby agricultural areas,
the hinterland, the old dty and
'910-23. Although new buildings did
which consist in parts of small parcels
Bovenstad to the port complex. The
appear along the TanJung Perak
marked off in blue.
same goes for the road infrastruc·
Barat, many of the streets behind run
ture, which dominates much of the
through vacant land. The original
map. One of these roads is the
plans for this area were for an Asian
TanJung Perak, a sort of boulevard
and a European district for port work-
that the urban area just above the
running along the west of the old city
ers and navy personnel. But they got
middle of the map is denser. The
to the port. The road is in fact two
little further than the row of houses
The map is not all that legible. But on closer inspection it becomes clear
86
'SCAPE
2/ 2007
Rob van der 8ijt
the quayslde along the TanJung The map belongs to the collection held by the Topograflsche Dienst Nederland and Is Illustrated In the Book Soerabaya 1900-1950. Havens, Marine. Stad~beeld, published by Asia Malor, Zierlkzee, 2004
2/2007 'SCAPE
87
Presentations at1FLA2008 Transforming with Water; A Hot Item Forum Transforming with Water is the theme of the 2008 World Congress of the International Federation of Landscape Architects. The 45th IFLA World Congress will be held in the Netherlands from June 30 to July 3
I! .-. IFLA2008
The Netherla nds
45th IFLA World Congress _ _- Transforming with Water
June 30 -July 3, 2008
We invite individuals, or group of individuals to send in proposals for presentation and/or discussion on themes of the day: June 30th: Living with Water Juli 1st : Land Meets Water Juli 2nd :Flow of Water The Fora will be held in a central room in the Congress venue, presentations are held simultaneously and last for 45 minutes.
Contact: IFLA2008 POBox 37756
1030 BJ Amsterdam
[email protected] www.ifla2008.com
88
'SCAPE 2 I 2007
JOB OPENING - TWO FACULTY POSITIONS, Landscape Architecture Department. Clemson, South Carolina, USA. Tenure-track positions at the assistant or associate professor level beginning August 15, 2008 are offered .
Candidates should hold a terminal degree in landscape architecture or a closely related field of study. We are looking for candidates with an expertise in two or more of the following: design, digital media, computer technology, design implementation and theory/history, social and behavioral aspects of Landscape Architecture and Ecology. Faculty will be responsible for teaching studios and seminars in the core of the curriculum as well as coursework in the area of their expertise. Other responsibilities include student advising, assistance with program and university accreditation, and participating in additional aspects of program, department, college and university affairs. Review of application materials will begin January 15 and continue until suitable candidates are identified. Housed in the College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities, the Landscape Architecture Program is an LAAB accredited 5-year bachelor degree program with eight full-time and two part-time faculty members. Established in 1986, the program regularly enrolls 130 BLA students. The first and second professional MLA programs began three years ago and numbers 35 students. Both programs have a strong design focus and are grounded in the study of cultural geography, social sciences, ecology and technology. Additional information about the program may be found at our web page: http://www.clemson.edu/caah/landscapearchitecture.ln 2005, The Scientist ranked Clemson as the number one place to work in academia, based on the international publication's annual survey. ttp:j/www.clemson.edu/aboutjclemsonataglance.html Applicants should submit a letter of application including research interests, curriculum vitae, portfolio of creative work/scholarship and the names of three references with e-mail, mailing address and telephone number to: Hanna Bornholdt, Search Committee Chair, Landscape Architecture Program, 121 Lee Hall, Box 340511, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina, USA 29634-0511. E-mail submissions via attached file to
[email protected]. Salary will be competitive. Clemson University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Employment Opportunity Employer.
LANDSCHAPE ARCHITECTURE AND TOWN PLANNI NG I N THE NETH ERLANDS 2004/2006
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AND TOWN PLANNING IN THE NETHERLANDS 03-06 Illustrates the best of recent landscape design and urban planning projects. No less than 33 projects have been Included In this review. Important developments within both professions are also discussed In a number of essays. LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AND TOWN PLANNING IN THE NETHERLANDS 03-06 Is volume 6 In a series of publications that presents the state of the art In Dutch landscape architecture and town planning.
Order English edition: www.scapemagazlne.com
-_........
- . , . . ; - . . . .,11;
-.---
~----
€ 40,- + postage
.....
2/2007 'SCAPE
89
'scape \
IURI _"_
7
th
The international magazine for I rc and b n 5
news, features, interviews, portra its, reviews, essays, products, commentaries, advertisements
2 X year, 84-92 pages,
www
full colour individuals € 30,students € 27,-
com
Triennial Apeldoorn: Transforming living lansdscapes Centruries of highlites: Versailles, Central Park, Tiergarten
"llh.. Ik" do
IFLA 2008:
Transforming with water
IUfm
90
'SCAPE 2 / 2007
