Rethinking Ground

Landschaftsarchitekturtheorie. Aktuelle Zugänge, Perspektiven und Positionen, ed by Karsten Berr, 2018

The following essay is based on the manuscript for the Timothy Lenahan Memorial Lecture 2014 at the Yale School of Architecture. It was the first lecture where I tried to synthesize what fascinates me about landscape architecture and what troubles me about the status quo of contemporary practices in Europe. This analysis was preceded by the work on the Topology project that we started in June 2011 as a team under the auspices of Christophe Girot with a three-day retreat at the Monte Vérità in Tessin, in the south of Switzerland. Two symposia and several publications followed. The lecture in Yale was the attempt to sum up my view of the Topology project, its fundamental ideas, how it was con-nected to the current practice in Switzerland and to the then ten years of research and teaching at Christophe Girot´s Chair of Landscape Architecture at ETH Zurich. From 2011-2014, my job as the newly appointed Head of Research was to link the theoretical framework of the Topology project with the fields of research and the methodology of research and teaching at the chair. Topology in landscape architecture presents a theoretical framework and tools to recast the potentials of landscape architecture. Landscape architecture is understood as an integrative discipline with a deeply rooted tradition in shaping and preserving nature. The goal of establishing a «topological thinking» is to merge ecological concerns and a design approach that considers the basic factors of modeling a site: the understanding of both the terrain and the history of a place, its spatial qualities, the condition of its soil, the proper use of plants and building materials, and the adjustment to the expectations of its users while challenging aesthetic sensitivities. I currently teach the principles of Topology to landscape architects, ecologists, engineers, and planners.

2009

Researcher and PhD Candidate TU Delft, Faculty of Architecture, Chair of Landscape Architecture Prof. Dr. Ing. C.M.Steenbergen Contemporary architecture has been strongly influenced by the concept of landscape in recent times. The landscape analogy that accompanied architecture for a long time in tectonics or ornament is now transforming the concepts of form and space. The landscape analogy has moved from marginal subjects to the core of the discipline. We are looking for principals of architectural theory, which can not be derived anymore from an big predominant ideology. What framework for architecture do we still need in the more or less lucky freedom of our time? We might want to use the proposed exercise of knowledge transfer to rediscover some basic principles. A study of landscape as a means of architecture could lead to such a basic theory, not derived from any ideology nor adopting philosophical terms to a practical field. We prefer looking in our own backyard, enjoying the freedom of thoughts about our own subject matter.

Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 2014

post-industrial imagery and the functions of ruins can evoke novel dimensions of spatial structures and organization. This article discusses the question of how interactions between urbanity and nature are articulated and enacted within the redesign of industrial ruins. The socio-ecological configurations produced in this process include multiple realities about nature that become fragmented and contested in practice described by various authors using different concepts which are viewed critically. The concept of urban nature is elaborated because it enables one to problematize more-than-human entities in making particular commons and can reveal some interactions between semiotic and ecological systems. Theoretical approaches are illustrated by a case study of initiatives taking place in the former heating plant of Tallinn. The study indicates that engagement with nature has evolved through abstract vitalization visions of the ruins and moved to tactile encounters of experimental gardening. The evolutionary aspects of nature were used as guidelines for enabling weak structures of creativity, and the rationalities behind the experimental garden got contested and partly refocused over time.

Cultural Geographies, 2006

2011

Rather than "object architecture" we should be able to speak of "environmental architectures" -those associated with a new understanding of "place" (and space in general) as a field of forces -open and plural -and no longer with a fixed and stabilized context (historical, typological ,figurative, etc.). These architectures could be described as "fields-infields" 13 In the case studies illustrated above the promoted "greening" action could be a concrete and sustainable solution to the environmental decay, from many point of view: environmental, social, identity and economic too. This is much more evident while we are talking about suburbs: "fallows/peripheries are gardens and places where boundaries turn out to be in motion, uncertain" 14 . The aim and the main result of the "Living Urban Scape" research would be to devise many projects where the city grond-scape can be the method and the matter of its own renovation. "There is no way we can leave nature untouched. We are part of nature, and we change the planet while living on it. We only have to make sure that we change it for the better." 15

III ICHT 2019 COLÓQUIO INTERNACIONAL IMAGINÁRIO: CONSTRUIR E HABITAR A TERRA DEFORMAÇÕES, DESLOCAMENTOS E DEVANEIOS 16-18. ABR. 2019 SÃO PAULO ATAS, 2019

The present investigation intends to broaden the discussions about contemporary architecture, mainly in what concerns its integration issues with land use and ecology, and in this process, to contribute to enrich the current debates on the imaginary by proposing a dialogue towards a paradigm shift, encompassing alternative ways of doing architecture and inhabiting collectively the earth. Departing from the multifold interpretation of architecture as a subtraction to earth (encompassing simultaneously the reference to tangible excavated architypes and the notion of environmental deficit), the paper observes the emergence and formulation, within contemporary architecture and urban projects, of an alternative response, in progressive consolidation, centred on the theme of recreated topographies. Focusing on a set of built and unbuilt cases projects, which demonstrate a variety of simulated landscape forms in its design integration with local ecosystem services, this analysis aims to characterize and define these works, unveiling the subjacent motives and contextual influences behind them. Questioning what consequences their premises would be able to introduce in current urban fabrics and problematics, it is then discussed the possible potentialities and shortcomings of this approach, including the extents of its dissemination possibilities, and its role in overcoming contemporary social and environmental issues, within and without urban areas.

Scientific Journal of Applied Social and Clinical Science, 2023

A. Ghersi & F. Mazzino (Eds) Landscape & Ruins: Planning and design for the regeneration of derelict places

Wastelands can be transformed into landscape through the “look”, and the “image”. However, not all the “looks” and all the “images” have this transformation power. Most of the time images and the spaces object of representation are simply silent. Society is indifferent to the unknown and the undiscovered. Therefore, wastelands are spaces of absence, because they are non-existent for the majority. Wastelands are like non-spaces or no-man’s-land, simple transparent spaces. According to the definition of transparency by H. Lefebvre, in “The Production of Space” (1974), these spaces can be perceived as innocent, freed from cultural memory, visual stereotypes and cultivated look. Visual models despite they help to value and preserve historical natural landscapes, do not help to discover the aesthetic values of wastelands. Do we need new visual models to appreciate their aesthetic qualities? Or do we need a new perceptual approach? The paper examines the theoretical work of M. Merleau-Ponty, Gaston Bachelard, John Berger, and Jean Baudrillard, in search for the qualities of this new perceptual approach. The paper exposes the two types of perceptual approach that transforms wasteland into landscape: first, by the voluntary deliberate choice of the observer, after an exhaust reading (Berger, 1982). Second, by the power of the scene that claims the attention of the observer, because wants to be immortalized (Baudrillard, 1999). To prove the theory, the paper selects and compares art work examples in painting, photography and cinema. Regarding the first perceptual approach, with a deliberate choice for the aesthetic framing of wasteland, Armand Guillaumin, Camile Pisarro and Claude Monet choose voluntarily the industrial suburbia of Paris (1870-1880) as a romantic landscape in order to criticize the polluting industrial progress, while the work of Bern and Hilla Becher in Oberhaussen (1970) choose to register with neutral photography empty factory sites to transform them into nostalgic heritage landscapes, and Michelangelo Antonioni´s movie ‘Il Deserto Rosso’ (1964) used the location of industrial wastelands to express a feeling of imprisonment and fear. Regarding the second perceptual approach, that one in which is the power of the transparent space which claims the attention, we could mention the work of Vincent van Gogh and ‘The Outskirts of Paris’ (1886), with Jean Baudrillard in his photographic work (1985-1998), and the cinematic work of Andrej Tarkovsky in ‘Stalker’ (1979).