Renaturalization

130 Collana Alleli / Research Scientific Committee Edoardo Dotto (ICAR 17, Siracusa) Emilio Faroldi (ICAR 12, Milano) Nicola Flora (ICAR 16, Napoli) Antonella Greco (ICAR 18, Roma) Bruno Messina (ICAR 14, Siracusa) Stefano Munarin (ICAR 21, Venezia) Giorgio Peghin (ICAR 14, Cagliari) The publication has been realized thanks to the contribution of DAStU “Territorial Fragilities” Research Project funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (MIUR), Departments of Excellence Initiative 2018-2022. ISBN 978-88-6242-795-1 First edition October 2022 © © © © LetteraVentidue Edizioni Fabrizia Berlingieri Giulia Setti Texts / Photographies: each author No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, even for internal or educational use. Italian legislation allows reproduction for personal use only, provided it does not disadvantage the author. Therefore, reproduction is illegal when it replaces the actual purchase of a book as it threatens the survival of a way of transmitting knowledge. Photocopying a book, providing the means to photocopy, or facilitating this practice by any means is similar to committing theft and damaging culture. If mistakes or omissions have been made concerning the copyrights of the illustrations, we will gladly make a correction in the next reprint. Book and cover design: Gaetano Salemi On the cover: The Luchtsingel bridge, Rotterdam (F. Berlingieri, 2021) LetteraVentidue Edizioni Srl via Luigi Spagna, 50P 96100 Siracusa, Italy www.letteraventidue.com EDITED BY FABRIZIA BERLINGIERI GIULIA SETTI DESIGN PROCESSES FOR TRANSITION CONTENTS 6 16 24 Design for Urban Transitions. Exploring current lexicon and contemporary transdisciplinary agencies Fabrizia Berlingieri, Giulia Setti Process, Uncertainty, Immanency. Emerging aesthetics in contemporary environmental urban design practices Fabrizia Berlingieri Tentative Tool | Gaming Marianna Frangipane 36 A multifaceted interplay. Envisioning built environment transformations in the contemporary urban context Roberto Cavallo 44 Lo-Tech Tool | Design Anatomy Oljer Cardenas Niño, Alessia Macchiavello 56 68 80 94 106 Renaturalization Tool | Section Chiara Pradel Optimistic Hybrids Nina Rappaport Temporary Tool | Photoreportage Carla Rizzo, Sarah Javed Shah In search of adaptation: exploring design tools and theories Giulia Setti 118 Symbiosis Tool | Visual Narrative Li Xiang, Liu Xiaoyun, Lu Zhaozhan 130 Climate/Design Change: Revisiting the In Between in Architecture Stamatina Kousidi 136 On Apparatuses, Agencies, and Affordances: Breaking Down the Design Lexicon for Transition Jacopo Leveratto 144 Authors profiles Wilderness: the lagoon as an infrastructure Alessandro Rocca 68 − 69 RENATURALIZATION CHIARA PRADEL RENATURALIZATION Tool | Sections To section means to trace a precise cartesian system over a map, cutting along a predetermined line perpendicular to the plan view to reveal elevation, depth or structural and material composition. The base plans, in this case, are four: the first is an extract from the current official Swiss national cartography (it describes the present situation), the second is a combination of historical cartographic sources and aerial photographs (it describes the past situation), the third and the fourth are schemes of the assumed new interventions and gradual expansion of some islands (they describes the future situation). In the second part of the drawing process, 25 sections— one every 50 meters—cut the four maps. They focus on the relationship between earth (delta) and water (lake or channels), searching for the change of their size, depth and form, while omitting other elements, like buildings, roads, plants. The length of sections (2,5 km) grasps a huge scale of the landscape (going from one mountain to the opposite one of the valley), and refers to a dimension where human activity and geophysical forces are on the same level: dealing with natural processes implies that we can no longer conceive a palimpsest on which only the anthropic scale could find place and only man’s action leaves traces. Following Corboz (1983) the territory as a palimpsest is overwritten time after time, in interaction with previously generated spatial realities. In this sense, the renaturalization intervention is questioned through a system of sections that aims to capture the ever-changing morphologies and the dynamics of landscapes, navigating between scales and time. 70 − 71 Renaturalization as a compensative landscape intervention The first encounter with this word took place during the observation of one of the highly-altered landscapes connected with the realization of the AlpTransit infrastructure1, considering and reading a number of official documents (books, scientific papers and legislations)2 that highlight how large compensative interventions have intersected the highspeed railway construction. Among others examples, the “renaturalization of the Delta Reuss” aims to recreate an (assumed) natural form of the delta of the river—which had been previously subjected to channelization and suffered from long-term drainage works—thanks to the to reuse of huge volumes of soil coming from the Gotthard tunnel excavation and to the modulation of the new delta and river mouth. Searching for a deeper insight on this issue, the following text would select and examine possible interpretations and critical positions toward the meaning of the word “renaturalization”. Renaturalization as a way to unveil natural processes within design Starting from the half of the last century, landscape design thinking has been clearly shifting from gardening and planting design to more performative testing of ecological infrastructures, inspired by, among others, arguments of environmentalists, like John Muir, by both design and ecological sciences, disruptive spatial ideas of landscape urbanism as well as technological knowledge dealing with climate change issues. As Margaret Grose claims in her book Constructed Ecologies. Critical Reflections on Ecology with Design (2017), this mixture of ecology and design has led “to shift from thinking in term of a stable nature and a destabilizing humanity to working with an unstable and changing nature” (Grose 2017, xiii). Also, looking at some examples as the awarded restoration of the devastated ecosystem of Orongo Station wetlands (Nelson Byrd Woltz, 2001-2012), Grose argues that landscape design has shifted away “from the invisibility of natural processes (e.g. water put underground) to visible processes” (Grose 2017, xiii-xiv). Indeed, according to the extensive plan for the 3000-acre land in New Zealand, a large part of freshwater swamp has been re-engineered to allow both designed and spontaneous processes and to accommodate seasonal flooding, making these phenomena the core of the landscape proposal. Renaturalization questions scale Many others exemplary ecological restorations, especially starting from the ‘90s, have been focusing on the recovery, through landscape design interventions, of 1. The NRLA or AlpTransit is a high-speed railway connecting South of Germany to north of Italy, passing through Switzerland. 2. In particular I’ve considered the SIA 103 regulation and the publication AlpTransit AG ed., La Galleria di Base del San Gottardo, Bern: Stämpfli Verlag, 2007. The planned mitigation measures are, in particular, described in: Paolo Lanfranchi et al., “Environmental reclamation for the Gotthard Base Tunnel, effects of spoil management on landscape,” in Tunnels and Underground Cities: Engineering and Innovation meet Archaeology, Architecture and Art, eds. Daniele Peila et al. (London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2019), 405–414. RENATURALIZATION relationships between water (rivers, lakes, wetlands etc.) and urban environments heavily affected by the constructive and deconstructive anthropic actions. One thinks at the “Renaturation of the watercourse of the Aire” near Geneva, by Atelier Descombes Rampini with Superpositions (2011-2016), at the “Los Angeles River Revitalization” (2007), or at the “Cheonggyecheon river restoration” in Seoul (2003-2005). However, research such as the one led by Dredge Research Collaborative team— which reflects on the restorations of the greater American coastal and fluvial areas—clearly bring out the exponential connectedness and extension of sites where to intervene. How to deal, for example, with the attempt to rethink the ecological asset of gigantic operations as the Panama Canal expansion (Brian, Holmes and Milligan 2015), that is still reshaping cities throughout the Americas? At this point, it is no longer possible to consider the “renaturalization” process as an operation delimited to small local sites or to a residual fragment, nor “landscape architects should be satisfied with their role as decorators who partially spruce-up the leftover” (Krull 2012, 13), since monumental infrastructural transformations are simultaneously affecting several inter-connected open spaces and are more and more broadly reshaping the landscapes all around us, on a planetary scale. Renaturalization questions time The prefix “re” evokes a repetition or a backward motion. Every present landscape, indeed, is haunted by traces of multiple past natures—constituted not only by plants and animals, but also by topographical or geologic formations—to which one can refer in order to reestablish them, thanks to a “renaturalization” project. Kind of “ecological restoration” are often rooted in nativist ideas of ecology, that differ from the contemporary intrinsic features and notions of nature. Let’s consider, for instance, the provocative example described by Maja and Reuben Fowkes (2018), in which the reintroduction of bison, moose and wild horses, within a park in Siberia, is planned to transform the mossy tundra into a grassy steppe— similar to the mammoths’ habitat—or the Wicken Fen 100-years rewilding plan in England. In an epoch of forecasted mass extinction, and in which we might lose the majority of all species (Raven 2000), careful “renaturalization” actions may set dynamics that will ultimately result in autonomous habitats and selfmanaging landscapes that, like ecological refugia, help in “combating the malaise of ‘ecological boredom’…and the widespread indifference to the approaching specter of ecological disaster” (Fowkes 2018, 389). Of course, these rewilding projects “can also be seen as the most extreme manifestation of the modern, romanticized Western mindset that simultaneously idealizes the purity of lost wilderness and champions scientific intervention to restore it” (Fowkes 2018, 389). Spatial/temporal frame within a neverending process According to Gandy (2013) we could argue that, in the renaturalization projects, one kind of cultural landscape (the contemporary urban one), is replaced by another equally artificial cultural landscape (different in time and/or place), which is part of an eco-oriented process of 72 − 73 redevelopment. This interpretation avoids to erase the social and cultural dimension intrinsic on every landscape intervention and to separate it from the geographical/ historical perspective, neglecting the unavoidable mutual inter-dependency and relation with its context. From this point of view, renaturalization projects may become laboratories of large-scale ecological design research: while progress train us to unquestioningly keep moving forward, the achieving of renaturalization processes may show us multiple unruly temporalities, extending our senses beyond our comfort-zones and leading to a more fluid spatial-temporal approach in opposition to a static, technopositivist or a-critic landscape design paradigm. RENATURALIZATION Bibliography • AlpTransit AG. 2007. La Galleria di Base del San Gottardo. Bern: Stämpfli Verlag. • Davis, Brian, Rob Holmes and Brett Milligan. 2015. “Isthmus.” Places Journal. Accessed July 1, 2022. https://placesjournal.org/article/isthmuspanama-canal-expansion/. • Fowkes, Maja and Reuben Fowkes. 2018. “Rewilding.” In Posthuman Glossary (Theory in the New Humanities), edited by Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova, 387-389. London: Bloomsbury. • Gandy, Matthew. 2013. “Entropy by design. Gilles Clément, Parc Henri Matisse and the Limits to Avant-garde Urbanism.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, no 37: 259-78. • Grose, Margaret. 2017. Constructed Ecologies. Critical Reflections on Ecology with Design. London and New York: Routledge. • Hutton, Jane, ed. 2018. Material Culture: Assembling and Disassembling Landscapes. Berlin: Jovis. • Krull, Wilhelm. 2012. “Introduction.” In Topology. Topical Thoughts on the Contemporary Landscape, edited by Cristophe Girot, Annette Freytag, Albert Kirchengast and Dunja Richter, 13-16. Berlin: Jovis. • Lanfranchi, Paolo, Emanuele Catelli and Thomas Bühler. 2019. “Environmental reclamation for the Gotthard Base Tunnel, effects of spoil management on landscape.” In Tunnels and Underground Cities: Engineering and Innovation meet Archaeology, Architecture and Art, edited by Daniele Peila, Giulia Viggiani and Tarcisio Celestino, 404-14. London: Taylor & Francis Group. • Raven, Peter. 2000. “Foreword” in Atlas of Population and Environment, edited by Paul Harrison and Fred Pearce. Berkeley: University of California Press. 74 − 75 a Renaturalization of a river delta: a) the Reuss river delta,1974; b) Renaturalization of the river, project by ILU Office 1988-1992; c) Construction of new islands made by material coming from the excavation of the Gotthard tunnel. Erstfeld, 2002; d) Renaturalization of the delta, current situation. b RENATURALIZATION c d 76 − 77 1984 2002 N a 0 100 200 500m 25 sections—one every 50 meters—cut four maps of the Reuss river delta: a) 1894: the river deviation and the new canal; b) 2002: the renaturalization of the delta (two phases); c-d) 2035-2050: envisioning the growth of the river delta b RENATURALIZATION 2035 2050 c d 78 − 79 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 100 200 500m 1894 2002 2035 2050 Overlapping of 25 secti The drawing aims to represent the dynamical, variable, fluid landscape of th RENATURALIZATION Overlapping of 25 sections taken in different times. The drawing aims to represent the dynamical, variable, ions taken in different times. fluid landscape of the Reuss river delta and to capture the of the the landscape formation. he Reuss river processuality delta and to capture processuality of the landscape formation. 144 − 145 AUTHORS PROFILES AUTHORS PROFILES Fabrizia Berlingieri, architect and Ph.D., is an associate professor of architectural and urban design at Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies. Since 2020 she is member of the coordination group of the research project Fragilità Territoriali, (Territorial Fragilities) within the ministerial funding programme “Departments of Excellence 2018-2022.” Her main research topics concern the interrelation between infrastructure and urbanisation, the study of contemporary design strategies for urban transition, and the relationship between architecture and the city. Marianna Frangipane is an architect, Ph.D. candidate in the Architectural, Urban, and Interior Design program at Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies. She studied at ENSAP of Lille and ENSA of ParisMalaquais and she gained her bachelor’s and master’s degree at Politecnico di Milano, where she graduated in 2019. Her commitment is focused on action-research exploring spatial modifications in marginal contexts such as peripheries and prisons. She is a member of the Terzo Paesaggio Association’s board of directors and co-founder of Forme Tentative Association. Oljer Cardenas Niño, Ph.D. candidate in the Architectural, Urban, and Interior Design program at Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies. Architect by the Universidad de los Andes, Colombia (2014). Master cum laude in Architectural Design from Politecnico di Milano, Italy (2019); thesis title: “Pierre Jeanneret and Domestic space: The government houses of Chandigarh”. His principal research concerns the project analysis of modern architecture, focusing on studying Pierre Jeanneret’s work and Photography. He collaborates as an architect and project coordinator of residential projects in Bogota-Colombia and MilanItaly. He has published articles such as: The Indian room designed by Pierre Jeanneret in Chandigarh (2020) and Climate and culture as design material: The government houses of Chandigarh by Pierre Jeanneret, a contemporary solution (2022). Sarah Javed Shah is a Ph.D. candidate in the Architectural, Urban, and Interior Design program at Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies. Her Ph.D. research is about the paradigm of Interior Public Space focusing on continuity of urban into the interior. She is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Engineering and Technology Lahore, Pakistan. She researched the contemporary practices of vernacular architecture in Pakistan and received a distinction in Master of Architecture in 2013. With over thirteen years of professional practice and teaching experience, she has designed architectural and interior projects, taught courses, supervised thesis projects, authored publications in peer-reviewed journals and presented at international conferences. Her interests include retail design, public space, interior urbanism, sustainability and sustainable architecture. Roberto Cavallo, architect, is an associate professor, Chair group Architectural Design Crossovers and Head of section Theory & Territories, Department of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology. He is currently a member of the departmental Research Steering Team and supervisor of several Ph.D. candidates. Council member of the EAAE, European Association of Architectural Education, he is a founding member of the Architectural Research Network ARENA. He is the author of several scientific publications and has extensive experience in leading workshops, symposia, conferences, and exhibitions, as well as a keynote speaker and a scientific committee member in international academic and professional events. Since 2013 he collaborates with the European Commission as a built environment advisor. Stamatina Kousidi is an associate professor of Architectural Design at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano. Her research is at the interface of theories and projects of the modern and contemporary eras, with a focus on the environmental aspects of the architectural organism. Her work has been published in journals such as Territorio; RIHA Journal; The Architectural Review; trans magazin and presented in national and international conferences. She has authored a monograph on the evolving performance of the building envelope (Gangemi, 2020). She holds a Ph.D. from Sapienza University in Rome (ArCos 2013). In the period 2014-2017, she held postdoctoral fellowships at DAStU/Politecnico di Milano, gta/ETH Zurich, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. 146 − 147 Jacopo Leveratto, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of Interior Architecture at the School of Architecture, Urban Planning, and Construction Engineering at Politecnico di Milano and a senior lecturer in the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of the same university. Focusing his researches on critical spatial practices and posthuman architecture, he has authored numerous publications in peer-reviewed international journals and edited volumes. Besides having published different monographs on these themes, he is also an associate editor of the peer-reviewed journals Stoà, ARK and iijournal_ International Journal of Interior Architecture and Spatial Design, and among the others he has written on Op.Cit., the Italian Review of Art Criticism, Area, Interni, and Int|AR Journal. Xiang Li is Ph.D. candidate in the Architectural, Urban, and Interior Design program at Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies. His research is related to the Chinese vernacular architecture, focusing on replacing indifferent and unsustainable development models in Chinese cities with traditional urbanrural frameworks, aiming to point out sustainable design models that respect the local natural and humanitarian contexts. He received a Master of Urban Planning in 2019 at Xiamen University, China, and has worked as a policy advisor for the Shenzhen Municipal Government, China, from 2019-2021. He has published several papers on vernacular architecture and Architectural Phenomenology. Xiaoyun Liu is a Ph.D. candidate in the Architectural, Urban, and Interior Design program at Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies. Her research is based on a design-driven method, exploring how adaptive renovation in the periphery of the Dong area can effectively address the threat of modernization. This research aims to critically extract and translate the vernacular into regionalism theories or concepts into on-theground renewed design actions by developing Adaptive Renovation to integrate local traditions and techniques with modern design. She is interested in the history, theory, and criticism of traditional architecture, which is concerned with the interrelation between contemporary and vernacular. Zhaozhan Lu is a Ph.D. candidate in the Architectural, Urban, and Interior Design program at Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies. His research is related to the place identity and its development in contemporary Chinese architecture, focusing on the translation and representation of the place, regional culture and architectural morphology in contemporary architectural design. He obtained a Master of Arts in Architectural Design with Distinction in 2019 from WSA (Welsh School of Architecture), Cardiff University, UK. Alessia Macchiavello is an architect and Ph.D. candidate in the Architectural, Urban, and Interior program at Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies. Her research concerns the study of housing solutions in informal slum upgrading processes in subSaharan Africa. She attended the master course ‘Emergency and Resilience architecture’ at IUAV University. She graduated from the Politecnico di Milano with a thesis developed in collaboration with RMIT on the topic of participatory design, experimenting it within Aboriginal communities. Alessia’s focus, working and academic, is the humanitarian architecture, it means built designs that offer safety, shelter and a sustainable solution to housing and public buildings with a particular interest on social, economic and environmental sustainability. Chiara Pradel, architect, graduated from IUAV, Venezia, followed by a postgraduate research Master degree from AAM, Mendrisio. Her professional experience revolves around landscape architecture; in particular she has worked as landscape designer in Switzerland and in Europe, with Paolo L. Bürgi, for over ten years and has participated in several international projects and competitions. She is a Ph.D, candidate in the Architectural, Urban, and Interior Design program at Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies. Her research, which explores ground movements in landscapes linked to complex infrastructural construction sites, has been published in national and international journals. Nina Rappaport is an urbanist, architectural critic, and educator. As director of Vertical Urban Factory, a think tank and consultancy, she focuses on the intersection of production spaces, economies, and the factory worker. She is author AUTHORS PROFILES of Vertical Urban Factory (Actar 2015 and 2020) and curator of the eponymous traveling exhibition (2011–2022). She co-authored Design for Urban Manufacturing (Routledge 2020) and a book of the conference Hybrid Factory/Hybrid City at Politecnico di Torino (Actar 2022). She has written numerous essays on industry and the city and lectures internationally. Rappaport has been a Visiting Professor at Politecnico di Torino and at University of Sapienza Roma. She is coordinator of the history/theory program at the School of Public Architecture at Kean University. She has been Publications Director at the Yale School of Architecture since 1999. Politecnico di Milano. Since 2019 he has been heading the PhD international program of Architectural Urban Interior Design (AUID), where candidates and professors cooperate in developing research in various branches of architectural culture: research by design, history and theory, architecture and social studies, cooperative architecture, emerging environmental challenges. In recent years he published Totem and Taboos in Architectural Imagination (2022), a pamphlet about crucial concepts like image, post-production, montage, parody, and ornament, seeking to enlighten some hidden parameters of today’s architecture. Carla Rizzo is a Ph.D. candidate in the Architectural, Urban, and Interior Design program at Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies. She works on history of architecture and her research focuses on the valorisation of the floor plan as main architectural design and investigation tool. She collaborates in teaching activities at Politecnico di Milano and contributed to publications on modern and contemporary architecture. She also has worked in the editorial field cooperating with foundations and cultural institutions in the same field. Giulia Setti has a Ph.D. in Architecture and is an assistant professor in Architecture and Urban Design at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano. Her research focuses on topics related both to the reuse of industrial architecture, as well as the typologies of contemporary public spaces. Currently, she is involved in the “Territorial Fragilities” research project coordinated by the DAStU Department of Excellence (2018-2022). In 2014-2015, she conducted teaching and research activities at CEPT University, Ahmedabad (India). In 2018, she has published Oltre la dismissione. Strategie di recupero per tessuti e manufatti industriali; in 2022, she has published Stepwell. Architetture per l’acqua nel Gujarat. Tra valorizzazione, progetto e recupero. Alessandro Rocca, architect Ph.D., is a professor of architectural design at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU), Printed in october 2022 by TheFactory, Rome