Over the last two weeks I have been conducting research for a final term paper in my Landscape Urbanism class at CCA taught by David Fletcher. I submitted the final version on Friday last week, as the Spring semester has now officially ended.
To summarize the ideas covered, I would first like to give my definition of how I see Landscape Urbanism, and how I understand it as a historical and theoretical approach to the landscape architecture, urban planning and architecture practices. The first sentence in the wikipedia article for Landscape Urbanism says "Landscape Urbanism is a theory of urbanism arguing that landscape architecture, rather than architecture and urban planning, is more capable of organizing the city and enhancing the urban experience." In a sense I agree, but I would say that perhaps instead of re-framing a distinct hierarchical relationship between the practices, there is a balancing that is now occurring as a result of the Landscape Urbanism movement. The significance of our surrounding environment, is more and more apparent. Instead of seeing the synthetic enclosed spaces (also known as architecture), as objects in space, seeing the solid-void relationship as one of a give and take--a symbiotic relationship between architecture and landscape that in turn are our urban environment.
Ecology has become increasingly important as the negative side-effects of inefficient urban design are becoming more and more clear (ie urban sprawl). Climate change is a symptom of ignorance on behalf of all individuals in charge of building cities, architects, planners, landscape architects, developers, urban designers alike. Hence, Landscape Urbanism reoriented the perspective / changed the lens from which we need to view how we build cities. So I quote the first and last paragraphs of the paper:
"The San Francisco peninsula, flanked by the Pacific Ocean and the San Franicsco Bay, has served as an intermediary between the bay area region and the rest of the world. Described in a patchwork and geometrically-imperfect street grid, the urban fabric is a description of how over time the land has been divided into parcels as population density, economic vitality have risen and fallen, water and land-based transportation for commerce, recreation and military purposes have intensified and decreased. While the human activities, measured operations and inaccuracies in dividing the grid and carving pathways through the land have contributed to the asymmetry of its map, equally so have historic ecological conditions. Anomalies in the orthogonal street system are in part due to its reflexive relationship to the surrounding water. While Mission bay and Mission Creek have been filled in, historic coastal geometries of these water bodies are still literally inscribed into the city grid. The initial location of them affected granular shifts in rhythm, size and directionality of the infrastructural system, creating a rippling palimpsest of actions, functions of both humans and nature and resulting synthetic infrastructures. Overlaying historical and contemporary maps and interweaving those with histories and photographs where Mission Bay coast once lay and Mission Creek once ran, an analysis of these grid distortions can reveal further understandings of their present states. The instances analyzed are a series of reflective conditions where the fluidity of water and human movement have warped what were attempts at a set of otherwise autonomously derived divisions. Furthermore the palimpsest-like qualities unveil potential implications for future projections and further discovery."
"Ecological irregularity opposes the fixed logics of the cartesian grid. The two categories of geometry are the respective bases of landscape and urbanism. In the case of water versus city, irregularity lends itself to a natural water infrastructure and orthogonal grid lends itself to constructed urban infrastructure. Humans apply order and structure to built systems for ease of use, fabrication, and to give them strength and durability. These urban design operations are tried and true attempts at creating density and maintaining city organization. What Landscape Urbanism theories have attempted to uncover in the past is the need for this ordering system to recreate and maintain new controlled ecological systems. By giving order to a designed landscape, an open-endedness from which hybridized ecologies can be cultivated and in turn contribute to a more livable city. Now that surface water pollution, ground water depletion and fresh water scarcity are prevalent and threaten its livability, as opposed to its infrastructural efficiency, it is time that we re-think our reactive strategies to building around and over our water systems. Instead of filling and attempting to erase the drainage basins and coves like we did with Mission Creek and Bay, we should see these environmental conditions as a part of the greater ordering system that is our urban landscape. Like the creek that has surfaced in the Armory (See article: Mission Creek Runs Through the Armory), these cracks and fissures in the hardscape are reminders of the past. Furthermore, such a moment is perhaps a design opportunity to intensify and celebrate the past, as it is another layer to add to the ever-changing urban palimpsest."
For the full paper click here.
