Public space and civil yards in Dutch rural landscapes of the future
Qualitative Research as a Perspective for Urban Open Space Planning
Theory and Critique in Landscape Architecture: Making Connections
The Narrative Approach in the Design Studio
Indigenous landscape urbanism: Sri Lanka’s reservoir & tank system Kelly Shannon, Samitha Manawadu
Abstract In Sri Lanka, the relation of urbanization to landscape has a long-standing tradition. The earliest Singhalese settlements –
in the so-called Dry Zone of the flat coastal lowlands surrounding the central highlands – were structured in conjunction with an ingenious tank
(man-made reservoir) and irrigation system, linking habitation to cultivation and sacred spaces to topography. The productive (agricultural), reflective
(religious) and engineering (flood/drought control) aspects of the tank system were interdependent and worked hand-in-hand with urbanization. Over the years,
these systems have fallen into disrepair. The article will develop an argument that the term ‘landscape urbanism’ has actually been standard practice for
several millennia in various parts of the world. In this regard, Sri Lanka and other South (and Southeast) Asian contexts can undoubtedly benefit from the
landscape urbanism discourse while their traditional organization of agricultural agglomerations can imbue the discussion with a perspective which is less
formal and aesthetic and more grounded in necessity and survival tactics.
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Private use of public open space in Tokyo – A study of the hybrid landscape of Tokyo's informal gardens Marieluise C. Jonas
Abstract Informal flowerpot gardens are an unregarded yet ubiquitous sight in Japanese cities, and contribute vibrantly to the richness and
diversity of residential neighbourhoods. By examining the flowerpot gardens in Tsukishima, a traditional neighbourhood in Tokyo’s bay district, which is
directly impinged upon by modern city development, the structure and background of this particular extension of private territory is set in context with
the concept of hybrid landscape. The term hybrid landscape is used here to describe the space created by two place-making strategies: the traditional planning
of open space and the small scale appropriation of planned space creating unique and rich living environments.
The main aim of this paper is to illuminate the background and present conditions of Japanese flowerpot gardens and their surroundings and deepen understanding
of this surprisingly apt illustration of hybrid landscape.
The 21st-Century Garden City? The metaphor of the garden in contemporary Singaporean urbanism Steven Velegrinis, Richard Weller
Abstract From 1963 onwards, Singapore officially thought of and broadcast itself as a ‘Garden City’. Recently this title has been amended to
‘City in a Garden’. Singapore’s landscape is thus perceived as the nation’s garden. This paper exposes the incongruity of this branding in the light of
Singapore’s ecology and culture, and then explores the range of ways in which the idea of the garden continues to operate as a primary metaphor in Singaporean
design culture. The paper surveys a range of high profile public projects by planners, architects and landscape architects which all overtly manipulate the
idea of the garden to achieve formal outcomes. We focus on and critizise the ways in which the idea of the garden is being variously used decorate or structure
Singaporean urbanism. Our analysis highlights Singapore as a fertile test site for increasingly sophisticated landscape design experiments. Until now,
Singaporean urbanism has not been addressed from a landscape architectural perspective and, as an introduction to this vein of research and practice, this
paper is deliberately wide-ranging and lightfooted. The paper concludes that, although the theoretical discourse of landscape urbanism has not yet arrived in
Singapore, the design experiments being conducted there indicate that an Asiatic practice of landscape urbanism is now emerging.
The New Dutch Parks: relation between form and use Alexandra and Margit Jókövi
Abstract In recent decades, both the design of urban parks and their recreational uses have changed. This paper considers these developments
and reports on an explorative study into the relationship between form and the poptential for recreational use in contemporary park designs in the Netherlands.
In so doing, we also try to explain how park designers can influence the use of their product.
Landscape Architects of the World, Unite! Professional organizations, practice, and politics, 1935-1948 Dorothée Imbert, Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Abstract This article describes the shaping of the modern landscape architecture profession in Western Europe through the lens of international
congresses and associations that took place and were created during the period 1935-1948. The tangible legacy of these years remains the International
Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA), founded in 1948 through the efforts of landscape architects from 15 national professional organizations.
Although the birth of IFLA appeared essentially tied to postwar Europe, it also addressed more general questions regarding the profession, namely its future,
its visibility within the design world, and its educational standards. These were all issues that had dominated prewar international meetings. The congresses
of Brussels (1935), Paris (1937), Berlin (1938), and Zurich (1939) offered a means to broaden the forum for discussion and strengthen a nascent profession.
In addition, the Association Internationale des Architectes de Jardins Modernistes (AIAJM), which followed the 1937 Paris meeting, looked toward the
Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) as a model for a modernist alliance between landscape architects and architects and urbanists. Therefore,
one can consider the international congresses and organizations as a register of a changing landscape architecture profession, in its practice, and its
relation to other design disciplines and political currents.
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Landscoping – Teaching experiments in and around Geneva Sandra Parvu and Eunate Torres, Institute of Architecture, University of Geneva
Abstract This article is an account of teaching experiments realized in the context of a design studio and a visual studies seminar part
of the Architecture and Landscape postgraduate programme at the University of Geneva. Its purpose is to develop a new set of representation tools
and working processes interacting with particular sites through an approach that goes beyond the boundaries of the discipline of landscape architecture,
and maybe even beyond the notion of discipline as such. The text does not claim to build a complete and theoretical picture, but attempts to convey the
knowledge of making hat emerges from this work in progress. As such, it accompanies the handmade material resulting from these experiments. Discussions
include the work of video and land artists, documentary and experimental filmmakers, choreographers and dancers such as Gerry Schum, Agnès Varda,
Alexander Medvedkin, Andreï Tarkovski, Anna Halprin and Maya Deren.
Under the SkyComplex concepts and controlling designs – Charles Jencks’ Landform at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
Catharine Ward Thompson
Barcelona’s Fossar de les Moreres: Disinterring the Heterotopic Anne Marie Hallal / History of Architecture and Urbanism, Cornell University
Abstract The architectural discourse has eagerly embraced, frequently misinterpreted, and reluctantly abandoned
Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia since he formulated it in the late 1960s. As a response, this article recuperates
heterotopia by underscoring its subversive roots, its potential for revealing the built environment’s political relevance,
and its usefulness in interpreting urban landscapes as unique elements of everyday life. By reformulating the idea in terms of
Fossar de les Moreres, a Barcelonan memorial built in 1988 to commemorate Catalan independence, this essay serves a dual purpose:
clarifying the complex meaning of one specific urban landscape while emphasizing the contemporary relevance of heterotopia,
particularly in relation to landscape architecture. As it is most often landscapes which the concept, in its formalistic guise,
is employed to categorize, colonize and, effectively, control, the assertion of a more accurate definition of heterotopic spaces
that is based on engagement, autonomy, multivalency and change is essential to promoting a landscape architecture discourse
founded on similar terms. Ultimately, this article is a model for one way to more successfully insert landscape architecture into
ongoing theoretical debates addressing space, urbanism and design.
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Reclaiming the Obsolete in Transitional Landscapes: Perception, Motion, Engagement Krystallia Kamvasinou / Kent School of Architecture, UK
Abstract Transitional landscapes are spaces/interfaces between city and countryside commonly experienced on the move;
although highly present in the commuting life of metropolitan areas, they are perceived as obsolete by the people who mostly use
them – the everyday passengers. However, these landscapes suggest a new type, a product of mobility as a condition of modernity.
Here, the notion of the terrain vague is employed to delineate the transitional landscape as a territory with hidden poetics and
as a new type of public space. Fundamental to this is a redefinition of engagement that takes the moving user into account.
This engagement is demonstrated in a series of digitally conducted design experiments for two hypothetical projects in real
locations (Athens, Greece; London, Britain) which explored the momentary perception of motion as part of a wider design method.
The study concludes that transitional landscapes can be rendered desirable both aesthetically and financially through the
mediation of motion perception.
Landscape Urbanism in Europe: From Brownfields to Sustainable Urban Development Pierre Donadieu / École nationale supérieure du paysage de Versailles
Abstract The article explores the notion of landscape urbanism in the European – and especially the French – context.
It develops the idea that this very recent notion of American origin, which is at the intersection of many theories and practices
in landscape architecture, urban planning and design, ecology and architecture, may be used to partly describe a set of
professional practices in landscape architecture which emerged in France and Europe from the 1970s. The role of the State in
France in this change is highlighted, as well as the recent acknowledgment of the notion of urban sustainable development.
Intentions for the Unintentional: Spontaneous Vegetation as the Basis for Innovative Planting Design in Urban Areas
Norbert Kühn / Technische Universität Berlin
Abstract Spontaneous vegetation is a characteristic component of the urban environment. It occurs at no financial
cost, is authentic and is always appropriate to the site conditions. Until now, the use of spontaneous vegetation for ornamental
purposes in public or private areas has been largely misunderstood. If it is possible to make spontaneous vegetation more
attractive, it may also be possible to introduce it as an alternative to ornamental plantings in the city. To intervene in
spontaneous vegetation may seem contradictory: ‘spontaneous’ means that which occurs by chance, without conscious design intent.
We are dealing here with design using spontaneously occurring species. The starting point of this idea is to use plants that can
clearly build stable communities under the given conditions of a site and to try to transform the plant communities according to
a design perspective.
The investigations show that ‘improving’ spontaneous stands by adding new plants is possible. However, a proper assessment of
competition conditions is needed to get a permanent establishment of these new plant communities. Theories that originally
derive from vegetation ecology (i.e. plant strategies and equilibrium models) can help us to understand the underlying processes
and to make these interventions more successful.
Rural Landscape Anatomy: Public space and civil yards in Dutch rural landscapes of the future Paul A. Roncken, Wageningen University, Netherlands
Abstract Landscape Architecture is still maturing in the Netherlands. It fills gaps left by urban designers and provides
integrated design examples that reflect current cultural conditions, yet at the same time this does not necessarily lead to specific and
adaptive design strategies. When dealing with the future of rural landscapes and countryside, a shift should take place regarding current
landscape architects’ competencies because, as Dutch landscape architects are gradually becoming urbanists (they may not call themselves
‘stedenbouwers’ since that is a protected title), the long-term growth and maintenance of trees, perennials and biotopes is losing their attention.
Many dominant designers perceive the future of rural landscapes as being only loosely related to agrarian activities. They regard the rural landscape
as bourgeois countryside with rural backdrops. Mixed with a fashionable historic perception and this results in an awkward brew of “purified spaces”
that only solve non-rural issues. Worse, the same urbanist ‘best practices’ are repeated over and over again and thus gain authority amongst the
relatively small community of landscape-related professions, without much review.
In this paper I will comment on this status quo and also explore some projects by young landscape architects who show glimpses of a shift in design motives.
These projects focus on the mechanisms that have produced current rural patterns and aesthetics. The counterurbanisation that will gradually introduce
non-agrarian inhabitants into the future rural landscape will also have to work creatively with mechanisms such as establishing right-of-way routes,
and initiating causal relationships between the ownership and care of yard, garden and landscape – mechanisms that will produce future living landscapes
instead of fashionable images that reflect (sub)urban demands.
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Qualitative Research as a Perspective for Urban Open Space Planning Soeren Schoebel, Munich University of Technology, Germany
Abstract In the twentieth century, German open space planning was based mainly on quantitative arguments.
The recent change of attitudes and ideas in society and space has led to a discussion of ‘quality instead of quantity’ in politics and landscape architecture.
However, this alteration has until now remained focused on concrete objects without grasping the changed nature of the general purposes and concepts of open
space in an urban landscape.
These fundamentally changed relationships are the topics of research in the social, cultural and economic sciences with the help of specific – so called
qualitative – methods. In the largest possible spectrum of perspective considerations, that which is under investigation is not submitted to inductive
measurement or deductive derivation, but to ‘abductive’ interpretation. In this approach, with the help of certain technologies, unknowns are searched for and
a new structure of relationships is being developed. In doing this, qualitative science not only affects the understanding of the cultural context, but also,
because of its methodological requirements, the ideas behind landscape architecture.
Using Berlin as an example, a process of qualitative open space planning is introduced, with which contemporary, structural qualities and purposes of open
space are defined and categorized. Although the categories stemming from these qualitative methods have a narrow regional context, the methods of this
investigation and their perspectives are applicable for other cities as well.
Theory and Critique in Landscape Architecture: Making Connections Simon R. Swaffield, Lincoln University, New Zealand
Abstract The relationship between theory and critique in landscape architecture varies according to the way the theory is constructed.
This can be demonstrated using an heuristic analytical framework focused upon the ‘pre-suppositional’ hierarchy of assumptions that underlie theory and
critique. Categories of epistemology, theoretical perspective, methodology, methods, and modes of representation can be used to explore the relationship
between design critique and alternative theoretical positions. The analysis suggests that the ability to articulate from critique to theory, and from theory
to critique, will determine the future shape of the theoretical foundation for the discipline, and is a key factor in determining the validity and efficacy
of particular examples of critique. An argument is made for greater attention being paid towards a ‘social constructionist’ framework for theory and critique
within landscape architecture.
From “Reading” the Landscape to “Writing” a Garden: The Narrative Approach in the Design Studio Dr. Tal Alon-Mozes, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Israel
Abstract Reading landscapes as text or narrative became a valuable mode of interpretation of natural and man-made environments, by A. Spirn (1998)
and M. Potteiger & J. Purinton (1998), who based their work on the theoretical framework proposed by Barthes, Geertz, Duncan and others. But are these critical
tools applicable to the design studio?
This paper examines the use of the narrative approach and its literary framework as a source of inspiration, as well as an approach in design. It applies
concepts such as text/narrative, story-world, context, figure of speech and others to a second-year landscape architecture studio. The studio consisted of
three phases, which included the design of a small site on the basis of a given text (a poem or prose), the examination of the theoretical framework of the
concept and relevant precedents and, finally, the writing/design of a story/garden.
Each of the phases raised different questions and problems concerning the transformation of an interpretive approach into a design approach. In writing their
own stories, ‘telling-stories’ students developed an interesting dialogue with the existing layers of an already ‘written’ site. While some erased these layers,
others used them as the basis for their design: te-interpreting, re-questioning, re-writing the site.
The European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools ECLAS
ECLAS exists to foster and develope scholarship in landscape architecture throughout Europe by
strengthening contacts and enriching the dialogue between members of Europe's landscape academic community.
Le:Notre
The LE:NOTRE Thematic Network in Landscape Architecture aims to improve the quality and effectiveness of landscape architecture
education in Europe by identifying, analysing and building on current best practice to defi ne new standards and identify future needs for
professional education at undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing education levels, as well as for research methods teaching.
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