Atlantis, the magazine published by Polis of the TU Delft. Atlantis' most recent edition focuses on 'Urban Landscape' and explores the relationship between the city and the landscape. Amongst the contributors are Edward Soja, Rene van der Velde, Dirk Sijmons, Jaap van den Bout, Geoff Manaugh (BLDGBLOG), Daniel Jauslin, Alexander Wandl and Maurits de Hoog. On top of that you can also expect interviews with Hans de Jonge, Mitesh Dixit (OMA), Matthew Skjonsberg (West 8) and the Korean landscape professor Jonghyun Choi. I was chief-editor of Volume 22

1. ATLANTIS
#22.4 February 2012
René van der Velde 04
Jaap van den Bout 07
DIMI 10
MAGAZINE BY POLIS | PLATFORM FOR URBANISM Daniel Jauslin 14
Dirk Sijmons 18
Berrie van Elderen 20
Urbanismweek 2011
Urbanismweek 2011
Intro by Jorick Beijer 22
Plein06 24
Edward Soja 26
Alexander Wandl 32
Hans de Jonge 35
Jason King 38
Matthew Cusick 40
Mitesh Dixit 42
Jonghyun Choi 47
Geoff Manaugh 52
Matthew Skjonsberg 55
Maurits de Hoog 60
URBAN LANDSCAPE 1

2. Editorial
There is no doubt about the recent uprise of becomes water, water becomes land. Houses rates on the difference between Western
landscape design and planning. Offices pop make way for ports and ports make way for and Asian notions of the landscape and how
up everywhere ‘doing’ architecture, urban- houses. What was meant to be a creative pro- that is related to the urbanisation processes.
ism ánd landscape and even the architecture cess, turns out to be nothing more than the Geoff Manaugh is asked about his semi-
faculty of the TU Delft has recently started a reshuffling of land and land use.” Especially nal blog BLDGBLG and his thoughts and
new mastertrack “Landscape Architecture”. in the Netherlands it seems our philosophy speculations about landscape futures, while
However, each of us seems to define “land- that the job of the landscape architect is to West8’s Matthew Skjonsberg reflects on the
scape” differently, having different images in reshape nature in order to conform landscape relationship between aesthetics and ethics.
mind. As a result everybody holds his own to a human ideal. Or, adversely, we try to leave Finally, Maurits de Hoog reflects on the
understanding about the “urban” in relation “nature” in its raw state, untouched and unus- topics discussed in this Atlantis issue. Along
to the “landscape”, which I think has a pro- able by urban society, like at the Oostvaarder- these lines, we have intermezzos with Hans
found impact on our daily environment. splassen. Both approaches sometimes lead to de Jonge, OMA’s Mitesh Dixit, inspiring
undesired results. This final issue of Atlantis art by New York based illustrator Matthew
For example, Charles Waldheim, an influen- Volume 22 will explore this area of tension by Cusick and TU Delft urbanism and land-
tial landscape architect, is a proponent of what asking a variety of practitioners, scholars and scape student projects.
he calls “Landscape Urbanism”. This global students what according to them “landscape”
movement sees landscape architecture rather means in relation to the contemporary city. Our Atlantis volume 22 mission has been to
than architecture and urban design as the contribute to the challenge of the urbanist to
design medium more capable of organizing René van der Velde will open this Atlantis synthesize worldviews, ideas and theories by
the city and enhancing the urban experience. issue by explaining the seemingly dichoto- exposing different and sometimes opposing
Waldheim notes that, "there is a decentrali- mous and ambiguous terms “urban” and perspectives on urbanism. We have explored
sation to horizontality and it is very difficult “landscape”, followed up by an interview the large field of urbanism within four issues
to structure urbanism out of buildings." The with Jaap van den Bout about the way he and it is up to the reader to deduct his or
critic Charles Birnbaum adds: “Landscape relates that dichotomy to practice. Daniel hers own narrative from this. I would like
architects are increasingly leaders of systems- Jauslin continues with writing about the to thank all the contributors, since it is has
based urban planning; and, architects feeling paradox of sustainability and aesthetics and been their work that provided the building
threatened/seeing opportunities are trying to Atlantis talked with four professors about blocks for this narrative. I am also very grate-
grab that market share”. There is however mobility in relationship to the landscape. ful for the work, quality and passion that the
critique on the uprise of landscape design and Berrie van Elderen reviews the latest colossal editors Jan Breukelman, Edwin Hans and
planning. Emily Talen argues that the big- Metropolitan Landscape Architecture book Jan Wilbers, designer Rik Speel and many
gest problem is that the profession completely while Plein06 and ‘regionalist’ Edward Soja guest-editors have put in Atlantis. It was a
leaves out human beings. Also in the Neth- round off the Urbanism Week by reflecting joy working with you! Much thanks goes to
erlands, Midas Dekkers criticises the grand- on the role of the urbanist. Alexander Wandl the Polis board for letting us follow our fas-
scale ‘gardening-boom’: “If you see what takes us to the European ‘Shadowlands’ and cinations freely and I wish the new Atlantis
architects make out of dwellings, you would the influential blogger Jason King further committee good luck and fun in publishing
become frightened by hearing the name clears up the debate by defining terms like about urbanism, our great field of work!
’landscape architect’. They turn mountains urbanism, landscape or land space. Korean
into valleys and valleys into mountains. Land landscape Professor Jonghyun Choi elabo- Jasper Nijveldt
11 11 11
ril 20 ril 20 ril 20 ril 20
11
1 Ap 1 Ap 1 Ap 1 Ap
#22. #22. #22.
IS IS IS
#22.
ATL ANT ATL ANT ATL ANT IS
MA GA ZIN
E BY PO
LIS | PLA
TFO RM
FO R UB
AN ISM
MA GA ZIN
E BY PO
LIS | PLA
TFO RM
FO R UB
AN ISM
MA GA ZIN
E BY PO
LIS | PLA
TFO RM
FO R UB
AN ISM
ATL ANT
MA GA ZIN
E BY PO
LIS | PLA
TFO RM
FO R UB
AN ISM
ATLANTIS VOLUME 22:
1 1 1
1
SOCIETY SOCIETY SOCIETY CIETY
URBAN URBAN URBAN URBAN
SO
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3. From the board
Dear Polis members, Committees 2011
In front of you lies the brand new edition of the Atlantis magazine: This year’s activities could not be carried out without our fantastic
#22.4 Urban Landscape. A year has passed since we started as Polis active members. The last twelve months seven fully enthusiastic
board 2011. Just one year ago we decided to take up the challenge committees set up some tremendous events together. The board
and join the Polis board with the five of us. Within no time Polis would like to thank all people involved in these great achievements!
has assembled a strong team of committees, the basis for an eventful
year. We organised lectures, exhibitions, a case study, excursions in Education
the Netherlands as well as abroad, education evaluations, midterm This new committee organizes evaluation meetings for master
and final presentation drinks and parties, published four fantastic students of Urbanism. Especially in these times of cutting down
Atlantis magazines and last but not least: we re-introduced the budgets, our education is under great pressure and therefore we
Urbanism Week. should remain sharp and critical. Jenny Nauta & Noor Scheltema
The year flew by and looking back we can be very proud of our Urbanism Week
achievements. Together with the committees we have brought Polis This committee was responsible for setting up the exciting Urbanism
again one step further as the platform for urbanism. Of course we Week 2011. We are already looking forward to the next Urbanism
did not do this all by ourselves. First we would like to thank all the Week of 2012! Arie Stobbe, Karien Hofhuis, Vera Konings, Tim
enthusiastic people from the Polis Committees for their efforts and the Ruijs, Noor Scheltema and Jorick Beijer
positive spirit they have put in Polis. Without them we could never
have achieved what we did this year. Besides we would also like to Big Excursion
thank the Urbanism department for all their support, especially After the great success of the big trip to Vienna the committee
during the Urbanism Week. And of course Polis could not have done with Maike Warmerdam, Alicia Schoo and Liselotte van der A,
all this without the support of our sponsors and in particular our unfortunately stopped. A new team of five people took over the
partner Grontmij. Last but not least we would like to thank all our lead in organizing inspiring excursions to Antwerp, Amsterdam,
student, alumni and professional members for keeping Polis a lively Zaandam, Maastricht and Liege! We would like to thank them all
study association. for their efforts: Hannah Cremers, Gijs Briet, Andre Kroese, Feddy
Garofalo & Wieke Villerius
We are very happy to have found six enthusiastic people that will take
over Polis. We proudly introduce you to the new Polis board of 2012: Lectures
After some very nice lectures about digital urbanism, this committee
Karlijn Kokhuis - President is looking for new enthusiasts! Let us know if you want to join them
Hans Smit - Secretary & Association Relations and organize more interesting lectures! Remmelt Oosterhuis, Sylke
Victor van Elburg - Treasurer Koumans andThomas Paul
Manuel Félix Cárdenas - Company Relations
Aleksandrs Feltins - Atlantis Borrel
Djawid Tahery - Events After a midterm or final presentation, before the holidays or
afterward; this committee proved it is always time for a ‘gezellige’
With their ambitions and drive, 2012 promises to become a fantastic borrel and/or urban dinner. Thanks all! Maaike Zwart, Nazanin
year for Polis again. We wish the new board the best of luck for the Hemmati, Ani Skachokova and Laurens de Lange
coming year and make sure to enjoy!
Atlantis
On behalf of Polis board 2011, Last but not least we would like to thank all members of the Atlantis
committee for publishing four outstanding Atlantis magazines in
Jorick Beijer, Karien Hofhuis, Vera Konings, Tim Ruijs & Noor total. Polis can be very proud of its Atlantis magazine! Greatly thanks
Scheltema for your splendid efforts! Jan Breukelman, Edwin Hans, Jasper
Nijveldt and Jan Wilbers.
Are you interested in joining one of the committees? Please contact us
via contact@polistudelft.nl
3

4. Oxymoron René van der Velde
Introduction Urban Landscape MLA, Assoc. Professor. Landscape Architecture
For someone unfamiliar with contemporary discourses within the The paradox in the term ‘urban landscape’ is linguistically speaking,
building sciences, the theme of this Atlantis issue would appear to be less strange than it at first seems. To begin with, there are impor-
something of an oxymoron. The term ‘urban’ surely infers the spatial, tant etymological links between landscape terms such as garden and
organizational, political, social and cultural characteristics of city, a urban terms such as town. The words garden, yard, garten, jardin,
very different notion than the rural or natural environments inferred giardino, hortus, tun, tuin, and town, all pertain to spatial enclosure
to by the term ‘landscape’. This paradox is not necessarily restricted of outdoor space. Landscape – a term related to garden and origi-
to outsiders: within the faculties of the building sciences ‘urban’ and nating from the appreciation of created or cultivated land – also has
‘landscape’ are separate and distinct disciplinary traditions. Both fields related connotations of inclusion and entity. More importantly, the
of enquiry arise from – and are connected to – independent arenas of appreciation of landscape and its depiction as outdoor space is an
theory and praxis. The traditional pursuits of these two fields however invention of the city; the perception and depiction of land as land-
– the understanding, ordering and design of cities and landscapes - scape first appeared in the artistic milieu of urban society during
are becoming more and more urgent as time goes on and as such, their the Renaissance [Lemaire, 1970]. It is no coincidence therefore, that
legitimacy as independent disciplines is unquestioned. The linguistic this very same urban society was responsible for the first landscape
union of the two terms therefore, has nothing to do with disciplinary architectural creations in the villas urbana around Rome and Flor-
deterioration which commonly herald these kinds of mutations, and ence in the same period [Reh, Steenbergen, 2003]. The term ‘urban’
everything to do with the pursuit of knowledge and tools to under- and ‘landscape’ can thus be argued to be inter-dependent, or per-
stand and act in the increasing elusive contemporary city – of which haps more extremely put: without the city there would be no land-
more later. Firstly, a little etymology and history. scape. In the same way one can claim that without landscape there
Figure 1. High-line Park, New York. Photo: James Corner Field Operations.
4

5. would be no city. The topographic and productive characteristics
of land(scapes) have historically determined where cities arise –
as well as having an effect on their form, size, shape and wealth.
They also determine for a large part the character of the city itself
through the configuration and character of its public open spaces,
the figure ground of the city and even the way the city develops
and changes. These modes of landscape within the urban realm
are another important reason behind the development of the term
urban landscape as an independent arena of praxis and enquiry.
They also happen to form a useful trinity of sub-themes within the
field, which roughly span the theoretical and practical breadth of
the theme: landscape within the city, landscape beneath the city, and
the city as landscape.
The sub-theme landscapes within the city focuses on urban public
space – exploring the spatial and social problematique of the physical Figure 2. Regional Development Model, Groningen Meerstad, Bureau Hosper.
network of public (open) space in contemporary cities. The addition of
landscape (and landscape architecture) to the problematique reflects in a new publication Metropolitan Landscape Architecture by Clem-
the increasing complexity and crisis developing in public space and the ens Steenbergen en Wouter Reh (reviewed in this issue by Berrie van
public domain. The ‘decline’ of urban space in general and its widely Elderen). The rediscovery of the relationship between geomorpholog-
accepted causal ‘isms’ - individualism, capitalism, neo-liberalism – are ical and cultural landscape layers and ensuing urban patterns in pre-
demanding an increasingly sophisticated arsenal of tools to under- modern cities became the leitmotif for a discipline in search of a new
stand, order and operate with. In theoretical and philosophical dis- beginning. This approach was also posited on the notion of process
course, the public domain – and its physical counterpoint public space and continuity in city form - urbanization as a stage in the perennial
– has always been understood as an urban problem, but new insights transformation of landscape.
from the perspective of landscape have proven – at least from a theo- The advantage of landscape beneath the city has also increased since
retical point of view – extremely fertile [Corner, 1999]. Landscape its introduction as framework for spatial planning on a regional scale.
has a lot to offer public space and the public domain: a ‘grounding’ Landscape in countries such as the Netherlands is increasingly identi-
of urban communities in a physical and historical landscape context, fied as the primary ingredient of spatial planning ideologies such as
visual and spatial multiplicity within the architectonic confines of the longue durée: the establishment of a permanent spatial framework for
city, infrastructures for social and cultural interaction and the emo- all manner of dynamic processes, including urbanization. Schemes in
tive and experiential qualities of nature within an urban environment. this genre have been pioneered by Bureau Hosper and include Meer-
The remarkable success of High-line Park in New York also demon- stad in Groningen (2005) and the Wieringerrandmeer in North Hol-
strates the value of ‘landscape’ to the public space discourse in praxis. land (2005). Curbs in public spending and the decentralization of spa-
In this (and other) projects, landscape has also proven itself as a factor tial policy poses a serious threat to strategies such as longue durée but
in the successful regeneration of urban neighborhoods. these - and the financial, climate, energy and food crisis - can also be
argued as reasons to step up the use of longue durée landscape; it may
A second sub-theme – the urban landscape beneath the city – covers be all we have left.
a much broader field of exploration: that of the role of a previous or Undoubtedly though, the most pregnant – and contested – interpre-
underlying landscape in (re)defining the spatial fabric of cities. Grow- tation of the term ‘urban landscape’ is the notion of city as landscape.
ing criticism of the tabula rasa thinking of modernism in the second At the start the 21st century, the legitimacy of the notion that city
half of the 20th century lead to the search for a new repertoire to and landscape have become one - at least in geographical terms – has
understand and give form to cities. Already in the 1960’s, Vittorio become indisputable. Since the middle of the last century an increas-
Gregotti argued for an ‘anthropo-geographic approach’ to urban- ing number of researchers have been involved in charting and analyz-
ism, a return to the topography and ecology of a region to inform the ing this transition; each research conference and publication seems to
urban fabric [Gregotti, 1981]. Studies in the Netherlands such as Frits come up with a new term to describe the phenomenon. While the idea
Palmboom’s analysis of Rotterdam as urbanized landscape prompted of the city may still conjure up images of a coherent ensemble of built
a return to landscape context and underlying landscape characteris- forms, spaces and programs, the city is clearly becoming progressively
tics such as topography, geomorphology, drainage patterns, vegetation less and less an architectonic artifact and more and more a patchwork
types and historical settlement forms in the layout of new urban areas of urban fragments interwoven with - and infused by – landscape
here. This was not necessarily new -there are important historical [Colenbrander, 1999]. This process is not new. As early as the early
precedents of this. The proposal to develop Boston around a necklace 19th century, the compact and orderly urban tissue of the city fell prey
of parks along the Charles River at the end of the 19th century is one to forces of growth and change, which progressively eroded its archi-
of the first - and most extensive - examples of an ‘urban landscape’ tectonic cohesiveness and loosened up its characteristic homogeneity.
project. The exploration of the evolving relationship between city and Landscape crept as it were, into the cracks in this ever-expanding organ.
landscape and the role of the landscape beneath the city, is explored Developments in the same period point to a parallel process of the
5

6. Figure 3. Borneo Sporenburg development, Amsterdam. Photo: René de Wit.
dissolving of the ideals and values associated with the classical city adaptation, landscape - and landscape ecology - are championed as tools
form. The former clarity and definition of the collective order of the to understand, order and act with. Instead of concentrating on formal
city has given way to a loose-knit aggregation of urban territories in objects, dynamic relationships and agencies become the subject of study
which the distinction– and relationship - between public and private and design [vd Velde, 2003].
has become anything but clear. Responses to this condition took form
in the garden city movement and later schemes such as Corbusier’s The relationship between landscape and city, between landscape archi-
broad-acre city. Subsequent approaches to understanding and giving tecture and urbanism, and between landscape and urban ideologies is
form to the city as landscape appeared in theoretical and experimental undoubtedly deepening. Contemporary academic discourse is either
projects in the work of Archigram and Reyner Banham’s pioneering pushing for a merger of urban and landscape disciplines, or calling
study of Los Angeles, The Architecture of four Ecologies. Towards for further disciplinary specialization. The re-emergence of landscape
the end of the last century these theoretical forays also took root in comes because of its potential to embrace urbanism, infrastructure,
‘real’ projects such as Chasse terrain by OMA, Borneo Sporenburg by strategic planning and speculative ideas, a quality, however, that is by
West 8 and Muller pier by KCAP. Pioneering (but as yet unverified) definition rich and diverse, arising from a range of sometimes-con-
‘taxonomies’ of the concepts used (grid, casco, clearing and montage) flicting perspectives. At the same time many new directions are simply
position them squarely within the landscape idiom [Smets, 2002]. reformulations of perennial concerns of the both disciplines. The oxy-
moron created by the terms ‘urban’ and ‘landscape’ is justifiable and
The rapidly changing position of landscape in the discourse on the con- irrevocable, but we should tread carefully before we go mixing the
temporary city gained further academic (and international) momentum symptoms with the cure.
with the introduction of the term Landscape Urbanism in 2006. In this
‘manifesto’, landscape supplants architecture as the essential organizing 1. Ton Lemaire, Philosophy of Landscape (Amsterdam:Ambo publishers, 1970)
element for the contemporary (horizontal) city. Landscape is also seen 2. Wouter Reh & Clemens Steenbergen, Architecture and landscape - The design experiment of
as the tool to comprehend and order urban development because they the Great European Gardens and Landscape (Basel, Berlin, Boston: Birkhaüser, 2003)
had come to resemble each other as system and process: the city now 3. James Corner, Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture
changes, transforms and evolves as a landscape [Shannon, 2006]. As a (Princeton: 1999)
medium, landscape is purported to be capable of responding to trans- 4. Vittorio Gregotti, ‘La forme du territoire’, in l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui no. 218 (1981)
formation, adaptation and succession, making it more analogous to con- 5. Bernard Colenbrander, De verstrooide stad (NAi Uitgevers: Rotterdam, 1999)
temporary urbanization and better suited to the open-endedness, inde- 6. Marcel Smets, ‘ grid, casco, clearing, montage’ in About Landscape Edition Topos (Basel,
Berlin, Boston: Birkhaüser, 2002)
terminacy and change of future cities [Waldheim, 2006]. The modern
7. Kelly Shannon, ‘From Theory to Resistance: Landscape Urbanism in Europe’, in The Land-
urban condition is defined by indeterminacy and change: the city is in
scape Urbanism Reader (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006)
a state of flux, always on its way to becoming something else. The pro-
8. Charles Waldheim, ‘Landscape as Urbanism’, in The Landscape Urbanism Reader (New
cesses of urbanization can be seen as a kind of human ecology: a com- York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006)
plex that includes language and technology, and that produced and con- 9. Dirk Sijmons, The City and the World, Inaugural address, TU-Delft 09 december 2009
tinues to produce spatial organization as an emergent order [Sijmons, 10. René van der Velde, ‘Landscape Urbanism in the dutch deaign tradition’, in 4th Inter-
2009]. Whether it be the growth and seasonal dynamics of living mate- national Seminar on Urbanism and Urbanization (ISUU), TU Deft, Holland (09/2007), pp
rial or the more abstract processes of temporality, transformation, and 154-162.
6

7. Urban Landscapes
Interview with Jaap van den Bout
What exactly are urban landscapes? We went to the office of Palmbout Urban Landscapes to After his graduation in Architecture at
talk with co-founder Jaap van den Bout about his vision on urbanism and landscape. Famous the TU Delft, Jaap van den Bout worked
for its urbanised landscape theory and its birds-eye hand drawings evolved out of the appli- from 1981 to 1994 at the Department
cation of that theory into practise, the office has established itself as one of the leading of Urban Development of Rotterdam.
urban design offices in the Netherlands in two decades time. Apart from asking about the After leaving that department in 1994 he
office’s specific landscape approach we asked Jaap van den Bout to reflect on the education founded Palmbout Urban Landscapes
at Delft University, where he studied and later fulfilled a visiting lectureship. together with Frits Palmboom. He has
been active in education at several univer-
Palmbout Urban Landscapes. What do you mean by the term urban landscapes? sities and academies and fulfilled a visit-
ing lectureship at the TU starting in 2000.
‘The term urban landscapes is derived from our central conception that landscape and urban
are not opposite notions but rather symbiotic. In the period of urban renewal we developed a
methodology to define the foundation of the landscape. By analysing the underlying landscape
layers of a city we were able to define the main thread in the city’s storyline. Frits Palmboom
has applied this methodology to the situation of Rotterdam in his book “Rotterdam als verste-
delijkt landschap” (Rotterdam as urbanized landscape). In his book Palmboom explains how the
underlying pattern of the delta in combination with cultural activity shaped an urban landscape
which directly influenced the current layout of the city. The renewed layer has to deal with the
existing morphology. Just as with a monumental building: as a designer you need to be aware
of this legacy and do something with it. You have to be aware that your new design will form a
relationship with the quality of the existing. In that sense, our methodology rebelled against the
then reigning clear-cut planning and tabula rasa design.
So for us the notion of urban landscapes is very much about the viewpoint you adopt during
the design process. Therefore it is applicable to an inner city project as well; there is landscape
within the city. Take for instance Kop van Zuid. In Rotterdam, the harbour basins guided the
layout of the city to a great extent, an aspect we wanted to emphasize even more than had been
proposed in the master plan of Koolhaas. The deep insertion of the harbour basins is a specific
aesthetic quality of the urban landscape. It is an existing landscape feature which you can re-use
in the urban landscape. Although that may sound logical, damping of the basins was an option
and has been proposed. In my opinion this would be a waste of poetry, history and spatial quality.’
It almost sounds like a durable mantra: reuse the landscape you encounter
‘You could see it as such, but I refrain from using the trendy term sustainability, or durability for that
matter. Re-using the landscape is the way we approach design assignments, other offices have
7

8. “It would be better if urban designs link up to natural processes. Not for
nothing landscape bureaus increasingly are asked for urban interventions.”
their own concepts. In our design we focus on their dwellings in private entrepreneurship. They often got the assignment to “do some-
the long term layers of the urban morphology, We stated that the landscape design was thing with living landscapes”, based on desires
so in a sense our attitude towards the urban stronger than the architecture of the individual that often did not meet reality. In such cases
landscape has durable aspects. Then you have dwellings.1 During the process of realization the general problem seemed to be that pro-
to find out what you can do with the existing the ratio between programme and landscape gramme, location and the ambition of the
landscape, no matter the density you are going grew off balance due to the fact that inhabit- commissioner to realize a certain atmosphere
to build. For the last couple of years our work ants began building larger dwellings than fore- could not be united. Thus, our wish was to
focused on suburban residential landscapes. seen in the building regulations. In that sense, come up with a book in which living landscape
Within the VINEX neighbourhoods you encoun- the omnipotence of the urbanist is very limited. projects are analysed both in imagery and fig-
ter here, multiple design approaches are pos- Today the pressure of the built environment on ures. To come up with a Neufert for living land-
sible. One of them is reproducing some kind of the landscape is quite high. I still believe that scapes so to speak, hoping to bring desire and
historical Dutch city, an example being Brande- the landscape of water and gardens will win reality closer together. Moreover, the interest
voort. Another approach is finding a new type after a couple of years.’ of H+N+S and ours in living landscapes as a
of urban quality. We wanted to look for subur- societal phenomenon and reaction to the ear-
ban quality: we wanted to design something Recently the book ‘Landschappelijk wonen’ lier mentioned approaches to VINEX housing
in the periphery where people will want to live (Living Landscapes) was published in could be very well integrated into the research.
because it is a suburban area. which Palmbout together with Faro archi- We went looking for suburban quality, for a
Nesselande is an interesting example. tects and H+N+S Landscape architects way of living in which the separation between
There we tried to create a residential land- researched the relationship between resi- landscape and building plot fades.
scape inspired by the Reeuwijkse plassen. dential programme and the landscape. The danger of uncontrolled development
Apart from a couple of strategic orientation What motivated this research? of living landscapes lies in unrestrained
points which were developed as architectonic urbanization. So, we tried to find an answer
highlights, inhabitants were allowed to create ‘The initiative came from Faro architects. to this threat by asking ourselves: what can
1 In the Netherlands this type of private en-
trepreneurship is referred to as "welstands-
vrij" meaning that the dwellings do not have
to undergo an aesthetics test – an urban in-
strument to keep buildings within a neigh-
bourhood ‘in line’ with each other without
excessive architecture destroying the rhythm
of the whole block.
Figure 1. Birds-eye drawing of the design for Buizengat, Vlaardingen
8

9. be a natural break for unrestrained urbani-
zation sprawl? First of all, planning itself is
a break. But apart from that we studied this
question in some projects. A nice example
of this is the investigation into new living
environments for a project in the Eindhoven
region. In the project a new occupation layer
was added with a minimum of infrastructural
interventions, thus facilitating no more than
the infrastructure can handle. For that we
came up with the term maximum load capac-
ity, a very banal expression. Which is nice,
because a lot of people stumbled upon the
term, after which we were able to explain
the idea more detailed. There is a natural
break on the system if the central govern-
ment decides not to invest in infrastructure.
Besides that, the designer really needs to
say something about the counterweight that Figure 2. Masterplan concept Belvedere, Maastricht
remains open. If you don’t have a thorough
interpretation and implementation of the
landscape, then the odds of someone build- ‘The improved integration of landscape into processes. Not for nothing landscape bureaus
ing there later on increase.‘ the design is one of the consequences of a increasingly are asked for urban interventions.
changing education. The urban design educa- There is a rich interface between the two
In line with this, it also seems that the bor- tion in Delft used to be much more planning disciplines and education should elaborate
ders between the disciplines architecture, oriented. It was not so much about design- on that. Dirk Sijmons will be the new chair-
urbanism and landscape architecture fade. ing urban form. In that period students were man of landscape architecture, I am curious
Offices brand themselves as multi-discipli- trained as urban planners rather than urban to whether his H+N+S background will alter
nary and design assignments ask for this designers. In general, the urbanists from my the education and if so in what way. It might
multi-disciplinary approach as well. How generation are originally architects, because be that he will further the integration of this
does this relate to the works of Palmbout? our education focused on residential neigh- hardware knowledge of the structure and
bourhoods and the social aspects of architec- functioning of the landscape.’
‘We are first and foremost urbanists, but we ture, under the guidance of Max Risselada and
choose to incorporate knowledge of the land- Henk Engel for instance. Within urbanism only To conclude, what is the current task in the
scape on how to shape public space. That a few people contested this planning rationale field of urbanism in the Netherlands?
is something different from an office like and started to analyse the place itself. Pjotr
H+N+S which has fundamental knowledge Gonggrijp was one such a phenomenon at the ‘There are no more large housing assign-
about the hardware, understanding the struc- faculty, who drew incredibly beautiful maps ments. The design tasks which are still there
ture of the landscape in terms of water sys- depicting the evolution of the landscape. His are smaller in scale, such as restructuring or
tems, geomorphologic layers and so on. We landscape pattern analysis was an important shrinkage, or large landscape themes such
need them as complement to our own work. source of inspiration to Palmboom. That which as the Delta. Even though shrinkage and
Nowadays, the design of the landscape is others denote as the redrawing of maps, the vacancy of office buildings are interesting
very much integrated with urban design. This analysis of the landscape, is in part also based study themes, there is a lack of clients for
is very different from the situation in which I on his work.’ these topics. Politics has turned inward and
worked at the municipality of Rotterdam some does not define commissions, governments
thirty years ago, where landscape designers What according to you lacks in current are withdrawing and busy reorganizing. No
were brought in to draw and design public education at Delft? societal issues are formulated by national
space that was already defined in the urban government where design bureaus could be
plan. So yes, the three disciplines are coming ‘I am not really sure what the education con- implemented. I think this is primarily a mon-
closer together.’ sists of today but I think that the landscape etary question, after the reorganization pro-
design should be integrated more. By that I cess it might be that we can turn to real prob-
Starting in 2000 you have been involved in do not mean the discipline of landscape archi- lems again. Yet this period also has its merits
the education at Delft in the form of a visit- tecture, in which Delft has a rich tradition, but since the production line of the last twenty
ing lectureship. Do you see changes in the the knowledge obtained in Wageningen about years has tailed off allowing us some time to
way students approach, think about and the natural layers of the landscape. It would reflect on our work again.’
deal with landscape? be better if urban designs link up to natural Jan Breukelman & Esther Verhoek
9

10. MOBILITY AND THE LANDSCAPE OF THE FUTURE
Interview with Maurits de Hoog, Han Meyer, Dirk Sijmons & Han Vrijling
Delft Research Initiative for Mobility and Infrastructures (DIMI)
Infrastructure and mobility are the basis of our prosperity, and important drivers for our economy.
existed for much longer; roads are extraordinary stable elements in the landscape.
Highways, airports, waterways and ports are among the largest programs in our cities and land- They only have been extremely broadened.
scapes. Underground there is a maze of cables and pipes to make it all work. These programs are One thing which is really a new element is the Betuwe line, where under the
often seen as barriers. As our mobility increases, so does the pressure on landscapes in and around
motto ‘ugly with ugly, dirty with dirt’, you can see this tendency to bundle different
our cities. Therefore long term planning of infrastructures needs to be adaptable as society changes.
infrastructure lines and to see them as one thing, resulting in these fantastic cutting
Designers and engineers can play an important role in fitting in these infrastructures, combining
lines in the landscape (figure 1). These bundles are slowly becoming imposing worlds
effectiveness with new forms of ecology, leisure, and urbanisation. of their own. You could say that the urban highway is the least controlled part of our
whole idiom as landscape architects and urban planners. We have never really suc-
The Delft Initiative for Mobility and Infrastructures (DIMI) is one of four research groups at Delft
ceeded to bring those things together in a logical manner.'
University that brings together different departments dealing with these topics. In it they work
together on complex assignments related to infrastructure and mobility, focusing on the integration
'I do think however that mobility will in the end more or less stabilize. Not just
of different systems. Atlantis spoke briefly with four professors linked to DIMI, to see how they view
because of our demographic way down, but also because we will be forced to
mobility and the landscape of the future. act smarter due to all sorts of changes, due to energy reductions and such. As an
approximation I would say that we have seen the biggest influences of mass mobility
Mobility is the basis for our prosperity. How is our increasing mobility affecting the differ- on the landscape in the twentieth century. Now that this age of fossil expressionism
ent functions of the landscape today? is coming to an end, with smarter forms of mobility and information transport, we will
see a slow stabilization.'
Maurits de Hoog
Professor. Regional Design, former chairman department of Urbanism) Han Vrijling
'In part it's just destruction; port development, airport construction, land reclama- Professor. in Probabilistic Design and Hydraulic Structures, Civil Engineering, chairman of DIMI
tions. We have completely rebuilt this delta and in many cases this has led to the 'That’s exactly the task we’re dealing with. We as civil engineers will say: ‘tell us how
destruction of natural qualities. Deltas are the best natural habitats, the most varied, you want it. It can be underground, on the ground or high above the ground.’ And
and the most valuable in a biological sense. By definition, urbanization of the&delta
Binnen het Delft Research Initiative Infrastructures it’s partly up to urban designers to say how we eventually do it, and to ensure that it
Mobility werken wetenschappers vanuit verschillende
leads to destruction of those qualities, so it’s an enormousrond infrastructuur,
disciplines samen aan oplossingen task to be more prudent looks nice on both ends. So when you arrive in a city it should be pleasant there, and
when dealing with this.
ruimtelijke ordening, kustbescherming, mobiliteit, it should work; so you can park your car, or there’s easy access from the trains.
logistiek en transport.
That does not only mean fitting in program, but also ensuring that those qualities To establish those concepts in the densely populated Netherlands, whilst maintain-
of the delta – the biological qualities as well – remain there, and that we can benefit ing an urban or natural landscape which is attractive, I think that’s the task at hand.
from them. A good example is the fresh water supply. The dunes in the Netherlands are And I’m very much in favor of combining these disciplines, otherwise things get
protected and not urbanized. They have become enormous parks because fresh water is thought up that are impossible, or very expensive, so it’s good to work together from
being extracted there.' an early stage on. Civil engineers make the solutions, but designers fit it into culture,
where it becomes part of life.'
Dirk Sijmons
Professor. Landscape Architecture 'A multidisciplinary approach is essential to work on complex assignments such as
'What we’ve seen is that on first sight an enormous amount of infrastructure lines has water management, infrastructure and urban planning. The degree of expertise is
been added. But if you look closer you’ll see that most of those roads have already very high in these fields. These days it is very popular to consult the general public on
Figure 1 Infrastructure bundles cutting through the landscape
10

11. “...we are not going to solve our environmental problems without solving our
urban problems...”
design decisions. Are participatory movements still possible in the design process?' extremes, because often by doing something extremely wrong you get really good
ideas about how to do it right.'
Han Meyer
Professor. Urban Composition, Urbanism 'If the city of the future is a combination of urban planning, mobility and climate
'Well, it has to do with specialists and laymen, but also with the large and the small resilience, what then is the landscape of the future?'
scale. Relatively specialist issues like mobility and the water defense system are the
most important fields within the DIMI, so in short; dykes and roads. And actually these Maurits de Hoog
wet and dry infrastructures are the field of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environ- 'The delta city region is a very specific case. Those regions are spread out systems
ment, so the important decisions are made on a very high level. You can’t just make combined with these large scale programs. There’s a complex assignment in that, with
a good coastal defense system for The Hague alone, because if the system fails 300 Schiphol, the port, but also things like tourism. And because this system is so spread
meters down the road, the whole Randstad will still flood. You will need a concept for out the large scales, which are less self-evident, are quickly eaten up.
the whole coast, and the same goes for the rivers and for highways. Those contrasts that are important for the quality of the city are disappearing
However, it should fit in and be of some value to local communities that live next rapidly. That’s a very specific task, this crumbling up of open spaces. These spaces
to these highways, or on the coast. That is a very big task; in the end it is about how need to be connected, that’s the success of the London model in Amsterdam for
to make things in such a way that locals can also see the benefit of it. instance. In ten minutes you’re out of the landscape and into the city; that’s a real
That means that your initial plans must always have some space left for parts of quality. This contrast with the landscape that the city then offers, that’s a basic
the plan to change, so there’s a high level of flexibility demanded from these special- quality we should maintain.'
isms. This in turn means that specialisms shouldn’t hold on to the way of working
that has become common over the last century. Rather they should be open to other Han Meyer
influences, which are required for working with other disciplines, and in order to 'If from now on we continue with a more compact form of urban planning, rather than
bridge this scale difference.' expanding, then this whole Dutch landscape is still a very constructed landscape,
directly linked to urban use. This can be seen through people recreating there that live
Dirk Sijmons in cities, or in the fact that food is produced there which is consumed in cities. Also it
'Surely people have a right to their say. And honestly, I think in a lot of cases it won’t has to be maintained in such a way that if our landscapes aren’t kept dry, neither are
even work without public participation. Take the energy issue we’re working on for our cities, so water management is directly linked to both city and landscape.
example. There you see that the willingness is directly related to the stake people The term resilience is quite fundamental. The Dutch landscape is currently highly
hold in placing those wind turbines. You see enormous differences in success in fixed, with little flexibility. Now there’s this movement that started with the rivers to
deploying wind parks between Nord Rhein Westfalen and the Netherlands. In Nord create a more resilient water system, which in turn can create new and interesting
Rhein Westfalen local communities were brought in from the very beginning, which landscapes. For it to be more resilient and thus flexible it will have to make use of
gave them a kind of ‘we-feeling’ about these turbines. Here in the Netherlands we’ve some of the strong points that are still left in the landscape, historically, but that
seen more of a top down policy, which led to an atmosphere of ‘they’re putting these have been covered up during land consolidation projects and such. This resilient
mills here’ and ‘we have to live with it.' landscape is something different than this almost industrially organized landscape
that we have now.'
Han Vrijling
'I think the only possibility is that we as a collective of engineers provide a number Dirk Sijmons
of choices. So as a group of designers you make a number of alternatives and then 'I think that urbanization has become an aspect on such a large scale, and is spread
you let the citizens choose. Maybe they want something in the middle and you’ll need out globally in such special places, that you could say that almost all environmen-
to make a hybrid. I think that’s a good way of cooperating, because discussing these tal problems on this planet have become urban problems, or at least carry urban
matters in detail will be very difficult I believe. components. You could also turn this around and say; we are not going to solve
It’s very important, especially for the TU, to show the extremes in these alterna- our environmental problems without solving our urban problems. That shows how
tives. For instance with traffic, you can maximize the usage of the roads, so you need important I think this primarily urban view is and that’s also how I see the landscape,
less space. But then when one fly lands on your car window in this perfectly regu- especially how we study it here in Delft.
lated system, then the whole system crashes and there’s traffic jam from Maastricht You can see that in urbanized space we will also need to solve the world food prob-
to Amsterdam, because all the reserves have been squeezed out. On the other hand lem because cities happen to expand most rapidly in our deltas, which also contain our
you can build more roads, which will cost a lot more space, but which will probably best arable soil.
be more robust. That might not be what you want to hear or do, but that’s a political For the most part, and for most of humanity, the landscape of the future will be a
standpoint, which is fine by me. At the University you have to ensure that the whole hybrid, sometimes new, repaired or sometimes defragmented, but which will need to
range is explored. Also, as a thought experiment I think it’s valuable to work out these play a role in this gigantic urban fabric that we have developed.' JAN WILBERS
11

12. 21.
HANG
Het project ‘De plantage van Berlijn’ koppelt de ontwikkeling van de stad aan voedsel.
Tempelhof wordt opnieuw een voedselcentrum voor de stad. 8.
25. 2.
De mechanismen van de productie, distributie, consumptie en verwerking van voedsel
functioneren als motor voor het ontstaan van een robuust Berlijns stadslandschap.
H
4
Een landschap met vele gezichten. Een structuur van ‘poreuze’ bouwblokken met H
3.
collectieve tuinen ontwikkeld zich langzaam tussen de boomgaarden. Zij zijn de 18. 3
19.
schakel tussen de bestaande stad en een weids productielandschap dat ook als uniek H
2
park gebruikt wordt. De terminal wordt op enkele strategische plekken doorbroken
H
waardoor het gebouw toegankelijk wordt en als nieuwe openbare ruimte stad en veld 17.
1
verbindt. Daarnaast wordt de nationaal socialistische monumentaliteit gerelativeerd en
Urbanism Now!
HANGAR 1-4
de indrukwekkende constructie zichtbaar gemaakt.
Een nieuwe laag wordt toegevoegd aan de rijke geschiedenis van het Tempelhofer
vliegveld. Een laag waar transparante locale voedselproductie stevig wordt gekoppeld 9.
aan een continu veranderend stedelijk landschap. 8.
2
13.
Upcoming Urbanism talent in the Netherlands
14.
4
16.
12.
15.
10.
3
1. bestaande energiecentrale
2. boerderij #1
3. biogasleiding
Wednesday 15 February saw the ceremony of the annual StedenbouwNU (UrbanismNOW) award, a
4. collectieve tuinen
5. sport
6. waterbekken sluit aan op nieuw waternetwerk
7. park Hasenheide
8. theehuis
9. nutstuinen en schooltuinen
prize dedicated to upcoming talents in Urbanism and Landscape Architecture. Since most of our read-
10. padensysteem recreatie en landbouw
11. spoorbrug
12. landingsbaan
13. controlecentrum en gemaal
14. silos biocentrale
15. regionale spoorlijnen. verbinding met de regio 1 Het poreuze bouwblok
ers are students in these disciplines, Atlantis took a look at the winning designs, presenting them below.
16. ovaal route
17. overslagcentrum regionaal voedselcentrum 2 De tuinen van Neuköln
18. luchtbrug toren
19. Logistieke ruimte
20. Markthal 3 Het productiepark 11.
21. cafe, restaurant, club
22. daklandschap 4 De energiemachine
23. voedsel laboratorium
24. proeftuinen De voedselterminal
25. waterbekken gevoed door daklandschap
5
N
Although three plans were to be nominated by a jury panel of one hundred (!) critics, four prizes were 500m
awarded. Reason for this was the fact that third and fourth almost equalled in score and there was a
clear gap between these and the rest. The four prize winners will work together on a design assignment
sponsored by the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment. Atlantis presents an image overview
of the designs of the four awarded students and describes the winning design.
Short videos of the prize winners and the rest of the participants explaining their designs are available at
www.stedebouw.nu.
Gebouw en veld worden als eenheid Een eenduidig casco met wisselende Casco voor stad en boomgaarden Casco voor grootschalige landbouw Casco voor de regionale voedselterminal
ontwikkeld. De leegte van het veld is een maaswijdte biedt ruimte voor nieuwe 100 ha 300 ha
kwaliteit. stedelijke landchappen.
Dakterras voor recreatie en
evenementen.
Laboratorium en Bestaande Biogasleiding De nieuwe Boerderij #3
onderzoeksruimtes energiecentrale. langzame stad.
TU Berlijn.
HANGAR 5-8
H
4
H
3
H
2
H
1
HANGAR 1-4
Figure 1. Winner - Jan-Martijn Eekhof – Tempelhof: Berlin’s Public Garden (Academie van Bouwkunst, Amsterdam)
12

13. Tempelhof: Berlin’s Public Garden
Jan-Martijn Eekhof claimed first
prize with his transformation of
Berlin Tempelhof Airport, win-
ning the Archiprix 2011 along
the way. Essential aspect of his
design is the statement that pro-
gramme should not be the steer-
ing force in the redesign. This has
everything to do with the histori-
cal sensibility of the area and the
fact that Berlin has little market
pressure, leaving the area open
until now. Eekhof proposes a
plan in which the physical layout
can grow steadily over time,
generating new urban tissue. Figure 2. 2nd Prize - Wolbert van Dijk – The Dike Plateau (Academie van Bouwkunst, Rotterdam)
The Tempelhof is reintroduced
as the food centre of the city (as
it was during World War ii for
West Berlin), thus facilitating “a
structure of porous city blocks
with communal gardens [that]
mediates between the city and a
new productive landscape”. The
design seeks to add a new layer
to the rich history of Tempelhof
Airport, in which “transparent
local food production is welded
into a continuously changing
urban landscape”.
The Dike Plateau
The primary flood defence
designed as a dyke platform
with a versatile urban delta
landscape on the right bank of Figure 3. 3rd Prize - Thijs de Zeeuw – The Unconditional Garden (Academie van Bouwkunst, Amsterdam)
the river Maas between Rotter-
dam and Hook of Holland.
The Unconditional Garden
Approximately sixty percent of
all Dutch plants and animals
are found in the city or suburbs.
But still nature is led by the red
versus green polemic which sep-
arates the city and nature. The
design looks for a way to make
visible this wealth of the city.
The Hidden City
A design proposal for the naval
dockyard at Oosterdok to make
good that harbour basin's poten-
tial as public space by bringing out
its unique hidden qualities. Figure 4. 4th Prize - Marijke Bruinsma – The Hidden City (Academie van Bouwkunst, Amsterdam)
13

14. Landscape Aesthetics for Sustainable
Architecture Daniel Jauslin
PhD Candidate Landscape Architecture, TU Delft
No, No and No. Three times No is the answer to the question: is there currently such a thing
as aesthetics in sustainable architecture? This answer is drawn from the discussions of three
architects who are acclaimed practitioners and thinkers in the field. If we assume that aesthet-
ics is something that all architects pursue in one form or another, it would appear that, cur-
rently, sustainability is not an integral part of it.
One of the acclaimed architects considered in this chapter is Rem Koolhaas, a Pritzker laureate
and one of the founders of OMA, a highly regarded practice in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
He opened his keynote lecture at a Harvard University conference on sustainability in 2009
with the following statement:
"I did not assume that anyone in the academic world would ask a practicing architect in the
21st century, given the architecture that we collectively produce, to participate in a conference
on ecological urbanism." 1
During his lecture, Koolhaas showed a photomontage of a massive wall of skyscrapers set in
the desert, including some of OMA’s own designs (Fig. 1). If we asked Koolhaas the hypotheti-
cal question: ‘Does the aesthetics of architecture contribute to a sustainable world and its ecol-
ogy?’ He might answer: ‘No. Architecture is rarely sustainable as a human activity.’
The second acclaimed architect considered in this chapter is Peter Eisenman. During the
Eisenman + Wigley IV lecture at Columbia University in 2009, he made the following state- Figure 1: Collage for Lecture R. Koolhaas Sustainabil-
ment regarding the US Green Building Council’s rating system 2 while discussing the meaning ity: advancement vs. apocalypse (OMA 2009)
of architectural practice in the context of the current financial crisis:
"Some of the worst buildings I have seen have Gold, Silver or Platinum LEED Certificates
… and they are awful, architecturally. They are depressing … They may optimize ecological
constraints today but they don’t do anything for the culture in terms of the excess required for
architecture … Architecture has always been about an environmentally possible way of being.
Hence the buildings that last throughout the history of architecture." 3
Although Eisenman might agree that great pieces of architecture – the kind that last for
centuries – possess certain aesthetic qualities, if we asked him the hypothetical question: ‘Does
sustainable architecture possess durable aesthetics?’ Eisenman might answer: ‘No. Sustainable
buildings do not possess lasting aesthetics.’
The third acclaimed architect considered here is Wolf Prix, co-founder of the Coop Himmelb(l)
au in Vienna (Fig. 2). He presented a striking statement during the opening lecture for the
2009 Münchner Opernfestspiele (Munich Opera Festival):
“Sustainability belies signification – and it is therefore not possible to generate ‘aesthetics’
from the term sustainability. There is no such living aesthetics of sustainability as that of mod-
ernist architecture.” 4, 5
This statement led to a major uproar among German Architects and a policy debate or ‘die
Grundsatzdebatte’ in the prominent German newspaper, Die Süddeutsche Zeitung. 6 If we
asked Prix the hypothetical question: ‘Is there such thing as aesthetics in sustainable architec-
ture?’ He might answer: ‘No. By definition, there cannot be.’
To summarize current debates on the aesthetic possibilities of sustainability in architec-
ture, we may conclude that today, there is no consensus as to what these possibilities are or
whether they exist at all. At least this is the conclusion that may be drawn from the unau- Figure 2: Wolf D. Prix with significant architecture,
thorized summaries of three of the most prominent architects in the field. Their remarks dress and accessoires (Photo:AP ddp)
14

15. Figure 3: Mimimum Impact House Frankfurt (2004-2008) Photo: Drexler Guinand Jauslin Architects
are quite recent – made within the past few years – and quite behind cations of the real estate market. As of 2011/2012, we could say that
schedule if we consider that sustainability has grown to become a current architecture is not willing to meet the challenges of sustainable
firmly established and often compelling issue in the fields of science development, environmental protection and energy efficiency in a
and politics over the past two decades. proactive manner, given the widespread assumption of the substantial
On a wider scale, the United Nations committed itself to the goal aesthetic compromises that would be required to do so.
of sustainable development and environmental protection on a global In order to advance the cause of environmental consciousness in
scale when it passed Resolution 38/161 in 1987. In the process, the UN architecture, what appears necessary is neither an exclusive commit-
established its own definition for sustainable development: ment to sustainability nor a commitment to another avant-garde aes-
"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of thetic. However, playing up the polemics of opposition between sus-
the present without compromising the ability of future generations to tainability and the avant-garde will not lead to a resolution. Rather,
meet their own needs."7 a renewed environmental consciousness may be triggered with an
One decade later, the Kyoto Protocols 8 established energy efficiency aesthetic sensitivity toward the natural environment that provides
as an important policy agenda of many of the UN member states. the context for each piece of architecture, developed in tandem with a
While definitions of sustainable development and energy efficiency wider understanding of the human dimensions and aesthetic qualities
were established at the level of international policy making more than implemented in the built environment.
20 years ago, it seems that on the whole, the profession of architecture
still disregards the impact of sustainable development, while failing to A very different way of dealing with the polarity of nature and cul-
connect the notion of sustainability to the notion of aesthetics. ture can be seen in the perspective of landscape. German art theorist
As a practicing architect, it is clear that these problems may stem and activist Bazon Brock defines landscape as the aesthetic human
from the fact that environmental destruction does not appear to be a appropriation of nature.9 The role of aesthetics in landscape is not
matter that can be ameliorated or resolved through architectural aes- to separate natural forms from the cultural realm, but to reconnect
thetics. And in fact, that addressing environmental destruction would them. Drawing inspiration from the inherent terms of aesthetics in
curtail aesthetic possibilities. For many architects, sustainable design landscape, the architectural discipline could develop a real alterna-
has become an issue not because it is integral to their own desires for tive to the invasive practice of architecture where the dichotomy of
aesthetic experimentation or development, but because of the new nature and culture is profound. With inspiration from the landscape
legalities imposed by building regulations and the economic ramifi- perspective, it may be possible to shift the position and approach of
15

16. Figure 4: Grin Grin Park with Visitor’s Centre by Toyo Ito in Fukuoka (2002-2005) Photo by author, 2010
architecture toward nature, moving from an ented approaches to architectural design that natural, cultural, urban and architectonic
approach of opposition to one of integration. include cartographic methods such as map- constituents.12 There is an obvious correla-
Such a renewal is clearly outside the scope ping, and surface-oriented methods such as tion between content and form: the location
and potential of avant-garde aesthetics alone. folding. These methods expanded beyond the where the content resides is what connects
A common recognition of where our academic circles and into professional prac- the landscape to the architectonic in terms of
efforts should lead in terms of environmen- tice during the 1990’s. Although most of these material, topographic, technical, cultural and
tal consciousness seems to be absent from the methods took compositional and philosophi- economic substance. Form involves the way
education, socialization and profession of cal detours and do not implement a purely in which the elements are assembled into a
architecture. In fact, the question of how a territorial approach, they are fundamental to composition, based on the development of a
building, city or landscape will be perceived a consciousness that is changing the discipline variable but intimate relationship between
by its users and inhabitants is the key ques- in significant ways: a consciousness that views object and context.13, 14
tion that underlies most of our design work. the organization and composition of architec- In this way, the modalities of landscape
Designs that please human perception tend tural space as landscape. architecture are employed in the design of
to trump the consideration of the natural architectonic constructs, in order to formulate
environment. However, no matter which Concomitant with this rise in landscape-ori- a set of design tools that are appropriate to the
side of the discourse they fall on, most archi- ented consciousness is a research framework challenges of designing the built environment
tects agree that architecture should contain that can be characterized as the ‘architecture in relation to the natural one. The idea of
certain aesthetics, and most decision makers of landscape methods,’11 developed to investi- landscape in fact defines an aesthetic media-
agree that finding a sense of sustainability is gate and understand architecture that has been tion between the natural and artificial worlds.
a prerequisite of any planning or architec- designed as landscape. Within this research The design methods of landscape architec-
tural activity. But the relation between these framework, the interior volume of a building ture are particularly useful; they can be con-
two priorities – aesthetics and sustainability and the exterior landscape surface surround- trasted to architecture in terms of how they
– changes according to the theoretical and ing a building do not merely interact. strategically approach spatial design. While
practical views of different actors in the pro- Instead, the building is designed as an arti- most pieces of architecture carry a distinct
cess of building. ficial landscape, as a continuation and aug- building program forward from the outset of
The landscape perspective may be able mentation of the natural one. This idea of the design work, landscape approaches start
to unite the seeming dichotomies of nature landscape defines the exterior surfaces as well from the topography of the site.
versus culture and aesthetics versus sustain- as the interior surfaces, and through these Developing the aesthetics of sustainable
ability, showing that these dichotomies do methods, the relation of landscape to architec- architecture is necessary. It is probably the
not have to reside at the core of the discipline. ture is in fact turned inside out. only path left in the future of architecture
Already, some practitioners of contemporary A specific focus of landscape architecture – aside from the complete absence thereof –
architecture have been strongly influenced is placed on understanding the formative ele- that can begin to address the impacts of pro-
by the concept of landscape. In 1966, Vitto- ments and qualities implicit in the landscape, viding architecture and infrastructure to the
rio Gregotti postulated that architects should and on developing architectural design meth- world’s population of 7 billion. Designing
focus on territories rather than architectural ods and strategies in consideration of them. for sustainability is a unique opportunity. It
space.10 And since the late 1980’s, architects With the implementation of this approach, does not indicate the end of architecture as
have developed a wide range of process-ori- landscape architecture consists of a range of an aesthetic system, nor does it indicate an
16