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Introduction to Landscape Urbanism and Ecology
Introduction to Landscape Urbanism and Ecology
Shifting Sites by Kristina Hill
Kristina Hill talks about the evolving notion of the natural world as a dynamic ecosystem which has slowly but radically altered the ways ecologists talk about the patterns and dynamics of a site. Many of these changes in theory have led to shifts in the natural sciences as dramatic as transitions initiated by the Modern Movement in design. In short, a wholesale revaluation of boundaries and predictability has occurred, posing special challenges for professions that propose site designs. Although this has sometimes resulted in a reduced willingness among scientists to predict the specific outcomes
of dynamic processes, it has also led to an increased ability to understand fluctuating human economies as components of ecosystems.
Shifting Sites - Kristina Hill
Terra means ‘earth’ and fluxus means ‘flowing or fluid’
Massive urban growth.
Global ecological awareness
Looking at the city and landscape - 19th century
The importance of studying landscape.
1997 : New disciplinary ‘Landscape urbanism’ was anticipated in Landscape Urbanism symposium and Exhibition originally conceived by Charles Waldheim
Olmsted's challenge
Comparing the words landscape and urbanism to x and y chromosome
Looking at cities and landscape
The contrasting notion of landscape and the city
Functions of urban landscapes
1955 : Urbanist Victor Gruen coined the term cityscape
Landscape Urbanism - Practice more than a category
Four themes
1969 : Due to Ian McHarg’s, Design with Nature publication
1953 : Louis Kahn’s diagram of vehicular circulation in Philadelphia
Comparison by L. I. Kahn
21st century idea of including the landscape into the city
Terra Fluxus- James Corner
Looking back at Landscape Urbanism
The author Julia Czerniak imagines landscape as a particular culture of and consciousness about the land that refrains from the superficial reference to sustainability,ecology,and the complex processes of our environments in favor of projects that actually engage them.
According to architect James Corner the nineteenth century notions of public spaces where nature is seen as separate from the city, is imaged as undulating and pastoral and acts as a moral antidote to urbanization.
The following projects are discussed in this book which challenge this notion and attempt to make landscape visible and legible through the everyday life thereby to build new relationships
Guadalupe River (1988)
Byxbee Parks (1991)
Rebstockpark (1992)
Plaza Park (1989)
Post Human
Post Human
Simians, Cyborgs and Women by Donna Haraway
-The idea that nature is constructed, not discovered - that truth is made, not found - is the keynote of recent scholarship in the history of science.
-Immune system as an information system, and shows how deeply our cultural assumptions penetrate into allegedly value- neutral medical research.
-Reinvention of nature without the dominant nature of patriarchy
-Concrete practices of particular people make truth, Haraway argued. The scientists in a laboratory don't simply observe or conduct experiments on a cell for instance, but co-create what a cell is by seeing, measuring, naming and manipulating it.
-Networks are also inside us. Our bodies,fed on the products of agribusiness, kept healthy - or damaged - by pharmaceuticals, and altered by medical procedures, aren't as natural as The Body shop would like us to believe Truth is. we're constructing ourselves, just like we construct chip sets or political systems and that brings with it a few responsibilities.
Simians Cyborgs and Women- Donna Harroway
When we say about nature do we include ourselves?
The book traces evolution of ideas of nature over the years as to how in the medieval age - the age of discovering relationships with man and god, the concept of nature was god's creation. The conventional idea of nature is understood as being untouched, not spoilt, separated from man. 18th century this idea of nature shifts to order and right reason as the societal structure itself held administrative power. In early 19th century the idea of nature evolved as countryside retreats. in the second half of 19th century nature was seen as savage and cruel. The book concludes as
When nature is separated out from the activities of men, it even ceases to be nature, in any full or effective sense.
We have mixed our labour with earth, our forces with earth’s forces too deeply to be able to draw back and separate either out.
Theodore Roosevelt wrote,
“There he passes his days, there he does his life-work, there, when he meets death, he faces it as he has faced many other evils, with quiet, uncomplaining fortitude. Brave, hospitable, hardy, and adventurous, he is the grim pioneer of our race; he prepares the way for the civilization from before whose face he must himself disappear. Hard and dangerous though his existence is, it has yet a wild attraction that strongly draws to it his bold, free spirit.”
There gathered a momentum for setting aside the national parks and wilderness areas at that exact time where there was passing of the frontier.
The frontier was considered as a better place for all the troubles and dangers (of the people)
If the frontier was passing then they should preserve for themselves some pieces of its wild landscape so that they can just enjoy sleeping under the stars. The frontiers can go but it could be experienced still if preserved. Wilderness emerged as the ideas of the landscape choice of elite tourists and got in some urban ideas of the countryside.
Place of recreation - the land rather than the permanent home or productive labor.
Argument was- The concept of wilderness is not natural. It is due to the creation of culture that holds it.
Mishkos Kenomagwen: The Teachings of Grass
Grasses carry their growing points just beneath the soil surface so that when their leaves are lost to a mower, a grazing animal, or a fire, they quickly recover.
Even the pulling method was beneficial. The underground stem that connects the shoots is dotted with buds. When it’s gently tugged, the stem breaks and all those buds produce thrifty young shoots to fill the gap.Many grasses undergo a physiological change known as compensatory growth in which the plant compensates for loss of foliage by quickly growing more
A scientific theory is a cohesive body of knowledge, an explanation that is consistent among a range of cases and can allow you to predict what might happen in unknown situations.
never take the first plant that you see.
“To always leave a gift for the plants, to ask if we might take them? It would be rude not to ask first.”
"You never take more than half.”
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