Beschreibung
des Entwurfs-programmes |
Spontaneous urban nature
Weeds creeping through pavement joints, pioneer trees on disturbed ground, lichen crawling on buildings’ facades, wild flowers growing along the road’s edges, flimsy herbs by the train tracks, mosses in tunnel… We are surrounded within our urban landscapes by spontaneous vegetation. This adventitious flora takes opportunity of any ecological niche available in order to live an untamed existence. At best ignored, at worst fought against by spraying of pesticides and other chemicals, urban nature hosts an inconspicuous but incredibly abundant biodiversity. This “planetary garden” provides in return habitat for insects or birds, collect and breathe rainwater, mitigate heat islands and last but not least also awards a specific joy to the considerate passer-by.
Learning from city ecologies
During this semester, we will investigate the qualities and potential of unplanned urban nature, a topic which has seen a renewed interest in recent years. While parks, garden and street trees stem from a long tradition of urban planning and landscape architecture, they however require ceaseless maintenance, watering, fertilizing and pruning. In contrast, spontaneous urban nature appears without neither sowing nor seedling, taking advantage of any water or nutrients available, and in the pure spirit of the “punk garden” often grows fast before to die young.
Taking as a starting point the seminal book of the American landscape architect Anne Whiston Spirn, the Granite Garden, we propose to consider the city as a garden, albeit not one made of soil rich in organic matter, but one made of concrete, this material so emblematic of Swiss architecture and therefore of Swiss cities. What are the conditions that permit life to appear in an otherwise mineral, barren urban environment? Several kinds of habitats emerge while searching for urban nature.
Terms such as weeds or undesirable plants are not a botanical classification but a subjective way to look at nature. Is necessarily everything unplanned undesirable? Is there an advantage to this unruly vegetation? In our era of ecological collapse and mass extinction, we believe no type of nature should be seen as redundant or disposable. We will investigate the potential of those feral ecologies to create more lively, diverse and sustainable urban environments.
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Thematische und methodische Schwerpunkte |
Entwurf, Landschaftsarchitektur, Urban Ecology |
Lernziele |
We will use the city of Zürich as a case study to explore the potential of urban nature. This will allow us an iterative process between site and studio in order to identify, observe, and understand its potential.
The semester will be divided in three phases. During the first stage, every group will be assigned a specific kind of ecosystem and will have to explore it within the city of Zürich. The realisation of a transect, that is a linear survey of the living species within the habitat, will allow to cartography the chosen site. The first review will show an analysis of the given ecosystem and of its location within the city boundary.
During the second stage, scenarios will be developed in order to understand what is the potential of this habitat and how it can be beneficial to the city structure. The use of GIS cartography will furthermore permit to map the designated habitat. This work will be supplemented by the realisation of an ecological section. Two scenarios will be presented during the mid-term review.
Within the last stage of the semester, the groups will develop a favoured scenario and have to demonstrate their project’s added value to urban ecosystem. Beyond the usual representation tools, the realisation of a landscape axonometry will support the proposed narrative.
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