ECOLOGICABE

CHARLES WALDHEIM

JEANNETTE
JEANNETTE
MOHSEN MOSTAFAVI SORDI

SORDI
JAMES CORNER

DESIGNLAN
STAN ALLEN

BEYOND URBANISM
YOND
SANFORD KWINTER
CIRO NAJLE
EVA CASTRO
ALFREDO RAMIREZ

DS LANDSC
CHRIS REED

URBA
PIERRE BÉLANGER
ALAN BERGER
KELLY SHANNON
MANUEL GAUSA
MOSÈ RICCI

URBANISME
PROJECTS

NISM
STOSS/MVRDV/
FIELD OPERATIONS/MVVA
WEST 8/SWA/GROUNDLAB/
TURENSCAPE/ RMA/
SCAPE/OPSYS
MADE IN ITALY euro 19
contents

6 Foreword by Charles Waldheim 110 Figures

Interviews to:
8 Introduction: Beyond Urbanism 114 Mohsen Mostafavi
119 Charles Waldheim
123 James Corner
14 Epic 128 Stan Allen
132 Sanford Kwinter
1. PENN, 1980s. Landscape as Mechanism 136 Ciro Najle
20 1.1. Influences coming from Europe: townscape, progetto 141 Eva Castro and Alfredo Ramirez
urbano, landscape history and phenomenology (1960s-80s) 146 Chris Reed
27 1.2. Post-modern (eclectic) experiments in architecture, 150 Pierre Bélanger
situationists and radicals (1950s-80s) 155 Alan Berger
31 1.3. Landscape architecture in the United States: regional 160 Kelly Shannon
and ecological planning and the influence of Frederick Law 164 Manuel Gausa
Olmsted and Ian McHarg

2. PENN, 1990s. Recovering Landscape 168 Atlas

42 2.1. Landscape ecology and landscape geography: from the
pictorial to the operative 172 Stoss, Detroit Future City, Detroit, Michigan, U.S. (2012)
47 2.2. The expanded field of landscape architecture: critique 176 MVRDV, Freeland, Almere, Netherlands (2011)
and instrumentality, creativity and ecology 180 Field Operations, Water City, Qianhai, China (2011)
52 2.3. Recovering landscape and Field Operations 184 MVVA, Lower Don Lands Masterplan, Toronto, Canada (2011)
186 West 8, Toronto Central Waterfront, Toronto, Canada (2006)
3. COLUMBIA, 1990s. Landscape as System 190 SWA, Buffalo Bayou Promenade, Houston, Texas, U.S. (2006)
62 3.1. Historical, philosophical and technological framework: 194 Groundlab Plasmastudio, Flowing Gardens, Xi’an, China (2011)
rhizome, complexity, speed, and network 198 Turenscape, Houtan Park, Shanghai, China (2010)
66 3.2. Modified practices of architecture: surfaces, 202 RMA, Hathigaon Elephant Village, Jaipur, India (2008)
operational landscapes, and infrastructural urbanism. 206 SCAPE, Oyster-Tecture, New York, U.S. (2010)
71 3.3. The Dutch project: architecture, landscape, and 208 OPSYS, Dübenholz, Zurich, Switzerland (2011)
infrastructure 210 Mosè Ricci UNIGE, ecolecce, Lecce, Italy (2010)

4. DETROIT, 1990s. Landscape Urbanism

82 4.1. Towards an urban landscape: rise and crisis of the post- 214 Afterword by Mosè Ricci
Fordist city
86 4.2. Stalking Detroit: a “retroactive manifesto” for the
contemporary postmetropolis
91 4.3. Landscape urbanism

104 5. HARVARD, 2010s. Ecological Urbanism

 6 jeannette sordi beyond urbanism 7

tions. As Mohsen Mostafavi’s introduction to the Ecological Urbanism publication

suggests, ecological urbanism “implied the projective potential of the design disci-
foreword by Charles Waldheim plines to render alternative future scenarios.” Overcoming the traditional distinction
describing ecology as outside the city, and the urban as external to ecology, ecological
urbanism continues the line of thinking first proposed through landscape urbanism,
From Landscape to Ecology
Charles Waldheim, Chair of the Land-
scape Architecture Department of the and reanimates it with renewed critical and cultural potential.
Harvard Graduate School of Design,
coined the term “landscape urbanism” It is no coincidence that an adjectivally modified form of urbanism (be it landscape,
to describe emerging landscape design
Landscape has emerged as a model and medium for ecological, or other) has emerged as the most robust and fully formed critique of urban
practices in the context of North Amer-
the contemporary city. This claim has been avail-
ican urbanism. He organized the first design over the recent past. The structural conditions necessitating an environmentally
La ndscape Urba nism con ference i n
able since the turn of the twenty-first century in the modified urbanism have emerged precisely at the moment when European models
1997 and is the editor of The Landscape
Urbanism Reader, 2006. discourse and practices described under the term of urban density, centrality, and legibility of urban form appear increasingly remote
“landscape urbanism.” Jeannette Sordi’s research on and when most of us live and work in environments more suburban than urban, more
this topic aspires to document a genealogy of this concept through the individuals and vegetal than architectonic, more infrastructural than enclosed. I believe that these
institutions that have proposed and propelled it. As Sordi carefully articulates here, structural conditions for urban practice and the disciplinary realignments attendant to
landscape urbanism emerged over the past decade as a critique of the disciplinary and them will persist, as our language morphs and transforms in an ultimately incomplete,
professional commitments of neotraditional urban design. The critique launched by yet completely necessary attempt to describe them.
landscape urbanism has much to do with urban design’s perceived inability to come to
terms with the rapid pace of urban change in post-Fordist economic conditions and the
essentially horizontal character of contemporary automobile-based urbanization across
North America and much of Western Europe. It equally has to do with the inability of
traditional urban design strategies to cope with the environmental conditions left in the
wake of deindustrialization, increased calls for an ecologically informed urbanism, and
the ongoing ascendancy of design culture as an aspect of urban development. These
cultural and disciplinary conditions left a void at the center of the contemporary urban
field. Landscape urbanist practices evolved to occupy that void through an unlikely
combination of progressive design culture, environmental advocacy, and cultural capital,
expressed through contemporary laissez faire development practices. These practices
were fueled by new forms of public agency and donor culture in relation to planning,
at the moment that both urban design and planning were described in their respective
literatures as enduring various forms of crisis.
The established discourse of landscape urbanism is seemingly maturing, at once
no longer sufficiently youthful for the avant-gardist appetites of architectural culture,
yet growing in global significance as its key texts and projects are translated and
disseminated globally. One aspect of this maturity is that the discourse on landscape
urbanism, while hardly new in architectural circles, is rapidly being absorbed into the
global discourse on cities within urban design and planning.
As Sordi’s work shows us, the emergent discourse of “ecological urbanism” has
been proposed to more precisely describe the aspirations of an urban practice informed
by environmental issues and imbued with the sensibilities associated with landscape.
This most recent adjectival modifier of urbanism reveals the ongoing need to re-qualify
urban design as it attempts to describe the environmental, economic, and social
conditions of the contemporary city. Ecological urbanism proposes (just as landscape
urbanism proposed over a decade ago) to multiply the available lines of thought on the
contemporary city to include environmental and ecological concepts while expanding
traditional disciplinary and professional frameworks for describing those urban condi-
 8 jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
Introduction Beyond Urbanism
“Over the past few years, a number of people including myself have been associ-
ated with the body of work that has been presented under the banner of “landscape
urbanism.” Based also on some degree on a critique of established modes of prac-
tice and planning in urban design, much of this work has played an important role
in suggesting a hybrid model of practice that sits opportunities on the interface of
landscape and urbanism. […] But, over the past few years, I have begun to speculate
more in terms of the potential correspondences between the ecological and the urban
[...] using the limit that is presented by the ecological as an opportunity for new
organizational structures in the context of dense urban conurbations.”
Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Ecological Urbanism Conference, April 2009.1
Landscape urbanism has emerged as a set of practices and theories over the last
fifteen years, occupying increasing space within the discourse of architecture. During
this time, a considerable number of journals, books, and articles, as well as design
projects and academic programs, have been dedicated to exploring this compelling
project named landscape urbanism. In addition to the direct involvement of its main
promoters – Charles Waldheim, James Corner, and Mohsen Mostafavi – many other
scholars and professionals have also found in this interdisciplinary practice a productive
ground for their work, contributing to its expansion into yet further fields and contexts.
In 2009, Mohsen Mostafavi, who founded the first Master’s Program in Landscape
Urbanism at the Architectural Association in London in 1999 and who was appointed
Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2008, promised to update and renew
that decade-old discourse, reframing it as “ecological urbanism.” Does this mean that
landscape urbanism is therefore over? Should it be considered instead as a pre-history,
part of a broader, more urgent and inclusive discourse, as ecological urbanism aims to be?
Many landscape urbanism theorists and practitioners took part in the “Ecological
Urbanism” conference in 2009, and many others joined the Harvard Graduate School of
Design in the years that followed. Waldheim was appointed Chair of the Department of
Landscape Architecture in 2008, and “landscape urbanists” such as Chris Reed, Pierre
Bélanger, Mason White, Nina-Marie Lister, Clare Lyster, Kelly Shannon, Sébastian Marot,
Paola Viganò, among others, have also been involved in the academic programs of the School.
As New Urbanism’s exponent (and landscape urbanism skeptic) Andrés Duany expressively
highlighted: “For God’s sake, these guys took over Harvard!”2 – which means that land-
scape urbanism is likely not over but is instead expanding and exploring its full potential.
The term “landscape urbanism” was coined in 1996 by Charles Waldheim,3 who
notably claimed that, in the horizontal field of urbanization, landscape had assumed
a new relevance for the making of urban form; in particular, in the context of complex
natural environments, post-industrial sites, and public infrastructure.4 The idea of the
territory, developed in the second half of the nineteenth century, required urbanism to be
well defined in space and time and planning was meant to outline urban functions and
design. In the last few years, architects, geographers, sociologists, and urbanists have
9
underlined the necessity of defining new categories of space and land use, questioning
the role of architectural and planning disciplines. “Metapolis,” “metacity,” “endless-
city,” “città diffusa,” “postmetropolis,” and “planetary urbanization,” are just some of
the terms that have been coined to describe similar configurations of dispersion and
complexity, shaped by postmodern economies and technological progress.5 Landscape
has in many ways provided the conceptual and practical tools to define the increasing
horizontality and dynamism of the urban field, to structure and manipulate the space
between buildings and dense settlements.5 In fact, the dynamic and evolutional dimen-
sion of contemporary urbanization required the development of new instruments and
transversal orientations. Landscape urbanism theories have recognized and formalized
this phenomenon, contributing to blur the boundaries between architecture, landscape
architecture, urban planning, and design, multiplying and enhancing urban strategies.
Thus, can a different perspective, coming from landscape, lead urbanism towards more
environmentally aware and socially sustainable practices?
Beyond Urbanism explores the potential of landscape to renew the urban design
and planning disciplines, beginning with the many roles it has assumed within land-
scape and ecological urbanism theories and projects. Landscape urbanists may not be
the first, nor the only ones, who considered landscape as a thick surface, an ecological
infrastructure, or a medium for urbanism. Nevertheless, the continuity, the coherence,
and the many outcomes of the discourse, are certainly worthy of attention and are rich
in potential for renewing the urban disciplines. Moreover, the emergence of landscape
urbanism within the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design,
has offered the opportunity to explore how the meaning of landscape itself has changed
through the years: shifting from being an “aesthetic” complement to the city to playing
an active role within it, improving urban economic and environmental performance. The
recent recommitment of ecological urbanism underlines the importance of the perform-
ative rather than cultural character of landscape.
In the last fifteen years, the theories and projects of landscape urbanism have indeed
redefined concepts of landscape, urbanism, and ecology in relation to actual contexts and
uses, giving rise to one of the most compelling theories of architecture, in the broader
sense. Landscape urbanism emerged as a critique of urban design’s inability to deal with
the expanded character of urbanization and aimed to define a more ecologically informed
urbanism.6 Large parks, brownfields, infrastructures, and in-between spaces have become
opportunities for landscape architects to design resilient and adaptive ecological systems,
reclaiming and reorganizing the sites but also establishing new relationships with urban
and social contexts. Landscape has been considered the medium in which to operate such
transformations: a mechanism to enrich the urban experience, an ecological infrastructure
to reclaim these post-industrial sites, a lens through which to understand and organize
the contemporary geographies of urbanization. In addition to this, landscape urbanism
can also be seen as the project of a “school,” whose main advocates are recognizable and
whose intellectual history can be traced. Despite the many practices and programs it has
involved, it is one project, converging now into ecological urbanism.7
The first section of this book, named the “Epic,” aims to trace the intellectual history
of landscape urbanism beginning with the main figures who developed the discourse.
As we shall see, many “landscape urbanists” began their careers together at the Univer-
10 jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
sity of Pennsylvania in the late 1980s, while others met in the following years, finding a
common interest and a productive field of action in the interrelationship between landscape
and urban design. Thus, the “Epic” of landscape urbanism aims to clarify the different
theoretical and disciplinary positions that led to its development and success. The five
chapters explore the main cultural and academic contexts in which the interdiscipli-
nary, and transdisciplinary, field of landscape urbanism has emerged and been defined
through the years: from its origins to its new recommitment as ecological urbanism at
the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
The origins of the discourse can be traced back to the late 1980s at the University of
Pennsylvania, where Mohsen Mostafavi, James Corner, Charles Waldheim, and other
figures relevant to the field were teaching or studying at the same time. There, the Euro-
pean phenomenological approach and architectural and urban theories encountered the
legacy of Ian McHarg’s environmental planning, blurring the boundaries between urban
design and landscape architecture and absorbing principles of ecology. At the same time,
the postmodern architectural research on semiotics and form was slowly being abandoned
in favor of an increasing interest in program and process, as best exemplified by the finalist
proposal for the Parc de la Villette Competition (Paris, 1982) developed by Bernard Tschumi
and OMA. The first chapter – “Penn, 1980s. Landscape as Mechanism” – focuses on the
origins of the discourse, when for Mostafavi, Corner, and others, urban design moved closer
to landscape architecture, exploring phenomenological effects, environmental layers and
processual thinking.
A second contribution came from the expansion and modification of the discipline
of landscape architecture itself, influenced by geography, ecology, hermeneutics and
post-structuralist philosophy, urban theory and practice. Chapter Two – “Penn, 1990s.
Recovering Landscape” – therefore looks at what happened at Penn (and only there) in
the following decade, during which James Corner, professor there since 1988, became
one of the leading figures for the field of landscape architecture. Corner’s book Recovering
Landscape, published in 1999, clearly framed the field of action of the discipline in rela-
tion to the emerging landscapes of urbanization: not only urban parks but also suburban
neighborhoods, brownfields, and infrastructures. The book soon became one of the most
important references for landscape urbanists. The projects that Corner, together with Stan
Allen, developed with his office Field Operations – Downsview Park Toronto, 1999, and
Fresh Kills Landfill Park in Staten Island, 2001 – represented the first examples of a new
way of designing through ecological processes, and suggested new approaches for both
landscape architects and urban designers.
In parallel to what was occurring in the field of landscape architecture, architects and
urbanists were abandoning postmodern theories in order to better address the challenges
of the contemporary city, especially due to the development and diffusion of digital tech-
nologies and communication networks. Influenced by philosophers such as Paul Virilio,
Manuel De Landa, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, some architects became interested in
managing networks, speed, and complexity. Columbia University, where Bernard Tschumi,
Stan Allen, and FOA were teaching in the late 1990s, was leading this research linking
the emerging philosophical thinking to computational design. Landscape architects,
especially the work of Dutch and Spanish architects, became a reference for architects and
urban designers due to their disciplinary predisposition to deal with flows, surfaces, and
11
infrastructure. The third chapter – “Columbia, 1990s. Landscape as System” – therefore
explores the role played by landscape within architecture: an operational surface and a
system through which to structure the contemporary city. Many of the architects working
at Columbia at that time converged at the first Master of Landscape Urbanism program
founded by Mohsen Mostafavi and Ciro Najle at the Architectural Association in London
in 1999. As was the case at Columbia, the Master’s focus was mainly on the construction
of landscapes and processes through architecture and digital design, exploring the poten-
tial of transferring tools and practices typical of landscape architecture to urban design.
At the end of the 1990s, landscape urbanism became a sort of “retroactive manifesto”8
for the contemporary city: the only discourse and medium that could make sense of
increasingly dispersed post-industrial landscapes of urbanization. These conditions were
particularly evident in North American metropolises such as Atlanta, Los Angeles, Las
Vegas, Houston, and especially Detroit. It is from working on Detroit – the city that best
expressed the success but also the failure of industrial development and planning – that
Charles Waldheim developed the idea of landscape urbanism. As he claimed, building on
David Harvey’s theories, the failure of the post-Fordist metropolis should not be attributed to
designers but was rather the result of capitalist economic and political processes. According
to Waldheim, under such an economic system, the growth and dispersion of urbanization
are inevitable. This naturally led to the diminished relevance of architecture as the basic
building block for urban design, and the emergence of landscape as such.9 As we shall
see in Chapter Four – “Detroit, 1990s. Landscape Urbanism” – landscape could be seen
as the most appropriate medium to understand and organize contemporary urbanization.
The last chapter of the “Epic” – “Harvard, 2010s. Ecological Urbanism” – serves as a
conclusion but also as a starting point for further development in the fields of urban design
and planning towards more environmentally and socially aware urban transformations
and design. Indeed, Mostafavi’s concept of ecological urbanism aims to use ecology as
a framework and an opportunity for setting up new organizational structures, while still
preserving a role for reciprocities between landscape and the urban.
As previously mentioned, the “Epic” essay aims to trace an intellectual history of
landscape urbanism starting from the main figures who developed the discourse. The
second section, “Figures,” thus presents a series of interviews conducted with Mohsen
Mostafavi, Charles Waldheim, James Corner, Stan Allen, Sanford Kwinter, Ciro Najle, Eva
Castro, Alfredo Ramirez, Chris Reed, Pierre Bélanger, Alan Berger, Kelly Shannon, and
Manuel Gausa. They comprise the most notable scholars identified with landscape urbanism
over the last fifteen to twenty years and those who have promoted its development. The
interviews constitute a basis upon which to reassemble the body of knowledge of land-
scape urbanism, investigating the disciplinary, geographical, social, and cultural contexts
that provoked the rejection of traditional instruments and encouraged the convergence of
landscape, ecology, urbanism, and architecture. The protagonists of the discourse speak
of the main reasons that led them to landscape urbanism, indicating their main references
and fields of research and speculating on future outcomes.
Finally, the third section of the book, “Atlas,” looks at emerging practices. The “Atlas”
brings together a selection of recent projects developed by those practitioners who have
been early references for landscape urbanism (i.e. MVRDV, West 8, Field Operations, Kong-
jian Yu) and practices that found a fertile ground in this interdisciplinary field (i.e. Stoss,
12 jeannette sordi beyond urbanism 13

Groundlab, SWA, Bélanger). It also includes some projects developed by designers who, no longer used airport of Dübendorf, near Zurich, a productive landscape within the city,
although not included under that banner, are using landscape and ecology as mediums in also mitigating its carbon emissions.
which to enrich the possibilities of architecture and urbanism, planning and design (i.e. Finally, the consultancy research project for the new urban plan of the city of Lecce,
Rahul Mehrotra, Kate Orff, MVVA), and an overview of its potential for the Italian context in southern Italy, developed by Mosè Ricci and the University of Genoa,10 aims to reverse
(the Urban Plan of Lecce). The selection of twelve projects aims therefore to provide a broad, conventional planning rules based on zoning and peripheral expansion. The project individ-
although not exhaustive, overview of the potential uses of landscape and ecology within uates a series of thematic fields of intervention, landscape values, and ecological parameters
the spatial disciplines. Performative urbanism, infrastructural landscapes, and constructed that set the framework of the urban plan. These themes and objectives constitute the
ecologies are all seen as emerging objectives and fields of interventions highlighted by reference according to which urban design projects, including proposals by individuals and
these projects, forecasting innovative relationships between the urban and the environ- communities, will effectively implement the plan. In a context like Italy, which is very much
ment, beyond traditional urbanism. urbanized and often in highly hydrogeologically sensitive areas, landscape and ecological
The Detroit Future City Plan developed by Chris Reed Stoss Landscape Urbanism and urbanism practices offer a means in which to pay renewed attention, or new attention, to
the Almere Freeland plan by MVRDV present two reference projects in which ecological questions of landscape transformation, ecology, infrastructures, water, energy, and waste,
performances and parametric principles suggest multiple design options and replace and to put these materials to work. These projects are embracing landscape and ecology
deterministic planning rules. While the first aims to face Detroit’s shrinkage, building a as projective means that go beyond their aesthetic and scientific connotations – expanding
plan based on productive landscapes and ecological infrastructures, Freeland combines the boundaries and meaning of urbanism itself.º
individual desires with an overall landscape development. The Qianhai Water City Master-
plan, by James Corner Field Operations, offers a third way for planning: the project of
landscape and open space as the starting point, the basic ground, for future developments. 1
. The Ecological Urbanism Conference was organized by (Venezia: Daest-IUAV, 1990) ; Edward Soja, Postmetrop-
In a similar manner, MVVA’s ongoing project for Toronto’s Down Don River Lands plans Mohsen Mostafavi and Gareth Doherty and took place olis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions (Oxford, UK,
the transformation of an area on Lake Ontario, creating an innovative relationship between at the Harvard Graduate School of Design on April 3-5, Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000); Neil Brenner and
building design and the estuary ecological and landscape systems, with a strong focus on 2009. Most of the interventions, including this introduc- Christian Schmid, “Planetary Urbanization,” In Urban
the social benefits of these emerging environments. tion, can be watched on: http://ecologicalurbanism.gsd. Constellations, edited by Matthew Gandy (Berlin: Jovis,
West 8’s Toronto Central Waterfront project combines the construction of stormwater harvard.edu/conference.php. The essays of the confer- 2012), 10-13.
ence, and others, were published in Mohsen Mostafavi 5
. See the interview with Manuel Gausa in this book,
treatment systems with the reclaiming of abandoned industrial sites on Lake Ontario’s
and Gareth Doherty eds, Ecological Urbanism (Baden: “Figures” Section.
waterfront, creating a multifunctional infrastructural landscape and public spaces. In a Lars Muller, 2010). 6
. Charles Waldheim, “On Landscape, Ecology, and other
similar manner, SWA promenade’s extends in the interstitial spaces beyond and around 2
. Quoted in Leon Neyfakh, “Green Building,” Globe Modifiers to Urbanism,” Topos, International Review of
the Houston’s Buffalo Bayou highway to create a public park, creating a unique system Newspaper Company, January 30, 2011, http://www. Landscape Architecture and Urbanism 71 (2010): 20-24.
incorporating water and infrastructure. Groundlab’s Flowing Gardens project used the boston.com/yourtown/cambridge/articles/2011/01/30/ 7. See the interviews with Charles Waldheim and Mohsen
occasion of the 2011 International Horticultural Fair in Xi’an, China, to design a three-di- green_building/?page=4 Mostafavi in this book, “Figures” Section.
3
. Waldheim, Charles. “Landscape Urbanism: a Gene- 8
. As Koolhaas’ book Delirious New York in 1976 made
mensional landscape in which exhibition halls, greenhouses and buildings originated a
alogy” Praxis Journal 4 (2002): 4-17. sense of the metropolitan condition of Manhattan, Wald-
rich topography of vibrant spaces that became embedded in the city once the expo was 4
. Waldheim, Charles, “Introduction. A Reference Mani- heim, Daskalakis, and Young’s book Stalking Detroit
concluded. Kongjian Yu Turenscape’s Houtan Park is instead a project of land reclamation festo,” in The Landscape Urbanism Reader (New York: showed how landscape was replacing architecture as
in the fast growing city of Shanghai. The project designs an infrastructural landscape Princeton Architectural Press, 2006). The following the basic building block for contemporary urbanism.
that beautifully combines constructed wetlands, agricultural fields, public gardens, and year, Waldheim organized the first Landscape Urbanism See Chapter 4.2.
promenades on the site of a neglected brownfield, at the same time cleaning the water Exhibition and Conference, presenting landscape in the 9
. Charles Waldheim, “Landscape as Urbanism,” in The
context of contemporary urban development and public Landscape Urbanism Reader.
of the river it faces.
works, as opposed to being defined as an art historical 10
. The Municipality of Lecce commissioned the University
Rahul Mehrotra Architects’ Hatigaon Projects expands the boundaries of ecologically genre, an environmental science, or an applied art (The of Genoa to undertake the consulting research project
informed planning, designing a new home for one hundred elephants and their mahouts Landscape Urbanism Exhibition, by Charles Waldheim, for the new urban plan of the city of Lecce in 2009. The
(keepers). Modifying the topography of an almost desert landscape, RMA designs a at Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York, Sept. research project is coordinated by Mosè Ricci with Jean-
constructed natural environment rich in water and vegetation, reinforcing the relation- 27 - Oct. 18, 1997). nette Sordi, Emanuele Sommariva, Federica Alcozer, Luca
ship between humans and animals. Kate Orff SCAPE’s Oyster-tecture project designs a
5
. Manuel Gausa et al. eds, The Metapolis Dictionary of Mazzari, Sara Favargiotti and with the Department of
Advanced Architecture (Barcelona: Actar, 2003); Winy Ecology of the University of Salento. An interdisciplinary
new ecological system to prevent the effects of climate changes. As part of an exhibition
Maas and MVRDV, Metacity-Datatown (Rotterdam: 010, group coordinated by Luigi Maniglio, Director of the
held at MoMA in 2012, Scape’s vision proposes oysters’ implantation as a new economic 1996); Richard Burdett and Deyan Sudjic, The Endless Planning Department of the Municipality of Lecce, is
and social activity, also reducing the risks connected to rising sea levels. OPSYS/Pierre City: the Urban Age Project (London: Phaidon, 2007); currently working on the actualization of the Urban Plan.
Bélanger, with Hana Disch and Stephan Hausheer, designed a dense forest in place of the Francesco Indovina, La Città Diffusa [the diffuse city]