ECOLOGICABE

JEANNETTE
JEANNETTE
SORDI

SORDI
DESIGNLAN
BEYOND URBANISM
YOND
DS LANDSC
URBA
URBANISME
NISM
ECOLOGICA
CHARLES WALDHEIM

JEANNETTE
MOHSEN MOSTAFAVI

SORDI
JAMES CORNER

DESIGNLAN
STAN ALLEN

BEYOND URBANISM
SANFORD KWINTER
CIRO NAJLE
EVA CASTRO
ALFREDO RAMIREZ

DS LANDSC
CHRIS REED
PIERRE BÉLANGER
ALAN BERGER
KELLY SHANNON
MANUEL GAUSA
MOSÈ RICCI

URBANISME
PROJECTS
STOSS/MVRDV/
FIELD OPERATIONS/MVVA
WEST 8/SWA/GROUNDLAB/
TURENSCAPE/ RMA/
SCAPE/OPSYS
MADE IN ITALY euro 19
 Jeannette Sordi

BEYOND
URBANISM
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
Charles Waldheim, Chair of the Land- urbanism continues the line of thinking first proposed through landscape urbanism,
scape Architecture Department of the
Harvard Graduate School of Design,
From Landscape to Ecology and reanimates it with renewed critical and cultural potential.
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.
5
ence, and others, were published in Mohsen Mostafavi . 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. 10
works, as opposed to being defined as an art historical . 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]
In the last fifteen years, the theories and projects of land-
scape urbanism and ecological urbanism have 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 has been considered the most appropriate
medium in which to establish new relationships with urban
and social contexts: 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 urban-

ization. The
“Epic” traces the intellec-
tual history of landscape urbanism
from its origins, in the late 1980s, to
its new recommitment as ecological
urbanism. The narrative aims to clarify
the different theoretical and disciplinary
positions, as well as the social and cultural
frameworks that led to landscape urbanism’s
development and success. The following five
chapters explore the main cultural and aca-
demic contexts, in order to understand how
the interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary,
fields of landscape and ecological urbanism
have emerged through the years.

epic
 Epic From landscape to ecological urbanism

BERKELEY
COLORADO

RICE
detroit.1990s
ILLINOIS
LANDSCAPE URBANISM PROGRAM
MICHIGAN

bélanger TORONTO
LANDSCAPE URBANISM PROGRAM
berger CORNELL

waldheim penn.1980s penn.1990s

corner PENN
reed
PRINCETON
harvard.2010s GSD

MIT
allen columbia.1990s
kwinter COLUMBIA
najle

mostafavi AA LANDSCAPE URBANISM PROGRAM AA

BUENOS AIRES

.85 .86 .87 .88 .89 .90 .91 .92 .93 .94 .95 .96 .97 .98 .99 .00 .01 .02 .03 .04 .05 .06 .07 .08 .09 .10 .11 .12 .13 .14
.87 KOOLHAAS, R., 1987, “Atlanta,” (reprinted in S,M,L,XL)

LEATHERBARROW, D., 1988. "Review of Thought and Place. "Journal of Architectural Education
.88

VESELY, D., 1988 "On the Relevance of Phenomenology."Form, Being, Absence: Pratt Journal of Architecture. No.2
.89
.90

CORNER, J., 1990, “A Discourse on Theory I,” Landscape Journal, 9.2

.91

CORNER, J., 1991, “A Discourse on Theory II” Landscape Journal, 10.2

KWINTER, S., KOOLHAAS, R., 1992, “The reinvention of Geometry”, Assemblage 18

.92

KWINTER, S., 1992, “Landscapes of Change: Boccioni’s Stati d’Animo as General Theory of Models” Assemblage 19

DELEUZE, G., 1993, Leibniz and the Baroque

.93

AA.VV., 1993, Folding in Architecture, Architecture Design 63, 3/4

LYNN, G., 2003, “Architectural Curvilinearity: the folded, the pliant and the supple”, Architectural Design 63, n. 3/4
.94

TSCHUMI, B., 1994, Event-Cities (Praxis)

KOOLHAAS, R., 1995, “Whatever happened to urbanism?”. S, M, L, XL CORNER, CONSTRUCTING LANDSCAPE EXHIBITION, PENN DESIGN
KWINTER, S.,1995, “Politics and Pastoralism” Assemblage 27
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FRAMPTON, K., 1995, “Toward an Urban Landscape”, Columbia Documents

CORNER, J. , MACLEAN, A., 1996, Taking Measures Across The American Landscape
KWINTER, S.,1996, “Virtual City, or the waring and vaning of the world”, Assemblage, 29 CORNER, BALFOUR, THE RECOVERY OF LANDSCAPE EXHIBITION, LONDON AA
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KWINTER, S.,1996, “Flying the bullet or when did the future begin?,” Koolhaas, ed., Conversations with Students
PONTE, A., 1996 “The house of light and entropy,” Assemblage 30

ALLEN, S., 1997, “From object to field”, Architectural Design vol.67 no.5/6
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‘ rtificial ecologies: the work of MVRDV’, El Croquis no.4 (86)
CORNER, J., 1997. “Ecology and landscape as agents of creativity”. In Ecological Design and Planning
WALDHEIM, THE LANDSCAPE URBANISM EXHIBITION, CHICAGO, NEW YORK, PHILADELPHIA
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ALLEN, S., 1999, Points+Lines

CORNER, J. (ed.), 1999, Recovering Landscape : Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture
.99

CORNER, J., 1999, “The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique, and Invention” in COSGROVE, D., (ed), Mappings
FRAMPTON, K., 1999, Megaform as Urban Landscape
EASTERLING, K., 1999, Organizational Space: Landscapes, Highway, and Houses in America
.00

LERUP, L., 2000, After the City

CZERNIAK, J., ed., 2001, CASE. Downsview Park Toronto
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MATHUR, A., DA CUNHA, D., 2001, Mississippi Floods. Designing a Shifting Landscape
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RAXWORTHY, J., and BLOOD, J. (eds.), P. CONNOLY, R. WELLER et al, 2004, The Mesh Book: Landscape/Infrastructure
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WALDHEIM, C., 2006, The Landscape Urbanism Reader
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CZERNIAK, J., HARGREAVES, G., CORNER, J., 2007, Large Parks

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SHANNON, K., SMETS, M., 2010, The Landscape of Contemporary Infrastructure
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.14

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LISTER, N.M., REED, C., 2014, Projecting Ecologies
20 jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
1 penn.1980s
landscape as mechanism
1.1. INFLUENCES COMING FROM EUROPE:
TOWNSCAPE, PROGETTO URBANO, LANDSCAPE HISTORY
AND PHENOMENOLOGY (1960S-1980S)
According to Mohsen Mostafavi, the origins of the use of landscape for studying and
developing urban projects can be traced back to the end of the sixteenth century, to the
Counter-Reformation Age and pontificate of Sixtus V.1 Before reaching the papal throne,
Cardinal Felice Peretti di Montalto – his name before becoming Pope – was pushed by
his predecessor and political enemy Gregory XIII (1572-85) into forced retirement on his
estate on the Esquiline. There he spent almost five years of retirement enlarging and
renovating his property, and experimenting with spatial configurations in the garden
surrounding the villa, likely informed by his father’s activity as a gardener. When he
became Pope in 1585, under the name of Sixtus V, he launched one of the most relevant
quinquennia of urban transformations in the history of Rome and could be considered
the first modern town planner. Prominent authors such as Sigfried Giedion, Paolo
Portoghesi and Giulio Carlo Argan wrote on the role of Sixtus V in defining modern
Rome2 and of the Baroque vision of the world in anticipating Enlightenment and the
modern age, both in history and art and architecture. 3 What Mostafavi was unraveling
was the capability of open space to structure the built environment, also over time.
The transformations that Sixtus V realized during his pontificate (1585-1590) had
already been in gestation, studied and experimented in the Cardinal’s garden. Thus,
landscape could be seen as a “mechanism,” a model with which to experiment and
develop urban processes.4
This is what the present Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) was
researching when he moved, in the late 1980s, from the Architectural Association in
London (AA) to the Pennsylvania University Design School in Philadelphia (Penn). The
impact of the architectural historians and critics who moved to Penn is quite relevant
for the development of the theories of landscape urbanism, especially the influence of
Joseph Rykwert, Dalibor Vesely and David Leatherbarrow, all of them moving to Penn
from England at the end of the 1980s. They taught architecture and urban design semi-
nars, bringing European approaches and theories to a university where the Landscape
Architecture and Regional Planning program, founded by Ian McHarg in 1956, was the
most advanced in the country. The Chair of the Landscape Architecture Department
at the time was Anne Whiston Spirn, a graduate student of McHarg in the early 1970s
who had worked in McHarg’s office from 1973 to 1977. Her book, The Granite Garden 5
21
was one of the first books to argue for a synthesis of architecture, landscape and the
city. As Waldheim recalls, “This group of people came from England to the Architec-
ture and Landscape Architecture departments at the University of Pennsylvania and
something happened there.” 6
Charles Waldheim, a Penn graduate student at the time, was attending Mostafavi’s
class and James Corner, a young assistant there, was participating in the seminars.
The interrelationship between landscape, architecture and urbanism was “something
in the air” at that time, and Penn was the right place to develop it. 7 Thus, Penn is
where the “origin” of landscape urbanism will be placed, and its “intellectual history”
traced. This essay starts from those who then originated, developed and took part in
this interdisciplinary project, trying to understand what drove their research towards
interdisciplinary fields. There are three main issues that came together at that time: a
renewed attention to urban space, phenomenology, and design in reaction to modern
technocratic planning; the recognition of the limits of architecture and the limitless
experimentation advanced by avant-garde architects and thinkers; the perspective of
landscape architecture and the set of tools offered by the discipline.
The origins of landscape urbanism, according to Waldheim, can be traced to
postmodern critiques of modern architecture and planning that had been incapable
of producing a meaningful and livable public realm or dialogue with history. 8 In the
1970s and 1980s, all over Europe, the arguments against modern planning were prom-
inent. Both the architecture and planning professions were criticized for their focus on
individual needs and the efficiency of movement and development, leaving no place for
public space and collective life.9 In particular, in England after World War II, various
new towns had been built under the New Towns Acts, approved from 1946 onward in
order to relieve housing congestion in London. 10 The biggest of these New Towns was
the famous Milton Keynes, designated in 1967. 11 Flexibility, personal freedom, and the
picturesque were the common elements for Milton Keynes’ architecture, a city planned
as an “organized American suburb:” private, car-based, efficient, and conflict-free. 12 This
empty and inoffensive image was soon compared to a desert of quantitative reasoning,
an anaesthetized landscape cleansed of memory and consciousness.13
Alternatives to this image – and precedents to landscape urbanism – may be found
in the main critiques of modern planning that arose in the 1960s in the United States,
England and continental Europe. Against progressive planning or a purely aesthetic
approach, architects like Gordon Cullen in England and Kevin Lynch in North America
were investigating a middle way, in which the aesthetic of urban space was accompa-
nied by its perception,14 its livability and its cultural identity.
Kevin Lynch, Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1949, based
his research on empirical research in the city, proceeding from human perception to
understanding the sense of place. He also explored the role that natural features play in
enhancing the identity, legibility, coherence, and immediacy of urban form from the scale
of the street to that of the region.15 In England, Gordon Cullen’s writings and drawings
on Townscape,16 a sort of “picturesque” in the open space of the city, became particularly
influential. Cullen’s pictures did not just insist on the role of open space in structuring the
built environment, they also stressed the role of the inhabitants in making it become a
livable place. In the same manner, landscape assumed a social value because it involved
22 jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
participation from multiple actors: a political will to order it, a designer to shape it, but
also the people who could benefit from it. Townscape also focused on an in-between
scale, which was neither the architectural object nor the urban plan.
Analogue issues found a parallel in the Italian debate on progetto urbano17 that soon
became the most credible, and followed, counter-argument to modern architecture.18
Between the 1960s and 1970s, a group of Italian architects, most notably Giuseppe
Samonà, Carlo Aymonino, Aldo Rossi, Vittorio Gregotti, Giancarlo de Carlo, and Manfredo
Tafuri, originated a series of writings and proposals that questioned the role of archi-
tecture, as well as the professional and cultural responsibility of the architect. Although
they had different perspectives and agendas, some common questions emerged, like
the importance given to the relationship between architecture and urban planning,
and the role this relationship could play in mediating and directing capitalist forces and
urban development. The responses to this were multiple and ranged from relegating
architecture to the realm of utopia (Tafuri) to finding a beneficial relationship with urban
morphology (Samonà, Aymonino), history (Rossi), geography (Gregotti), environment,
and society (De Carlo).19 All of them, except perhaps for Tafuri, who mainly worked as a
historian and theorist, placed their activity in a realm between architecture and urbanism,
investigating the relationship between the two and especially the role of architecture as
a structural element within a city that was rapidly expanding territorially. In-between
spaces, infrastructural elements, and multiscalar approaches began to be explored.20
This debate found its way to the States, and in particular to Penn, thanks to Joseph
Rykwert, whose own research directly influenced the discourse.21 The research of Joseph
Rykwert, architecture historian and professor of Mohsen Mostafavi, was fundamentally
concerned with the origin of architectural ideas and with our sense of “place,” with an
implicit and timely critique of postwar New Town developments. The Idea of a Town,
The Anthropology of Urban Form in Rome,22 first published in 1963 as a special issue
of the Dutch review Forum, broke new ground in understanding the ancient town as
a product of sacred and symbolic rituals rather than accepting the archaeologists’
viewpoint of the ancient city as an outcome of practical settlement needs. Rykwert – as
its editor Aldo van Eyck recalled - was indeed suggesting that “the city was not just a
rational solution to the problems of production, marketing, circulation and hygiene-or
an automatic response to the pressure of certain physical and market forces - but that
it also had to enshrine the hopes and fears of its citizens.” 23 Against mechanic/organic
models and zoning recommendations, efficiency and pre-fabrication, Rykwert explored
the possibility of reading the ancient “pattern” that any city had to offer, and to start
from there to structure the urban experience. 24
In On Adam’s House in Paradise: The Idea of the Primitive Hut in Architectural
History, first published in 1972, Rykwert examined the persistent idea that architecture
could return to a lost state of accord with nature, an accord symbolized by the fabled
idea that Adam had built a house in Eden. Both books became canonical. 25 Against
the modern vision of the twentieth century city, where architecture was considered
an isolated object and market forces ruled, Rykwert offered a nonrational perspective,
based on the history of ideas, myths, and urban experiences. He also investigated the
meaning that the city could get from its context, and the role that open space, and
especially “in-between” spaces, could play within it. This is an issue that Rykwert,
23
an assiduous writer in journals such as Domus and Casabella, shared with the Italian
architects and especially with Vittorio Gregotti, author of Il Territorio dell’Architettura26
and Rykwert’s friend and colleague. 27
Never translated into English, Gregotti’s Il Territorio dell’Architettura was first
published in 1966 (the same year as L’Architettura della Città by Aldo Rossi) and investi-
gated the role of architecture at three levels of intervention: the geographical, relating to
the territory, the topographical, relating to the site or the context, and finally the object,
which is the building. While not opposing the neo-rationalist project of reconstructing
the neoclassical European city along traditional, typological lines as hypothesized
by Aldo Rossi, Leon Krier and others, Gregotti was more intent on responding to the
challenge of the megalopolis at a regional scale – at a scale that was closer to that of Le
Corbusier’s Plan Obus, which he recognized as a precedent. Kenneth Frampton would
build on Gregotti’s theories and project when defining his concept of megaform, “the
form giving potential of certain kinds of horizontal urban fabric capable of affecting
some kind of topographic transformation in the megalopolitan landscape.” 28
Influenced by the theories of phenomenologists Enzo Paci and Maurice Merleau-
Ponty, as well as anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss and geographer Pierre George,
Gregotti investigated the geographical and infrastructural qualities of architecture,
as well as the aesthetic perception of landscape. 29 He accused modern architecture of
having neglected the real relation between city and nature; a relation that had instead
been part of the history of architecture since the end of the sixteenth century. 30 In
the second chapter of Il Territorio dell’Architettura, entitled “La Forma del Territorio”
(“the form of the territory”), Gregotti reassembled the roles and values that landscape
(paesaggio) had assumed through the centuries. As he recalled, the idea of landscape
as a material for architecture was found at the end of the sixteenth century and first
used to structure the Baroque city. Nature was seen as an element in dialectic relation
to buildings, an element that could be used in an operational way. In the second half
of the eighteenth century, the role of landscape became mainly aesthetic; still, nature
could help architecture in defining the character of a place, its genius loci. Finally, in
the industrial city, and here Gregotti refers to Mumford, 31 nature was absorbed by the
built environment but still could offer a possibility of regeneration – in public parks –
and an ideal escape from it, as garden-cities suggested. 32
Thus, in opposition to modernist planning, and from a structuralist and phenom-
enological perspective, 33 Gregotti saw in landscape architecture the possibility of
building a “voluntary geography,” a “meaningful image” of the built environment
and a “material” place to be experienced. 34 As he posed it, “the question for formally
structuring the anthropogeographic landscape requires a review of the concept of
nature, moving from the values of the modern tradition towards a concept of nature
both as a social value to be redistributed and a value that represents construction in
terms of growth and process.” 35 Gregotti individuated three main roles that landscape
could play in urban and architectural culture: first, the conservation and restoration of
valuable landscapes, namely the normative role, which is the one that became prevalent
in Italian planning disciplines; second, the recovery of the picturesque, meaning with it
a fragmentary approach capable of building relationships among objects as suggested
by the English tradition of townscape, namely by Kenneth Brown and Gordon Cullen;
24 jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
lastly, the American tradition that was addressing the new dimension of the regional
city, as theorized by Mumford and designed by Hilberseimer in his landscape plan for
the Great Lakes, the “New Regional Pattern.” 36
The questions that Il Territorio dell’Architettura posed – especially the investiga-
tion of disciplinary boundaries, studying the relationship between architecture and
the territory of the city, between the landscape and the region, and architecture as
something that must be read as a text (in early semiotic terms) – are the result of a
diffuse skepticism about the capability of the project alone to change reality. As Eco
underlines, Gregotti’s book came just before 1968’s revolutions and Tafuri’s book
Progetto e Utopia. 37 But they were also a symptom of the “intellectual style” (in Eco’s
words) that surrounded phenomenologist philosopher Enzo Paci in Milan in the 1950s.38
The disasters following World War II made it impossible to continue to believe in the
supremacy of reason: all over Europe, phenomenology had a profound impact on the
theory of architecture and, conversely, philosophers found in architecture the medium
to give shape to their thoughts. 39 As argued by Jorge Otero Pailos, the architectural
trajectory of phenomenology reached its peak during the 1970s. In the context of a
renewed interest in scholarly rigor and accountability, architects devised a “phenome-
nological approach” to architecture, a form of intellectualism premised on claims about
the primacy and universality of corporeal experience that relegated the intellect to a
secondary status in the process of understanding reality. 40
In Italy, this relationship between phenomenology and architecture was repre-
sented by Enzo Paci and Ernesto Nathan Rogers. Paci offered the possibility of a moral
architectural practice, suggesting architects suspend abstract scientific prejudice and
fully experience the “life-world” as “the living flux of experience.” 41 The life-world (il
mondo della vita) found its “translation” into Rogers’ dialogue with history as the only
element capable of making sense of places and meanings in architecture. The group that
surrounded Rogers at Casabella’s editions, which included Vittorio Gregotti, Aldo Rossi,
and Giancarlo de Carlo, continued his legacy of investigating the relationship between
architecture and the preexisting historical context. 42 In the UK, and in particular at
the Architectural Association where Mohsen Mostafavi was teaching urban design
studios, this relationship between mind, body, and place was explored through the
phenomenological method and found its real manifestation in urban design and in the
study of landscape history. In fact, while landscape architecture could not be defined
as a practice in England, 43 the study of landscape history, the picturesque and the
phenomenology of landscape were instead very relevant there.
Phenomenology had a remarkable impact on Moshen Mostafavi’s work as well, 44
and especially the writings on time, narrative, identity and history by Paul Ricoeur,
the French phenomenology and hermeneutics philosopher. As Waldheim remembers,
“Mostafavi would often talk about the constructive imagination.” 45 Likewise James
Corner, influenced by the teaching of Dalibor Vesely and David Leatherbarrow, would
later find in phenomenology and hermeneutics a background and method for land-
scape architecture theory. 46 Dalibor Vesely, an architect and critic responsible for
having diffused phenomenology and hermeneutics into the field of architecture, was
Mostafavi’s professor at the universities of Essex and Cambridge, and he also moved
to Penn at the same time as him, Rykwert and Leatherbarrow. What Vesely and other
25
phenomenologists were criticizing in science was its consideration of just one aspect
of reality, which was not enough for architecture. Indeed, for phenomenologists, the
problem with modern scientific scholarship was that, in order to be objective, it had to
eliminate the influence of the interpreter, and his conception of time, on understanding.47
Phenomenology experimented with a rational method to address non-rational issues,48
involving questions of perception and relations.
Paul Ricoeur, 49 mentioned previously for his influence on Mostafavi’s work, deeply
investigated the relation between time, place and circumstances, as well as the rela-
tion between history and narrative. According to Ricoeur, the historical present is the
moment framed by the agent’s space of experience and horizon of expectation; to give
expression to this complex historical present, one must use a kind of discourse capable
of articulating both strings of actions and events and their human contexts. The kind
of discourse that can do this is narrative. Thus, historical time becomes human time
to the extent that it is articulated through a narrative mode, and narrative attains its
full significance when it becomes a condition of temporal existence. 50 The constitutive
features of any narrative form the basis for Ricoeur to hold that personal identity always
involves a narrative identity. First, narratives draw together disparate and somehow
discordant elements into the concordant unity of a plot that has a temporal span. 51
Second, the elements and episodes that a narrative unites involve contingencies; all
of them could have been different or even nonexistent. Nonetheless, as emplotted,
these elements take on the guise of necessity or at least of likelihood because they are
followable. Taken by itself, an element of a story is of interest only if it is surprising,
but when it is integrated into a plot it appears as a quasi-necessity. Third, narratives
are made up not only of actions and events but also of characters or personages.
From this brief excursus on Ricoeur’s theory of narrative, there are two main aspects
suggested by phenomenology that led architects toward landscape. First, it claimed a
renewed interest in perception, sensorial feelings and experience; it was accompanied
by the relevance of the subject and the collectivity, as opposed to the objective and
individuality, as expressed by memory and history. Landscape could indeed be inter-
preted as the medium to feel reality through the body and its sensations, which were
seen as being as important as the mind for experiencing the world. This goes back to
Gordon Cullen’s townscape design, but also finds precedents in landscape literature.
To use the words and feelings of Frederick Law Olmsted – the first “contemporary”
landscape architect52 – in the contemplation of landscape the mind was “occupied
without purpose,” producing an enjoyment of the moment, an escape from stresses of the
present and worries about the future; it exercised and refreshed both mind and body. 53
Even more interesting is the second aspect. History, as Ricoeur put it, is articulated
through a narrative mode that attains its full significance when it is related to time.
Eventually it is the plot that creates relationships among facts, making them become
historical. In terms of architecture and spatial organization, it suggested the possibility
of working on a narrative – the development of facts in time – to give meaning to single
interventions and the whole urban landscape.
Ricoeur’s concepts of time, narrative, and emplotment were very influential in
Mohsen Mostafavi’s work in the 1980s. When he moved to the Pennsylvania Univer-
sity School of Design, in Philadelphia, he taught some design studios that explored
26 jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
the question of the urban plot. As he recalls, “Plot” stood for the site, the disposition
of urban elements, but also for the structure of the novel - in this case the project. 54
The objective of the studios was to explore the relationship between fact and fiction
and the potential of fantasia, an Italian word that can be translated as “constructed
imagination.” 55 The question of the imaginary would be recurrent in his writings and
would also be taken up by James Corner. 56 In fact, in the plot, there was also an implicit
methodology: it implied a structure that could be developed over time. What there
was in the aforementioned example of Cardinal Montalto’s garden in Rome was the
capability of open space to structure the built environment, also over time. Landscape
could thus be seen as a “mechanism,” a model with which to experiment and develop
processes. On the one hand, the Italian landscape expressed a relation between the
symbolic conception of the park and the mechanism of the city. Somehow, what was
conceived in the gardens of the villas was reflected in the organization of the urban
fabric: the axial realization of roads, the perspectives and the connections. In landscape
history, Mostafavi could find examples of methods to develop and deal with process. 57
On the other hand, landscape architecture, especially as it was taught at Penn, could
offer the possibility of taking some tools and methodologies, such as the overlapping
of layers and the natural development over time, and apply them to urbanism. In this
sense, Mostafavi conceived landscape urbanism as something between landscape
and urbanization, being both a transposition of techniques from one discipline to the
other and a new methodology that involved multiple scales and change over time. 58
As he put it in Landscape Urbanism: A Manual for the Machinic Landscape, “The
modern city […] emphasizes regularity more than fantasy and imagination, and order
rather than tumult. And perhaps this is because there was yet another aspect of the
landscape tradition that had remained unexplored: its temporal characteristics. The
temporality of landscapes renders them forever incomplete, and this incompletion can
be seen as an antidote to the implicit finitude of zoning. […] The fact that urbanism
relies as much on the construction of surfaces and voids as it does on the construction
of buildings seems to make the literal use of landscape as a material device a neces-
sity. But at the same time, the fact that landscape architecture contains an explicit
recognition of the changing nature of the land through time allows the possibility of a
productive relationship on a metonymic register to an urbanism whose conception of
time has generally become more implicit and linear.” 59
Therefore, according to Mostafavi, landscape offered a new way between architecture
and planning, overtaking them both, rejecting rationalism and formalism and encour-
aging citizens’ participation instead. Landscape urbanists, like landscape architects,
would start from the given and speculate on the spatialities of everyday experience
in order to avoid the “all-too-common assignation of meaning to forms.” 60 As Corner
also underlined, landscape, as a human-made projection, is a cultural schema open to
interpretation and transformation. Referring to hermeneutics, he defined landscape as
an open text, a plotting, that is as much political and strategic as it is relational and
physical. 61 The landscape architect as plotter is therefore simultaneously critic, geog-
rapher, communicator, and maker, digging to uncover unspoken and latent possibilities
in the lived landscape. As he put it, “To plot, to map, to dig, to set,” are fundamental
traditions of landscape architecture. 62
27
1.2. POSTMODERN (ECLECTIC) EXPERIMENTS IN
ARCHITECTURE: SITUATIONISTS AND RADICALS (1950S-1980S)
In parallel to the aforementioned discourses on townscape and progetto urbano, a
few architects and artists had an even more relevant impact on what would become
landscape urbanism. The focus here is on “eclectic” suggestions, visions, and experi-
mentations that – closer to art than to planning – altogether questioned and enlarged
spatial design. The work of architects and artists such as Alison and Peter Smithson,
Constant Nieuwenhuis, Superstudio, and Archizoom, had a remarkable impact on the
development of landscape urbanism. 63 Long before Bernard Tschumi and Rem Kool-
haas’s proposals for Parc de la Villette (1982), which are by many considered to be the
first examples of landscape urbanism, these architects were blurring the boundaries
between disciplines, experimenting with a hybrid and complex understanding of the
urban realm.
Postwar architects, faced with the destruction of much of Europe, the transformation
of the third world according to rational and industrial principles, and the ever-grander
dreams of the United States, articulated a vision of architecture dissolving into a form
of planning. Indeed, if on the one hand planning was criticized for its lack of imagina-
tion and references to historical and collective values, on the other hand architecture
could also no longer be only the making of isolated objects, as members of CIAM had
decreed in the early 1930s.64 Architecture should develop a broader perspective, and
deal with urban questions and land use. The rediscovery of major thinkers, including
Martin Heidegger, Guy Debord, and Henri Lefebvre, also played a part, especially
for what would later become the Situationist movement. 65 These writers had quite
different attitudes on the nature of land and how it should be converted by human
constructions, but central to their thinking was the notion that the land should not be
accepted as a given.
In comparison to the Derridean and Heideggerian (abstract and textual) approach to
“unfolding” the land, that will later be taken as a reference by postmodern architecture
and deconstructivism, 66 the writings of Guy Debord and Henri Lefebvre indicated a
path more rooted in the artifacts of human civilization. Guy Debord was the ringleader
of the Situationist International, a group of avant-garde artists and left-wing political
extremists that he founded in 1957. 67 His main idea was that human landscape was not
only the field out of which new structures could appear, but also a collage of memories
and experiences that needed only to be articulated or named in order to generate new
forms. This could be experienced through the dérive – a rapid wandering through the
streets of Paris in an unplanned fashion, but with a playful and constructive behavior
and an awareness of psychogeographical effects. 68 Debord brought the city to life with
his uncovering of forgotten corners and his collage-like assembly of monuments that
in reality were spaced far apart. The resulting map reflected subjective desires and
perceptions rather than a synoptic totality of the city’s fabric. It was an act of naming
that rediscovered the city’s inherent properties and gave significance to the very
contour lines of daily existence.
28 jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
The immediate post-war period of reconstruction and the consequent economic
expansion had alarmed Debord, but also Lefebvre, whose theories deeply influenced
the Situationists’ experimentations, and especially Constant’s.69 Henri Lefebvre, from
his first writings on urbanism,70 continuing in such texts as Introduction à la Modernité
(1962), Le Droit à la Ville (1968), Du Rural à l’Urbain (1970), and culminating with La
Production de l’Éspace (1974), revealed an increasingly precise and critical analysis of
capitalist planning as an historically specific form of production of space integral to
the society of programmed consumption. As he claimed, under a capitalist system,
play, religion or sexuality were replaced by leisure, material commodities and mere
genitality. In the urban realm, authenticity was replaced by planning. Planning could
therefore produce only an abstract space where everyday life was programmed by
planned commodity consumption. 71 This production of abstract space was planned on
a planetary scale, and the planning process itself was considered to be nothing but a
negative appropriation of space under the reign of private property.72
As a response, Situationist projects proposed a series of works that increased public
consciousness and promoted direct action and systematic participation in everyday
life. They offered alternative views to the existing landscape as a labyrinth of endless
choices, each one leading to another cluster of possible experiences. 73 Considered by
Lefebvre as the leading figure behind what has been labeled Situationist architecture,74
Constant Nieuwenhuis allied himself with the Situationist International, funded by
Guy Debord in 1957, believing in the necessity of play and discovery as a central orga-
nizing principle in modern life. Indeed, if it was true that technology could set humans
free, Constant argued, one should not reproduce its enabling principles. 75 If work was
becoming more and more rational and taking up less and less time, free time and space
could be used to wander without limit, exploring the land and the body. New Babylon
was assembled from paintings, drawings and models over the course of three decades,
and proposed a utopian community given over to pleasure. 76
For Lefebvre, the project for New Babylon represented – as an oeuvre in its own
right and a concrete not a futurist utopia – his principles of recovery and the possibility
of another way of planning, another way of being. As a reaction to the prohibitions and
sterility of the planned New Towns, and beyond a nostalgic longing for ancient towns,
Constant’s proposal and aesthetic represented a critical reappropriation of what were
the best ideas of modernism as technological liberation.77 New Babylon’s plastic models
and neo-expressionist paintings depicted a completely new ground plane, an artificial
landscape that would hover over the earth while keeping its inhabitants protected
from sun and rain. The essential contradiction inherent in his work was the desire
to make an open structure and the vision of a consistently new nature. This formal
tension mirrored contrasting social tendencies toward democratic openness, on the
one hand, and cohesive social structures on the other. Projects thus veered between
the amalgamation of functions into constructions large and grand enough to reflect
the natural setting, and carpets of intersecting rectangles that imitated and intensified
the agricultural purpose of the landscape.78
These postwar architects believed in the natural development of a new kind of
man-made nature, which after World War II was taken to much further extremes by
the members of Team X – the group who organized the tenth and last CIAM congress
29
in 1956 and who went on to succeed CIAM.79 Alison and Peter Smithson, leaders of the
Team X group, led the way with such projects as Golden Lane Housing in 1952, which
assembled housing blocks into sinuous horizontal lines stacked on top of each other
while tracing existing footpaths.80 Their building integrated structure, services, and
functions to produce continuous carpets of constructions, that Alison Smithson later
named “mat-buildings.” Mat-buildings were the epitome of the anonymous collective,
where individuals gained new freedom of action through a new and shuffled order
based on interconnection and patterns of association, which allowed for growth,
diminution, and change. 81
Stan Allen, in his article “Mat Urbanism: the Thick 2D” would underline how the
mat building was a clear response to a fundamental question of urbanism, namely “how
to give space to the active unfolding of urban life without abrogating the architect’s
responsibility to provide some form of order.” 82 Indeed, Smithson highlighted the fact
that the architect could design the system but could not expect to control all individual
forms. Questions of style or appearance were thus avoided in spite of an emphasis on
organization and activities. Yet, in the case of radically dispersed urban contexts, such
as North American cities for instance, architecture might be incapable of mediating
these transitions. For this reason, Stan Allen coined the term “mat urbanism,” to find
some new uses for these old strategies. As he claimed, mat urbanism would connect
to “recent tendencies in landscape architecture, where the “thick 2D” of the forest,
field, or meadow creates mat-like effects of connectivity and emergence.” 83 Effects that
eventually make landscape emerge as a model for urbanism.
However, probably the most acknowledged contribution to landscape urbanism is
credited to the work of Italian radical architects’ groups Archizoom and Superstudio, both
for the geographical scale of the project and the dissolution of architecture embedded in
their critique (or exaltation) of capitalism. In 1966, the same year in which Aldo Rossi’s
The Architecture of the City84 and Vittorio Gregotti’s Il Territorio dell’Architettura85 were
published in Italy, another major event appeared on the Italian scene: Archizoom and
Superstudio’s exhibition Superarchitettura. 86
At that time, it became quite clear to many that territorial organization was increas-
ingly driven by economic and political planning and that both architecture and urban
planning were losing their autonomy. 87 Rossi and Gregotti, although in different ways,
revisited architecture as the medium capable of giving meaning to public space, by
recalling the memory of the city (Rossi) or controlling the geographical scale (Gregotti).88
Archizoom and Superstudio’s reaction was radical. They both criticized architecture,
for its general incapability (Superstudio) and its irrelevance (Archizoom). 89
In their most famous and extreme project, Continuous Monument,90 Superstudio
used the grid and the grid structure to create an overcoat that would make the totality
of the Earth habitable. In the graphics that followed their utopian project, one can see
the spatial formation that is constituted by a rectilinear grid, literally in every envi-
ronment found on the planet. The grid was seen as the ultimate provider of the needs
that people have; in their drawings the grid makes no distinction between natural and
artificial but instead crosses both cities and native ground.
Yet even more influential has been the work of Andrea Branzi, and the projects
undertaken with his group Archizoom. No-Stop City, conceived in 1970 and exhibited
30 jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
at MoMA in New York in 1972,91 represented the group’s first attempt at a non-figura-
tive architecture, an architecture that surpassed its constructing limits. They showed
architecture in exclusively quantitative terms, eliminating the qualitative question from
the debate on the contemporary city.92 At a time when automobiles and supermarkets,
rather than buildings and monuments, were defining spatial distribution (their own
internal space was not defined by formal issues but by technological needs, such air
conditioning and artificial light), Archizoom (ironically) highlighted the technical and
artificial reality of the urban construct. As Charles Waldheim has highlighted, in proj-
ects such as No-Stop City Archizoom envisioned an urbanism of continuous mobility,
fluidity and flux.93 They defined the city as a territory of exchange and information, and
anticipated the focus on infrastructure and ecology as non-figurative drivers of urban
form. A generation of contemporary urbanists — ranging from Stan Allen and James
Corner to Alex Wall to Alejandro Zaera-Polo — has drawn from Branzi’s intellectual
commitments.94
Charles Waldheim also explicitly referred to Branzi’s later project of Agronica
(1993-94) claiming that, together with Ludwig Hilberseimer’s New Regional Pattern
(1945-49), and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City (1934-35), it constitutes an early
example of agrarian urbanism.95 The three projects, produced decades apart by three
very different authors yet nevertheless informed by each other,96 proposed a profound
reconceptualization of the city — a radical decentralization and dissolution of the
urban figure into a productive landscape. The dissolution of figure into field rendered
the classical distinction between city and countryside irrelevant, replacing it with a
conflation of suburb and region — a suburbanized regionalism.97
Overcoming traditional European distinctions between city and countryside, Frank
Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City proposed a network of transportation and communication
infrastructures, with the Jeffersonian grid as its principal ordering system. Broadacre
was conceived as a model of democracy and individual freedom, with an implicit critique
of private ownership, conspicuous consumption, and the accumulation of wealth
associated with cities. Nevertheless, if on the one hand Broadacre was conceived as a
realistic utopia, a project to be realized, on the other hand it appeared to be the natural
consequence of a growing capitalist economy. As Wright claimed, America did not need
any help to build Broadacre City; it would be built by itself, spontaneously, following
technological innovation and changing behaviors.98
Analogously, modernist architect Ludwig Hilberseimer quickly abandoned the strict
and totalizing rationalism of projects such as Hochhausstadt (Highrise City) in favor of
projects that explored decentralization as a remedy for the ills of the industrial city.99
Exploring the relationship among transportation networks, settlement units, and the
regional landscape, Hilberseimer developed the New Regional Pattern in 1940, as a
strategy for low-density urbanization. As with Broadacre, the New Regional Pattern
unified an essentially horizontal, landscape-dominated suburban settlement. But
instead of deferring to the abstraction of the grid, Hilberseimer’s plan was informed by
the natural environment — by topography, hydrology, vegetation, and wind patterns.
It conflated infrastructural systems with built landscapes and used environmental
conditions to produce a radically reconceived type of North American settlement.100
A couple of decades after No-Stop City, Andrea Branzi returned to extended urban-
31
ization and found a precedent in Hilberseimer’s and Wright’s projects. He suggested
Agronica as model of weak urbanization, where any hierarchy, structure or sense of
dependency between landscape and the city was canceled out. Anticipating landscape
urbanism, Agronica surpassed the old conflict between city and countryside through an
innovative mediation. An ante litteram example of sustainable and ecological urbanism,
Agronica investigated the possibility of a weak form of planning, identifying territorial
devices that would allow the realization of more nuanced, intermediate and flexible
zoning. Indeed, according to Branzi, a correspondence between construction technolo-
gies and urban form and use no longer existed. In Agronica, the function of places did
not correspond to visible stylistic codes (home, office, factory) but instead to invisible
softwares that specialize activities.101 These elements along with agriculture – seen
as an enzymatic, horizontal, systemic, changing, and inexpressive territory – created
a semi-urbanized and semi-agricultural territory where temporary service structures
were settled in a productive agricultural territory.102
As Waldheim noticed, not coincidentally, Wright, Hilberseimer, and Branzi each
pursued agricultural urbanism as part of critical positions that engaged economic
inequality, social justice, and environmental health, contributing an important legacy
for landscape urbanism.103 They also illustrated the city as a continuous system of rela-
tional forces and flows, as opposed to a collection of objects — something that makes
them still particularly relevant to contemporary discussions of ecological urbanism.104
1.3. LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE IN THE UNITED STATES:
REGIONAL AND ECOLOGICAL PLANNING AND THE
INFLUENCE OF FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED AND IAN MCHARG
The argument put forward throughout this essay is that landscape urbanism finds
itself at the merging point between architecture, landscape, and urbanism. Certainly
there is a latent project of promoting transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches
(and this is the second thesis of the book), but it also benefitted from the shifts that
occurred in the three disciplines themselves, as well as in others related to spatial
design and understanding, such as ecology and geography. So far, architecture and
urban design have been considered. The third principal contribution leading to the
development of landscape urbanism is that made by landscape theory and practice.
In postwar England, landscape architecture did not really exist as a discipline. In
1962, Reyner Banham famously claimed that while English landscape painting was a
singular contribution to art, no such claim could be made for landscape architecture.105
Landscape design was a copy of painting, which was itself a copy. As Hunt and Willis
recall, in England, between 1700 and 1720, there was a shift from the French and Dutch
formal models to a love of the unbridled, pastoral landscape. 106 The early pastoral
landscape gardens were embodiments of educated and “good” taste, informed by
Italian art and landscape. It was no longer a superimposition of reason upon nature,
but a celebration of nature as both the great metaphor and arena of all art. From the
aesthetics of Enlightenment emerged the manipulation of the landscape for sensory
and imaginary stimulation, while from the Enlightenment project of origins and history
32 jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
emerged the eclectic distribution of ruins and figural fragments in allegorical narratives.
All landscapes, Height argues, were profoundly picturesque. 107
This was not the case in the United States, where landscape architecture had a
consolidated tradition in the design of public parks and private gardens and played a
relevant role in the realm of planning. In fact, the discipline of landscape architecture
actually preceded urban planning, which was originally part of it. In particular, two main
figures defined the profession and the discipline of landscape architecture and “shaped”
American landscape culture.108One was Frederick Law Olmsted, who pioneered both
landscape architecture and city planning in the last half of the nineteenth century. The
other was Ian L. McHarg, who further advanced landscape architecture and planning
practices in the last half of the twentieth century.
Frederick Law Olmsted initiated the American professions of landscape architecture
and city planning in the nineteenth century, arguing for a synthesis of them.109 In 1850,
he went to England and visited Birkenhead Park, the first publicly-funded civic park,
designed by Joseph Paxton and opened in 1847. Indeed, the eighteenth-century English
landscape gardeners had begun to apply to parks the same rehabilitation concept and
design principles they had developed for the estates of the wealthy. In Birkenhead Park,
Olmsted saw an antidote for the demoralizing aspect of nineteenth-century American
city life brought about by the industrial revolution.110 He imported the English pastoral
vision of landscape first to urban parks, then to suburbs and campuses, imprinting the
pastoral aesthetic into the American consciousness.111
Nevertheless, while his admirers and critics alike have focused upon the specifics
of his expression, whether formal or verbal, the larger significance of his vision and
methods was often neglected. It is mainly in the last twenty years that contemporary
landscape architects and theorists have reconsidered the Olmsted legacy. They underline
his role in forging a synthesis between man and nature and in rejecting the divisions
between artificial and natural, form and process, design and management. His plans for
the natural parks of Yosemite, Biltmore and Niagara, the Boston’s Fens and Riverway
as well as Central Park in New York, are seen by contemporary landscape architects
as precursor examples of what is now called ecological design, landscape planning, or
landscape urbanism.112
Indeed, throughout his projects, Olmsted highlighted the relationship between
landscape design and planning, arguing that unlike a building, a landscape is never
“finished” after construction. He underlined how landscape architecture always
needs a succession of designs, and sometimes also requires the alteration or even the
deliberate destruction of its early phases, through growth, succession, or thinning.
Preserving a landscape in its “natural” form requires an even more sophisticated
management. Thus, for Central Park (1856), Olmsted envisioned a design that had to
be implemented over several decades after the initial construction. The forest at Bilt-
more would mature well beyond his own lifetime.113 For Yosemite, it was only thanks
to the artifice of intervention, a very detailed governmental action controlling water,
soil, animals, and people, that one could have the misconception that the “natural”
park was not designed and managed.
Yet, an even more interesting reference was the Boston River Park System, which
anticipated by nearly a century the introduction of ecological planning and design in
33
landscape architecture in the 1960s.114 Built during the 1880s and 1890s and defined
as an urban “wilderness,” a history museum of New England’s landscapes that could
be experienced along the way, it was instead the first place anywhere to construct a
wetland.115 The Boston Fens and Riverway were in fact built on the site of tidal flats and
floodplains, fouled by sewage and industrial effluent. The series of parks, also known
as the “Emerald Necklace,” was designed to purify water and protect adjacent land
from flooding, and incorporated an interceptor sewer, a parkway, and Boston’s first
streetcar line. Together, they formed a landscape system designed to accommodate
the movement of people, the flow of water, and the removal of wastes.
The Fens was a synthesis of civil engineering and landscape architecture, an
unusual entity that harnessed and structured natural systems into a new typology of
urban infrastructure and aesthetics.116 But these aspects have only been reconsidered
recently, by landscape architects such as Elizabeth Meyer,117 Anne Spirn,118 and James
Corner,119 who reclaimed its role as an urban infrastructure and an early example of
landscape urbanism.120 By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Fens’ aspects
of innovation and dependence on the waterway ecosystems were already lost, and the
Emerald Necklace understood only in visual terms. In 1910, the function of the Fens as
a brackish, tidal estuary ecosystem was destroyed when the Charles River dam was
built in order to transform the river into a freshwater impoundment.121
Many aspects of Olmsted’s vision and legacy lasted until the first half of the twentieth
century, thanks to those organizations and academic programs he personally instituted
and in which he was involved.122 Nevertheless, they fractured in the following decades.
After World War II, city planning was separated from landscape architecture and began
to promote itself as an applied social science rather than an environmental design
art. Planning grew in prominence, but eventually lost its effectiveness in improving
human communities. Planners became engaged in many of the most pressing political
issues, from social equity to environmental quality, but they distanced themselves from
the creation and rehabilitation of the places of daily life. While policies for engaging
citizens in public decisions proliferated, the quality of communities deteriorated.123
Meanwhile, landscape architecture retreated from the social advocacy of the Olmsteds.
Although notable exceptions existed,124 landscape architects were largely engaged in
applying the pastoral aesthetic to the country homes of the wealthy, to golf courses,
and to exclusive subdivisions. During and after World War II, academic programs in
landscape architecture began to disappear or become marginalized.
In the 1960s, a landscape architect-planner emerged to challenge the status quo
and to establish a new direction. Ian McHarg revived, redirected, and re-created the
professions of landscape architecture and planning in the late twentieth century.
Influenced by the leading American environmental writings of his time,125McHarg
believed ecology could be utilized to understand complex interactions between people
and their environments and that the science could be employed to guide actions. His
mentor, Lewis Mumford,126 had advanced the notion that planning and design could be
viewed as forms of social criticism and that the regional, ecological city could improve
our quality of life. Following Mumford’s example, McHarg came to see planning and
design as means for criticism of the environments we had created. He transcended
disciplinary boundaries, and by making this leap, the limits of his own fields were
34 jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
extended. As McHarg claimed, ecology had a profound relevance for both city plan-
ning and architecture and it offered a way of emancipating landscape architecture.127
Through his “ecological method,” he argued, form could be understood as an explicit
point in evolutionary process.128
A new theory was therefore advanced, that ecology could inform the environmental
design arts, and that planning and design should follow nature’s lead. Form and process
were considered to be indivisible aspects of a single phenomenon. McHarg presented
this theory at a time when, not only in the United States but also worldwide, questions
of creating better environments, investigating the limits of growth and limiting the
dependence of humans on natural resources, were becoming urgent.
Theorist, writer, and professional planner, McHarg pursued numerous design and
planning projects under the auspices of his home institution, the University of Penn-
sylvania. At Penn, he promoted a multidisciplinary, collaborative approach to planning
and design, transforming the program of landscape architecture into one of the most
advanced in the United States.129 In 1969, he published Design with Nature,130 which has
been considered the single most influential book in the field of landscape planning.131
In it, McHarg outlined ways in which natural processes could guide development,
setting the basis for ecological planning132 and leading to fundamental changes in the
teaching and practice of landscape architecture.
For the next decade, working on several projects on several scales, he promoted
landscape architecture as the instrument of environmentalism. Understanding the
relationship between landscape, engineering, the sciences, and development, he
helped to shape national policy on the environment. By the mid-1970s, ecological
design was an integral part of the landscape architecture curriculum at Penn. Much of
the impetus for exploring ecological design came from McHarg’s students, and some
produced work that influenced projects at his firm. Among them, Michael Hough’s
book of 1985, City Form and Natural Process,133 and Anne Spirn’s of 1984, The Granite
Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design,134 brought together ecological planning and
design and argued for a synthesis of architecture, landscape and the city. Both were
sympathetic to McHarg’s approach but critical of his pessimism toward and neglect of
cities.135 McHarg was indeed considering science as the only defensible authority for
landscape design, and ecology not only as an explanation, but rather as a command.
Among the critics of McHarg scientific determinism there is also James Corner,136
who studied with McHarg and was nevertheless deeply influenced by his method.
James Corner arrived at Penn from England at the beginning of the 1980s and studied
with McHarg. As Corner declared, McHarg was not just opening the field to regional
planning, but he was also using “nested scales,” building processes, and overlaying
maps and layers in order to let the project emerge from natural conditions.137 McHarg’s
ecological method aimed to define the best areas for a potential land use, determined
by the convergence of all or most of the factors deemed propitious for that use and the
absence of all or most detrimental conditions.138 Although Corner considered cultural,
social, political, and economic environments as part of the “natural” world as well,139
the projects he would further develop with his office Field Operations derived from
McHarg’s exploration of the potential of landscape beyond the boundaries of gardens
and squares. 140
35
In 1986, the Chair of the Landscape Architecture Department, founded by McHarg,
was turned over to Anne Whiston Spirn. As explained earlier in this chapter, during
those years of transition the discussion on landscape and urbanism opened itself to
theories coming from abroad — especially the phenomenological approach brought by
Rykwert, Vesely, and Leatherbarrow from Europe. At Penn, they found a place where
people were coming from all over the world and the best department of Landscape
Architecture. Landscape architects who studied and worked at Penn, like James Corner,
were instead introduced to philosophy and architecture theory. And for him, as for
everybody, the finalist entries for the Parc de la Villette in Paris, designed by Bernard
Tschumi and Rem Koolhaas in 1983, constituted the shifting point.
1
Mohsen Mostafavi, interview with the author, Harvard urbanism, landscape of a kind. And they were in a place
Graduate School of Design (GSD), Cambridge, October 3, that had a good Landscape Architecture department.”
2011, and February 29, 2012, reedited by Mostafavi for Charles Waldheim, interview with the author, Harvard
this publication, see “Figures” Section. As he argues, GSD, September 21, 2011, reedited by the author for this
the same process was then followed in the eighteenth publication, see “Figures” Section.
century in France – during the empire of Louis XIV - and 7
Mohsen Mostafavi, interview with the author, in
in the nineteenth century in England – accompanying “Figures” Section.
8
the industrial revolution. “These critiques, put forth by Charles Jenks and
2
On the urban transformations of Rome during the age of other proponents of postmodern architectural culture
Sixtus V, see Sigfried Giedion, “Sixtus V and his Pontif- [i.e. J. Jacobs, R. Venturi, K. Lynch, A. Rossi], indicted
icate,” in Space, Time and Architecture. The Growth of modernism for its inability to produce a ‘meaningful’
a New Tradition (1941, reprinted Cambridge: Harvard or ‘livable’ public realm [Lynch], for its failure to come
University Press, 1954), 75-106; Paolo Portoghesi, Roma to terms with the city as an historical construction of
Barocca (Roma: Bestetti, 1966); Giulio Carlo Argan, collective consciousness [Rossi] and for its inability
L’architettura Barocca in Italia (Milano: Garzanti, 1957). to communicate with multiple audiences [Venturi].”
3
Giulio Carlo Argan, L’arte Barocca (Milano: Skira, 1989). Charles Waldheim, “Landscape as Urbanism,” in The
4
Mohsen Mostafavi, interview with the author, in Landscape Urbanism Reader (New York: Princeton
“Figures” Section. Architectural Press, 2006), 38.
5
See Anne Whiston Spirn, The Granite Garden. Urban 9
Gordon Cullen, “Confession of Faith,” Architectural
Nature and Human Design (New York: Basic Books, Review (1964).
10
1984). Anne Spirn was Chair of the Department of “Need for more planned towns in the South-East,”
Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at Penn The Times, December 2, 1964.
University, from 1986 to 1993; before that Spirn also 11
Milton Keynes Development Corporation, The Plan for
taught at Harvard (1970-1986). Milton Keynes (Bletchley, Milton Keynes Development
6
“I am convinced that something happened there [at Corporation, 1970).
Penn]. None of us had the concept, but after a couple of 12
Vittorio Gregotti, “La città ideale nell’era postmod-
years there together it was pretty clear that that was erna,” Corriere della Sera, September 3, 2009. Gregotti
the way. It was between 1987-1990, and both Architec- goes back to Milton Keynes 40 years after it was created
ture and Landscape Architecture were at the end of a (in 1967).
13
great era at Penn: Kahn was dead, Bacon had retired, See James Corner, “A Discourse on Theory II: Three
McHarg was in a kind of purgatory. It was disorga- Tyrannies of Contemporary Theory and the Alternative
nized but very productive. Many people came from of Hermeneutics,” Landscape Journal, 10.2, 115 Fall (1991),
South Africa, London, Asia. The Chair of Landscape p.118. In this essay Corner is explicitly referring to the
Architecture was given to Anne Whiston Spirn, and the theories of phenomenology and hermeneutics architects
Chair of Architecture to Adèle Naudé Santos - they are (Vesely, Leatherbarrow) and philosophers (Merleau-Ponty,
both at MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ricoeur, Gadamer) in opposition to positivistic modern
Cambridge, Mass] now. Other schools had a program, planning of which Milton Keynes is a result.
but not Penn. There were architects, like Mohsen, who 14
Francois Choay, L’urbanisme. Utopies et réalités
were working on the city and had a broader interest in (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1965).
36
15
See Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1960) and Kevin Lynch, A Theory of Good
City Form (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981). On the influ-
ence of Kevin Lynch on ecological urbanism, see also
Anne W. Spirn, “Ecological Urbanism: a Framework for
the Design of Resilient Cities,” http://www.annewhis-
tonspirn.com/pdf/spirn_ecological_urbanism-2011.pdf,
last accessed March 29, 2014.
16
Gordon Cullen, Townscape (London: The Architec-
tural Press, 1961).
17
For the history, the strong points and protagonists of
Progetto Urbano, see Mario Ferrari, Il Progetto Urbano in
Italia, 1940-1990 (Firenze: Alinea, 2005). Ferrari defines
progetto urbano as neither a discipline nor a movement
but instead a clear approach to the city, that had its
main development between the 1960s and 1970s and
that stays between architecture and urbanism.
18
In fact their answer is not a radical alternative to
modernism, but rather an investigation of the relation-
ship between modernity and tradition, an issue that has
been widely investigated by Ernesto N. Rogers through
his writings in Casabella and his projects as BBPR
(BBPR’s Torre Velasca is probably the first example of
the controversial relationship between tradition and
modernity). Rogers, as we shall see in the following
paragraphs, can be considered the father, or a precursor,
of progetto urbano.
19
Among their many writings in books and journals
see Manfredo, Tafuri, Progetto e Utopia (Bari: Laterza
& Figli, 1973); Giuseppe Samonà, L’Urbanistica e l’Av-
venire della Città negli Stati Europei (1959, reprinted
Bari: Editori Laterza, 1960); Carlo Aymonino, Origini e
Sviluppo della Città Moderna (1965, reprinted Padova:
Marsilio Editori, 1971); Aldo Rossi, L’Architettura della
Città (Padova: Marsilio Editori, 1966) and also Pier
Vittorio Aureli, The Project of Autonomy. Politics and
Architecture Within and Against Capitalism (New York:
Princeton Architectural Press, 2008); Vittorio Gregotti,
Il Territorio dell’Architettura (1966, reprinted Milano:
Feltrinelli, 2008); Giancarlo de Carlo, Questioni di
Architettura e Urbanistica (Urbino: Argalia, 1965).
20
Although this is not the place to discuss in depth the
relations and similarities between landscape urbanism
and progetto urbano, it is interesting to notice how these
points are still relevant for the discourse. Besides Tafu-
ri’s translation of Architettura e Utopia [Architecture and
Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development (Cambridge,
Mass: MIT Press, 1976)] Tafuri’s book (co-authored with
G. Ciucci, F. Dal Co, M. Elia) The American City: from
the Civil War to the New Deal (Cambridge, Mass: MIT
Press, 1978) played a fundamental role in the educa-
tion of future “landscape urbanists;” Peter Eisenman
and Kenneth Frampton’s collection “Opposition Books”
translated and published both Aldo Rossi’s A Scien-
jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
tific Autobiography (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1981) and The Architecture of the City (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1982), the last also edited and introduced
by Peter Eisenman. It must be noted that Rossi’s The
Architecture of the City was published sixteen years
later than the original Italian version; while many books
mentioned before – by de Carlo, Samonà, and especially
Gregotti - have not even been translated into English.
21
Mohsen Mosta favi, inter view with the author,
Harvard GSD, in “Figures” Section; Charles Waldheim,
interview with the author, in “Figures” Section.
22
Joseph Rykwert, The Idea of a Town (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1976).
23
Quoted i n t he P reface to t he paper ed ition of
Joseph Rykwert, The Idea of a Town (1976, reprinted
Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1988). Aldo van Eyck
himself indeed, like other Team X members Alison
and Peter Smithson or Giancarlo de Carlo, is very
concerned with the role played by open spaces as rela-
tional spaces within the city. Team X work was also
often taken as reference by those later involved with
landscape urbanism, most notably James Corner and
Mohsen Mostafavi.
24
Something similar to the sort of imagery that Kevin
Lynch deduced from his fellow citizens’ response to the
city of Boston. See Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City.
25
Charles Waldheim, interview with the author, in
“Figures” Section.
26
Vittorio Gregotti, Il Territorio dell’Architettura.
27
Even though Il Territorio dell’Architettura had never
been translated into English, Rykwert was reading it
when it came out, admitting that “the problems it raised
were very much what we talked about at the time -
and which we continued to discuss;” J. Rykwert, e-mail
message to author, February 14, 2012.
28
See Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Crit-
ical History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980);
Kenneth Frampton, “Toward an Urban Landscape,”
Columbia Documents of Architecture and Theory, Volume
4 (1995): 83-93; Kenneth Frampton, Megaform as Urban
Landscape (Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of
Michigan, 1999). As aforementioned, Gregotti’s Territorio
was never translated in English and it was also probably
through Frampton’s articles that his geographical and
“infrastructural,” approach was transmitted to the U.S.
and influenced the work of Pierre Bélanger (interview
with the author, Harvard GSD, October 5, 2011, reedited
by the author for this publication, see “Figures” Section)
and Stan Allen (interview with the author, Princeton
University School of Architecture, April 18, 2011, reedited
by the author for this publication, see “Figures” Section),
among others.
29
Vittorio Gregotti, Il Territorio dell’Architettura, 62.
30
“[Manca, oggi] quel consistente rapporto progettuale
tra città e natura messo in atto dalla storia dell’ar-
chitettura a partire dall’età barocca” quoted in Vittorio
Gregotti, Il Territorio dell’Architettura, 72. Gregotti
there refers to Siegfried Giedion, “L’organizzazione
dello spazio esterno,” Spazio, Tempo, Architettura
(Milano: Hoepli, 1954). Translation by the author.
31
See Lewis Mumford, The Highway and the City
(London: Secker & Warburg, 1964).
32
Gregotti, Il Territorio dell’Architettura, 74-75
33
On Vittorio Gregotti’s relation to phenomenology see
Umberto Eco, Preface to Il Territorio dell’Architettura.
34
“La possibilità di riconoscere nella costruzione del
paesaggio un campo di specifica competenza architet-
tonica... che miri alla costruzione di una geografia
volontaria che si offra come immagine significante
dell’ambiente in cui ci muoviamo. L’idea, cioè, della
possibilità di considerare l’ambiente totale funziona-
mento indistinto come concreto formale da conoscere ed
organizzare secondo gli obiettivi di una continua espan-
sione della possibilità di fruire della sua materialità,”
Gregotti, Il Territorio dell’Architettura, 81. Translation
by the author.
35
“Il problema della strutturazione formale dell’am-
biente antropogeografico impone una revisione del
concetto di natura come valore, come si è costituito
nella tradizione dell’architettura moderna: sia quindi
come bene sociale da ridistribuire, sia come valore a
cui adeguare il senso stesso della costruttività come
crescita e processo,” Vittorio Gregotti, Il Territorio
dell’Architettura, 92. Translation by the author. German
geographer Friedrich Ratzel (Anthropogeographie, vols.
1–2. Berlin, 1882–91) was the first who coined the term
anthropogeographic.
36
Gregotti, Il Territorio dell’Architettura, 78-79. Later
in the book Gregotti also refers to Frank L. Wright’s
Broadacre City project in which city and countryside
constitute one organic element.
37
Umberto Eco, Preface to Il Territorio dell’Architettura.
Eco’s preface was written for the French edition of Le
Territoire de l’Architecture (Paris: l’Equerre, 1982).
38
Ibid.
39
Jorge Otero Pailos, Architecture’s Historical Turn:
Phenomenology and the Rise of the Postmodern (Minne-
apolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010).
40
Otero-Pailos analyzes the role that phenomenology
played in the work of Rogers, Norberg-Schultz, Moore
and Frampton, defined by him as the anti-avant-guarde;
Otero Pailos, Architecture’s Historical Turn.
41
Enzo Paci, “L’Architettura e il Mondo della Vita,”
Casabella Continuità 217 December (1957): 54. Paci’s
main contribution to phenomenology is the reading
of Husserl’s and Marx’s theories as a common battle
against sciences and capitalism. For Husserl indeed,
the life-world (lebenswelt) represented the lived and
37
concrete experiential dimension of the world that was
hidden by centuries of positivistic supremacy. See
Edmund Husserl, La Crisi delle Scienze Europee, (1954,
reprinted Milano: Franco Angeli, 1985)
42
Rogers directed the Italian architectural journal Casa-
bella from 1953 to 1965, also changing the journal name
to Casabella Continuità. Vittorio Gregotti directed the
journal himself from 1981 to 1996.
43
See Chapter 1.3.
44
Mohsen Mostafavi, interview with the author, in
“Figures” Section.
45
Charles Waldheim, interview with the author, in
“Figures” Section.
46
See Chapter 2.2.
47
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York:
Seabury Press, 1975), 333, referred to by James Corner
in “A Discourse on Theory II.”
48
Reality is a continuum; “A house is still a part of the
landscape and of what goes beyond the horizon, which
is not a problem for the scientists who can operate with
a much more transparent definition of what he is doing
and what his product is referring to;” Dalibor Vesely,
“On the Relevance of Phenomenology,” Form, Being,
Absence: Architecture and Philosophy 2 (1988), 60.
49
Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative (Chicago, The
University of Chicago Press, 1984). Hermeneutics was
also revaluated, as it was a theory of understanding
and interpretation that necessarily involved reflection
and could not be reduced to rule-governed technique
or method. Indeed, as they claimed, interpreters are not
passive observers, but bring with themselves certain
ideas and knowledge that necessarily enter into the
interpretation, an interpretation that is related to partic-
ular situations.
50
Ibid.
51
For Ricoeur, plots relate the mutual development
of a story and a character or set of characters; every
character in a story of any complexity both acts and
is acted upon. It is the narrative that constructs the
identity of the character, what can be called his or her
narrative identity, in constructing that of the story told.
And it is the identity of the story that makes the iden-
tity of the character. Nevertheless, identity is not like
that of a fixed structure or substance; identities are
mobile. Until the story is finished, the identity of each
character or person remains open to revision and each
personage’s individual identity always intersects those
of other personages in the narrative; every personage
that figures in a story has a distinctive heritage that
always matters. Dauenhauer, Bernard and Pellauer,
David, “Paul Ricoeur,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), edited by Edward
N. Zalta, last accessed January 30, 2013, http://plato.
stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/ /entries/ricoeur/
38
52
On the legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted, see Chapter 1.3.
53
“Olmsted’s description of the positive effects of
natural scenery may sound dated and naive, but recent
studies have documented the beneficial effects of plants
on human health and healing. Hospital patients who
have windows with views of trees or other “natural”
scenery have been shown to heal faster than patients
who have views of buildings or no window at all. See
Roger Ulrich and Russ Parsons, “Influences of Passive
Experiences with Plants on Individuai Well-being and
Health,” in Diane Relf, ed., The Role of Horticulture
in Human Well-being and Social Development (Port-
land: Timber Press, 1992), 93-105; as quoted by Anne
Whiston Spirn, “Reconstructing Nature: the Legacy of
Frederick Law Olmsted,” Uncommon Ground, edited by
William Cronon (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 91–113.
54
Mohsen Mostafavi, interview with the author, in
“Figures” Section.
55
Ibid.
56
James Corner, “Terra Fluxus,” in The Landscape
Urbanism Reader.
57
Mohsen Mostafavi, interview with the author, in
“Figures” Section.
58
Mohsen Mostafavi, “Landscapes of Urbanization,”
in Landscape Urbanism: A Manual for the Machinic
Landscape, edited by Mohsen Mostafavi and Ciro Najle
(London: Architectural Association, 2003).
59
Mohsen Mostafavi, “Landscapes of Urbanization,” 7-8.
60
Ibid.
61
James Corner, “A Discourse on Theory II.”
62
Ibid, 129
63
James Corner, “New Forms of Practice and Design”
(paper presented at the “Second Wave of Modernism
II: Landscape Complexity and Transformation” confer-
ence, Museum of Modern Art, New York, November 18,
2011) and interview with the author, March 2014, in
“Figures” Section. Mohsen Mostafavi also retains that
the work of the Smithsons, as well as Superstudio and
Archizoom, can be considered a precedent for Land-
scape Urbanism (Mohsen Mostafavi, interview with
the author, in “Figures” Section). Waldheim often refers
to Branzi as one of the early examples, as does Pierre
Bélanger.
64
The Athens Charter for the Restoration of Historic
Monuments was written after CI AM’s boat trip to
Athens in 1931.
65
Simon Sadler, The Situationist City (Cambridge, Mass:
MIT Press, 1998).
66
According to Aaron Betsky, it was Eisenman who
brought “post-functionalism” as a move away from
architecture as the making of autonomous buildings.
Eisenman also helped spread the views of the French
“thinkers” – and especially Jacques Derrida - through
his leadership at the Institute of Architecture and Urban
jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
Studies (IUAS). The department of comparative litera-
ture at Yale University also had a strong influence. See
Aaron Betsky, Landscrapers. Building with the Land,
(New York: Thames and Hudson, 2006), 9.
67
See Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (New
York, NY: Zone Books, 1994).
68
Libero Andreotti and Xavier Costa, eds., Theory of the
Derive and other Situationist Writings on the City (Barce-
lona: Museé d’Art Contemporaine de Barcelona, 1996).
69
Lefebvre’s contact with and influence on the Situationist
International, and particularly with Guy Debord are well
acknowledged; See “Henri Lefebvre on the Situationist
International,” Interview conducted and translated in
1983 by Kristin Ross, accessed December 10, 2012, http://
www.notbored.org/lefebvre-interview.html
70
Henry Lefebvre, “Utopie expérimentale: pour un
nouvel urbanisme,” in Revue Française de Sociologie,
11, 2 (1961), quoted in Elizabeth Kofman and Eleonore
Lebas, “Recovery and Reappropriation in Lefebvre and
Constant,” in Non-plan: Essays on Freedom, Participa-
tion and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism,
edited by Jonathan Hughes and Simon Sadler (Boston:
Architectural Press, 1999).
71
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1991).
72
Ibid., 319.
73
Aaron Betsky defined the work of Situationist archi-
tects as “landscrapers,” buildings that can take many
forms, but in all cases they unfold the land, promising
to lay a new ground on which an architecture of the
land can be erected; Aaron Betsky, Landscrapers, 10.
Betsky found in Dutch artist Constant Nieuwenhuis’s
New Babylon the most thoroughly shown earthbound
project of the post-Second World War era.
74
Simon Sadler, The Situationist City.
75
On the relationship between Nieuwenhuis and
the Situationists, see Mark Wigley, Constant’s New
Babylon: the Hyper-Architecture of Desire (Rotterdam:
010 publisher, 1998), and Simon Sadler, The Situationist
City.
76
Constant Nieuwenhuis, New Babylon, 1959-74. In
different ways indeed: the “instant city” and “sin city”
megastructures imagined by the Archigram group in
England, Cedric Price’s Fun Palace and Constant’s New
Babylon, proposed self-sufficient systems. According
to Betsky (Landscrapers, 10), their structures were the
gathering of the consumer goods, the technological
systems that made these goods work, and the new
ground of a growing capitalist city into a free-floating
spectacle that architects and planners usually tried to
hide with more traditional forms and restrictive grids.
77
Elizabeth Kofman and Eleonore Lebas, “Recovery and
Reappropriation in Lefebvre and Constant.”
78
Ibid.
79
Alison Smithson ed., Smithson: Team 10 Primer (1962,
reprinted Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968).
80
Ibid.
81
Alison Smithson, “How to recognize and Read Mat
Building,” Architectural Design September (1974);
reprinted in CASE: Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital,
edited by Hashim Sarkis (Munich: Prestel, 2001).
82
Stan Allen, “Mat Urbanism: The Thick 2-D,” in CASE:
Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital, 122.
83
Ibid., 123.
84
Aldo Rossi, L’Architettura della Città.
85
Vittorio Gregotti, Il Territorio dell’Architettura.
86
Archizoom e Superstudio, Superarchitettura [exhibi-
tion], Galleria Jolly, Pistoia, 1966.
87
Pier Vittorio Aureli’s book, The Project of Autonomy,
interprets Aldo Rossi’s architecture and his book The
Architecture of the City as an attempt of architecture to
find autonomy from capitalism within history, collective
memory and monumentality. The work of Andrea Branzi
and Archizoom, although very different from Rossi’s,
is also presented by Aureli as a conscious critique of
capitalism and consumption.
88
Giovanni Galli, personal communication with the
author, University of Genoa, January 21, 2013.
89
As their first manifesto claimed, “La Superar-
chitettura è l’architettura della superproduzione, del
superconsumo, del supermarket, del superman, della
benzina super” [“Superarchitecture is the architecture
of superproduction, superconsumerism of the super-
market, of supermen, of benzina super;“ in Italian,
benzina super is gasoline, translation by the author];
see Gianni Pettena ed, Radicals.
90
Superstudio, Monumento Continuo, 1971. See also
Gianni Pettena ed., Radicals. Architettura e design
1960/75 (Firenze: il Ventilibro, 1996), 206-213.
91
Italy: the New Domestic Landscape, exhibition
curated by Emilio Ambasz at Museum of Modern Art,
New York, May 26 – September 11, 1972.
92
Andrea Branzi, Weak and Diffuse Modernity: The
World of Projects at the Beginning of the 21st Century
(Milano: Skira, 2006).
93
Charles Waldheim, “Notes Toward a History of
Agrarian Urbanism,” Bracket 1: On Farming, edited by
Mason White and Maya Przybylski (Barcelona; New
York: Actar, 2010).
94
Ibid.
95
Ibid. See also Frank Lloyd Wright, The Living City
(New York: Horizon Press, 1958); Ludwig Hilberseimer,
The New Regional Pattern: Industries and Gardens,
Workshops and Farms (Chicago: Paul Theobald & Co.,
1949); Andrea Branzi, “Preliminary Notes for a Master
Plan,” and “Master Plan Strijp Philips, Eindhoven
1999,” Lotus 107 (2000): 110-123.
96
As Waldheim notes, the three projects form a coherent
39
intellectual genealogy, with Branzi referencing Hilber-
seimer, who earlier had been informed by Wright;
see Charles Waldheim, “Notes Toward a History of
Agrarian Urbanism.”
97
“The choice of projects is based on the idea of agricul-
tural production as a formative element of city structure,
rather than as an adjunct, something to be inserted
into already existing structures; thus this tentative
counter-history seeks to construct a useful past from
three projects organized explicitly around the role of
agriculture in determining the economic, ecological and
spatial order of the city;” Charles Waldheim, “Notes
Toward a History of Agrarian Urbanism.”
98
Frank Lloyd Wright, The Disappearing City (New
York: William Farquhar Payson, 1932) quoted by
Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical
History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).
99
Ludwig Hilberseimer, The New City: Principles of
Planning (Chicago: Theobald, 1944); The Nature of
Cities: Origin, Growth, and Decline, Pattern and Form,
Planning Problems (Chicago: Theobald, 1955).
100
Charles Waldheim, “Notes Toward a History of
Agrarian Urbanism.”
101
Andrea Branzi, “Agronica – Weak Urbanization,” in
Weak and Diffuse Modernity: The World of Projects at
the beginning of the 21st Century, 134-145.
102
Ibid.
103
Charles Waldheim, “Notes Toward a History of
Agrarian Urbanism.”
104
Ibid.
105
Reyner Banham, “Kent and Capability,” in A Critic
Writes (University of California Press: 1996); originally
published in New Statesman 64 (1962), 842-3; quoted
by C. Height, “Portraying the Urban Landscape: Land-
scape in Architectural Criticism and Theory, 1960
– Present,” in Landscape Urbanism: a Manual for the
Machinic Landscape, 25-26. Height also underlines that
Banham even avoids the term “landscape architecture,”
referring only to the “landscape movement” or “scene,”
as if it were a hip counterculture
106
John Dixon Hunt and Peter Willis eds., The Genius
of the Place: The English Landscape Garden 1620-1820
(New York: Harper, 1975).
107
Christopher Height, “Portraying the Urban Land-
scape,” 25.
108
On the fundamental role played by Olmsted and
McHarg in landscape architecture and planning prac-
tice, see Ian McHarg and Frederick Steiner, eds., To
Heal the Earth: Selected Writings of Ian L. McHarg,
(Washington DC: Island Press, 1998); Carl Steinitz,
“Landscape Planning: A Brief History of Influential
Ideas,” Journal of Landscape Architecture (Spring
2008): 68-74; Anne Whiston Spirn, “Ian McHarg, Land-
scape Architecture, and Environmentalism: Ideas and
40
Methods in Context,” in Environmentalism in Land-
scape Architecture, ed. Michel Conan (Washington
D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2000), 97–114; Anne Whiston
Spirn, “Reconstructing Nature: the Legacy of Frederick
Law Olmsted.”
109
William Shaler Cleveland (1814-1900), in his book
Landscape Architecture as Applied to the Wants of the
West (Chicago: Jansen, McClurg & Co, 1873) claimed
for new methods for planning that could start from the
needs of the city. In doing so, he saw in Olmsted the
figure through which landscape and planning could
aspire to a new synthesis; see Manfredo Tafuri and
Francesco Dal Co, Architettura Contemporanea (Milano:
Electa, 1976), Chapter III.
110
Influenced by the leading American transcendental-
ists Emerson and Thoreau, who advanced the concepts
of self-awareness and freedom through interaction with
nature, Olmsted believed that interaction with nature
was a prerequisite for freedom. Transcendentalism is
a North American informal movement that, in the first
half of the nineteenth century, provided intellectual and
moral leadership for many social transformations: the
abolition of slavery, equal rights for women, freedom of
religious thought and practice, educational reform, and
more. The movement also had a strong influence on the
preservation of large tracts of wild nature; Ralph Waldo
Emerson was the most important figure and Henry
David Thoreau, his most influential disciple.
111
Frederick Steiner, Introduction to To Heal the Earth:
Selected Writings of Ian L. McHarg.
112
See Elizabeth Meyer, “Landscape Architecture as
Modern Other and Postmodern Ground,” in The Culture
of Landscape Architecture, edited by Harriet Edquist
and Vanessa Bird (Melbourne: RMIT, 1994). James
Corner and Chris Reed, in their articles in The Land-
scape Urbanism Reader, both refer to Olmsted as the
first landscape urbanist.
113
In Biltmore (once the home forest of George Vander-
bilt and now part of Pisgah National Forest), Olmsted
applied the same principles and took a long-term view
of landscape construction and development. See Anne
Whiston Spirn, “Reconstructing Nature: the Legacy of
Frederick Law Olmsted,” 102.
114
Anne Whiston Spirn, “Reconstructing Nature: the
Legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted,” 104-109.
115
Ibid, 104-109.
116
Elizabeth Meyer, “Landscape A rchitecture as
Modern Other and Postmodern Ground,” 66.
117
Elizabeth Meyer compares this project to the 1930s
Bos Park in Amsterdam and the contemporary Parc de
la Villette in Paris (1984), defining them as landscape
cyborgs, spaces between man-made and natural, machine
and organism (Elizabeth Meyer, “Landscape Architecture
as Modern Other and Postmodern Ground,” 66).
jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
118
Anne Whiston Spirn, “Reconstructing Nature: the
Legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted,” Uncommon Ground,
edited by William Cronon (New York: W. W. Norton,
1996), 91–113.
119
Corner saw in the Emerald Necklace the embodiment
of some of the more significant potentials of landscape
urbanism: the ability to shift scales, to locate urban
fabrics in their regional and biotic contexts, and to
design relationships between dynamic environmental
processes and urban form; see James Corner, “Terra
Fluxus,” in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, 24.
120
Ibid.
121
Elizabeth Meyer, “Landscape A rchitecture as
Modern Other and Postmodern Ground,” 66.
122
Institutions such as the American Society of Land-
scape Architects, the Trustees of Public Reservation,
the American Planning and Civic Association, and
academic programs in landscape architecture and plan-
ning at leading American universities, such as Harvard
and the University of Illinois. These institutions influ-
enced American policy for national parks and national
forests, wrote numerous plans and zoning ordinances
for towns and cities, and published books and articles.
Still they fractured in the years following the deaths
of the senior Olmsted and of Charles Eliot, one of his
main followers.
123
Frederick Steiner, “Introduction to To Heal the Earth:
Selected Writings of Ian L. McHarg.
124
“Notable exceptions existed, such as Jens Jensen’s
promotion of native plants in park design in Chicago,
Alfred Caldwell’s vision for a living city, also in Chicago,
and Frank Waugh’s concern for rural communities and
for national forests and parks in the American West from
his Amherst, Massachusetts, base;” Frederick Steiner,
Introduction to To Heal the Earth: Selected Writings of
Ian L. McHarg.
125
Mainly biologists Rachel Carson and Aldo Leopold.
Rachel Louise Carson (1907 – 1964) was an American
marine biologist and conservationist whose book Silent
Spring (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1962) and other
writings are credited with advancing the global envi-
ronmental movement. University of Wisconsin wildlife
biologist Aldo Leopold was perhaps the first person to
advocate an “ecological ethic” for planning, see Aldo
Leopold, A Sand County Almanac. And Sketches Here
and There (1949 reprinted, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989).
126
See Lewis Mumford, The Condition of Man (New
York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1944); Lewis Mumford,
The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and
Its Prospects (New York: Harcourt Brace and World,
1961) and also Mumford’s Introduction to Design With
Nature by Ian McHarg (Garden City, N.Y.: Natural
History Press, 1969).
41
127
Ian McHarg, “An Ecological Method,” 1967 reprinted otherwise be missed and to focus not merely on what a
in Theory in Landscape Architecture: a Reader, edited landscape looks like but also how it functions and how
by Simon Swaffield (Philadelphia: University of Penn- it is evolving.” See Anne Whiston Spirn, “Ian McHarg,
sylvania Press, 2002). Landscape Architecture, and Environmentalism: Ideas
128
Ian McHarg, “An Ecological Method.” and Methods in Context,” 112.
129 136
As Spirn recalls, Mc Harg founded the Department James Corner, despite his declared debt to his
of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at mentor, also criticized the predominacy of the scien-
Penn in 1956, and beginning in 1959, he introduced tific determinism in the work of McHarg; James Corner,
prominent scientists, humanists, and poets to land- “Terra Fluxus.”
137
scape architecture by inviting them to speak in his James Corner, “New Forms of Practice and Design.”
course “Man and Environment.” The team-based 138
McHarg, Design With Nature.
139
studio became a vehicle to combat the reductionism Corner saw in landscape urbanism the possibility to
of the science, while drawing on scientific knowledge, develop “a space time ecology that treats all forces and
to create new syntheses; Anne Whiston Spirn, “Ian agents working in the urban field and considers them
McHarg, Landscape Architecture, and Environmen- as continuous networks of inter-relationships;” James
talism,” 97–114. Corner, “Terra Fluxus,” 30.
130
Ian McHarg, Design With Nature (Garden City, N.Y.: 140
Most notably, Fresh Kills Park in Staten Island (James
Natural History Press, 1969). Corner, Stan Allen/Field Operation, Staten Island, New
131
Carl Steinitz, “Landscape Planning: A Brief History York 2001), Lake Ontario Park in Toronto (James Corner/
of Influential Ideas,” 68–74. Field Operations, 2006), and the recently opened High
132
See Frederick Steiner, The Living Landscape: An Line in New York (James Corner/Field Operations with
Ecological Approach to Landscape Planning, (1991, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, New York, 2004-2011). See
reprinted, Washington DC: Island Press, 2008), 9. http://www.fieldoperations.net/
Steiner defines ecological planning as “the use of
biophysical and sociocultural information to suggest
opportunities and constraints for decision making about
the use of the landscape.”
133
Michael Hough, City Form and Natural Process:
Towards a New Urban Vernacular (London; New York:
Routledge, 1989).
134
Anne Whiston Spirn, The Granite Garden.
135
Despite its unquestionable impact in the field in
landscape architecture, the work of McHarg didn’t
remain uncriticized. Emphasizing invention over
precedent, from the 1960s through the 1970s, he
turned the curriculum in landscape architecture at
Penn into a very deterministic and ahistorical one. He
also offered no introduction to, or comparison among,
alternative approaches to landscape design and plan-
ning. The inventory McHarg advocated and insisted
upon in his teaching and professional projects ‘as a
prerequisite for intelligent intervention and adapta-
tion’ was attacked by some landscape architects for
according too much weight to the insights of science
as opposed to intuition. Others criticized it for being
unnecessarily comprehensive and too elaborate and
expensive to undertake in most professional projects.
This last critique is attributed by Spirn to Karl Steinitz.
In defense of it, Spirn specifies how “such ecological
inventory was used as a diagnostic tool, a checklist of
interrelated systems. In McHarg’s practice, the inven-
tory was adapted to the particular situation. It was used
not only to understand how a place came to be, but
also to identify problems and opportunities that might
42 jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
2 penn.1990s
recovering landscape
2.1. LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY AND LANDSCAPE GEOGRAPHY:
FROM THE PICTORIAL TO THE OPERATIVE
Ian McHarg set the basis for landscape regional planning, designing future settle-
ments through the management of ecological processes and environmental layers.
James Corner, as aforementioned, studied with McHarg. Although Corner rejected
the opposition of nature and city implied in McHarg’s regionally scaled environmental
planning practice, he was very influenced by his method and acknowledged the histor-
ical importance of McHarg’s book Design with Nature.1 A further development of the
influence of ecology on landscape patterns, and vice versa, was instead advanced by
landscape ecology, which also had a relative impact on Corner and future landscape
architects and urbanists.
Landscape ecology is now a well-established and rapidly developing interdisciplinary
science that focuses explicitly on the ecological understanding of spatial heteroge-
neity. Landscape ecology defined landscapes as “heterogeneous areas of land composed of
interacting ecosystem or patches,” and aims to study the patterns and processes operating
at that scale, focusing on landscape structure, function, and change.2 Drawing together
expertise from both biophysical and socioeconomic sciences, landscape ecology studies
are characterized by spatially explicit methods in which spatial attributes and arrange-
ments of landscape elements are directly analyzed and related to ecological processes.
Richard Forman was the author, with Michel Godron, of Landscape Ecology, the
founding book of the emerging discipline. He was among the leading ecologists to
revamp basic assumptions about ecology’s alleged tendency to move toward a “steady
state” condition, advocating instead for continual environmental change through
ecological succession, mutation and adaptation.3 Forman defined a region as a broad
geographical area with a common macroclimate and a sphere of human activity and
interest, and a landscape as a mosaic, where the mix of local ecosystems or land uses
is repeated in similar form over a kilometers-wide area.4 As ecology is generally the
study of the interactions among organisms and their environment, landscape ecology
was conceived as the ecology of landscapes.5
Ecology models and research methods – such as the patch-corridor-matrix model,
hierarchy theory, and negative feedback – could be used to understand and experiment
on landscapes and regions.6 For example, important correlations can be found between
patch characteristics and the ecological parameters within them: the heterogeneity in
landscapes can determine animal population responses. The degree to which hetero-
43
geneity is expressed instead depends on scale. Humans are also considered part of the
ecologic system, and population flows modify, and are modified by, specific patterns.7
Landscape ecology thus determined the mechanism behind the relation of spatial patterns
and ecological processes, involving human impact in the system.8
Forman’s work has been critical for defining and mapping an expanded and complex
series of ecological conditions and relationships. He also created a corresponding language
of ecological structures (networks, nodes, matrices, patches, fields, mosaics) and rela-
tionships (overlaps, juxtapositions, adjacencies) to deal with them. Both James Corner
and Stan Allen cited Forman’s principles of landscape ecology as useful instruments for
developing urban landscapes. In particular, Stan Allen, exploring the catalytic potential
of infrastructural dynamics and field conditions on the urban realm, found in landscape
(and ecology) resilience and adaptability a model for a more physically flexible and highly
charged system.9
Transforming ecology’s principles and processes in spatial terms, Forman’s work
made a fundamental contribution to landscape architecture. Nevertheless, like McHarg’s,
his methods relied on scientific determinism and were by many, Corner and Waldheim
included, considered to be inappropriate in dealing with the complexity of the contem-
porary urban realm. The first chapter has explored how landscape was revaluated by
specific theories of architecture and urban design. These architects saw landscape as a
potential tool to understand the expansion of the city beyond its limits and to articulate
its inner open spaces.10 An equally relevant contribution to the postmodern revaluation of
landscape in its natural, cultural and social aspects was offered by cultural geography;
especially by the reading that J.B. Jackson (1909-1996) made of it in the second half of the
twentieth century and for the influence this had on human geographer Denis Cosgrove
(1948-2008) and landscape architects such as James Corner.
John Brinckerhoff Jackson gained an insight into architecture and planning from
the writings of Lewis Mumford and the interest for Baroque style and history from his
Harvard instructor Irving Babbitt, who also influenced his opposition to modernism.11 In
1934-1935, he wandered through Europe studying Baroque art and architecture. While
in Europe, Jackson began to manifest his interest in politics. As an officer during the
Second World War, he studied books to gain insight on the geography of the location.
He deciphered code, studied maps, and learned the terrain, and read books by French
geographers — in particular Pierre Deffontaines, Albert Demangeon, and Paul Vidal de
la Blache.12 Delving into the work of those geographers, Jackson developed the notion
that the shaping and devastation of the landscape came from the necessities of human
existence. He believed that human history brought about human geography.
In 1951, he founded and published the first issue of Landscape,13 a geography
journal that he edited until 1968. Jackson’s editorial and promotional skills sparked
important interdisciplinary discussions about everyday American-built environments
and popularized the term “cultural landscape” as a focus of study and reflection. Trans-
lating French, German, Spanish, and Italian journals and books, he also introduced
American readers to European ideas. Finally, Jackson and his journal brought together
a network of prominent readers and authors — including Lewis Mumford, Siegfried
Gideon, Edward T. Hall, Edgar Anderson, Kevin Lynch, Ansel Adams, Garrett Eckbo,
and Henry A. Wallace.
62 jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
3 columbia.1980s
landscape as system
3.1. HISTORICAL, PHILOSOPHICAL AND
TECHNOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK: RHIZOME,
COMPLEXITY, SPEED, AND NETWORK
The Contemporary City was the title of the first two issues of Zone, published as
a book in New York in 1986.1 Edited by Jonathan Crary, Michel Foster, Hal Foster, and
Sanford Kwinter, and designed by Bruce Mau, Zone 1/2 looked at the city from a whole
range of perspectives: philosophers, economists, historians, architects and artists.2 The
intent of the book was to examine the evolution of the contemporary city, questioning
what its structural and operational mutations were. As philosopher Félix Guattari
put it, the city no longer existed as an entity.3 It was reduced to “only a node at the
core of a multidimensional network – within the spatial web of urbanization; within
the temporal phylum of differential evolutions of seats of power; within the rhizome
of technical, scientific, artistic (etc.) machines…”4 But Zone was also part of the city
itself: the book “was” the city. Designed by Bruce Mau, in the pre-digital era, Zone
definitively brought the city back into the discourse and changed the way in which
architects were looking at it.5
The impact of the new technologies was indeed very powerful in the 1980s and
1990s; it made the destruction of the old forms visible. Social progress, technical devel-
opment, the interchange of information, and increased mobility fostered a growing
freedom in the occupation of space. The result was a complex and interactive urban
system, engendered through the accumulation of manifold, simultaneous and often
contradictory actions and experiences. To use Sanford Kwinter’s words, the city was
and is nothing if not an autonomous adaptive organism, “a vital ecology with a rich
life of its own.”6 A city both lives and may be found only in its transformations and
ramifications, in the cultural patterns and subjectivities it nurtures or gives rise to
and in those it sediments and leaves behind, in the indeterminacy of its movements,
and in the certainty of mutation and evolution. Cities are, indeed, “complex informa-
tion-processing machines.”7
Nevertheless, the increasingly dynamic and instable systems created by techno-
logical development and late-capitalist modes of production would not maintain the
rigidity of an organic structure. While the traditional city had developed a structure
of organic growth that had in turn informed the classic planning techniques built on
models of centrality, homogeneity, continuity and hierarchy, this was not true anymore
63
at the end of the twentieth century. Urban topographies grew in an environment no
longer structured by the city-territory opposition, but rather by the transportation and
communications infrastructure as a vector of mobility 8. The development of a road
network, the appearance of a spontaneous process of occupation, individual and collec-
tive behavior within a global movement of spatial flows and, ultimately, the growth
model of an urban agglomeration, resembled complex structures, shaped by dynamic
systems of temporal-spatial definition.9 These emerging configurations and phenomena
were no longer amenable to mechanistic “overmapping” techniques of intervention
and analysis, and were rather approached, in a number of scientific fields, through
alternative models of analogy and simulation.10 Architects found new explanations in
philosophy, especially Deleuzian thinking, and non-linear system theories.
In particular, Deleuze and Guattari’s definition of the rhizome11 offered a way of
understanding physical and cultural forces, proposing an alternative system of organ-
ization. Their model was the mushroom, which spreads into points of visibility from
an underground network. Rhizome meant something absolutely different from roots:
it could be a bulb or a tuber, but also a ramified surface extending in all directions.
The rhizome thus expressed the structure of multiplicities: it implies multiple entry-
ways and connections.12 A rhizome may be broken or shattered at a given spot, but its
ruptures are asignifying: it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines.13
In parallel with Benoit Mandelbrot’s and Ilya Prigogine’s contemporaneous formulation
of chaos theory,14 Deleuze and Guattari argued for non-hierarchical structures without
beginning and end, and often invisible.15 These structures seemed to be particularly
apt to explain the complex and unpredictable logic of the contemporary city.
Zone brought the writings of French philosophers to the world of architecture.
As Sanford Kwinter put it, the influence of Foucault and Deleuze is what changed
everything, in the world of architecture.16 No one in the late 1980s was using the word
globalization yet, but through the study of Foucault, Deleuze, and some economists,
it became evident that one could not think about the city as separated from the total
ecumene, the total system. Zone completely rejected any traditional approach to the
city, bringing in the new “cosmopolitan” city and problem. Although it was attacked
for “ignoring the boundaries between disciplines,” the book created a new intellectual
environment revolutionizing spatial thought, design, and representation.17
While the first issue, Zone 1/2, was kind of pre-Deleuzian, Zone 6 was a completely
Deleuzian project, about chaos and dynamic systems theory. Indeed, notions of
complexity, chaos, dynamic systems, and topology became also recurrent in architects’
vocabulary and approaches, leading to an increasing interest in surfaces, landscape,
ecology, and the study of urban systems in general. The development of information
and communication systems gave rise to new relations and spatial configurations that
found in the study of dynamic systems a model for representing and processing them.18
A system, according to Ludwig van Bertalanffy, the founder of general systems
theory, is a “set of elements that stand in interaction – that is, they are linked in such
relations that if one is modified, the others are too, and, as a result, the entire set is
modified.”19 In other words, a system is a set of objects and of relations between those
objects and their properties. The relevance of the relations, according to which one
considers a set of objects to be a system, depend upon the objectives of the investiga-
82 jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
4 detroit.1990s
landscape urbanism
4.1. TOWARDS AN URBAN LANDSCAPE: RISE AND CRISIS
OF THE POST-FORDIST CITY
As highlighted in the first chapter, the origins of landscape urbanism may be found
in the 1960s, when a deep urban crisis highlighted the failures and weaknesses of
both urban theories and practices that had evolved over the previous century. Urban
theories and empirical investigations of the city and its spatial specificity up to that
time were mainly involved in a search for regularity and order, while there was little
to help to understand what was happening in cities, why and what could be done.1
Urban planners and designers started to look for new meanings and models capable
of creating a dialogue with the preexistent but also of dealing with the imminent
explosion of the city and the changes in technology and lifestyles. 2 In the field of
landscape architecture, this led to a renewed awareness of the role of landscape and
ecology in relation to the city and the development of urbanization. 3 In the field of
architecture, new inspiration and references were also found in advanced technolo-
gies, models of chaos and complexity, subverting regularity and order in the quickly
growing global metropolis.4
In the 1960s, new approaches to understanding the dynamics of industrial capitalist
cityspace also emerged.5 Most of these approaches drew heavily on the writings of Marx
and Engels, an intellectual tradition that, although not specifically focused on cities, was
more attuned to study conditions of disorder, discontinuity, social upheaval, and economic
crisis.6 Influenced mainly by sociologists in France and Italy, and geographers in Britain
and North America, a neo-Marxist variant of urban studies emerged and took the lead in
making practical and theoretical sense not just of that crisis but also of the very nature of
the urbanization process and the social production of space.7 As geographer and urbanist
Edward Soja argued, “As cityspace was increasingly conceived as the specialized context
for collective consumption, urban politics came to be defined primarily around a struggle
for these collective goods and services that pitted the local and national state (with the
assistance of urban planners) against the empowerment strategies of the new urban
social movements. […] The fields of contention were thus explicitly spatialized, emplaced
within the specific geography of urbanism, and centered not so much on industrial
production as on the social and spatial reproduction of cityspace and the urban order.”8
Marxist philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre soon became one of the most
important references.9 Calling for a more radical reconsideration of social construction,
Lefebvre offered a thorough analysis of humanity through the medium of the land.10
83
In particular, Lefebvre’s work on “the rights to the city,” “everyday life in the modern
world,” the social struggles over “the production of space,” and the need for a specifi-
cally “urban revolution,” introduced a new perspective on the politics and ideology of
cityspace as well as the geohistory of modernity and capitalism.11 In Le droit à la ville,
published in 1968, Lefebvre analyzed the degradation of urban life, shaped by centralized
systems of production and consumption attitudes and deprived of its collective spaces.
Against rational planning, Lefebvre argued for the right to the city, a more extended
and complete realization of urban society.12 In La Production de l’Éspace, published in
1974, Lefebvre reviewed social, political and economic conditions that were completely
dependent on “the construction of space.”13 Inverting the Marxist analysis from the
Marxification of spatial analysis to the spatialization of Marxism, he made his most
relevant contributions to urban studies and more broadly to all the human sciences.14
According to Lefebvre indeed, the role of culture was that of revealing the land, which
constituted the very essence of the social.15
Lefebvre’s writings, and the neo-Marxist School of Urban Political Economy that
followed, created a new paradigm for studying the city and its complex geohistory that
would deeply influence and radically politicize urban theory up to the present.16 Indeed,
what Lefebvre described in revolutionary terms back in the late 1960s - early 1970s,
became evident in the postmodern metropolis, especially in American cities of the West
and Midwest. Manuel Castells, Lefebvre’s student, creatively reinterpreted Lefebvre’s
writings on cities and space in The Urban Question.17 Castells thus expressed the constant
tension embedded in urban space that revolved around the power differentials between
social classes that is manifested and performed in and around the evolving spatial
specificity of urbanism. In the early 1980s, transcending Marxist structures, he started
to investigate the role of new technologies in the restructuring of economy, especially
with regard to information society, communication and globalization. In the late 1980s
and 1990s, he famously introduced the concept of the “space of flows” – the material
and immaterial components of global information networks used for the real-time,
long-distance coordination of the economy – as the outcome of the “network society.”18
However, as regards the landscape urbanism discourse, it was the work of radical
geographer David Harvey that offered the main theoretical and analytic reference.
Harvey, like Castells, argued that a particular landscape, a specific urban geography,
is created by capitalism in its own image, designed above all to facilitate the accumu-
lation process. Nevertheless, he noted, the very fixity of the urban built environment is
what creates problems for continued capitalist accumulation, for it locks investments
into particular spatial locations. Over time, and especially during periods of crisis,
these immobilized investments could no longer be as profitable as they had been.19
The impossibility of moving built forms freely around the physical landscape when
they no longer meet immediate need creates a perpetual dilemma for capital and for
the social construction of capitalist urban space. 20 In Harvey’s analysis then, capitalist
development is continuously achieving a precarious balance between the creation and
the destruction of its specific geography. 21 Besides, not only is the expansion of the
urban environment, with its cyclic crises and reassessment, embedded in the very
logic of capitalism, this is actually what has ensured its survival and maintenance
over the last three centuries. 22
104 jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
5 harvard. 2010s
ecological 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. This is an area full of possibilities for example in relation
to the consideration of the temporal dimension of our cities and regions. But, over the
past few years, I have begun to speculate more in terms of the potential correspon-
dences between the ecological and the urban. In one sense, still preserving a role for
reciprocities between landscape and the urban but using the limit that is presented
by the ecological as an opportunity for new organizational structures in the context
of dense urban conurbations...”
Dean Mohsen Mostafavi, introducing the Ecological Urbanism Conference, April 2009.
With the 2009 “Ecological Urbanism” conference and exhibition,1 the recently
appointed Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), Mohsen Mostafavi, 2
clearly stated the intentions of the School: “Planning and urban design need a trans-
formation. We have the pedagogic responsibility of developing new tools and methods
of understanding and designing the city.”3 The conference, and the publication that
followed it, contained a vast range of essays and projects suggesting more ecologically
aware design approaches. Indeed, Mostafavi argued, while climate change, sustain-
able architecture, and green technologies have become increasingly topical, issues
surrounding the sustainability of the city are much less developed, and ecological
urbanism aims to fill this gap.4
Many landscape urbanism theorists and practitioners took part in the conference,
and many others joined the School in the following years.5 In 2008, Charles Waldheim
was appointed Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture.6 Since then, “land-
scape urbanists” such as Chris Reed, Pierre Bélanger, Mason White, Nina-Marie Lister,
Clare Lyster, Kelly Shannon, Sébastian Marot, Paola Viganò, among others, have been
appointed or invited as visiting professors and lecturers at the Harvard GSD. Thus, is
this the moment when people are coming together to explore the full potential of land-
scape urbanism? Or should landscape urbanism be considered as a pre-history, a part
of a broader, more urgent and inclusive discourse, as ecological urbanism aims to be?
The first program of landscape urbanism was founded by Waldheim in 1997, at the
University of Illinois in Chicago; the same year, he organized the ”Landscape Urbanism”
conference and exhibition. In 2003, he was appointed Associate Professor at the Faculty
105
of Architecture, Landscape, and Design of the University of Toronto, which already
had strong programs in landscape architecture, regional and environmental planning,
and he continued to promote interdisciplinary practices. The following year, Waldheim
became Associate Dean and Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture Program.
In 1999, Mohsen Mostafavi founded the Master in Landscape Urbanism (AALU) at the
Architectural Association in London, and co-directed it with Ciro Najle until 2003. Eva
Castro, Alfredo Ramirez, and Eduardo Rico, also founders of the Groundlab Landscape
Urbanism office, have been running the AALU Master since then. At the University
of Pennsylvania, where everything began, James Corner was Chair of the Landscape
Architecture Department from 2000 to 2012, significantly contributing to the develop-
ment of landscape urbanism theories and practices. The recent appointment of Richard
Weller as the new Chair of Landscape Architecture, speaks of the intention of Penn
to remain one of the most important programs investigating the relationship between
landscape and urbanization.7 Further landscape urbanism programs are being run at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,8 the University of Western Australia9 and
the AHO University of Oslo,10 where many of the aforementioned scholars have taught
and are teaching. Other design schools, more or less related to landscape urbanism,
have recently dissolved departmental distinctions between architecture and landscape
architecture or launched specifically combined degrees and interdisciplinary course work.
Two parallel claims overlap and interact here: on the one hand, landscape urbanism,
and its recently renewed commitment to ecology, appears to be the most appropriate
way to respond to the challenges and opportunities attendant on the contemporary
metropolitan condition. On the other hand, it is the project of a school, pursued by
scholars who have recognized the value of hybrid, complex and trans-disciplinary
approaches, and promoted them. If the first point claims the “necessity” of landscape
urbanism in order to face the challenges posed by contemporary urbanism, and espe-
cially the environmental question, the second demonstrates a clear intentionality of
the project, nonetheless strengthened and supported by the former. Not generally
considered a discipline,11 landscape urbanism practices originated a body of knowledge
and tools that, although modified and challenged by the different contexts, can still be
recognized as such. The first theorists and practitioners can be individuated, and their
careers followed. Their paths crossed throughout the years and, by providing multiple
references and perspectives, all of them contributed to implementing and refining the
discourse on urbanism, landscape and ecology.
As explored throughout this book, three main aspects have characterized landscape
urbanism theories and projects over the last fifteen years.12 First, landscape shifted
“from appearance to performance.”13 Challenging the view of landscape as a picture,
projects of landscape urbanism have embraced time, change, and circumstances,
building processes within a three-dimensional spatial continuum. Second, landscape
is intended as “the lens through which to understand the contemporary city and the
medium through which to transform it.”14 As urbanization expands, landscape has
replaced architecture as the most appropriate medium for urbanism.15 Open space, urban
infrastructures, and unused land play an increasingly important role in the organization
of the territory, both in ecological and economic terms. Third, several tools, practices,
and strategies can be imported from the landscape architecture discipline into the urban
Many “landscape urbanists” began their careers together,
at the University of Pennsylvania in the late 1980s, while
others met in the following years, finding a common inter-
est and a productive field of action in the interrelation-
ship between landscape and urban design. “Figures”
presents a series of interviews conducted
with Mohsen Mostafavi, Charles Wald-
heim, James Corner, Stan Allen, San-
ford Kwinter, Ciro Najle, Eva Castro,
Alfredo Ramirez, Chris Reed, Pierre
Bélanger, Alan Berger, Kelly Shannon,
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 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. Through
the voices of the protagonists, “Figures” investigates the
disciplinary, geographical, social, and cultural contexts
that provoked the rejection of traditional instruments
and encouraged the convergence of landscape, ecology,
urbanism, and architecture.

figures
 Figures Geography of emerging disciplines

AHO

AA Berlage
Leuven
Berkeley
Toronto
Illinois GSD ETH
IUAV
MIT
COLUMBIA Genoa
Colorado
Princeton
PENN Barcelona

114 Mohsen Mostafavi

119 Charles Waldheim
123 James Corner
128 Stan Allen
132 Sanford Kwinter
136 Ciro Najle
141 Eva Castro, Alfredo Ramirez
146 Chris Reed
UWA
150 Pierre Bélanger
155 Alan Berger
160 Kelly Shannon
164 Manuel Gausa
interviews with Jeannette Sordi RMIT
 jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
MMjs
Mohsen Mostafavi, architect and educator, is the
Dean of the Harvard University Graduate School of De-
sign and the Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of
Design. His work focuses on modes and processes of
urbanization and on the interface between technology
and aesthetics. He was formerly the Dean of the College
of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University,
Chairman of the Architectural Association School of Ar-
chitecture in London, and Director of the Master of Ar-
chitecture I Program at Harvard University’s Graduate
School of Design. Dean Mostafavi has also taught at the
University of Pennsylvania, Cambridge University, and
the Frankfurt Academy of Fine Arts (Städelschule). He
studied architecture at the AA, and undertook research
on Counter-Reformation urban history at the Universi-
ties of Essex and Cambridge. His major publications
include On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time
(with David Leatherbarrow, MIT, 1993), Surface Archi-
tecture (MIT, 2002) Landscape Urbanism: A Manual
for the Machinic Landscape (AA Publications, 2004);
Ecological Urbanism (with Gareth Doherty, Lars Müller
Publishers, 2010); and In the Life of Cities (Lars Müller
Publishers, 2012).
Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of
Design and Alexander and Victoria Wiley
Professor of Design
Jeannette Sordi (JS): I know that you,
Charles Waldheim, James Corner, and
many others who later became theorists
and practitioners of landscape urbanism,
met at Penn.
Mohsen Mostafavi (MM): It’s true that a
lot of ideas happened in the late 1980s.
My research was on Counter-Reformation
urban history. There is a direct relation-
ship between the evolution of cities and
the inspiration that comes from landscape
architecture. I was working on Rome, on
the urbanization projects that happened
in the latter part of the sixteenth century
under Cardinal Montalto, the future Pope
Sixtus V. Before becoming Pope, he had a
garden on the Esquiline Hill and designed
Mohsen Mostafavi
interview
a very particular kind of landscape that
also inspired him to develop ideas about
axiality. The main issue is that he experi-
mented with this landscape, and his ideas
for the development of Rome in 1585-1590
were in part derived from his experience
of designing the garden of Villa Montalto.
At Penn, I taught some design studios
around the question of “Urban Plot.” We
called this emplotment. We focused on
the different meanings of plot, on the
relationship between fiction, site, land-
scape, making architecture, and how to
create certain methodologies that provide
thematic ideas. There were a number of
very interesting people who took this
studio. Charles Waldheim was one of
the students. James Corner was a young
faculty member at the time and he partic-
ipated in seminars. He was particularly
interested in the La Villette projects by
OMA and Bernard Tschumi. Ian McHarg,
David Leatherbarrow, Homa Farjadi, Joseph
Rykwert, and the late Marco Frascari were
around, part of the atmosphere. And then
there was the influence of contemporary
architecture.
JS: So it can be considered “one project”?
MM: The influences between architecture,
landscape and urbanization were quite fluid
between these people. I don’t know that
it was one project, but there are a lot of
connections between the different projects.
Charles worked with Homa Fardjadi and
me, and later he taught with James Corner.
The time that I was there was spent more
on research on the idea. Charles was then
teaching in Chicago and organized the
“Landscape Urbanism” conference in which
some of us participated. It was something in
the air and the conference was the moment
when people who shared those interests
came together. It was important as a marker
of our mutual interests.
115
James Corner, Charles and I all probably
have different, but hopefully complemen-
tary, interests and positions. People think
our focus is the same because of the name,
but it is not. For me it’s about the question
of method and methodology. I am working
as a pedagogue, as a teacher, and so I am
also looking for ways in which it’s not only
an idea about landscape or urbanization,
but instead about taking some tools, some
methodologies from landscape architecture,
and using them for urbanism. I started with
urbanism.
The Landscape Urbanism book [Mostafavi,
Najle, Landscape Urbanism: a Manual for the
Machinic Landscape, AA, 2003] was about
method. It was not something that focused
primarily on parks in cities, and it wasn’t a
new idea. There are many cities that have
this tradition of landscape for urbanization.
The reason why I was interested in Cardinal
Montalto is that there are some practices
that could be co-opted from another field.
J S: W hat about your experience in
England, previous to Penn?
MM: In the UK in the 1970s, I felt the
presence of landscape history, more than
practice. At the A A, there were many
books, historical books, on the design of
the picturesque landscape. What landscape
included was the fact that it needed to have
a patron (who commissioned it), a designer,
and also participants (the people who
would take benefit from it). But there were
also other things connected to landscape:
the body that moves through landscape,
sensation, and the fact that landscape is
a mechanism—a device for the production
of experience.
In the UK, there had been the tradition
of Townscape (Gordon Cullen’s Concise
Townscape was an important book), a sort
of “picturesque” in the open space of the
city, in which the life of the city was repre-
118 jeannette sordi beyond urbanism interview

CWjs
For example, we’re planning symposia and
exhibitions in Chile and Brazil in 2014. We
had an exhibition in Kuwait in 2012. It is
available as an e-book and an application
for the iPad.
There has also been an impact in terms
of the work we are doing at the Graduate
School of Design through the work of Waldheim coined the term ”landscape urbanism”
students and faculty in studios and courses to describe emerging landscape design practices in
the context of North American urbanism. His major
and the nascent design labs. A number of publications include: The Landscape Urbanism Reader
new faculty members have joined us over (2006) and Stalking Detroit (2001). Waldheim taught
at the University of Toronto, was a visiting faculty
the past few years, specifically dealing with mem ber at Har vard University, the University of
issues relating to sustainable building, Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania, and Rice
University, and joined the Harvard GSD in 2008. In
climate change, social justice, art, and the 2006, he received the Rome Prize Fellowship at the
public domain: all components of ecological American Academy in Rome.
urbanism.
However, the most significant outcome, Professor of Landscape Architecture and
I hope, is in how the ideas and methods Chair of the Department of Landscape
contained within the book are influencing Architecture at Harvard Graduate School
students and practitioners, and perhaps the of Design.
public at large. That is of course not so easy
to measure, and not so visible, but hope- Jeannette Sordi (JS): Mohsen Mostafavi,
fully the concepts and methods of ecological Alan Berger, Chris Reed, and yourself:
urbanism will continue to impact education you were all at the University of Penn-
and practice, through many different mech- sylvania School of Design (Penn) at some
anisms, ultimately shaping future cities. point in the late 1980s-early 1990s; and
James Corner has also been teaching
Harvard Graduate School of Design, there since that time. If there is a history
Cambridge, Mass., 2011-2012. of landscape urbanism, is this where we
can say it begins?
Charles Waldheim (CW): There was a
moment when the three of us, Mohsen
Mostafavi, James, and I, were all in the
same place at the same time. James Corner
was at Penn, studying with McHarg, and
a branch of the Architectural Associa-
tion [London] was there. If you want to
go back in history, you can just focus on
that, because I am convinced that some-
thing happened there. None of us had the
concept, but after a couple of years there
together it was pretty clear that that was
the way. It was between 1987-1990, and
both Architecture and Landscape Architec-
ture were at the end of a great era at Penn:
Charles Waldheim
122
that means giving access to production,
winning competitions that will inevitably
look like a formalization of the project. Some
people would prefer to stay with social
critique and a theoretical approach. I want
to make it instrumental, I want to actually
build some of these programs, and I think
many of my colleagues think this way also.
The impact of that on landscape architec-
ture makes it more robust and stronger.
JS: I believe that conceiving of landscape
urbanism, and now ecological urbanism,
as schools, theories and practices, is more
productive and open than claiming it is a
discipline. I think this has also been your
position. Is it still, or is it rather becoming
a discipline?
CW: The School [Harvard GSD] is an
interesting place. We have appointed
a considerable number of new faculty
members in the last few years, and we
are now seeing the results of a collective
thing. We can now step back and look at
the students’ work, and it is quite produc-
tive. And it is finally time to reassemble
this work we have been doing into publi-
cations, conferences, and exhibitions. The
first of which being Chris Reed’s and Nina-
Marie Lister’s upcoming book Projective
Ecologies (Actar, 2014), and the “Airport
Landscape” conference and exhibition that
just opened [“Airport Landscape: Urban
Ecologies in the Aerial Age,” conference
held at Harvard GSD, November 2013].
So, after focusing on structuring the
pedagog ica l prog ra ms, we a re now
looking more at technical and ecological
tools, digital media, and engineering
systems. We are bringing in people who
can improve and develop this know-how
in a more operative way. The digital, for
instance, is going much faster than I
expected. We are scaling up, reassembling
different positions and diverse expres-
jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
sions, developing technical aspects, and
publishing the outcomes.
JS: What about the integration with plan-
ning and urban design?
CW: It is going very well. As I said, in the
first few years we repositioned the school,
not just the departments. All the depart-
ments shifted their programs somehow, but
now they have stabilized, and disciplinary
divisions are clearer again. Landscape
urbanism and ecological urbanism are
discourses, fields of practice that impact the
disciplines of architecture and planning but
they will not cancel those disciplines out.
Harvard Graduate School of Design
Cambridge, Mass., Sep. 2011 - Oct. 2013
interview
JCjs
James Corner is largely credited, along with Charles
Waldheim, with founding and developing the concept
“landscape urbanism.” He is founder and director of
James Corner Field Operations, based in New York
City. His projects include New York’s High Line and
Fresh Kills Park; London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic
Park; Seattle’s Central Waterfront; and Shenzhen’s
new city, Qianhai. He has been recognized with the
National Design Award (2010) and the by American
Academy of Arts and Letters (2007). He is author of
The Landscape Imagination (Princeton Architectural
Press, 2014); Recovering Landscape (Princeton Archi-
tectural Press, 1999); and Taking Measures Across the
American Landscape (Yale, 1996).
Professor of Landscape Architecture and
Urbanism, University of Pennsylvania
School of Design.
Jeannette Sordi (JS): Talking to Charles
Waldheim, Mohsen Mostafavi, Alan
Berger, and Chris Reed, it became evident
that I could place the origins of landscape
urbanism at the University of Pennsyl-
vania, between the late 1980s and early
1990s, where all of you were teaching or
studying at that time. They also give you
credit for shifting landscape architecture
towards urbanism, changing the field of
landscape architecture itself. What have
been your main influences?
James Corner (JC): My interest in land-
scape architecture began with a conjoined
interest in geography, biology, and art.
Geography pointed to land and environ-
ment, while art pointed to spatial and
aesthetic creativity, and so landscape
architecture seemed to hold the most
professional promise for me in this regard.
After studying landscape architecture
at Manchester Metropolitan University, I
began working with Richard Rogers and
James Corner
 jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
SKjs
Sanford Kwinter has taught at MIT, Columbia and Rice
Universities, the Städelschule in Frankfurt, the Archi-
tectural Association in London, and the Universität für
Angewandte Kunst in Vienna. He has written widely
on philosophical issues of design, architecture and ur-
banism, science and technology and was co-founder
and editor of the journal ZONE and Zone Books for 20
years. His books include Far From Equilibrium: Essays
on Technology and Design Culture (2008) and Requiem:
For the City at the End of the Millennium (2010).
Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Professor of Architectural Theory and
Criticism Harvard Graduate School of Design
Jeannette Sordi (JS): I am reassembling
the body of knowledge of landscape
urbanism, and its intellectual history,
starting from Penn to the GSD through
Detroit, Toronto, and Columbia. You were
at Columbia, and your essays have been
very influential for Stan Allen, James
Corner, Ciro Najle...
Sanford Kwinter (SK): Zone 1|2 came out
in 1986. Although we did our best to hide
it, the book’s full title was Zone 1|2: The
Contemporary City, and this apparently is
what disturbed so many and, in the end,
I suppose, changed everything. The book
looked at the city from a range of perspec-
tives: that of philosophers, economists,
architects, even a considerable number of
artists (I was writing in those days from the
perspective of a cultural history of philos-
ophy.) The intention of the book was to
examine the evolution of the contemporary
city, but as part of the city itself: to make
the book physically part of the city. It was
designed by Bruce Mau, notably in the
pre-digital era. Most thinking about the city
in those days was the province of experts—
Sanford Kwinter
interview
experts with no particular expertise really
other than the parochialism of the social
science disciplines, and our “upstart”
approach to the problem was an invitation
to everyone else to “think” the city. Many
said that the book that changed the way
architects would look at the city thereafter.
Architects especially were very excited
about it (even as many—Sylvia Lavin for
example, would continue to express shock
about its transdisciplinarity for years to
come). But it is also true that they took
years to understand what to do with it. It
became an object of meditation for them,
I think. But to be fair, there were a lot of
foreign philosophical concepts in it most
prevalently from Foucault and Deleuze. But
even for philosophy, the book brought the
city back into the discourse.
JS: That’s what I was about to ask you: how
is it that Deleuze became so popular among
architects in the 1990s? How did Deleuzian
thinking – and your writings – influence
landscape architecture and urbanism?
SK: The field started to become definitively
“Deleuzian” with Zone. After this Zone
1|2 came out, we began to publish other
books as a sort of support system for the
ideas and approaches we developed in the
Zones. Four years later we published Zone
6, about emerging biological ideas such
as complexity theory, chaos, and dynamic
systems theory. One might say that Zone
1|2 is pre-Deleuzian, while Zone 6 is almost
post-Deleuzian. In the first, Deleuze is
under the surface—you can see it every-
where of course even in the Introduction;
in Zone 6, we had already synthesized it
and were asking ourselves “where does
this lead?” The impact of the new tech-
nologies was very powerful in the 1980s,
which is something much harder to feel
today. One doesn’t see the destruction of
the old forms in the way one experienced
133
it at that time. We started Zone 1|2 in 1983
(it came out in 1986), to bring in the new
problem of the “cosmopolitan” city. No one
was using the word “globalization” yet,
but we could see through our own studies
– Foucault, Deleuze, and certainly many
economists – that you could not think the
city separate from the total ecumene, the
total system. The work was about rational-
ization processes and how their operations
were transforming the world, the city, in
new ways and at new scales, both small
and large.
In 1991, Alessandra Ponte asked me to
write an article for Ottagono. I was at the
Getty in Los Angeles, and I furnished an
essay on catastrophe theory [“Landscapes
of Change: Boccioni’s ‘Stati d’animo,’ as a
General Theory of Models,” 1992], which
was later published by Assemblage (after
Ottagono’s editorship and program was
decimated). I had no particular intention
when I called it “landscapes”— it was a
pure accident because I had never thought
to address landscape thinkers or designers.
People in our field in America were just
starting to read Deleuze, and the field was
already deeply interested in chaos theory
and dynamic systems theory. Years later,
James Corner—whom I had never before
met—asked me to come to Penn and give
some lectures to his students, and I realized
there was already a precocious following
for this stuff there. What they found inter-
esting about it, I think, was that they
could use a model for thinking about the
dynamism of landscape and its essential
features – succession, transformation and
change. And of course I was also interested
in the physics (formalisms) of transitions,
which I held to be really the most important
thing in philosophy and history.
After the Getty, I was invited to teach
at Harvard GSD. Most of the work I was
doing in the 1990s was on morphology, on
140
veloped for other uses, mostly based on
redundancy, rather than in efficiency, scar-
city, and logics of survival. The climate and
the materials were analyzed in parallel to
control or manage, their integration for orga-
nizational, systemic, and artistic purposes,
making the seeds that are latently present
in the desert grow and bloom, and creating
a form of architecture whose status stands
somewhere between an art installation, a
spatial prototype, and an incipient ecolog-
ical system . Simply by collecting water, the
conditions for new minute ecologies were
bred, organizationally merging them with
the architecture of the pieces, the weaving
patterns, and inscribing them in a larger
economy of territorial development. The
installations are still there, some of them
partially decayed, some of them evolved,
and some did both.
JS: What is your work about now?
CN: Here at the [Harvard] GSD, in the
past few years, I have been working both
along the lines and against the grain of the
open systems’ approach. I am still working
systemically, but now I am looking at how
architectural typology can be rethought
through the systemic. Ecological thinking
is still present, but it has become more
abstract, formal, and disciplinary. Fifteen
years ago, I would have shared a certain
belief in the holistic aspects of ecological
thinking, in terms of the opportunities
implied for urbanism and architecture. One
could think, back then, of the disciplines as
fluid realms that could move from domain to
domain very quickly and powerfully. But at
some point along the line, I started to think
that these beliefs were somehow too uncon-
strained and far too positive, so I started
to go back into the discipline to see what
exactly they were bringing. While in the
past I was working on the idea of suspension
of judgment at all levels, from the conceptual
jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
to the operative, making normative levels
relative to the larger realm of ecologies, such
initiative started to feel free-floating and
a-cultural. The sustainability discourse also
established itself as a generally accepted
evidence, becoming less tense as a field of
forward-looking investigation. So in the past
few years, while keeping the attention on
the territory, I have explored value systems
whose relevance one can recognize at a
cultural level.
JS: Do you mean you returned to engage
with architectural buildings?
CN: Yes, although not without bringing in
the techniques and the ductility we learnt
from working with dynamic systems. So
this is not to be regarded as a reaction, but
rather as another step in the complexifi-
cation of this same mind set. I went back
into developmental typologies, to under-
stand the potentials that might be explored
through four realms of research: higher
forms of normativity, new figurations,
mergers between the banal and the ideal,
and discoursive set ups situated beyond the
opposition between the skeptical and the
positive. It is not so much about dynamics
per se, but about taking them for granted to
develop new understandings of the practice
and new extents into what we are capable to
conceive as architects. While I cannot avoid
processing organizations through time-based
descriptions, I tend to be more interested
in how formal and figurative aspects of
urbanism can be thought when territorial
developments are seen as large pieces of
architecture. I feel that the direction to take
goes inwards, as much as outwards, and that
the boundaries that need to be expanded
have to do with the reclaiming of the old
territory of the discipline.
Har vard Graduate School of Desig n
Cambridge, Mass., Apr. 2012
interview
EC,ARjs
Jose Alfredo Ramírez is co-director of the Architectural
Association Landscape Urbanism master’s program
and co-founder and director of Groundlab. Since 2005,
Ramirez has worked and developed projects at the junc-
tion of architecture, landscape, and urbanism in a variety
of contexts such as China, Mexico, Spain, among others.
Eva Castro is visiting professor at Tsinghua University in
Beijing and at the Architectural Association, where she
has been teaching since 2003. Castro is co-founder of
Plasma Studio and Groundlab. She has been recognized
with several awards including the Next Generation
Architects Award, the Young Architect of the Year
Award and the Contract World Award.
Co-director and Professors of the
Landscape Urbanism Architectural
Association and co-founders of Groundlab
Jeannette Sordi (JS): You have been
directing the Master in Landscape
Urbanism at the Architectural Associ-
ation (AALU) since 2004, following the
leadership of Mostafavi and Najle. What
has characterized the AALU master’s
program over the last 10 years?
Alfredo Ramirez (AR), Eva Castro (EC):
The development of the AALU program
after Mohsen Mostafavi and Ciro Najle was
initially set up as a testing ground of the
methodology. We accepted its importance
as a mechanism to operate from within;
the only means to read and absorb the
embedded complexity of the territory as
the very material that lends itself to further
transformations, toward the projection of
new futures. Since we understand the
territory as a living organism in constant
flux, always in the wake of “becoming”
through iterative formations, something
to “tap into,” instead of suppressing the
information available, the methodology
has always been key to the development
Eva Castro
 jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
of the work we do. We felt, however, that
there was a need to introduce the notion of
the exemption within the process; to iden-
tify singularities that do not obey or are not
ruled by the system necessarily, but that
stem from a different level of engagement
related to the designer’s own criticality.
T he c on s t ra i nt s a nd c ont i ngenc ies
confronted by the methodology in specific
contexts bring landscape urbanism closer
to a political project, beyond a self-refer-
ential academic exercise. It is in these
methodological “deviations” where we are
compelled as designers to make decisions;
it is where our agency resides, where we
construct our political agenda.
Our intention to direct the development
of the program towards rapid urbanized
environments such as China and India
shifted the scope and size of our landscape
urbanism program to a larger urban scale.
We attempted to dispassionately assess the
validity of the discipline and to re-estab-
lish a certain urgency when dealing with
extreme conditions.
Our approach to living urban environments
is strategic, and thus its departure point is
framed under an operative methodology,
but it is also tactical in its development.
In this sense, the design output is not
prescribed towards a finite element but
serves as a catalyst for potential strategic
scenarios against the objectification of
space. This tactical approach, a conse-
quence of testing the methodology in
a specific context, strives for a critical
engagement with the project, and in our
case one that seeks to reintroduce the
material importance of the territory; the
power of its extroverted and articulated
physicality as a political tool toward the
inhabitant’s (re)appropriation of space, that
is, the public space – already in danger of
extinction. The continuous adjustment and
modulation of the methodology ensures the
Alfredo Ramirez
interview
capacity of the program to respond to the
pressing contemporary conditions of polit-
ical and social disengagement.
JS: You also named your office Groundlab
Landscape Urbanism. W hat kind of
specific knowledge, tools, and methodol-
ogies does landscape urbanism provide?
Does it define a specific field of practice
that is different from architecture, land-
scape, and urbanism?
AR, EC: Groundlab was somehow an
outcome of the intentions behind the
political and social engagement of the
Landscape Urbanism Program at the AA.
We were and are interested in specific
scopes encompassing large-scale, urban-
ized, and conflicting projects that ineludibly
need to draw from several disciplines, tools,
and mechanisms, thus requiring a truly
transdisciplinary approach.
As such, Groundlab was the opportunity
to overcome the barriers and constraints
of the academic environment, where condi-
tions of experimentation and parameters
are relatively controlled – similar to the
aseptic “laboratory” conditions.
Groundlab opened up a new niche of proj-
ects embodying within its practice relations
that neither architecture, nor landscape or
urbanism could per se accomplish. Hence,
the space comprised (compressed) within
their margins became the field of interest to
be redefined through new connections; the
interstices where existing typologies would
need to be challenged and novel morpho-
logical continuities could emerge. And it
is precisely here, within these transitions,
where we envisage a ground of new affili-
ations to take place; new ecologies able to
challenge traditional assumptions about
the city and offer new forms of engagement.
JS: In fact your work also contributed to
developing a sort of reference image for
143
landscape urbanism’s projects, in which
architecture, landscape, urbanism,
engineering, ecology… are combined,
giving shape to something new. What
led you to landscape urbanism? What
were and are your main references and
interests that propel your past and
current work/research?
AR, EC: We are mostly interested in what
can be called public space at large and
specifically its current precarious state. In
the context of today’s generic urban devel-
opments and the eradication of public space
by market forces and power structures, we
find landscape not only as an alternative
but as an original source of culturally and
socially charged concepts, urgently needed,
to challenge and resist those mechanisms
that produce contemporary urbanization.
In this sense, we constantly ask ourselves
what could be the role of landscape
as opposed to its conventional role in
producing aesthetic/ornamental scenarios?
To literally ground this interest, and from a
designer’s point of view, Groundlab takes
on the challenge and intends to generate
a practice that directly engages with
these conditions and the way in which
they continuously reconfigure the city. As
such, we understand ground as a medium,
a concept, and a design tool, materially
capable of embodying the qualities that
landscape urbanism puts forward as design
principles. Transdisciplinarity, processes
within larger ecological systems, perfor-
mance-oriented design, to name a few,
are explored through the use and under-
standing of landscape and engineering
techniques as constructing and building
the environment beyond a remedial or prob-
lem-solving approach. The ground caters to
an urbanism able to intrinsically integrate
other disciplines and scales within the
design process, thus an urbanism engaged
with larger territorial systems as well as
 jeannette sordi beyond urbanism
KSjs
Kelly Shannon teaches at the Oslo School of Architec-
ture and Design and the University of Leuven. She is an
editor of the Journal of Landscape Architecture (JoLA).
With Bruno De Meulder, she is co-editor of the books
series UFO: Explorations in Urbanism (published with
Park Books, Zurich) and co-founder of RUA (Research
Urbanism Architecture) where the office’s work in
Europe and Asia seeks innovative interplays of land-
scape, infrastructure and urbanization that respond to
contemporary challenges, while critically evaluating the
performance and capacity of existing contexts.
Professor of Urbanism and Landscape,
Oslo School of Architecture and Univer-
sity of Leuven
Jeannette Sordi (JS): You are the one who
made Europeans (and others) consider
well-known, and lesser-known, Euro-
pean projects from a different perspective:
Branzi, I BA Emscher Park projects,
Viganò’s Salento plan; a perspective
coming from landscape. How did you
engage with landscape architecture and
landscape urbanism?
Kelly Shannon (KS): In today’s urban world,
landscape is the most effective tool to
engage the territory and public realm—for
this simple reason I engaged with the field.
By the end of the 1980s, when I left the
United States having completed an archi-
tecture education, the city was merely a
playground of the private developer, and
designers were left to packaging enve-
lopes. There was already the emergence
of what the Australian Richard Marshall
decades later would label an “absent
urbanism”— the deliberate construction
of city form with no conscious attempt to
foster a social sphere, resulting in a sani-
tized urban condition with no coherent
Kelly Shannon
interview
morphology or public realm. Meanwhile,
in Europe, strategic projects in France, for
instance, involved landscape architects
from the onset and, more generally, the
welfare state endeavored to enhance the
interplay of infrastructure, landscape and
urbanism. Engaged designers and thinkers,
coupled with political will, created a
paradigm shift in the built environment.
Projects and policy resulted in strategies
where sites themselves—not financing or
program—became the controlling instru-
ment of the interface between culture
and nature; site phenomena, principles of
ecology, etc., were generative devices for
new forms and programs. The shift towards
landscape was clear and inevitable for me.
JS: If I am not wrong, you told me you
started your research working in Asia, in
Vietnam. Why was it important to adopt
a landscape approach there?
KS: I began working in Vietnam in 1997,
first with a Local Agenda 21 UN-Habitat
project (in Vinh) and later through PhD
research (in Vinh, Hue, and Cantho).
Vietnam, like many countries in the region,
was already in the throes of dramatic
transformation in both its city cores and
vast peripheral territories. Massive rural
to urban migration was occurring, due
to economic liberalization, changes in
land laws, and restrictions on residence
permits. Existing urban areas were quickly
stretched beyond their carrying capacities,
and new cities were rising from peripheral
paddy fields and low-lying lands, fragile
coastal wetlands and even from the sea
itself. The unprecedented scale, speed, and
scope of modernization and urbanization
were complemented by parallel processes
of extreme environmental degradation.
Untamable economic ambitions led to
developments where the once ritualized
attachment to the landscape was severely
161
compromised. And, in monsoon Asia, the
intensity and severity of storms has been
increasing, while dry regions are bracing
for extremes in the opposite direction. The
development of contemporary landscape
approaches towards urbanism is, in fact, a
re-articulation of age-old traditions. Land-
scape urbanism in Vietnam is an indigenous
practice—grounded in an intelligence borne
of necessity that led its ancient civilization to
seek a balance in creating settlement struc-
tures with, by, and through the constructed
landscape. Landscape urbanism strategies
that were developed, first for design research
in my doctoral work and later with various
(and ongoing) collaborations with the Viet-
namese government, were premised upon
a constructive interplay of interconnected
systems for rapidly growing territories,
which complement the existing structures
and build upon the logics of the hybrid and
domesticated landscape. Ultimately, blue-
green productive park waterscapes have
been developed as robust landscape struc-
tures in which enormous urban growth can
occur in tandem, while safeguarding water-
bound identities and simultaneously raising
resilience against the impeding impact of
climate change.
JS: Is it starting from the work in Asia
that you became interested in landscape
urbanism, or is it the contrary?
KS: Curiously, it was the maritime Republic
of Genoa that sparked my acute curiosity
in landscape urbanism. The city’s geog-
raphy, its rugged topography that meets
the Mediterranean and creates one of
Europe’s longest cities, its layered narra-
tives of urbanization and complicated webs
of infrastructure are a form of landscape
urbanism—as is the eastward Riviera of
Portofino and Cinque Terre, an indigenous
landscape urbanism where human settle-
ment and productive landscape developed
The last section of the book 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, Groundlab, SWA, Bélanger). It also includes
some projects developed by designers who, although
not included under that banner, are using landscape and
ecology as mediums in which to enrich the possibilities
of architecture and urbanism, planning and design (i.e.
Rahul Mehrotra, Kate Orff, MVVA), and an overview of
its potential for the Italian context (the Urban Plan of

Lecce). These projects are expanding the

boundaries of the design and planning

disciplines, embracing landscape
and ecology as projective means.
Performative urbanism, infrastructural
landscapes, and constructed ecologies are
all seen as emerging objectives and fields of
interventions highlighted by these projects,
forecasting innovative relationships
between the urban and the environment,
beyond traditional urbanism.

atlas
 Atlas Projects and advanced experiences

172 Stoss, Detroit Future City, Detroit, Michigan, U.S. (2012)

PERFORMATIVE
176 MVRDV, Freeland, Almere, Netherlands (2011)
180
184
Field Operations, Water City, Qianhai, China (2011)
MVVA, Lower Don Lands Masterplan, Toronto, Canada (2011)
URBANISM
186
190
194
West 8, Toronto Central Waterfront, Toronto, Canada (2006)
SWA, Buffalo Bayou Promenade, Houston, Texas, U.S. (2006) INFRASTRUCTURAL
Groundlab Plasmastudio, Flowing Gardens, Xi’an, China (2011)
198
202
Turenscape, Houtan Park, Shanghai, China (2010)
RMA, Hathigaon Elephant Village, Jaipur, India (2008)
LANDSCAPES
206 SCAPE, Oyster-Tecture, New York, U.S. (2010)
208
210
OPSYS, Dübenholz, Zurich, Switzerland (2011)
Mosè Ricci UNIGE, ecolecce, Lecce, Italy (2010)
CONSTRUCTED
ECOLOGIES
172 176 180 184 186 190 194 198 202 206 208 210

Detroit Freeland Qianhai Lower Central Buffalo Bayou Flowing Gardens Houtan Park Hathigaon OysterTecture Duebenholz ecolecce
Future City water city don Lands Waterfront Promenade
172 performative urbanism
STOSS
DETROIT FUTURE CITY.
PLACE, YEAR: DETROIT,
2012; CLIENT: DETROIT
ECONOMIC GROWTH
CORPORATION; SIZE:
37000 HA; PROGRAM:
BLUE GREEN ECOLOGICAL
INFRASRTUCTURE LONG
TERM PLAN; DESIGN: CHRIS
REED - STOSS LANDSCAPE
URBANISM.
detroit
Diagram of Detroit ecological flows. Right, future ecological networks to be developed starting from the
existing ecological networks and currentvacant lands; © Stoss. Above, picture of Detroit vacancy.
jeannette sordi beyond urbanism 173
Detroit Future City, the long-term urban plan, on which Chris
Reed Stoss Landscape Urbanism is consulting, is so conceived
in order to imagine new scenarios, starting from landscape and
ecology. Interestingly, the parameters on which the plan is based
are not the canonical ones of density, functions, or land use, but
rather the non-density, dis-function, and potential use, explicitly
classified into low, moderate, and high vacancy. In the moment
in which the city fails, landscape emerges as its infrastructure.
Indeed, traditional infrastructure is implemented and maintained
only when needed. Otherwise, forests, urban farming, superfi-
cial lakes, and water depuration plants will replace the obsolete
activities. These landscape ecological systems, to be realized in
public-private partnership, offer the possibility of reducing main-
tenance costs, creating new forms of employment, increasing the
quality of poor neighborhoods, cleaning soils and depurating and
reusing water, with notable consequences on environmental and
social quality. Indeed, the new urban plan of Detroit, at first named
“detroitworks,” promises to solve employment problems starting
from the city’s main resource: land.
174 performative urbanism jeannette sordi beyond urbanism 175

The Detroit Strategic Framework Plan will therefore be a compre-

hensive, action-oriented roadmap for decision-making to improve
the quality of life and business in Detroit, based on the transfor-
mation of vacant land, with over 70,000 parcels owned by the
municipality of Detroit, into an innovative open space network.
The Framework therefore establishes near- and long-range strat-
egies for: 1) economic growth and attracting new job opportunities
for residents; 2) stabilization and growth of neighborhoods and
employment centers; 3) more efficient practices for improving
city systems and infrastructure; 4) reforms to zoning that accom-
modate modern and innovative land uses; and 5) strategies that
help put our public land assets into more coordinated, strategic,
and productive use.
The project of landscape and infrastructure – of water, waste,
agriculture, and mobility – are integrated and conceived to reinvent
the urban space. Ecology becomes an economic opportunity as
well as a social mediator. Once again, Detroit tries to make a plan
that coincides with an emerging lifestyle, a model to be imitated.

Left, percentage of land utilization as of 2012; below, multiple future scenarios on dismissed lands; right,
diagram of the blue/green infrastructure and landscape interventions. All drawings, © Stoss.
176 performative urbanism
MVRDV
FREELAND. PLACE, YEAR:
ALMERE OOSTERWOLD
(NL), 2011; CLIENT:
MUNICIPALITY OF ALMERE;
SIZE: 4300 HA; PROGRAM:
15.000 DWELLINGS, 26.000
JOBS, 135HA BUSINESS,
200.000 M2 OFFICES,
ASSOCIATED FACILITIES,
400 HA NEW PUBLIC SPACE;
DESIGN: MVRDV.
almere
jeannette sordi beyond urbanism 177
Freeland is proposed as a radically liberated place where everyone
has the right to define his or her own living space. Based on a set
of parameters and simple rules that join individual desires with
collective needs, Freeland creates a rich assemblage of originality
where everything is possible, and where advanced urban planning is
also very basic. It is based on common sense: you can do whatever
you want, except harm others. By not only developing your own
plot but also all the necessary components around it, including
infrastructure, energy supply, waste disposal, water storage, and
public parks, you do not only build your own home, but you also
contribute to the development of your neighborhood and your
part of town. It is a growing attempt to make a masterplan collec-
tively. By giving these step-by-step initiatives a place, the area
will gradually transform the existing situation into a diverse living
and working landscape. By surrounding each development with a
green ring of urban agricultural and public or private green, city
and landscape are mixed and create a continuous green landscape.
This allows for the development of a “productive landscape” for
the production of food, energy, water reception, purification, etc.
After decades of scale enlargement of agriculture, which has led
to an increased distance between production and the consumer
(physical and psychological), the transformation of this landscape
is deployed through downscaling.
180 performative urbanism
FIELD OPERATIONS
QIANHAI WATER CITY.
PLACE, YEAR: SHENZHEN,
CHINA, 2011; CLIENT:
URBAN PLANNING, LAND &
RESOURCES COMMISSION
OF SHENZHEN
MUNICIPALITY; SIZE: 1740
HA; PROGRAM: FIVE MIXED
USED NEW DISTRICTS;
DESIGN: JAMES CORNER
FIELD OPERATIONS.
shenzhen
Diagram of the landscape layers and activities along the “water fingers.” Right, overall masterplan of the
Qianhai watercity over the existing land to be reclaimed. © James Corner Field Operations.
jeannette sordi beyond urbanism 181
Qianhai Water City is the project of a new city for four million
people at the western edge of Shenzhen, China, a key location
in the Pearl River Delta. James Corner Field Operations won the
International Urban Design Competition in 2010, envisioning
a “coastal water-town” built upon 18 ha of reclaimed land. The
design focused on eco-innovation whilst simultaneously creating
a diverse waterfront urban environment which continues through
the entire project area, encircling one of the city’s most important
resources – water. Five distinct development sub-districts are
defined by water fingers perpendicular to the harbor’s edge,
dividing the area into easily manageable districts with unique
architectural typologies and functions. The fingers function
as innovative water quality infrastructures and parkland; the
urban fabric within each development sub-district generates
a range of interconnected urban neighborhoods. The result is
a hyper-dense, yet ecologically sensitive urban territory that
offers an iconic waterfront, diverse building stock, cultural and
recreational features, and a series of unique, inter-connected
public open spaces.
After having designed the overall masterplan, Field Operations
was commissioned to create the schematic design of the entire
198 infrastructural landscapes jeannette sordi beyond urbanism 199

TURENSCAPE
Built on a brownfield of a former industrial site, Houtan Park is a
HOUTAN PARK. PLACE, regenerative living landscape on Shanghai’s Huangpu riverfront.
YEAR: SHANGHAI, The park was designed to offer an innovative demonstration of the
CHINA, 2010; CLIENT: ecological culture for the 2010 Expo and to improve the quality of
SHANGHAI WORLD EXPO
the area for years to come. Constructed wetland, ecological flood
LAND DEVELOPMENT;
SIZE: 14 HA; PROGRAM: control, urban agriculture, reclaimed industrial structures, and
LAND RECLAMATION, materials have been integrated into an overall restorative design
AGRICULTURE. WETLANDS, strategy, treating polluted river water and recovering the degraded
OPEN SPACE. DESIGN: waterfront in an aesthetically pleasing way.
KONGJIAN YU TURENSCAPE Through the center of the park, a linear constructed wetland was
designed to create a reinvigorated waterfront as a living water
treatment machine. Cascades and terraces are used to oxygenate
the nutrient rich water, remove and retain nutrients, and reduce
shanghai suspended sediments while creating pleasant water features.
Different species of wetland plants were selected and designed to
absorb different pollutants from the water, also working as natural
flood protection. The wetlands made it possible to replace the
concrete floodwall with a more habitat-friendly riprap: the native
species growing along the riverbank also protect the shoreline
from erosion. Overlapped in the matrix of ecologically regenerated
landscape are also layers of the agricultural and industrial past of
the site and future of the post-industrial eco-civilization. Crops
water setting and precipitation

sand filter for final polishing

water intake and screening

water quality stabilization

clean water impoundment

terraces for aeration and

heavy metal removal and

aeration and biological

pathogen removal and
biological purification

biological purification

biological purification
subsurface filtration

to World Expo Park

nutrient removal

purification

and control

Site plan showing the water tratment sequence. The dashed frame indicates the terraces for water cleansing,
represented in the following page drawings ©Turenscape. On the right, view of the Park, by Kongjian Yu.
202 constructed ecologies
RMA
HATHIGAON. PLACE, YEAR:
JAIPUR, RAJASTHAN,
INDIA, 2010; CLIENT: INDIA
GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC
WORKS DEPARTMENT;
SIZE: 36 HA; PROGRAM:
LANDSCAPE AND HOUSING
FOR 100 ELEPHANTS AND
THEIR MAHOUTS; DESIGN:
RAHUL MEHROTRA RMA
ARCHITECTS.
jaipur
Changing topography and waterbody. On the right, landscape transformation between 2007 and 2010; ©RMA
Architects. Right, below, mahouts and their elephants in the new waterbody, courtesy of Robert Stephens.
jeannette sordi beyond urbanism 203
“Hathigaon” (elephant village) is a housing project for 100 ele-
phants and their Mahouts (caretakers), situated at the foothills
of the Amber Palace and Fort near Jaipur. The design strategy
first involved structuring the landscape that had been devastat-
ed by its use as a sand quarry by local sand suppliers, to create
a series of water bodies to harvest the rain runoff, as this is the
most crucial resource in the desert climate of Rajasthan.
The water body was a critical component of the design, as it also
facilitated the bonding between “mahout” and elephant, through
the process of bathing – an important ritual both for the health of
the elephant as well as their attachment to their keeper. With the
water resources in place, an extensive tree plantation program
was carried out together with seeding the site to propagate
local species - all at an extremely low cost, using local labor and
craftspeople. The “thans” (housing units) are organized in clus-
ters and situated on portions of the site that are not used for the
landscape regeneration. Courtyards and pavilions supplement
the otherwise small area of 40 square meters that was allocated
in the budget for this essentially low-income housing project.
The site planning thus employed a system of clusters to create
shared community space at different hierarchies to build a sense
of community among the inhabitants.
210 performative urbanism
MOSÈ RICCI UNIGE
ECOLECCE FUTURE URBAN
PLAN CONSULTANCY.
PLACE, YEAR: LECCE, 2010-;
CLIENT: MUNICIPALITY OF
LECCE; SIZE: 23836 HA;
PROGRAM: MUNICIPALITY
NEW URBAN PLAN;
DESIGN: MOSE’ RICCI,
LUIGI MANIGLIO, WITH
S.FAVARGIOTTI, L.MAZZARI,
E.SOMMARIVA, J.SORDI,
UNIVERSITY OF GENOA.
lecce
Diagrams representing the new structural plan for Lecce, in contrapposition to traditional peripheral expansion,
and to be implemented by projects. On the right, the five themes of Lecce. Drawings, Jeannette Sordi.
jeannette sordi beyond urbanism 211
città storica
In Lecce, like in many other cities of southern Italy, postwar urban parco della mura
growth and the building boom (1980-1990) supported the shift struttura del centro
from an agriculture-based economy to an urban development,
land-based income. City planning consisted in arranging this
expansion towards the countryside and providing the necessary
infrastructure. ecolecce aims to reverse these conventional rules
based on zoning and peripheral expansion, and to create devel- Mura di Lecce
opment independently of urban growth and instead linked to the Walls of Lecce
city’s deepest values: landscape, tourism, and quality of life. The
research project has individuated a series of thematic fields of
cluster urbano
interventions and landscape values that set the framework for
cluster parco della musica
future transformations, mainly based on the reinterpretation and cluster campus
reactivation of the existing patrimony. ecolecce has also defined
a set of social and ecological objectives that would improve the
overall quality of life in Lecce and the sustainability of its urban
processes. A series of shared projects will effectively implement
Università e città
the plan: “Sine Putimmu” (yes we can!) was the public call for proj-
University and City
ects, thanks to which individuals’ and communities’ proposals that
demonstrated respect for ecolecce’s objectives will be integrated impronte
in the new urban plan. “isole”
campagna del ristretto
Isole dell’abitare
Islands for Living
segni della cultura materiale
campagna urbanizzata
paesaggio produttivo
Città rurale
Rural City
monumenti ambientali paesisitici
marine
connessioni strutturali
Parco delle marine
Marine Park
212 performative urbanism jeannette sordi beyond urbanism 213

Lecce, Vista dal campanile verso il mare, 2010.

Beyond Urbanism All rights reserved
© of the edition LISt Lab
Author © of the texts the authors
Jeannette Sordi © of the images the authors: pp. 16-17, 18-19,
112-113, 180-181, picture of Detroit Vacancy 183,
Published by Ecolecce project diagrams 222-223;
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