Designing a rivergarden Georges Descombes
The River Aire flows south of Geneva through valleys historically devoted to farming. From late nineteen Century to the 1940s the river was progressively canalized to control flooding. In 2001, the State of Geneva opened a restricted competition to return the river to a more natural form. In fact, the general implicit idea of the competition program was really to restore the river to its original shape and settings, by destroying the canal and redirecting the flows into the former meanders. The main justification for this undeclared demand was the hate for the unnatural straight line of the canal. It represented a kind of return, based on the well- anchored conviction that it is necessary and possible to go back to a state of pure Nature. A search for a lost paradise was, in fact, the narrative behind all this. Refusing this suggested solution, we instead proposed a plan which combined the existing canal, transformed, with a vast, new, parallel divagation space for the river. In the process the canal becomes the pointer (indication) for the transformations, a reference line giving the visitor a possibility to understand, to feel the before and after. A becoming which superimposes both situations. We won the competition with the assertion that any project shifts the given situations, and is not a return to the former so called historical, original state of the things. In the 1980s this design attitude was put forward at the School of Architecture at the University of
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Designing a rivergarden Georges Descombes
The River Aire flows south of Geneva through valleys historically devoted to farming. From late nineteen Century to the 1940s the river was progressively canalized to control flooding. In 2001, the State of Geneva opened a restricted competition to return the river to a more natural form. In fact, the general implicit idea of the competition program was really to restore the river to its original shape and settings, by destroying the canal and redirecting the flows into the former meanders. The main justification for this undeclared demand was the hate for the unnatural straight line of the canal. It represented a kind of return, based on the well- anchored conviction that it is necessary and possible to go back to a state of pure Nature. A search for a lost paradise was, in fact, the narrative behind all this. Refusing this suggested solution, we instead proposed a plan which combined the existing canal, transformed, with a vast, new, parallel divagation space for the river. In the process the canal becomes the pointer (indication) for the transformations, a reference line giving the visitor a possibility to understand, to feel the before and after. A becoming which superimposes both situations. We won the competition with the assertion that any project shifts the given situations, and is not a return to the former so called historical, original state of the things. In the 1980s this design attitude was put forward at the School of Architecture at the University of
english
11
The Canal and the River: on Making a Landscape Elissa Rosenberg
Montage, for Sergei Eisenstein, was a form of collision. The essence of the cinematic aesthetic that Eisenstein pioneered emphasized conflict rather than simple narrative continuity between frames: “in my point of view the ‘ montage ‘ is not a thought recounted by a succession of shots, but a thought which is born from the shock of two shots independent of one another”. 1 Eisenstein wanted to generate a new sense of the whole through the juxtaposition of its parts, based on the idea that meaning does not derive directly from the images present in the film, but from their juxtaposition and in the synthesis created in the mind of the viewer. The restoration of the Aire River landscape evokes a similar sense of montage, even collision. Its design responds to the dissonance inherent to the project of “renaturalization,” challenging the idea that a landscape can be returned to its “original state.” 2 Instead of drawing upon a timeless, idealized vision of nature, the project’s aesthetic of juxtaposition seems to actively describe, expose and question its own making. At the project’s core is the juxtaposition of two figures: the river and the canal. The Aire River flows north through the Aire plain, from the foothills of the Saleve mountains in France to the center of Geneva until it joins the Arve River and empties into the Rhone. In the 1920s the river was canalized, its tributaries were piped
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1
Francois Albéra. Eisenstein et le Constructivisme Russe (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1990).
2
See the discussion of the Aire restoration by Thomas Juel Clemmensen, “The Management Of Dissonance in Nature Restoration,” Journal of Landscape Architecture, 9:2 (2014): 54-63.
The Canal and the River: on Making a Landscape Elissa Rosenberg
Montage, for Sergei Eisenstein, was a form of collision. The essence of the cinematic aesthetic that Eisenstein pioneered emphasized conflict rather than simple narrative continuity between frames: “in my point of view the ‘ montage ‘ is not a thought recounted by a succession of shots, but a thought which is born from the shock of two shots independent of one another”. 1 Eisenstein wanted to generate a new sense of the whole through the juxtaposition of its parts, based on the idea that meaning does not derive directly from the images present in the film, but from their juxtaposition and in the synthesis created in the mind of the viewer. The restoration of the Aire River landscape evokes a similar sense of montage, even collision. Its design responds to the dissonance inherent to the project of “renaturalization,” challenging the idea that a landscape can be returned to its “original state.” 2 Instead of drawing upon a timeless, idealized vision of nature, the project’s aesthetic of juxtaposition seems to actively describe, expose and question its own making. At the project’s core is the juxtaposition of two figures: the river and the canal. The Aire River flows north through the Aire plain, from the foothills of the Saleve mountains in France to the center of Geneva until it joins the Arve River and empties into the Rhone. In the 1920s the river was canalized, its tributaries were piped
english
57
1
Francois Albéra. Eisenstein et le Constructivisme Russe (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1990).
2
See the discussion of the Aire restoration by Thomas Juel Clemmensen, “The Management Of Dissonance in Nature Restoration,” Journal of Landscape Architecture, 9:2 (2014): 54-63.
Inventing the landscape of the Plaine de L’Aire Gilles A. Tiberghien
Each and every river, stream and waterway is a living story. But nothing allows us to retain it, and it is formulated so fast that it is only rendered intelligible to us through its very disappearance: we can only make out hints of its twists and turns without really comprehending them. That water comes from far away, it has crossed entire regions, it has flowed over earth and rocks of multiple characters, which it has blended into its own course so well that it is difficult to really dissociate them. Its appearance, the variety of its colors, the nature of its reflections, the sounds it produces, muffled, grumbling, or crystalline, are profoundly associated with it. And yet however mixed together water and land become, the one continues to resist the other while allowing the other to espouse the surface, offering it what we call the bed. We cannot talk about a river without evoking its banks or think of water without immediately thinking of the land without which there would be nothing resembling a waterway. It is this dialectic between the free, the wild, and the constrained, or the constructed, that allows the existence of these flows that sweep along, overflow, bend and finally disappear into the seas and the infinite flux of their waves. Thus is a river or a stream always naturally channeled, to varying degrees, in such a way that sometimes water, when rain has swollen its contours, goes beyond what had contained it to flood the
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Inventing the landscape of the Plaine de L’Aire Gilles A. Tiberghien
Each and every river, stream and waterway is a living story. But nothing allows us to retain it, and it is formulated so fast that it is only rendered intelligible to us through its very disappearance: we can only make out hints of its twists and turns without really comprehending them. That water comes from far away, it has crossed entire regions, it has flowed over earth and rocks of multiple characters, which it has blended into its own course so well that it is difficult to really dissociate them. Its appearance, the variety of its colors, the nature of its reflections, the sounds it produces, muffled, grumbling, or crystalline, are profoundly associated with it. And yet however mixed together water and land become, the one continues to resist the other while allowing the other to espouse the surface, offering it what we call the bed. We cannot talk about a river without evoking its banks or think of water without immediately thinking of the land without which there would be nothing resembling a waterway. It is this dialectic between the free, the wild, and the constrained, or the constructed, that allows the existence of these flows that sweep along, overflow, bend and finally disappear into the seas and the infinite flux of their waves. Thus is a river or a stream always naturally channeled, to varying degrees, in such a way that sometimes water, when rain has swollen its contours, goes beyond what had contained it to flood the
english
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A River as Co-Designer Marc Treib
Despite its being rooted in natural systems, the design of landscapes always constitutes an act of artifice. While some designers pursue the look of nature in their designs, none of the resulting works are, in fact, natural. Nature, if one can even use such an imprecise term, possesses two properties rarely available to the landscape architect: time and extent. Natural landscapes develop over eons rather than years, and comprise regions rather than individual sites of comprehensible measure. Yet despite this paradox, naturalism has remained the primary mode for landscape architects over several centuries and shows signs of decline in neither the popular imagination nor professional practice. Without question any responsible new landscape, although a human creation, must function as if a natural phenomenon, but no valid reasoning supports the idea that the project must appear as untouched nature. Ultimately, however, it is not a question of landscape architecture that mimics or does not mimic the appearance of nature, but landscape architecture that regards nature at a deeper, more understanding level and transforms that understanding into an engaging landscape. The new landscape, in the end, exists as a designed artifact characterized by an intertwined network of organisms and natural processes. With their decade of work on the ‘renaturalisation’ (to directly translate the term from French) of the River Aire, Superpositions has formulated and realized an innovative and vital model for the
english
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A River as Co-Designer Marc Treib
Despite its being rooted in natural systems, the design of landscapes always constitutes an act of artifice. While some designers pursue the look of nature in their designs, none of the resulting works are, in fact, natural. Nature, if one can even use such an imprecise term, possesses two properties rarely available to the landscape architect: time and extent. Natural landscapes develop over eons rather than years, and comprise regions rather than individual sites of comprehensible measure. Yet despite this paradox, naturalism has remained the primary mode for landscape architects over several centuries and shows signs of decline in neither the popular imagination nor professional practice. Without question any responsible new landscape, although a human creation, must function as if a natural phenomenon, but no valid reasoning supports the idea that the project must appear as untouched nature. Ultimately, however, it is not a question of landscape architecture that mimics or does not mimic the appearance of nature, but landscape architecture that regards nature at a deeper, more understanding level and transforms that understanding into an engaging landscape. The new landscape, in the end, exists as a designed artifact characterized by an intertwined network of organisms and natural processes. With their decade of work on the ‘renaturalisation’ (to directly translate the term from French) of the River Aire, Superpositions has formulated and realized an innovative and vital model for the
english
249