Planting Buildings: Ecological Reconciliation and Recreation at Greendale Fields

Planting Buildings: Ecological Reconciliation and Recreation at Greendale Fields ‘London, according to one United Nations definition, is a forest.’1: it is an attractive factoid, not least because it feels somewhat fantastical. Are the humans, buildings, roads, and lampposts part of this forest, or are they jostling against it for space? If cities can be forests, why have ecologists pointed almost all their focus away from them?2 Thinking beyond the statistics (8.4 million trees removing 2,261 tonnes of pollution a year), can the city become what Murray Bookchin has called an ‘ecological enterprise’; a complex mosaic of shifting mutual relationships, both human and non-human; a fecund landscape of growth and decay.3 Through this broad ecological framework, the project engages with the site of Greendale Fields in Southwark, exploring the relationship between the local natural ecology and the site’s social and recreational use. Must the construction of buildings and the improvement of facilities be a zerosum game with the local biodiversity and wider biosphere?

Informed by ecological theory and practice, the research uncovers the necessity to juggle multiple scales and timeframes, from a ‘landscape approach’ to planning policy to local species habitats. In attempting to eschew an either-or mentality to ecological ‘solutions’, this essay also reflects on my struggle to define an objective in an often-tangential research process.

Taking up Timothy Morton’s call for us to ‘live the data’ of our ecological crises, the proposal attempts to build out of a methodology that collages the analytical with the emotional.4 Taking Murray Bookchin’s observation that ecological problems are inherently tied to hierarchies of power and dominance in human society, the project speculates on a future for Greendale Fields where ecology plays a part in deeper citizen control through new forms of municipalism.

Wood, T. (2019) London is a Forest. London: Quadrille. p.1.

Corbyn, Z. (2010) Ecologists shun the urban jungle. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/news.2010.359 (Accessed: 12 April 2021) 3 Bookchin, M (1992) Urbanization without Cities: The Rise and Decline of Citizenship. Montreal: Black Rose Books. p. xi.

4 Morton, T. (2018) Being Ecological. UK: Penguin. p.11.

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Out of my bedroom window in Lambeth and across a busy residential junction, lies an unkempt public hedge. Leafless patches reveal bare branches and a chain link fence; new plants grow in the gaps of its knobbly texture. But while it is possible to anthropomorphise this hedge as forlorn or scruffy, its appearance can also suggest something closer to a rural hedgerow, the same length of which can contain over 100 different plant species and a habitat to mammals, birds, insects, and fungi.5 In its intended state as a well-trimmed monoculture Privet,the hedge in Lambeth could find its epitome in the landscapes of formal gardens like those at Versailles. Designed through a strict attention to geometry and control over nature, the gardens of Versailles make no attempt to support wild species, a clear expression of a humandominated natural landscape.6 At the other end of the spectrum, the hedgerows found on rural roadsides can accommodate far more biodiversity, acting as a network of wildlife corridors across agricultural landscapes. But like Versailles, the hedgerow is also a product of human design, albeit with much longer timescales of maintenance and borne from practices that stretch back to the Neolithic Age.7 The thought of a ‘rural’ hedgerow lining a residential street in Inner London seems unlikely, but it points to an alternative approach to urban ecology based on reconciliation with nature.

Reconciliation ecology, as defined by Michael Rosenzweig, is “the science of inventing, establishing and maintaining new habitats to conserve species diversity in places where people live, work, or play.”8 Unlike reservation or restoration ecology, which aim to protect existing natural habitats or restore land to a more natural status, this approach is more explicitly design-led. As Emma Harris points out, human actions have pushed many ecosystems across the globe beyond a threshold of biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living) change: there is no ‘natural’ state (or ‘ecological baseline’) to which we can return.9 Despite this loss, it also leaves us with a chance to interpret and reinvent the terra nova left behind. A chance to create designer ecosystems that can be tailored to specific goals, to the benefit of both humans and nonhumans.

Wright, J. (2016) A Natural History of the Hedgerow. London: Profile Books.

L. Rosenzweig, M. (2003) Win-Win Ecology: How the Earth’s Species Can Survive in the Midst of Human Enterprise. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.23 7 Wright, J. (2016) p 22.

8 L. Rosenzweig, M. (2003) p.7.

9 Harris, E. (2016) Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World. New York: Bloomsbury. p.81.

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Taking an approach of reconciliation between the needs of humans and other species means understanding the power structures that dictates this relationship. This becomes clearer when focusing on a popular territory for urban ‘rewilding’: the back garden. Private gardens provide a good chance to learn about accommodating local wildlife habitat while creating space for human needs and desires.

But even with carefully researched management, a small plot of land like a garden can only be useful to a limited number of small creatures. To be truly successful in supporting species populations over the long term, these gardens must be considered as components of a larger network. Together, this sets up what Richard Levins coins as metapopulations: regional groups of plants or animals composed of connected local populations.10 One their own, local populations are far more susceptible to extinction.

By applying this approach to the site of study at Greendale Fields, as well as situating it in the context of planning policy, the political implications and ecological limits become clear. Firstly, and perhaps most obviously, a lot of people in London live without access to a private garden. In Southwark, this figure is over 30% of households, among the highest in the UK. This was particularly apparent during the Coronavirus pandemic when park closures disproportionately affected poorer citizens and highlighted class racial inequalities.11 A ‘rewilding’ approach that focused only on

private gardens would exclude many from involvement and from the benefits of leisure, improved air quality and education.

Secondly, a mapping of land use around Greendale Fields reveals geographical limits to this approach. Unlike some suburban landscapes, Inner London is marked by a greater variety of residential urban forms.

Southwark Council owns a third of all housing in the borough, with Greendale Fields surrounded by multiple council housing estates ranging from a 1930s cottage estate to 5 and 6 storey flats more typical of the 1950s.

Both housing typologies, but particularly the latter, are interspersed with public green spaces of various sizes that represent an untapped potential for both ecology and community use.

This potential is not unrecognized by Southwark Council, whose Great Estates Programme aims to ‘enrich the shared living environment of our estates, working closely with residents to identify new ways of improving the look, feel and lived experience of the estate.’12 The Council claim that these improvements are integral to their other programme of infill housebuilding on these estates, but according to one architect working on such a project, attempts to enact meaningful communication across council programmes is often thwarted by the bureaucratic ‘silos’ they exist within.13 A radical approach to reconciliation ecology would require not only a council development programme that is more unified and transparent, but a way of working across categories of land use and ownership. Plants and animals rarely respect the neat borders found on planning policy maps.

Hanksi, I. (1999) Metapopulation Ecology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.2.

Duncan, P, and others (2020) ‘Coronavirus park closures hit BAME and poor Londoners most’ in The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/10/ coronavirus-park-closures-hit-bame-and-poor-londoners-most [accessed 14 April 2021] 12 Southwark Council (2018) Great Estates Guide Version 1.0. Available at: https:// moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/documents/s81127/Appendix%201%20Great%20Estates%20Guide.pdf (Accessed: 14 April 2021) 13 Westerståhl, M. (2020) Conversation with Alastair Howard, 12 November.

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Planning policy in London is beginning to develop along broader ecological strategies, responding to evidence that cities are permeable to species activity. The 2021 London Plan includes two key policies to be applied to new developments: an Urban Greening Factor (UGF) and the All London Green Grid (ALGG). As well as considering their effect on nearby parks and Sites of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINCs), new developments now need to meet a target on a UGF points-based system, where different types of green space score differently based on their potential for biodiversity.

While the points system speaks little to human needs, the London Plan encourages its use in meeting other policy requirements such as ‘addressing the urban heat island effect, sustainable drainage and amenity – the latter being especially important in the most densely developed parts of the city where traditional green space is limited.’14 Where similar systems have been implemented in other countries, their success has been as much a result of complimentary policies, democratic processes and professional ecological input.15

Policies like the Urban Greening Factor have the danger of being utilised as apolitical, science-driven ecological tools. Instead, they are the products of historical and geographical contexts of power regarding our relationship to nature, at their worst used as tick-box exercises to get developments through planning that are otherwise far from sustainable, just, or democratic. James Evans has made similar claims about the role of ‘wildlife corridors’ in urban planning. Following from Bruno Latour’s definition, he describes the concept of wildlife corridors as quasi-objects, things presented as material realities when in fact harbouring discursive, social and political intent.16 Rather than treating concepts like wildlife corridors or the UGF as simply a quantitative and evidence-based approach to biodiversity, each case must be interrogated for the political forces behind and the myriad social manifestations that are possible within them.

Greater London Authority (2021) The London Plan 2021. London: GLA. pg. 322.

Ponsford, M. (2021) ‘Swede dreams: can Malmö’s green points system help rewild London?’ in The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/ feb/05/malmo-sweden-success-rewild-london-aoe (Accessed: 15 April 2021) 16 Evans, J. (2007) ‘Wildlife Corridors: An Urban Political Ecology’ in Local Environment. 10 (3). p. 133.

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Manoeuvres of power behind ecological strategies are evident in current development proposals for Greendale Fields. Meadow Residential, owners of land at the neighbouring Dulwich Hamlet Football Club (DHFC), have plans for a speculative development of 240 homes, involving the rebuilding of Dulwich Hamlet’s stadium on and around the existing public AstroTurf. These plans are justified through both the creation of a new SINC on the remaining land at Greendale, as well as a reductive reading of the site’s designation as Metropolitan Open Land. While the stadium would meet one policy criterion for Metropolitan Open Land – being an ‘open-air recreation facility’ – little attention is paid to the effect it has on the ‘openness’, accessibility, and civic ownership of that land, as well as forcing a binary reading of the site as two landscapes of formalised recreation and conserved biodiversity, separated by mass retaining walls and fencing. The major project at Greendale will seek to create a counter proposal that takes an ecological approach of reconciliation between human recreation and biodiversity, rooted in a

desire to increase civic participation. This will include speculation on new municipal partnerships between the Council, DHFC and local community groups.

I hope to explore Murray Bookchin’s theory of social ecology by framing the proposal through these speculative municipal partnerships. Bookchin claims that human domination against nature should be challenged alongside ‘the entire system of domination itself – its economy, its misuse of technics, its administrative apparatus, its degradations of political life, its destruction of the city as a centre of cultural development.’17 Drawing a distinction between the ‘city’ and the ‘urban’, Bookchin sees urbanisation as a process of homogenisation and political alienation through urban sprawl, centralized politics and ‘institutional gigantism’.18 He believed the historical conception of cities, in comparison, to be decentralized both politically and spatially, allowing for a more intense civic life where the distinction between politics as statecraft and politics as ‘civitas’ is broken down. Departing from anti-city anarchist thought, Bookchin sought a humanly scaled politics of the city through municipalism.

Bookchin, M. (2007) Social Ecology and Communalism. Edinburgh: AK Press. p.46.

Bookchin, M. (1992) Urbanization without Cities: The Rise and the Decline of Citizenship. Montreal and Cheektowaga: Black Rose Books. p.3.

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In the UK, Bookchin’s concept of the city seems almost implausible in the context of 13 years of slashed council budgets and encroaching privatisation. But with the Coronavirus pandemic providing a glimpse of a less centralized city life, and some councils beginning to eschew a view of public land as financial assets to be bartered with, new relationships between municipality and citizen are being explored through practices of community wealth building and publiccommon-partnerships.19 Inspired by these new practices, my project proposal will explore how new relationships between Dulwich Hamlet FC and Southwark Council can instigate greater civic involvement over the management of the land. Looking to expand on the volunteerism that already exists within local community groups, I hope to explore ways to increase accessibility through public recreation and education facilities.

A relevant historical precedent in the UK would be the Urban Studies Centres of the 1960s-1980s. Advocated by Colin Ward and Anthony Fyson, these centres acted as an urban counterpart to the Field Studies Centres that already dotted rural Britain.20 Through providing education to children and adults about the processes that create the urban environment, the centres hoped to equip people with the environmental literacy to participate in that creation more meaningfully.

Breaking away from firm distinctions between education, local environment and recreation, the centres ran urban trails and other forms of fieldwork to connect people directly to their local environment but through a new point of view.21 This major project proposal will test how these educational ideas could be incorporated into the recreational facilities on site, speculating on their role within the longer-term management of Greendale’s natural and built environment.

Hatherley, O. (2020) ‘Covid has finished off the old high street, but we can replace it with something better’ in The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian. com/commentisfree/2020/dec/09/covid-finished-off-high-streets-replace-preston-wrexham (Accessed: 16 April 2021) 20 Perez-Martinez, S. (2020) ‘Deschooling Architecture’ in E-Flux. Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/education/322673/deschooling-architecture/ (Accessed: 16 April 2021) 21 Ibid.

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With a desire to consider both the natural and built environment as one ecological enterprise, any built proposition on Greendale will have to be considered within its whole material life cycle. As with living organisms, buildings change and deteriorate in response to environmental impacts and the actions of its occupants, tied directly to decisions of maintenance, repair, refurbishment and decay.22 For this reason, the ecological life and decline of any proposal on Greendale must be considered in its civic, economic, and cultural context: in this case, within a speculative model of municipalism.

Taking cues from what Steward Brand has called the ‘scenario-buffered building’, the design and detailing should be set within speculative future scenarios23: • In 2030, Dulwich Hamlet FC get promoted to the National League. With their fanbase continuing to grow, the club are desperate to increase the stadium’s capacity.

• Despite 10 years of increased council housing construction, many families in Southwark are still living in overcrowded conditions while the waiting list remains long. Greendale Fields is marked as a possible area for infill housing development.

• After a 6-month review, it is agreed the squash courts at Greendale are being underutilized and residents have voted for their conversion to a single multi-use sports hall.

Designing with such scenarios in mind may create a building that is more open to long term change and adaptability, including more direct democratic and civic ownership. Richard Sennett and Pablo Sendra describe similar ideas in their concept of the ‘open city’, advocating for buildings that allow for non-linear narratives (or scenarios).24 One unlikely physical form through which they suggest the open city can be designed is the wall, making the distinction between the wall as ‘border’ and the wall as ‘boundary’. Relating to ecological science, the border is defined as a site where different species and conditions meet, resulting in the evolution of new mutual relationships. On the other hand, the boundary marks the edge of a guarded territory. This distinction also explains why urban brownfield sites can often support diverse and unpredictable habitats (known as open mosaic habitats), as human disturbance has created habitat boundaries between fine-scale changes in ground material, hydrology, pH and topography.25 The proposal at Greendale Fields should respond to two boundaries at the site as possibilities for increased interaction: the edge between DHFC and Greendale Astroturf, separated by a concrete wall, and the immaterial boundary between the Astroturf and the adjacent proposed SINC. Sturgis, S. (2017) Targeting Zero: Embodied and Whole Life Carbon explained.

Newcastle upon Tyne: RIBA. p.20.

23 Brand, S. (1994) How Buildings Learn. London: Orion. p.178.

24 Sennett, R. and Sendra, P. (2020) Designing Disorder: Experiments and Disruptions in the City. London: Verso, p.25.

25 Robins, J. (2020) Identifying Open Mosaic Habitat. Available at: https://cdn. buglife.org.uk/2020/01/Identifying-open-mosaic-habitat.pdf (Accessed: 24 April 2021) 22

Another physical form that Sennett and Sendra promote – the ‘incomplete form’ – reveals the ecological relationship between a building’s form and the specifics of its material properties and detailing.26 A building with an incomplete form can be added to, subtracted from, or revised to suit new uses. This adaptability relates to the buildings form and layout but also to its structural and constructional systems and their ability for disassembly: both at the end of its life and throughout. For a building to expand and contract in a sustainable manner – whether through a drastic renovation or a simple re-finishing – the resultant material flows should be considered within circular economies or what Paloma Gormley and Summer Islam have referred to as ‘circular ecologies.’27 Circular economies are projects that create closed loop material cycles: from design and manufacture, to use, re-use and decay.28 Materially, this cycle can exist within both the tech-sphere and the biosphere: the former referring to material re-use within human technological processes without requirements of chemical change; while the latter indicates material re-use within natural cycles of waste and carbon transfer through decay, decomposition, and regrowth. I would define ‘circular ecologies’ as projects that have a particular focus on these relationships to the biosphere.

Through previous research - developed during a placement with Material Cultures – I explored approaches to circular ecology within the context of prefabricated housing construction. While this research was somewhat tangential regarding its focus on prefabrication, it gave me insights into the complex political and social contexts that lie

behind materials and construction processes. I intend to take this knowledge forward into the designing and detailing of the built proposition, exploring how different materials fit into different biological cycles on different scales. In previous research, my interest turned towards the bioregion as a potential productive force within the economies of scale required by prefabrication technologies. Similarly, this research has spurred my interest in larger scale bio-based industries such as chemurgy, or the scalar implications of biochar production from waste building timber.

Narrowing down my methodology to one based on close site observation, the project at Greendale should instead explore opportunities for ultra-local material biocycles. This will allow for a greater understanding of the mutual relationship between the life cycles of the buildings and their immediate natural habitat. Can the closeness of these biological cycles help engage an emotional and civic participation with the site’s built and natural ecology? Rather than treating this as a manifesto for localism, the project should bear in mind the limits to this methodology; revealing gaps where extensions in scale are required to the municipality, the bioregion or the globe. While the process of research and design has often been tangential or convoluted, it presents a struggle highlighted by Timothy Morton: ‘that ecological awareness means thinking and acting ethically and politically at a lot of scales, not just one.’29 Unlike the linear understanding of scale described in Eames’ video Powers of Ten, a messier collaging of spatial and temporal scales is required when thinking and acting ecologically.

Sennett, R. and Sendra, P. (2020) p.24.

What is Next? New Material Developments (2020) ETH Zurich, 20 October 2020.

Available at: YouTube (Accessed: 20 April 2021) 28 Baker-Brown, D. (2017) The Re-Use Atlas: A Designer’s Guide Towards a Circular Economy. London: RIBA Publishing. p. 109.

29 Morton, T. (2018) Being Ecological. UK: Penguin. p.63.

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Bibliography Bookchin, M. (1992) Urbanization without Cities: The Rise and the Decline of Citizenship. Montreal: Black Rose Books.

Bookchin, M. (2007) Social Ecology and Communalism. Edinburgh: AK Press.

Baker-Brown, D. (2017) The Re-Use Atlas: A Designer’s Guide Towards a Circular Economy. London: RIBA Publishing.

Brand, S. (1994) How Buildings Learn. London: Orion.

Corbyn, Z. (2010) Ecologists shun the urban jungle. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/news.2010.359 Duncan, P, and others (2020) ‘Coronavirus park closures hit BAME and poor Londoners most’ in The Guardian. Available at: https://www. theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/apr/10/coronavirus-park-closures-hitbame-and-poor-londoners-most Evans, J. (2007) ‘Wildlife Corridors: An Urban Political Ecology’ in Local Environment. 10 (3).

Greater London Authority (2021) The London Plan 2021. London: GLA. Hanksi, I. (1999) Metapopulation Ecology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Harris, E. (2016) Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World. New York: Bloomsbury.

Hatherley, O. (2020) ‘Covid has finished off the old high street, but we can replace it with something better’ in The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/09/covidfinished-off-high-streets-replace-preston-wrexham L. Rosenzweig, M. (2003) Win-Win Ecology: How the Earth’s Species Can Survive in the Midst of Human Enterprise. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Morton, T. (2018) Being Ecological. UK: Penguin.

Perez-Martinez, S. (2020) ‘Deschooling Architecture’ in E-Flux.

Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/education/322673/ deschooling-architecture/

Ponsford, M. (2021) ‘Swede dreams: can Malmö’s green points system help rewild London?’ in The Guardian. Available at: https://www. theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/05/malmo-sweden-success-rewildlondon-aoe Robins, J. (2020) Identifying Open Mosaic Habitat. Available at: https://cdn.buglife.org.uk/2020/01/Identifying-open-mosaic-habitat. pdf Sennett, R. and Sendra, P. (2020) Designing Disorder: Experiments and Disruptions in the City. London: Verso.

Southwark Council (2018) Great Estates Guide Version 1.0. Available at: https://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/documents/s81127/Appendix%20 1%20Great%20Estates%20Guide.pdf Sturgis, S. (2017) Targeting Zero: Embodied and Whole Life Carbon explained. Newcastle upon Tyne: RIBA. Westerståhl, M. (2020) Conversation with Alastair Howard, 12 November.

What is Next? New Material Developments (2020) ETH Zurich, 20 October 2020. Available at: YouTube Wood, T. (2019) London is a Forest. London: Quadrille.

Wright, J. (2016) A Natural History of the Hedgerow. London: Profile Books.