Topos 72

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

72

R E V I E W

O F

L A N D S C A P E

2010

T H E

INTRODUCTION KATHRYN MOORE ON THE FUNCTION OF DESIGN CHINA BOTANICAL GARDEN AND BUND IN SHANGHAI BROOKLYN BRIDGE PARK

·

·

·

A R C H I T E C T U R E

A N D

U R B A N

D E S I G N

Design and Function

SPAIN SEAFRONT PROMENADE BENIDORM

ISRAEL TEL-AVIV JAFFA SHORELINE

A U S T R A L I A UNIVERSITY CAMPUS AND PIRRAMA PARK IN SYDNEY

· LEBANON · SPECIAL

·

FRANCE QUAYS IN BORDEAUX

HARIRI MEMORIAL GARDEN, BEIRUT

·

·

USA

COMPETITION RESULTS SEA CHANGE 2030+

DESIGN AND FUNCTION

TABLE

OF

CONTENTS

Cover: Heaven Chairs by EMU, Paddington Reservoir Gardens, Paddington, Sydney Photo: Robert Schäfer

KATHRYN MOORE

16

ALISA BRAUDO, RUTH MAOZ

The Function of Design

74

Demystifying the art of design to achieve design excellence

Reading Park and Jaffa Landfill Park, Israel

MAGDA ANGLÈS Linda Blatzek Fotografie

22 35 Mathildeplein Eindhoven: Elongated Corten steel planters create a striped pattern.

The stripes of varying length, width and height integrate wooden benches and bicycle stands.

VLADIMIR DJUROVIC

Playa de Poniente Esplanade

80

Benidorm, Spain: promenade with iconic potential

Hariri Memorial Garden, Beirut, Lebanon Landscape sculpture with limited but symbolic elements

THIERRY KANDJEE

28

Reconnecting the Tel-Aviv Jaffa Shoreline

CONSTANCE PRICE

Bordeaux: The Quays on the Left Bank

84

Gardens and squares on the quays of the Garonne River

The Kogod Courtyard National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, USA

44 Corten steel is the predominant material

KIM THEHU

35

in Ouerbett Park, a versatile public open space in the small town of Kayl in Luxemburg.

Mathildeplein Eindhoven

JENNIFER E. COOPER

88

Stripe pattern for a green square in the Netherlands

Brooklyn Bridge Park The Evolution of a New, New York Tradition

THOMAS JAKOB

39

A Landscape Sculpture To Play On

MARK TYRRELL

94

Landscape sculpture on a reinforced concrete bridge in Munich, Germany

The University of Sydney Australia: new design for Darlington Campus and Camperdown Campus

SIGA FOTO –Shirish Ghate

Buro Lubbers

haut-relief

TANJA GALLENMÜLLER

28 The Water Mirror is the heart of the design of the quays on the left bank of the Garonne River in Bordeaux. With a layer of fog, the fountain square can be used as a water playground.

Alternately, it can function as a reflecting pool or a dry square.

44

Versatile open space in the town of Kayl, Luxemburg

ROBERT SCHÄFER

100

A Place They Called Pirrama Park with access to the ocean in Sydney, Australia

DOROTA RUDAWA

48

Hoover Square, Warsaw

106

Poland: modern space respecting the historic context

58 Pune, India: the design for a business

Sydney: Sea Change 2030+ Competition Projects looking for responses to a rising sea level

LEVENT KERIMOL

52

campus combines traditional images of Indian

22 Seafront at Benidorm, Spain: Organically

The Green Centre: Ouerbett Park

landscape with geometrical forms.

Gallions to the Thames Currents

England: strategic landscape project in East London

6

shaped white concrete walls and colourful tiles create a cheerful beach promenade.

Competitions, Projects, Awards, Reports

ABHIJEET NATU

58

Zensar Technologies

110

Authors

111

Credits/Imprint

Business campus in Pune, Maharashtra, India

FALK JAEGER

62

Confucius would have loved it The new Chenshan Botanical Garden in Shanghai

SHANNON BASSETT

Alejo Bagué

Adrian Boddy

68

4

Better City, Better Bund The Shanghai Bund gets a new life

100 Pirrama Park, Sydney: seating steps lead down to the water and provide direct access to the ocean.

5

Magda Anglès

Sinuous curves evoke cliffs and waves along a complex sequence of spaces.

The undulating white walls are dramatically illuminated during the night.

Benidorm, Spain

Playa de Poniente Esplanade Organic shapes and a colourful tile tapestry create a cheerful beach promenade in the Spanish coastal town. The new public space with iconic potential helps to stimulate tourism.

ea, sex and sun”, Serge Gainsbourg’s song could be the official soundtrack of Benidorm. Blessed with benevolent Mediterranean weather, this hedonistic town sits in a magnificent bay on the Valencian coast, with an identifiable skyline of many high-rises that seem to stand as custodians of the 24-hour party city. In the words of the sociologist José Miguel Iribas, Benidorm is an affordable paradise, a mass marketing product that offers a Dionysian feast to the Northern European lower social classes. Recently, the underrated promenade on the western beach of Benidorm has been utterly transformed by the Office of Architecture in Barcelona. The practice, led by Carlos Ferrater and Xavier Martí Galí, has designed a cheerful and optimistic esplanade with organic shapes and a colourful tile tapestry. Sinuosity, evoking cliffs and waves, has resulted in an inspiring and complex space. The new promenade consists of a succession of undulating walls which ease the transition from built environment to hot sand. With multiple access points to the beach and intertwined paths, it is an optimistic celebration of the landscape and the city.

Benidorm, as we know it today, was invented by its mayor Pedro Zaragoza, a stout Falangist with a thin moustache who managed to stay in office for 17 years. Of course, the lack of democratic elections helped, but his insistence on transforming the small fishing town into a prosperous city was fundamental to keeping him in the city council. Between 1950 and 1967 Benidorm overcame the unfavourable post-war financial situation and turned into a profitable business: it now ranks third in Europe, after London and Paris, in numbers of hotel beds. Zaragoza intentionally linked the economic growth of the city to its methodical urban development. In 1956, he set up Spain’s first General Plan for Urban Organisation, which promoted skyscrapers – choosing high density instead of urban sprawl – guaranteed “a room with a view” for every tourist and defined Benidorm’s main features and greatest hits. As a result, the city grew efficiently and in an orderly fashion, adapting itself to the emerging model of mass tourism.

For those who see tourism and coastalisation only as destructive forces, choosing between extensive or intensive occupation of the territory is the same as asking by which vehicle one would prefer to be run over in an accident, by a caterpillar or a van. Still, it does make a difference. Unfortunately, Spain’s coast has been blessed with both extensive

S

23

The lowered, elongated square provides access to an underground gallery and restaurant.

Four honey locust grow next to the modern pavilion and complement existing trees.

H

oover Square is located on Krakowskie Przedmiescie – the most archetypal street in Warsaw, which is the northernmost part of Warsaw’s Royal Route. It proceeds south towards the royal summer residence Lazienki (The Palace on The Water in The Baths Park) and links the Old Town and Royal Castle with some of the most notable institutions in Warsaw, including the Presidential Palace, Warsaw University and the Polish Academy of Sciences. Warsaw Royal Route was one of the favourite locations for the aristocracy’s palaces. Today, with it’s restored and rebuilt historical buildings, it is Warsaw’s front parlour and, together with the Old Town, the heart of Warsaw tourism.

Krakowskie Przedmiescie and Hoover Square itself form an extremely important yet difficult public space. It’s a place that expresses the glory of Polish kings, but it is also a place with historic and war disturbances. What are the origins of a street that broadens to finally become the Hoover Square? In 1867 workers demolished tenement houses and residences and a piece of Warsaw history disappeared.

Buildings were demolished a few years after the January Uprising was finally crushed, allegedly to ease the Cossacks’ charge on Krakowskie Przedmiescie. Here, during the Warsaw Uprising, insurgents were surreptitiously buried.

Here, young people gathered to meet Pope John Paul II in 1979 during his first papal visit to Poland; the trip that had a great impact on today’s Polish and perhaps even European history. Today Herbert Hoover Square is a green

Dorota Rudawa

enclave situated in the widest section of Krakowskie Przedmiescie. It is located between the Mickiewicz Monument that is seen from the square with the side facade of the Presidential Palace in the background and the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Passau (which is the second oldest monument in Warsaw dating back to 1683).

JEMS Architekci won The Hoover Square Design Competition proposing a space of elegant, calm and modern appearance made of stone and copper that does not directly reference the past but respects the context of it’s surroundings and creates a new chapter in Krakowskie Przedmiescie’s history.

In spatial terms, the key decision was to situate an elongated square depressed below Krakowskie Przedmiescie, between the historical monuments. New facilities include a café pavilion, a kiosk, public conveniences, an underground restaurant and gallery, which are embedded in the layout of the existing and newly designed stone walls.

The underground gallery and restaurant occupy the entire width of the square, so four special openings have been designed for proposed trees. A row of Gleditsia triacanthos with crowns developed above the roof of the pavilion and irregular trunks that break the rhythm of the pavilion facade have been planted on the depressed plaza. This non-native species recognized for its open, airy habit was chosen to correspond with the new architecture and become a distinctive landscape feature. From the very beginning much effort went into adapting an

HOOVER SQUARE, WARSAW The square in the heart of the Polish capital has played an important role in Polish history. The new design does not directly reference the past but respects the context of the historical surroundings.

48

49

Shannon Bassett

BETTER CITY, BETTER BUND The Shanghai Bund gets a new life The restructuring of the Bund’s complex infrastructures is both a transformative and restorative design function, successfully reconnecting and restitching Shanghai’s dynamic urban fabric back to its waterfront.

The temporary green wall maintains the design idea of lining Chen-Yi Plaza with a vertical garden that foregrounds the view to the Pudong district beyond.

69

Alisa Braudo, Ruth Maoz

Israel is a country with low precipitation levels, where desert conditions comprise a great deal of the region. Consequently, the comfortable climate along the Mediterranean coastline has added importance for the country’s population, becoming the most densely populated area in Israel. Tel Aviv, founded in 1909, developed as a new Jewish coastal city adjacent to the ancient port city of Jaffa. Today the two cities are united, both with strong bonds to the sea.

Over the years, their ports ceased to operate as

In 1938, Tel Aviv’s power station was established on the far north end of the city. For 74 years this wonderful piece of seashore remained the property of the Israel Electric Company with no public access. About a decade ago, the power plant began the conversion from oil to natural gas. During the approval process, the local municipal planning board noted that opening a section of the plant to the public would be a condition of the building permit. A “fallow” area within the plant serving as the station’s backyard,

RECONNECTING the Tel-Aviv Jaffa Shoreline between Reading Park and Jaffa Landfill Park, Israel Two derelict landscapes blocked the access to the Mediterranean Sea around Israel’s port cities Tel Aviv and Jaffa. The transformation of these two sites into public parks reconnects the shoreline and adds to the existing promenade along the seafront.

74

commercial ports and evolved into districts with fishing and small workshops. In recent years the city began to develop and nurture the old ports as recreational zones along the beach (see also Topos 67).

In order to enhance and facilitate the use of the beachfront, two obstacles were identified that blocked the continuity of the Tel-Aviv Jaffa shoreline: The Reading Power Plant, north of the Tel-Aviv port and the Jaffa Landfill south of Jaffa port. Both were derelict landscapes, closed to the public. In recent years, the Tel-Aviv Jaffa municipality managed to realize its vision of reconnecting the shoreline and transformed these two sites into open public parks. Presented here are the two projects designed by Braudo-Maoz Landscape Architecture Ltd. They are an exciting continuation of the existing promenade along the Tel-Aviv shoreline, completing an approximately 13 kilometer strip for walking, riding and other recreation and leisure activities.

approximately six hectares in size, was found to be suitable for the purpose. Upon further inspection, remarkable natural vegetation coverage typical to coastal sandy areas was found together with various wildlife species rarely seen in an urban environment. This was the inspiration to create a unique park, centered on renewing vegetation typical to Israel’s sandy beaches, much of which has disappeared or is endangered due to the massive development in the area.

Coastal park replaces “Forbidden City” The location of the park is particularly challenging as it is a junction encumbered with numerous sensitive issues, including power plant facilities and harbor, natural gas transmission pipelines from the sea, a landing corridor of a local airstrip crossing over the park and proximity to the Yarkon River delta. All of these factors were critical in the park’s planning, especially as

A 160-meter-long bridge crosses the harbor. Along the coast one can still find historical remnants. Guard posts protected the power station nearby during World War II.

75