Topos 90 - Resilient Cities and Landscapes

i n t e r n a t i o n a l

90

2015

t h e

r e v i e w

o f

l a n d s c a p e

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

Resilient

Cities and Landscapes

Nina-Marie Lister Resilience: Designing the New Sustaina bilit y · Stig L. Andersson The Urba n a s a Resilient System of Processes · Dirk Sijmons Resilient Urba nisation a nd L a ndsc a pe Arc hitec t ure · Jasper Hugtenburg Designing for t he Post-fossil Er a · Diane E. Davis From Risk to Resilience a nd Bac k · Chris Reed A bsorb / Ada p t / Tr a nsform · Kate Orff Tr a nsforming Pr ac tic e · Adrian McGregor The Biourba nism Pa r a digm · Raoul Bunschoten 6 Lessons on t he Sm a rt Cit y

CHORA

Cover: Aerial map of the city of Zhalantun, with the proposed master plan, CHORA

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Yanweizhou Park gives new life to the riparian

wetlands of Jinhua City, China. The park is designed to adapt to the monsoon floods. The bridge also ensures

Turenscape

that access to the city is maintained during flooding.

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Smart City Chengdu is a proposal to develop the planned 5th ring of Chengdu in China, a circular

motorway, into a giant Smart City incubator. Countryside, rivers and villages will be fused with urban prototype projects, Smart City districts, infrastructure, decentralised energy generation projects, and others.

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The Erie Street Plaza in Milwaukee adapts to

environmental dynamics. Storm water is directed to the lower areas of the plaza, where a native marsh is

John December

reconstituted behind the existing bulkhead wall.

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resilient

cities

and

N ina-M arie L ister

landscapes

table

of

contents

Sander Schu ur

14 Resilience: Designing the New Sustainability

74 Rising beyond Resilience

The need for an evidence-based approach to adaptivity

Resilient urban development, Rockaways, Queens, New York

Anne k e Bo k ern

Sti g L . Andersson

22 The Urban as a Resilient System of Processes

78 Water Squares in Rotterdam

The Delta District, Vinge, Denmark

The Netherlands: Open spaces also serve as water basins

SLA

Dir k Sijmons

30 Resilient Urbanisation as a Landscape Architectural Question

Kon g jian Yu

84 A Resilient Landscape Yanweizhou Park in Jinhua City, China

The necessity of solving the urban problems

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Natural and cultural processes form the basis of

the Delta District in Vinge, Denmark. The urban deve-

lopment is constantly changing and being optimised.

38 Designing for the Post-fossil Era

J asper H u g tenb u r g

Adrian M cGre gor

90 The Biourbanism Paradigm A tool to create resilient metropolises and urban systems

The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy

R ao u l B u nschoten

Bru no De M e u lder, Kelly Shannon

96 6 Lessons on the Smart City

44 Towards a Resilient Hoog Kortrijk, Belgium

Landscape as city: a smart and conscious skin

The conversion of a fragmented, post-war development

J oseph C lag horn, C hristian Werthmann

50 Non-formal Growth and Landslide Risk Strategies to improve non-formal settlements in Medellín

SCAPE

Currents 6 Competitions, Reviews 108 News

Diane E. Davis

57 From Risk to Resilience and Back

110 Authors

New design assemblages for confronting unknown futures

111 Credits/Imprint 70

Iterative sketching and concept design is a

C hris R eed

way to communicate ideas to stakeholders, reaching

60 Absorb / Adapt / Transform

consensus around the testing of different approaches.

USA: Urban landscapes and climate adaptation strategies

Kate Orff

70 Transforming Practice

White Arkitekter

Science-driven methodology creates a new aesthetic

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“For a Resilient Rockaway” explores strategies

for the resilient development of an 80-acre site on the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, New York.

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currents

competitions

competitions

Moscow River: A Living Environment

The winning strategy of the team of Meganom/Gillespies is based on a series of ports and a cleansing land-

Meganom/Gillespies (2)

scape framework.

The Moscow River Competition was seeking a systematic concept for the water artery to create a pleasant and livable environment for Muscovites.

In late 2014, the City of Mos­ cow announced an interna­ tional competition for the ­future of the Moscow River.

This was the latest in a series of major international compe­ titions organised by the City and followed the Moscow ­Expansion Competition in 2012 and the Zaryadne Park Competition adjacent to the Kremlin (see Topos 81 and 85).

In launching the competition, Sergey Kuznetsov, the Chief Architect of the City, stressed the diverse urban environ­ ments and natural green areas through which the River pass­ es. In his introduction to the brief, Kusnetsov emphasised that the competition’s purpose was to create a systematic ­concept for the River overall as well as to develop appro­ priate techniques for each of

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different sections of the river within the City with the aim of establishing a transforma­ tional strategy for the water artery to become a living envi­ ronment for Muscovites.

From an extensive field of ap­ plicants the jury, headed by Marat Khustnullin, Deputy Mayor of Moscow, selected 6 international teams: Burgos & Garrido Arquitectos (Spain) with Citymakers (Rus­ sia); Turenscape (China) with Archpolis DSK (Russia); Max­ wan Urbanists (Netherlands) with Atrium Studio (Russia); Meganom (Russia) with Gil­ lespies (UK); Ostozhenka (Russia); and SWA Group (USA). The terms of the com­ petition brief anticipated a winning team to be appointed as consultants to the City Gov­ ernment for the development

and implementation of the winning concept. The jury ­selected the Meganom/Gil­ lespies team as winners and announced the decision at the 4th International Urban ­Forum in Moscow.

The Meganom strategy was based on a series of “future ports” – an interconnected series of points where the city meets the river. The ­selection of the ports was based on a thorough metro­ politan analysis of connec­ tivity, environment and ­urban intensity in the city.

The ports were considered the balance of centre and periph­ ery in Moscow and envisaged the development of a new ­typology in the public realm: park, square, boulevard and city port where each addressed the challenges of arrival, trans­

port interchange, meeting, connecting and departure.

In counterpoint to Meganom’s system of ports, a cleansing landscape framework was de­ vised by Gillespies of Glasgow and an interconnected move­ ment system was provided by Systematica of Milan. The landscape strategy anticipated the introduction of a system of new “islands” to green and clean the channel of the river.

Thus the overall concept was based on three fundamental principles: an intensive sys­ tem of acupuncture created by the new river ports, a rein­ forced network of connec­ tions – the human scale for development, and a system of cleansing ecosystem and smart cleaning for natural and human habitat health.

Brian Evans

competitions

currents

City as Project Conference, 22 May, City Cube Berlin

64 North, HNTB, Bionic, Ned Kahn (2)

The urban future is a much-discussed issue.

Questions of designing and planning for urban challenges are always part of the diverse topics featured in Topos. The same applies for our sister magazine Baumeister, the German architectural magazine. In this context, the Baumeister & ­Topos Cities Initiative, an international, crosscultural, cross-disciplinary initiative will bring together the competencies the two journals ­represent: landscape architecture and architecture, urban design, and planning and development in a broad social context.

The first event of this initiative is the one-day conference “City as Project”. Instead of offering a very generic “good ideas for cities” programme, we wish to highlight four issues that we perceive as being indicative of any future u­ rban development. First, cities have to focus on resilience.

Second, they have to come to terms with the ­issue of how to maintain individual mobility.

Third, the question arises as to how a city becomes a creative cluster with a sound economic basis. And finally, there is the question of how we can get closer to the ideal of the “open city”.

The conference is part of the “Metropolitan ­Solutions” conference trade show, a platform for exchange on the urban future, which will be held from 20 to 22 May in Berlin.

“Confluence”, the winning project by 64 North Architecture, HNTB Engineering, Bionic Landscape Architecture, and artist Ned Kahn, will reconnect the City of Palo Alto with San Francisco Bay, bridging fourteen lanes of Freeway 101.

Adobe Creek Bridge, Palo Alto, California A team comprised of 64 North Architecture, HNTB Engi­ neering, Bionic Landscape ­Architecture, and artist Ned Kahn has won the interna­ tional design competition for Palo Alto’s new Adobe Creek Pedestrian & Cyclist Bridge.

The winning scheme, titled “Confluence,” will reconnect the city with San Francisco Bay, bridging fourteen lanes of Freeway 101.

Drawn from the trajectories of the cyclists moving along it and the sinuous waterways

that trace the edges of San Francisco Bay, it is designed not as an icon but as an expe­ rience, creating a more conse­ quential relationship between Palo Alto and the bay. The bridge ascends in a counter­ clockwise loop, arcing over the freeway before descending in a broad circle. To the east, a new gathering space provides a place to sit and take in the view. Encircled by the bridge is a new vernal pond and board­ walk, a new way to explore the Palo Alto Baylands and the bay.

The designers create zones for pedestrians and cyclists, lifting one above the other, and sepa­ rating them in plan.

“The winning design includes several amenities at the Bay­ lands gateway, and shows a ­remarkable integration of form and expression, creating a safe landmark bridge for the use of cyclists and pedestrians, while also acknowledging that thousands of motorists will pass beneath this bridge every day.” said Jury Chairwoman Judith Wasserman.

For the programme please see the advert on page 13 or go to: www.toposmagazine.com.

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Nina-Marie Lister

Resilience Designing the New Sustainability Design for resilience needs an evidence-based approach that contributes to adaptive and ecologically-responsive design in the face of complexity, uncertainty and vulnerability. Put simply: What does a resilient world look like, how does it behave and how do we design for resilience?

L

ong-term sustainability necessitates an inherent and essential capacity for resilience – the ability to recover from disturbance, to accommodate change, and to function in a state of health. In this sense, sustainability typically means the dynamic balance ­between social-cultural, economic and ecological domains of human behavior necessary for humankind’s long-term surviving and thriving. As such, long-term sustainability sits squarely in the domain of human intention and activity – and thus – design; it should not be confused with the ultimately impossible realm of managing “the environment” as an object separate from human action. Instead,

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the challenge of sustainability is very much one for design, and specifically, design for resilience.

A growing response to the increasing prevalence of major storm events has been the development of political rhetoric around the need for long-term sustainability, and in particular, its prerequisite of resilience in the face of vulnerability.

As an emerging policy concept, resilience refers generally to the ability of an ecosystem to withstand and absorb change to prevailing environmental conditions; in an empirical sense, resilience is the amount of change or disruption an ecosystem can absorb and, following these change events, return to a recognizable steady state in which the system retains most of its structures,

For the design studio “Depoldering Dordrecht� at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Kimberly Garza and Sarah Thomas proposed a speculative dynamic measure of sea level for the Netherlands delta region as part of a climate-change adaptation project.

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Stig L. Andersson

The Urban as a Resilient System of Processes The Delta District, Vinge, Denmark

A resilient city is constantly changing and optimizing its physical appearance. An innovative planning process expresses a symbiotic relation between nature and the built environment. Physical Development Plans can actively acknowledge how geological, hydrological and vegetative processes shape urban form and human inhabitation.

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The natural and cultural processes of the Delta form the 足basis for the Delta District in Vinge, Denmark. This model not only creates a rainwater management system with ecological functions but also aesthetic and social spaces.

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Bass River Park Adaptation Strategy. The park in West Dennis, Massachusetts,

by Stoss responds to changing environmental conditions. Seven different landscape states are possible (wet, dry, windy, active, etc.). Oscillations can occur between and among any of the different states over time.

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Chris Reed

Absorb Adapt Transform Climate change affects cities everywhere, and all cities need to think through climate adaptation strategies moving forward.

Urban landscapes, landscape infrastructures, and landscapedriven city-making strategies have all proven successful in helping to mitigate environmental change.

There are two misperceptions about resilience when it comes to thinking about cities in the 21st century. First, resilience is not about a city’s ability to resist or hold back the effects of climate change, to simply ­buffer more against storms and water; rather, it should be about a city’s ability to adapt to any number of possible effects of climate change – to absorb those effects and, perhaps, to re-tool city and landscape fabrics to accommodate change. Second, resilience isn’t just a coastal issue – climate change affects cities everywhere, and all cities need to think through ­climate adaptation strategies moving forward. This article will explore the implications of a closer understanding of resilience terminology and demonstrate its potential applications vis-à-vis a few recent projects from the middle of the North American continent designed by Stoss.

Resilience. Resilience is a term borrowed from the ecological sciences.

Ecologist and planner Nina-Marie Lister defines resilience in Projective Ecologies as “… the ability of an ecosystem to withstand and, to some ­degree, absorb the effects of sometimes unpredictable and sudden changes to prevailing environmental conditions while still maintaining the majority of its structures and functions. Occasionally, such changes may result in a reorganization of the system’s structures and functions

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Kongjian Yu

A R e s i l i e n t La n d s c a p e In Yanweizhou Park in Jinhua City water-resilient terrain and plantings are designed to adapt to the monsoon floods. The project has given the Chinese city a new identity and is now acclaimed as its most poetic landscape.

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Yanweizhou Park gives new life to the riparian wetland of Jinhua City. The Bayong Qiao Bridge (Bridge of Eight Chants, named after eight poems written in ancient times about landscapes surrounding the site) was inspired by the vernacular Bench Dragon Dancing.

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