Human-Wildlife cohabitation be incorporated in the Anthropocene

University of Huddersfield School of Art, Design and Architecture Master of Architecture Dissertation

‘How can Human-Wildlife cohabitation be incorporated in the urban setting in the context of the Anthropocene?’

By Clement Ting Yiung TANG 1872990

Acknoledgement I would like to thank the following people who have helped me realise my interests and inspiring me to pursue this thesis project.

My supervisors, Dr. Amir Gohar, and my tutors, Dr. Ioanni Delsante and Dr. Hazem Zaida, for their tutelage, guidance and support in helping me write this thesis. My course mates, who helped gave me several ideas of approaching the thesis.

I would also like to thank my parents who have been supportive and encouraging during my studies.

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Abstract

With the unending fear of climate change, the natural world is seeing rapid decline in biodiversity. Humans that rely on this biodiversity will also face its issues in the near future.

Humans and animals will have to find a way to cohabitate mutually with each other to have the possibility of providing resilience in the climate change Anthropocene.

This thesis is positioned within a landscape of the city, human’s ‘habitat’ which undeniably has been through the most drastic ecological transformation with mainly focusing on the context climate change issues cause by these drastic changes. This engages the use of space which the local wildlife has dissipated or some of them struggling to adapt to the urban environment causing further tension between both parties. This thesis would seek to answer the question of how cohabitation in the near future through a series of different philosophical view of the human and wildlife perception through the visions of the architectural environment and paired together with the relationships of the Anthropocene with the wildlife. Helping us to understand what it means to cohabitate and how can we rethink resilient solutions to not only help us but the biodiversity as well.

Furthermore, this will be beneficial to try and create a hypothetical framework for future citynature developments by understanding through literature reviews and precedent studies.

Precedent studies would be chosen from looking into existing or well-structured proposals regarding cohabitation and resilience and choosing those of which includes both aspects and how it would relate to the chosen site. An attempt would be fabricated to merge these ideas and solutions to create a cohabitation of socio-ecology in a hypothetical scenario in the context of the site’s (City of Hull) future.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Abstract 2. Acknowledgement 3. Table of Contents 4. Introduction 5. Literature Reviews 5.1 Cohabitation 5.1.1 Existing, progression and Relationships 5.1.2 Importance of balanced biodiversity 5.1.3 Possibilities of Wildlife within the Urban Setting

5.2 Future Nature 5.2.1 5.2.2 5.2.3 5.2.4

Posthumanism in the Anthropocene Valuing the Biodiversity Nature Culture Regenerative Design

6. Precedent Studies 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

Mizumoto Park, Tokyo, Japan Qiaoyuan Park Tianjin, China Oyster-tecture, Manhattan, United States Public Sediment, Alameda, San Francisco

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7. Redesigning the City of Hull 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5

Condition of the City Bridging Biodiversity on the Master Plan Level Implementing ‘Natural Technologies’ into the Biodiversity Infrastructure and artificial living spaces Further Proposal Scheme

8.

Findings

9.

Conclusion

10. References 11. List of Figures 12. No Specifics Ethics Risk Declaration

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Introduction The current view of sustainability in architecture has been focused on reducing impacts of how we use resources but fails to consider the issues of the how wildlife biodiversity would be affected by these ‘green design’. With the issues surrounding climate change, lots of habitats not only of wildlife but also for humans will be in crucial decline. Currently the urban landscapes of humans are operating at a pace of resource consumption and is created to be anthropocentric. This causes further issues for the earth as a whole because with the evergrowing expansion of mankind, habitats of non-humans that has already been disrupted will be reduced to limited high effort conservative spaces. Unfortunately, human expansion is inevitable, but it could be possible to create new urban spaces or redesign current cities to welcome wildlife that has been pushed away by creating novel ecosystems that will help the local biodiversity to once again strive and create a cohabitation between humans and wildlife in the urban settings. To do this the new habitats of non-humans must also be considered.

Over the years there is no deny that humans have taken over the domination of the earth and is wringing dry raw material while further developing biosphere into a more anthropocentric biosphere. Out of all these developments, the crucial effect of the industrialisation and urbanisation of humans are affecting the future of not only the humans themselves but all living things. With these developments, and pollutions caused, the earth as we know it has entered the era of the human epoch, the Anthropocene (Meyer, 2016).

Medias and rumours are always broadcasting the notion of not being able to reverse what the humans has done to the natural world even if there are still precautions and policies of conservation efforts and building regulation that coincides with nature. Fortunately, there are environmental researchers like Chris Thomas (2017) that found evidence of wildlife flourishing with the help of human interventions. The future could see this as a possibly reconnect humans and nature together in a hybridisation of societal mutualism, if not peaceful cohabitation.

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.

5.1 Cohabitation To be able to implement animals into human’s everyday live in the new built environment, one must understand what it means to co habitat with each other.

Currently there are stigmas and fears, that are not only prevents this but also prevents certain animals to benefit systems already installed by the conservation effort (Camino, 2016). It would help to seek information of current misunderstanding or perception, importance of preserving and regenerating, also to look into that what current architects and researchers have in mind in regard to these issues

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5.1.1 Existing, progression and Relationships The basic human perception of animals is categorised in two forms, the domestic and wild.

Most of these relationships are based on humans’ perception of control (Berque, 1997). This can be seen in the domestication of animals into pets, monetisation of animals in terms of resources by agriculture and the aestheticization of wildlife for entertainment like the zoo. With these perceptions of animals, comes with some issue of viewing the animals that are not in humans’ control as pests. Though the harmfulness of the animals that are living amongst the urban settings are existent, the reasons for their behaviour almost mirrors the invasion humans caused when the industrialisation and urbanisation took away parts or most of their habitats.

Figure 1.1 Diagram of basic human perception of animals (Gunawan, 2017) There is also a notion that the wild is independent form human intervention and it is out of the grasp of control from the human perspective (Gunawan, 2017). Though these species remain out of the boundaries of the human, some of them have become slowly integrated into the civilisation of urban context because the landscape that supports them are intruded by developments. The conservation practice which is established by environmentalists less than a century ago to preserve the state of wild by providing reserves and closing off certain areas of land, though helpful for a certain aspect, is further disconnecting the connection between the human and wildlife.

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Ironically these acts of preservation would indirectly be producing hybrid natural landscapes (Lefebvre 1992). The human wildlife relationship established during these preservation efforts creates a “conservation reliance” as termed by biologist J. Michael Scott which means that the humans are “governing the wilderness” in which he implies that the line between conservation and domestication are greyed (Mooallem 2013). The human perspective of wilderness being wild and uncontrolled is slowly diminishing allowing for different levels of reliance and independence from human.

Lefebvre’s idea can further be seen in Geoff Manaugh’s (2011) concept of architecture’s ability to generate new ecosystems in an article titled “Architecture Ecologies”. He writes about the possible existence of historical architecture style whose ornamentation provides the ideal nesting place for specific type of bird. The bird, who maintains a seed-based diet, would inadvertently imitates the cultivation of a new ecology. Though this is not intentional like what Lefebvre previously suggested, it embodies the fact that even without intention, humans have a significant tendency to change the outcome or behaviour of what we would assume is the very vague notion of the “natural order”.

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5.1.2 Importance of balanced biodiversity

This phenomenon of members of wild species of animals or plants that are subjected to human and the urban environment are benefited from being around humans (excluding domesticated animals like farmed and pets) is called synanthropic relation (Johnson & Klemens, 2005).

These

creatures

are

not

always

considered as pests, and some may even be likened by the locals. There are several projects that proposes that these ‘urban wildlife’ be more integrated into the urban setting.

Figure 1.2 The Food chain balance, this would be disrupted if any of the animals a missing (nau.edu/3rm22)

Nevertheless, there is still imbalance of biodiversity caused by human intervention even if the views of synanthropic are positive. It regards the fact that there are other missing animals that completes a healthy self-sustainable ecosystem. This happens to deteriorate the animals from the top of the food chain, and by doing so the booming populations of animals from the lesser food chain causes the food source to diminish and increases the chance of harmful diseases to manifest in the animals that got to live long enough to be weakened by old age (Agudo, 2017).

This ‘unnatural’ phenomenon in biodiversity goes against the harmony of what makes an ecosystem works. An ecosystem is not only there to manage variety of living things but also to stabilise the surrounding geological condition like erosion, mineral regulation, water purification and more.

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Figure 1.3 Yellowstone Park’s Biodiversity Balance (Endangered.org)

This could be seen in the history of Yellowstone Park in the United states. During the 1900’s, the hunting registry removed the wolves from the reserve in thoughts of helping the elk population grow, in doing so the elk though increased in numbers, declined the health of the park drastically. With the vegetation destroyed by the elk and erosion of the land, the park decreased in the number of biodiversity. After the ban of wolves was lifted through the campaign by ecologists regarding ecological balance, the park has reintroducted wolves in the 1990’s (Hank, 1995). Yellowstone has since rejuvenated and even reshape the geographical health back to nature’s original characteristics of a balanced ecosystem. Humans’ interaction with nature has been disruptive and harmful, but the technology and awareness progression of the biodiversity within these decades has provided constant reminder .and information on how to generate useful ideas on providing crucial help for the non-human.

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5.2 Possibilities of Wildlife within an urban context The urban biome that has such a difference structure and systems compared to the natural ecosystems. These concrete jungles are previously designed to prevent wildlife from intruding into the humans living space, pathways replaced greeneries, repurpose of habitats into parks that are voided of shelters for the wildlife. So naturally, the wildlife that adapted into these settings are resilient animals which eventually thrived to become invasive

and

nuisance.

As

previously

mentioned, there must be a need to introduce other animals to regulate the balance of an ecosystems.

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5.2.1 Artificial Spaces There are several artificial spaces that are already in place and are in use. Within the urban setting specific wildlife are looked after in terms of conservation to accommodate for the inhabitable spaces of the concrete jungle. For example, the addition of the nest box. The nest box was created by a British conservationist Charles Waterton during the 1900’s in the hopes to encourage more birds to be implemented into wherever the nest box was placed. Initially the introduction of the nest box was to invite birds to control the amount of insect pests usually in farming (RSPB Community, 2016). The use of nest boxes has gone through a lot of redesign to accommodate several different species of animals like bats, bees, butterflies, and even hedgehogs. These artificial living spaces are currently fairly simple and are quite effective in what they aim to do like creating safe shelter against predators or providing roosting places of migrating species.

Designer and sculptor Fritz Haeg’s project called ‘Animal Estates’ helps address this issue as in a smaller scale and as a prototype. He works with various scientists and ecologists to provide the local wildlife, the ‘clients’ to research what requirements do those clients need to inhabit a space and to replicate these requirements to an artificial structure to work as an animal ‘apartment’. His project encompasses the idea of providing homes not only for the urban wildlife but to introduce back what is missing from a balanced ecosystem.

This animal estate brings back natural predators that helps regulate the pests.

Figure 1.4: Animal Estates by Fritz Haeg

The critical question stills lie in that if the animals of the missing ecosystem were to be brought back, what more could be done to prepare for the future where climate change and further pollution seems inevitable, and what more can be done to design or establish a safe haven for humans and animal to cohabitate not only peacefully but has a contribution to each other, a mutualism.

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5.2.2 Wildlife Corridors There is a limit to how much an artificially built living shelters can accommodate. For an ecosystem to be able to flourish, spaces need to be turned into places of not only shelter but series of requirements such as biodiversity distribution not only of animals but plant life as well, because these animals have interactions with other species of animals and plant life like foraging needs, movement patterns and many more. It is important to create easy ‘wildlife traffic’ because there is also the possibility of accommodating migration species, since the migrating species are currently the most animals that are in the decline.

Figure 1.5: Conservation Wildlife Corridor that helps connect habitats (conservationcorridor.org) By the definition of Beier and Noss (1998) a wildlife corridor is a part of habitat that helps connect several larger habitats of different characteristics. The current urban areas rarely includes balanced ecosystems and even rarer a wildlife corridor. If any biodiversity were to thrive healthily within an urban context, the wildlife corridor is essential to creating any type of sustainable system in the built environment.

Fortunately, like mentioned before, there are opportunities to recreate habitats within the urban context. The problem is that these repurpose of specific lands have no connection and safe passages between them. Issues of vehicular traffic would render exploration outside of specific areas will be near impossible for land animals that are unaccustomed to the city life. Currently there are already things like animal crossings for the highway and movement indication technologies like led alerts to let humans be aware of wildlife presence. These implemented structures and designs though effective, are not for the scale of the urban fabric.

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5.3 A New Built Environment With

possibilities

of

implementing

wildlife into the urban context, further questions like how the implemented wildlife does can be mutually useful to the humans and vice versa. Is it possible to create habitats that help not only the current city scape but provide benefits for the biosphere as a whole? How to bring these ideas into fruition with the previous issues of how humans perceive wildlife and what solution can be fabricated to merge the constructs of human-wildlife relations

with

technologies

regeneration?

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of

5.3.1 Posthumanism in The Anthropocene The Anthropocene is an epoch in the Earth’s Geological history associated with the results of human’s impact in the environment. The Anthropocene started when the Neolithic Revolution started and is further accelerated when the steam engine was invented (Oldfield, 2015).

Humans are increasingly consuming resource every decade, with the use of more advanced technologies.

Different posthumanism ideas are argued amongst scholars of what kind of future might behold the humans. There is a clear understanding that humans have always rely on natural resources even in the current most advance of human technology (Ferrando, 2012). The term ‘technology’ is usually perceived as being advanced the tools used, but the definition of technology in a simpler sense is using resources to solve problems. So, asking questions like ‘is nature considered as technology?’ or ‘how can we use nature as technology?’ would benefit how we solve problems of the future.

Architectures of environmental posthuman should not be only representing ‘facades’ of nature but to interact with nature. Planting carpets of greenery, making green roofs, in a term called green washing is not useful in the creation ecological life (Patience, 2011). If humans are to use plants as technologies to help ecologically, needs to understand more of these ecologically in how it is useful, how it correlates to the animals to create these ecological cycles and how to replicate and treat these ecological cycles in various ways.

Since then, over the last few decades the concept of nature and animals had been skewered through the perception of humanism. Timothy Morton in his book ‘deep’ ecology states that ‘humans has reduced all other lifeforms into prosthetics’ (Morton, 2016). This means the perception has created different social, political and discipline regarding the uses of nature as humans see fit. Furthermore, these concepts are amplified through the use of technologies like the media and internet, the digital culture.

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Figure 2.1: Figure of Lyles hope of future integration of wildlife agriculture and urban spaces. (Lyle 1994)

Architecture in the contexts of these socio-cultural constructs also faces these perceptions of nature, harbouring the same issues. Francisco Gonzalez de Canales (2013) proposes the idea of connection in a single collective of “in-touch-ment� (nature and society) by reconfiguring our present construction of ethics. On the other hand, the digital world magnifies the experience of this new environment be it positive or negative, helping to connect those that haven’t experienced it in person the ability to understand nature through technologies (Latour 2018).

The actions of engaging the natural environment as an ethic and of expanding our need for physical sensation as a projection provide guidelines to realigning our architectural thinking according to these new conceptions of this society-nature.

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5.3.2 Valuing Biodiversity in an Urban Setting Before creating spaces of society nature, biodiversity must be at the least be addressed in its value to humans. By creating habitats within the city, it crosses over from conservation into a new and limited precedented category. Placing value on biodiversity may be a controversial subject, because of the way humans perceive biodiversity in an anthropocentric way, meaning everything surrounding must be of certain value to humans. However, though the nonanthropocentric way of visualising biodiversity in the built environment is the best way to approach a new built artificial nature, there is an issue of having enough resources to make drastic change within an urban setting. By valuing them in certain ways could help provide clarity for existing companies or governing bodies that has resources to help create or reinvent systems biodiversity in the city, to see value of promoting projects that would benefit them in a way.

Figure 2.2: Diagram showing the vision to create a interaction between Social, Conservation and Economy (Lehikoinenb, 2015) The ecological researches have provided innumerable facts that biodiversity has large importance for the survival of humans (Hopkins 2015). However, there is obvious difficulty to place an economic value on biodiversity. As stated above, that biodiversity has an empirical value not only to provide resources but also as means to stabilising the ecosystem. The biodiversity would be categorised in various different values anthropocentrically.

One-way biodiversity can be valued at by its merit is aesthetic. This goes into the part of how humans perceive the specific animals that are within the biodiversity (Lienhoop and Volker, 2016). Aesthetics can provide the population of the city an opportunity to experience biodiversity (animals that are usually not seen in an urban setting) as a form of eco-tourism.

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Most of the time the influence of aesthetics is dependent on how diverse the biodiversity is.

However, though most of these influences could be positive, the opposite can be also the case depending on what kind of environment the biodiversity was shown. This could be problematic due to the difference between actual and perceived diversity. This will in turn decide which aesthetically pleasing animals will inherit the benefit of being integrated. It would be expected that unethical perception and separation of wildlife will inevitably be brought out for the discussion of cohabitation between human and wildlife (Camino 2016). However, with that in mind, information through media and education in the recent decades has provided better understanding of biodiversity. If questioned, majority of people would agree that variety in biodiversity preferably are aesthetic pleasing even if a part of the it may not be (Sarah Batt 2009).

The education value has similar merits to the aesthetics, but it adds further value by being able provide in-depth study not only of the existing biodiversity but also the opportunity to study the creation of artificial ecosystem from within the city. Furthermore, there is prove that carries into the recent decades that education of children is slowly integrating the direction of providing experience. By creating access to certain mixture of nature-culture systems, would in turn not only provide better on hands experience, it would also help in bringing awareness to the issue of climate change and importance of natural occurring solutions to increase resilience of said issues.

The most important value of the biodiversity is option value. Option value in the terms of environmental study is the value of preserving threatened natural resources (Wiesbrod, 1964).

The reason this is important is that it speculates the how the future generations would use said resources generated from the biodiversity. Though these valuations are commonly used for wildlife conservation in a present condition, the issue of future climate change and creating artificial habitats is considered a possibility of resiliency of future issues ie flooding, resource management and destruction of ecology. Thus, the option value here is not on the uncertainty that the state of biodiversity themselves but how the future generations could benefit from such arrangements (Birnbacher, 2004). This would only be speculative due to the sheer amount of possibilities in how future generations utilise the resources. However, it is agreed that by providing unconventional or unprecedented way of biodiversity preservation or regeneration within the city, allows useful research and possibility of creating a well-controlled environment of an ecosystem where humans are part of the equation.

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5.3.3 Nature Culture One of the ideas that provides significant possible positive outcome is the use of nature culture as stated above. This nature culture can be seen as a hybridisation solution for example the use of nature to prevent urban issues, creating living spaces like bat box to prevent wildlife deterioration. This offers designers to act more critically about the responsible of humans and can help provide better ethical ways of approaching the ways of creating spaces for complexity from within the city (Forlano 2017). In the built environment, most of the issues regarding complex design are most often related to environmental change (Jeremijenko, 2016). As suggested previously, juxtaposing nature in an urban context is unproductive in the context of biodiversity cohabitation. The new concepts of creating novel ecosystems are starting to integrate into the ideas of self-sustainability and regeneration but still considered as testing phase. By understanding the creation an evolution of novel ecosystems is how we can make inhospitable space into habitable space for biodiversity to thrive (Smith, 2017).

Kinji Imanishi a presented a biologist’s view of what the relationships of human and wildlife be. He introduces the concept that the environment would be perceived as a ‘field of living’ meaning it is not merely a space of living but an extension of each different environment connected to one (Imanishi 2002). This brought about the relationship through resources humans and wildlife share, the relation of food. This connection with the wildlife is highly relevant today since most consumers have minimal awareness that the biodiversity are slowly diminished due to what they are buying. With the issue of radical commons, earth’s resource has faced an imbalance through agriculture that cripples the natural order. These can be reversed by creating spaces to regenerate resources not in an agricultural way but as catalysts to provide something more natural, sustainable and renewable in the long run. These unitary concept of is further expanded by a philosophical professor Tetsuro Watsuji. He talks of the concept of “in-betweenness” as a characteristic of human existence (Watsuji 1992). He sees the relation of nature as ‘milieu’ which means the humans and their environment exists in a dynamic unity. Though his philosophies are aimed at how we treat existing resources as a mixture of human and nature, it can be translated into the current situation as mixing of biodiversity and urban architecture, “new nature” of awareness and technology.

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5.3.4 Regenerative Framework There are several framework or concepts that discusses these ideas of hybrid synergies which pairs technologies and nature. Regenerative means of nature can help within the urban context and vice versa. Sustainability centric architect Ken Yeang (2008) further supports the theory of hybrid design by stating that to move forward with the built environment, architects must maintain ecosystems by designing forms of function. This can be done approaching the context of sensitivity of the local ecology and processes of that specific ecosystem with a larger goal of contributing positively to biodiversity. The Hybridisation of Human + Technology + Nature or in a sense human’s effort in the use of technology to connect to nature’s biodiversity to benefit both parties in the context of the human epoch is quite complicated. However, it is important that before the design of such systems a framework must be established with the merits previously discussed.

Figure 3.1 Several models of consumption (Lyle, 1994) The traditional consumption of these resources of humans are that the space, energy and material are taken away with a linear flow which the waste of these consumption amount to a loss because of its incompatibility with nature. This not only causes pollution, but the habitats of the biodiversity are disrupted. The ‘green’ framework currently adopted was aimed to reduce reuse recycle some of these by products into useful products, thus disrupting less of the natural resources. Both these The Regenerative framework seeks to use natures design to create a loop that completes and balance itself.

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‘Regenerative Design’ focuses on the plan of what Yeang proposes, hoping to achieve a beneficial mergence of man and biodiversity. From the perspective of Lyle (1994), a regenerative system consists of several criteria; source, input, output, waste; with the success of a regenerative system lies in how could the by-product of output like wastes, heat or contaminated water, be efficiently reused not only in terms of recycling but how the new artificial nature would respond and assimilate to encourage wildlife within the urban context.

The key principals of regenerative design are: 1. Design with the taking existing ecology into consideration 2. By using natural forms of bioproduct assimilation 3. Letting Nature do her work The regenerative design holds some great promises for the future of architecture and cohabitation living. Unfortunately, the current regenerative design though not new, are still primitive. To be able to leap from reduction of negative impact to a positive net gain would need several more advanced technologies, but it is not impossible.

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6 Precedent Studies These will investigate precedents of several projects regarding the theme of cohabitation of human-wildlife and about flood resilience of city to learn and fabricate a system for the thesis on Hull based on these precedents. These precedents are also reviewed on the merits talked about in the literature review; the effect of wildlife, the issues before the project, how it fits in the relationship framework.

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6.1

Mizumoto Park by Norihisa Yamamoto

Figure 4.1: Fisheries Experiment Station (upper right) and the situation before (bottom left) and after transformation (centre)

These concepts of mixing nature and culture in a sense to provide resources for both parties is one way to help the structure an ecosystem within the city. One of the precedents that focus on this concept is Mizumoto Park in Tokyo. This project’s conservation effort is fairly different from the western’s approach. The goal of this project unsurprisingly aims to preserve and cultivate the endangered biodiversity, but it also aims to introduce agriculture into the mix.

This creates an interesting landscape that helps visitors to interact with the riparian life of the waterfront environment (Prominski, 2014).

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Figure 4.2: Situation of the site before (left) and after (right) The project kept the quadrangular area where small and elevated concreate basins for breeding goldfishes but the landscape that surrounded it becomes different depths of water in the landscape to provide for different types of plants and fishes to thrive with the addition of paddy fields for agricultural and educational purposes. The way of creating semi wild environment mixed with agriculture help create an ecosystem where nature provides for the agriculture by producing fertilisers through the waste of animals living within the vicinity The main thing about this project is that the relation between the animals and humans are connected through the use of plants. The designer created a series of different situation to allow for different layers of interaction between the different biodiversity and visitors. In some parts, plants and animals have privacy while preventing human access to a certain degree. These places are separated with different means like fences or subtle design measures. There are also areas of education where people get to study the inhabitants; plants, animals and especially fishes. Finally, there are areas where human has priority where gatherings and social activities takes place.

This project is a successful expression of the unitary Japanese concept of mixing nature and agriculture to benefit the human. Within the site it provides a connection where humans’ maintenance to sustain the high biodiversity, while the animals and plants provide the agricultural and educational needs. It is also mainly focus on rehabilitating native species of wildlife and prevents further mixture of invasive species with close monitoring. That being said, the project is missing a crucial benefit of providing for better output. This also shows that by reconfiguring current unusable parks by giving it purpose will not decrease the park’s existing usability but expands into something more beneficial, which forms of agriculture and activity can take place.

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6.2

Qiaoyuan Park, Tianjin China by Landscape Architect Kongjian Yu

Dr Kong Jian Yu, a practitioner in the fields of architecture, landscape and urban planning, famous for his work Sponge city focuses on projects that deals with the issues of city and ecology all over China. One of his projects that I chose as a study is Qiaoyuan Park.

(Turenscape, 2011)

Figure 4.3: The existing garbage dump site (http://architypereview.com/project/tianjinqiaoyuan-park/) The site is located within the city of Tianjin. The place used to be wetlands, but the industrialisation has caused it to be decimated. Previously the site has been a shooting range but after that it has been deserted and eventually became a garbage dump, causing surrounding soil to be heavily polluted by saline and alkaline.

The municipal government and the residence of the area requested the site to be rebuilt into a park. Instead of creating a park, Kongjian wanted to use this project to deal with the pollution of the landscape by reusing the natural system of wetland which was here before the industrialisation happened by the hybridisation of nature and city. The idea of the project was ‘to let nature do her work’ similar to the regenerative design’s framework.

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Figure 4.4: Master Plan of the project showing the adaption palettes. (http://architypereview.com/project/tianjin-qiaoyuan-park/) The park was to create different ponds of ‘adaption palettes’ which would house different types of plants. These different pools of habitats will house a series of plants that thrive in different season, different weather and different soil conditions. By introducing these plants, it helps balance the soil’s alkaline and saline conditions and provide more nutrients for better ecological health. In keeping with the idea of ‘letting nature do her work’ the ponds will start to grow into each other connecting the ponds into a self-sustainable ecosystem. The ponds also provide flood resilience from the storm waters by acting as a bioretention area, preventing further erosion and soaking up the metal runoffs from the city leaking into the sewage discharge.

The technologies used here is considered as a regenerative project, meaning it helps repurpose a space that is uninhabitable for wildlife and created a system that not only creates living spaces but implements a certain technology that helps prevent further erosion or pollution. The use of nature by creating bioretention walls helps human to regulate the storm waters and also helps to provide cleaner and habitable surrounding. Even though, in this project, the wildlife was not the main focus, meaning there was no direct connection of the project addressing wildlife, it created a possible space to act as a catalyst for wildlife corridors.

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6.3

Oystertecture, Manhattan by Kate Orff (SCAPE)

Over the years Hudson river estuary is home to lots of marine life, oyster being a key part of it. The oysters help to dissipate the tidal waves that reached for the shores, and also create rough textures to help increase resistance and slowdown the water flow from the sea to the bay.

Even the shells were used a construction material. The shells were burned and grinded and turn into lime to pave the streets. The city has been dumping all sorts of pollutants into the water without regulation. During a decade ago in the 1900’s, New York was hit with deadly outbreaks of Cholera and Typhoid, epidemics which public health experts traced back to oyster beds.(Orlove, 2015) After that the city stopped farming oysters and they were gone, leaving Manhattan exposed to the dangers of tide flooding.

The pollution continued over the years and caused quite a lot of problem, so the New York Congress passed the Clean water act which prevents industrial and toxic wastes from being released into the water. Over the last decades people are suggesting different ideas to bring back oysters. But the environment is still not suitable for oysters to grow and will sink to the bottom of the bay to be covered in the eroded silt. She proposed a concept of lifting oysters in suspension by building nets made of ropes to elevate them from the seafloor. This structure would be the catalysts for the oysters to grow into the oyster beds that acts as a natural flood resilient walls to prevent future tidal flooding.

Figure 4.5: Diagram shows the use of oysters in a nursery to filter water in the Hudson River (Scape 2009) After hurricane Sandy in 2013, there was a competition to create resiliency with the context of climate change and sea level rise. SCAPE’s proposal uses the oystertecture as a base to build of a much larger scale call the “Living Breakwaters”. The Living Breakwater Project reuse the method of the oyster reefs blocking the large tidal waves to design their project. The oysters would not only block the waves but can help in preventing further coastal erosion and help create beaches. (Scape, 2009) 28

This project also aims to revive the existing ecosystems. Other than to reduce wave damage and water filtering, the project could see to revive the water from the oyster reefs providing habitats to other aquatic animals. Furthermore, with the help of marine biologists the architects designed several pockets within the structure called “reef streets,” that provide shelter for brooding fishes. This would help provide opportunities for the eco-tourism and cultivation of marine wildlife and encourage interaction between the locals and their neighbouring aquatic inhabitants.

Figure 4.6:. Living Breakwaters Project Wall (SCAPE 2009) The Oystertecture project it a close example of how it fits into the ‘Future Biodiversity Framework’, meaning it could work in the future of climate change in relation to the biodiversity of its site. It uses wildlife to create further habitats for wildlife and continuously helps rid the water it inhabits of pollutions caused by the industrial era. Furthermore, the oyster reefs created by the oysters also prevents further deterioration of the salt marsh that holds the shores of Manhattan. It generates further events by allowing the locals to interact with the habitats partially and created a possibility of food resources for the future Manhattan. It is crucial that all of these criteria creates a loop of regenerative framework, allowing the project to create a net gain for both the wildlife and the humans with aesthetic, educational and option value as previously suggested.

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6.4

Public Sediment Alameda Creek, San Francisco

The Public Sediment project like the Oystertecture was created from a design challenge that aims to bring awareness of climate resilience to the public by using innovative solutions. The team Architectural Ecologies Lab proposes the use of the trapped sediment along the Alameda Creek to revitalise the creek (Architecture Ecologies,2018).

Figure 4.7. The reformation and repurpose of Alameda Creek. (architectureecologies.cca.edu)

The public sediment’s main focus is on creating a public event that could see an interaction between humans and local wildlife. Community spaces were created to around the park to be advertised as a leisure space but regulated to help provide awareness and for the local residents to experience the creek without disturbing the wildlife.

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Figure 4.8:. The use of modular stones (architectureecologies.cca.edu)

The most helpful information about this project is the use of artificially stones made with different grooving help to be places easily on the creek banks. These stone modules prevent further deterioration of the sediments and creates places for plant life to grow. There are also different types of modules that overhang at the fish channels that provides cover for migratory fishes like salmons in moving upstream to their spawning areas.

This project does not have technologies that help the humans directly, but it creates a positive output by preventing further deterioration and help rejuvenate the creek back to its prime. This would further help in preventing the rise in sea level during the climate change by protecting the tidal systems downstream with taking care of its upstream with this project. But even though this project is not set in an urban setting, the use of artificial means of regenerating nature helps to understand the possibility of merging striking the balance in technology and how nature reacts to human intervention positively.

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7 Redesigning The City of Hull

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7.1

Condition of the City

Hull in its essence was a place of coastal wetlands. The coastal wetlands are one of the most productive ecosystems on Earth. These coastal wetlands provide significance benefits to the living environment not only as habitats for the biodiversity that lives in it but also crucial for means of cleaner waters and flood protection. Though it may not seem like it, it is one of the most important filter and mineral transition from land to ocean. This means that the ocean’s production of seafood relies heavily on the wetlands, with the seafoods’ quantity and quality depending on the health of coastal wetlands. Even before hull has established its new wetlands, the incoming sea level rise from the global warming would reach before this happens. The City has a potential in being a candidate of going through the framework and the use of nature as technology to tackle its own Anthropocene issues, with its pollution and deteriorating river caused by previous industrial shipping. The city itself boasts its variety in biodiversity but it is not felt or seen as so.

Figure 5.1: Greenery Map of Hull

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As shown in this figure 4.1 there are seems to be a lot of allocated green space, but unfortunately the green spaces are mostly uninhabitable flat parks and have little to none environmental use in terms of helping the environment. The darker green space shown is the ones that could potentially be habitats of current wildlife that are living in the city. This could be remedied by naturalising these existing green spaces; parks, sidewalk greenery, leisure spaces into something beyond mere recreation or aesthetic purposes. Currently there are a lot of environmental policy surrounding the conservation of its biodiversity, but none are focused on creating a healthier city to accommodate this wildlife. The city could see a revitalisation of nature by the use of the framework suggested by adding nature as technology and creating events like agriculture or education to create awareness.

Figure 5.2: Pollutants of the river Hull The current city of hull has gone through a history of industrial revolution where wildlife is a large portion of its income. Hull in the earlier centuries has always been reliant on the fishing industries even though the industry has died down since the 1970’s. Has seen quite a lot of pollution that are caused by the runoff chemicals of ships and from the erosion of land in the city as well.

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As mentioned above the current biodiversity of Hull is consists of animals of the wetlands and also of the grasslands. This mixture of biodiversity biome makes into an interesting combination of habitats. Several notable animals that are recorded but rarely seen are, otters, migratory birds and bats. Currently there are also a initiative to push the city into creating a catalysts in rehabilitating the growth in numbers of a specific rare brimstone butterfly which is also one of the animals that are included in the Hull Biodiversity Action Plan.

Figure 5.3: Different Layers of Wetland Habitat and Biodiversity

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7.2

Bridging biodiversity on the Master Plan level

Figure 6.1: Chosen sites

The site chosen for the implementation of these several different habitats are currently unused land and large memorial park that provides no significant positive impact on the biodiversity.

These sites are to be repurposed with implemented different biomes to accommodate the different local biodiversity.

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Figure 6.2: Recreating habitats After creating these different layers of habitats, it is crucial that these different habitats are linked together by creating a landscape that could allow the wildlife to travel safely around the newly created habitats helping to increase the mix of biodiversity creating a more complexed ecosystem. For the site selected it could also demonstrate possible opportunities to create educational, agricultural and infrastructural benefits to be implemented within this bridging.

Figure 6.3: Connecting Habitats

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Figure 6.4: Animal Crossings Green – Wildlife, Blue - Humans

The integration proposed to connect these places a quite simple and easily buildable in the present. By creating arcs and bridges could easily help the animals to cross busy roads without the danger of human traffic and some parts can be private for the animals where human interaction is minimised.

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7.3

Implementing ‘Natural Technologies’ into the biodiversity

The technologies mentioned here are use of natural way of providing resilience of human caused issue due in removing the natural habitats for development gain. One of these technologies is the use of bioretention areas. Bioretention is a system that consists of soil bed that are suitable for the native species of plant life. The stormwater runoff that goes through these bioretention areas are filtered through different layers of soil, sand, gravel and cleaner water are slowly released back into the existing soil, the plants planted in the bioretention areas will help facilitate microorganisms that could break down these metals and petroleum based materials into organic chemicals . Furthermore, bioretention areas have underdrain pipe outlets at the bottom of the filtration to channel the water away. This outlet can be connected into further complex filtration into everyday use water for the city itself. This would address more than eighty percent of the pollution within the river hull because most of its pollution are heavy metals caused from the deterioration of the buildings and roads. This not only helps filter water, but it also helps in directing stormwater, preventing floods of uneven terrains.

Figure 7.1: Bioretention system implemented as wildlife corridor

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Figure 7.2: Photo of River Hull during low tides (Edkins, 2014) Other than that, to rejuvenate the health of the river, it will be closed for water transports because one of the higher chemical pollution is cause by the paint used on these boats to prevent aquatic pests like barnacles from attaching to the ship hulls. By closing off the transport access it also helps with the issue of current erosion. As shown in the figure 4.9, there is an issue that during the low tides the water in the river is too shallow to accommodate larger aquatic animals.

Water regulating dam (Figure 4.9.1) will help to keep the river from being too shallow thus providing adequate amount of depth for larger fish to inhabit the spaces. The plan is to introduce mollusc into the river after regulating the water flow. The reason to introduce molluscs like oysters and mussels is that the wetland habitats rely very much of these molluscs to clear the water of silts and also prevent erosion by attaching themselves to the riverbanks. These molluscs reefs can also provide food and shelter to other fishes and acts as spawning nurseries, this will help with the pollution of the river and help rejuvenate it to flourish in more variety of fishes. And by providing a fish ladder helps migratory fish to be able to travel upstream.

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Figure 7.3: Dam with fish ladder

7.4

Infrastructure and artificial living spaces

This site chosen for this is the educational part of the master plan. This project aims to create a structure that can house not only the wildlife corridor but an opportunity to experience different cascade of the ecosystem that sees interaction between the wildlife. The designed structure hovers over river hull so this will be a bridge for wildlife. This structure will include nest boxes for different types of animals and also creates a possibility of being another part of a biome. So, it means that this wildlife bridge could also be a structure of regenerative design.

Figure 8.1: Wildlife Bridge

The insertion of the wildlife bridge is aimed to establish a multi layered ecosystem comprising of different pollinators and that also provides means of service in the balancing of biodiversity by attracting all of the food web from the top tertiary carnivores to the simple decomposers.

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This hopes to harmonise different species created by these artificial habitats which would slowly flourish into its own mix of nature and man-made structure. Hopefully this could in the final phase be self sufficient without the manage of humans.

The design of this bridge is focused on main local pollinators; the bats, seed based dieted birds, bees and butterflies, that could further help spread the pollination into the different patches of ecosystems as mentioned before in (figure 5.2).

Figure 8.2: Artificial Bat habitat The bat house design came from the traditional design of bat boxes which provides integrated gripping surfaces and the reason the bad habitat was places on the sides of the bridge is because it needs large safe drop zones to manoeuvre out of these living spaces.

Figure 8.3: Artificial Bird Habitat The bird houses are lifted high above ground to minimise disturbance from the lower ground and also provide adequate daylight and temperature regulation during different seasons. There are different sized holes to accommodate different types of pollinating species of birds according to their dwelling sizes.

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Figure 8.4: Artificial Mollusc Reefs The mollusc reefs are integrated with the use of a mixture of concrete, some silt and shells.

These create a hard-textured surface to help these molluscs to attach on the artificial reefs.

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7.5

Further Proposal Scheme (Undersigned)

As mentioned before, it would be helpful to include other sectors of the integration of technologies into the scheme where it would compose of various hydroponics and agricultural planning to help further the process of human-wildlife cohabitation with events of education and tourisms. Providing for the animals’ side is important but there should be creation of several agriculture points that could gain benefits of introducing these various ecosystems to turn the city into a living machine.

Figure 9: Sections of social-nature interaction

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8

Findings

By looking for technologies of climate change resilience, it is safe to say that most of the technologies are using nature itself, like biorientation filtration, composting or even the use of wildlife. These are how humans would be able to create not only a self-sustainable ecosystem but also can provide a regenerative outcome. And by doing so means that implementing of biodiversity is the sure way of creating a future city where humans and wildlife would be able to interact with each other in a peaceful and respectable environment where each would have their own part wo play with in the novel ecosystem. Educational sectors and Eco tourism can help bring more awareness and further reconnect human with nature.

The following framework is constructed by looking into several frameworks that affects human biodiversity, and by using the regenerative loop to fabricate a framework that I could place information into it to understand what it would affect each other. This helps me visualise what could happen if different input into these categories could produce.

The Relationship Framework: This is to helps to understand and speculate what kind of outcome to the final event category if a technology (regenerative structure) or a movement (biodiversity awareness) is implemented.

Figure 10: Framework of Human Biodiversity Relations

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The concept of interaction and feedback of humans and wildlife depends on these several interactions to determine if it is possible to provide peaceful cohabitation as explained below. (a) The event in the presence of wildlife, that caused by human reaction results in impact.

Which (b) in turn causes a response of human behaviour. (c) These behaviours would then determine what kind of environmental policy needed to be made. (d) The behaviour could also cause a feedback that effects the wildlife be it intentionally or (e) unintentionally. (f) these landscapes would change in different scales mostly harmful, and this would affect the presence of wildlife. (h) The environmental policy helps to regulate the land use that changes the landscape characteristics and the wildlife presence as well. (i) So, depending of the framework, this would be the output that would help propel the benefits if the next interactions are well structured. By understanding this relationship framework, the methods of regenerative scheme can be inserted, for example if the [human behaviour] was using regenerative technology, the [landscape characteristics] could be affected positively. Furthermore, by pairing the positive landscape regeneration and relevant environmental policy, the whole framework could see a regenerative loop as mentioned before.

The output produced by this framework would not mean if the project is operating in away as a regenerative framework that creates a positive gain for the environment but it does help to position how it the projects’ criteria relates to each other and how it correlates and contribute to the societal-nature relationship of humans and wildlife within the shared space.

However, the challenge in these regenerative frameworks is that, everything lies in the balance of the respectable biodiversity, constant monitoring and complicated environmental regulations are needed to be implemented. This is still fairly hypothetical and are in need for a better professional understanding in the area of environmental researchers and biologists to help address how the wildlife would react to a new stimulus of the new novel ecosystem.

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9

Conclusion

This thesis helped to provide an alternative view of how in the coming future, designing and development of the urban landscape can be turned into non anthropocentric but with an understanding of the social nature that could be realised to include all life forms as players within the biosphere. Addressing the needs of the humankind together with the biodiversity helps to push forward the possibility of becoming a regenerative world rather than one of rapid consumption.

Designing for the biodiversity does not necessarily mean sacrificing limited biodiversity resources, but instead there are possibilities of co-operation and greater synergy as seen in this thesis. The planning that stems from the master planning level and into the intricate details of artificial living spaces are required if the earth could actually see a positive change. As it is crucial to develop technologies that mirror and learn from nature, it is also important that awareness is brought forward to the public and more importantly the young. These would be the opportunity to rewire the thinking of modern sustainable solutions into more possibilities of future novel ecosystems.

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10

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11

List of Figures

Fig.1.1

: Diagram of Basic Human Percepetion of Animals, Retrieved from

http://www.expandedenvironment.org/knowing-the-synanthrope/ Fig. 1.2

: The Food chain balance, this would be disrupted if any of the animals a

missing, Retreived from nau.edu/3rm22 Figure 1.3

: Yellowstone Park’s Biodiversity Balance, Retrieved from Endangered.org

Figure 1.4

:

Animal

Estates

by

Fritz

Haeg,

retrieved

from

https://www.fritzhaeg.com/garden/initiatives/animalestates/main2.html Figure 1.5

: Conservation Wildlife Corridor that helps connect habitats retrieved from

conservationcorridor.org Figure 2.1

: Figure of Lyles hope of future integration of wildlife agriculture and urban

spaces. Retreived from ‘Regenerative Design for Sustainable Development, Page 287.

Figure 2.2

: Diagram showing the vision to create a interaction between Social,

Conservation and Economy, Retrieved from https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ow-tovalue-biodiversity-in-environmental-Laurila-PantaLehikoinenb/b799c2d7084dcf9d3d9eddb52b726c5972049d05 Figure 3.1

: Several models of consumption retrieved from ‘Regenerative Design for

Sustainable Development, Page 287.

Figure 4.1

: Fisheries Experiment Station and the situation before and after transformation,

retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/18626033.2014.898819 Figure 4.2

:

Situation

of

the

site

before

and

after

retrieved

from

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/18626033.2014.898819 Figure 4.3

:

The

existing

garbage

dump

site,

retrieved

from

http://architypereview.com/project/tianjin-qiaoyuan-park/ Figure 4.4

: Master Plan of the project showing the adaption palettes, retrieved from

http://architypereview.com/project/tianjin-qiaoyuan-park/ Figure 4.5

: Diagram shows the use of oysters in a nursery to filter water in the Hudson

River, Retrieved from https://www.scapestudio.com/projects/living-breakwaters-competition/

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Figure 4.6

:

Living

Breakwaters

Project

Wall,

Retrieved

from

https://www.scapestudio.com/projects/living-breakwaters-competition/ Figure 4.7

:The reformation and repurpose of Alameda Creek, retrieved from

architectureecologies.cca.edu Figure 4.8

: The use of modular stones retrieved from architectureecologies.cca.edu

Figure 5.1

: Greenery Map of Hull, by author

Figure 5.2

: Pollutants of the river Hull, by Author

Figure 5.3

: Different Layers of Wetland Habitat and Biodiversity, by Author

Figure 6.1

: Chosen sites, by Author

Figure 6.2

: Recreating habitats, by Author

Figure 6.3

: Connecting Habitats, by Author

Figure 6.4

: Animal Crossings, by Author

Figure 7.1

: Bioretention system implemented as wildlife corridor, by Author

Figure 7.2

: Photo of River Hull during low tides, by Edkins, retrieved from

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4047642 Figure 7.3

:

Dam

with fish ladder, retrieved from https://cbecoeng.co.uk/our-

projects/branciforte-dam-removal-design/ Figure 8.1

: Wildlife Bridge, by Author

Figure 8.2

: Artificial Bat habitat, by Author

Figure 8.3

: Artificial Bird Habitat, by Author

Figure 8.4

: Artificial Mollusc Reefs, by Author

Figure 9

: Sections of social-nature interaction, by Author

Figure 10

: Framework of Human Biodiversity Relations, by Author

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