Master in landscape architecture Academic Portfolio_1_Jiaqian Cao

Academic Portfolio

JIAQIAN CAO

NARRATING

Turn to synergy

PEATLANDS

IN TERCEIRA

Re-examine the relationality between humanity and the environment in the process of discussing the peatlands transformation

I am a naturalist who lives in the city, takes care of the plants around me, wants to go to the desert to see the baobab trees blooming in the night.

I am a sensual soul under the rule of reason, showing my uniqueness without disturbing the other.

I am an egalitarian who uses power, giving the other enough respect with my own perspective.

Pay attention to my own mind as well as to all living beings in this world.

The many parts of me are fighting with each other, impeding each other.

Tangled…Painful…Unstable…

I am trying to turn them into synergy, like boiling water that finally turns into mild steam.

DESIGN BIOGRAPHY

My focus and my personal ideology will lean towards respect for nature and human intelligence. For nature, I view it as the origin, the roots of the environment we live in, and her historical changes are very important. But on the other hand, I am also interested in human activity. As a member of humans, I can have intuitive feelings, while consciousness is the source of my perception of the world, that is to say, the way of the world formation, including what is about nature, is seen through the human perspective. My aims as a landscape architect are to create a better living environment for humans while respecting nature and designing spaces in consultation with nature.

The most pressing challenge facing humanity now is the deterioration of the environment, which is not a completely new issue, but has been accompanied by the progress of human society for centuries. However, due to the belief in science, power, and humanities, human beings still take the attitude of withdrawing human beings from the whole system and using the landscape as a tool to deal with the problem of environmental degradation. By a sensibility of respect for the landscape, reconstructing and emphasizing the interrelated and dynamic systems of human and nature, and narrating in the medium of the landscape, can become a transition to a non-anthropocentric cognition.

CONCEPT DEFINATION

Anthropocene Noun

Period of time during which human activities have impacted the environment enough to constitute a distinct geological change.

The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems. The word Anthropocene is derived from the Greek words anthropo, for “man,” and cene for “new,” coined and made popular by biologist Eugene Stormer and chemist Paul Crutzen in 2000.

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/anthropocene/

Relationality

Noun

Relational means indicating relation(s) or relationship; concerning the way in which two or more people or things are connected. It would follow, therefore, that relationality means ‘being related to’; ‘in a relationship’; ‘connectedness’; but try Yeung (2005) TIBG 30, 1, who describes relationality as an ‘essential quality embedded in an iterative process of drawing interconnections between two or more discrete categories and phenomena that may not necessarily be binaries’.

Transformation

A complete change in the appearance or character of something or someone, especially so that that thing or person is improved

Narrative

Noun

a story or a description of a series of events

a particular way of explaining or understanding events

Relationality

Human and the living environment?

The space you are living in?

Where does perception come from and where will it go?

“The Anthropocene” represents a point of view that humanity has affected the earth so profoundly that it has become a formidable geological force has gained considerable ground.

To begin, I would like to introduce the main issues facing the Anthropocene epoch. Carbon emissions will rise as a result of economic and social progress, raising global temperatures. Controlling greenhouse gas emissions has become a big concern for everyone on the planet.

The site of the project is the Azores, the islands are more sensitive and vulnerable due to their isolation and remoteness from the mainland.

For global carbon accounting to remain balanced, peatlands need to function as carbon-capture systems. The peatland distribution of the Azores occupies a large proportion.

I focus on the site of my project from a natural point of view. In peatlands, a unique type of landscape, where human and non-human elements come together to form a “museum of nature”. After studying the

site and the surrounding landform fabric, I discovered the role of nature and society in the territory. I therefore see this as two interlocking layers that influence this site.

This is mutually balanced and inseparable. In the Anthropocene epoch, humans are not outsiders to the ecosystem — rather, we are participants in its unfolding.

“Living in the Anthropocene thus necessitates a fundamental shift in understanding relationality as destabilising (rather than as enabling governance as resilience) and thus elicits new non-anthropocentric approaches to knowledge and governance.”

“Relationality was previously understood to extend human knowledge beyond modernist linear and reductionist framings in island resilience. It is now increasingly clear that relationality cannot be contained within these anthropocentric framings.”[1]

After reading some research on land use, I

[1]Chandler, D. & Pugh, J. (2020) Islands of relationality and resilience: The shifting stakes of the Anthropocene. Area (London 1969). [Online] 52 (1), 65–72.

This collage selects elements such as industry, agriculture and animal husbandry, and reflects the impact of human activities on climate change. At the same time, it is a metaphor for the destruction of underground soil carbon storage.

This satellite image has been processed by photoshop to remove specific landscape elements, and more clearly show the texture of the landform in the middle of Terceira Island.

Figure1. Climate change and CO2 emission Jiaqian Cao, LA Design exploration Part 1, Archipelago studio, 2021

Figure2. Satellite image of Terceira island Jiaqian Cao, LA Design exploration Part 1, Archipelago studio, 2021

found that it is in the scale of Azores, the area of wetland is decreasing year by year, which is a great threat to the natural environment of the island.

I was primarily inspired by the theory of landscape ecology, focusing on ecological corridors and patches, and prioritizing spatial conservation. The idea of ecology network can be traced to the work of Ian McHarg in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which showed that analysis and assessment of natural resources (geology, soils, water, habitat, etc.) could inform the best places and ways to develop land for social occupation.The way information is superimposed can provide connections between some elements, and plays an important role in interpretation or analysis of landscape at big scale. However McHarg’s work has been identified as lacking consideration of human and culture elements of the landscape.

According to Lefebvre, “on the one hand, space is a product of modes of production, arising from the process of social movement; on the other hand, space is the place where the evolution of social activity takes place, where it can

nurture new factors that can change the social process and shape the shape of real society.”[2]

What the landscape describes is also a space, this space contains both naturally formed and socially formed, in Lefebvre’s theory, nature create a space, this space is unique and does not have any purpose, it cannot be called a product. For example, in the Azores, the craters, cinder cones, lavas, etc. formed by volcanic activity. Before the start of human production activities, space is only the trace left by natural time; while society product space, such as rural landscape (Farmland, pasture, afforestation), different urban landscapes, and cities, in purposeful landscapes, people’s social life, behaviours, and memory also change. Landscape can show the influence and feedback of society in natural space.

Relationality is like a transparent line connecting different objects, layers, dimensions.

With regard to the Anthropocene, anthropologists continue to explore underrepresented parts of nature and society.

[2]Lefebvre, H. (1991) The Production of Space [3]Latour, B. & Weibel, P. (2020) Critical zones : the science and politics of landing on Earth / edited by Bruno Latour, Peter Weibel. Karlsruhe, Germany: ZKM/Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany & The MIT Press.

Bruno Latour focus on the thin surface of the critical zone which is hardly visible at the scale of the typical planetary perspective, being only a few kilometres up and a few kilometres down at most. It’s only a varnish, a thin mat, a film, a bio film. Despite this, it is the only location that living beings have ever visited prior to the discovery and contact with other worlds. It encompasses the entirety of our finite world. We must see it as a skin, the Earth’s skin, sensitive, intricate, ticklish, and reacting. Cells, plants, bugs, creatures, and humans all exist there.[3] This expands my understanding of peatlands from a wetland landscape type to an entire system of zone from subsurface soil to surface organisms.

Deep from the surface, soil is a concept with rich meanings. Artists around the globe are using of soil to raise awareness for environmental and social issues, employing earth as an artistic medium for reflection.[4] In one of Lopez’s projects, she gathered and packed this material into one-centimeter-by-one-centimeter cubes, and arranged the cubes on the floor of a room at Havana’s First Alternative Biennial, to be stepped on and blended back to

[4]https://hyperallergic.com/487683/artists-find-common-ground-in-soil-fromaround-the-world/

Figure 3 The Earth as a Network of Critical Zones Frédérique Aït-Touati, Alexandra Arènes, Axelle Grégoire

Figure 4 Breaking Point _ The Earth Beneath Natalia Lopez

their original form by passerby. For the landscape field, soil is both the medium and the subject.It can be a problem that needs to be solved, or a tool to shape space, or it can be the storyteller of history.

Draw with charcoal and design different strokes to express different landforms. The basemap processed with digital technology can better feel the difference between different landforms, including the vegetation on the surface, hydrological information, and the structure of artificial areas.

Figure 5 Landform fabric of Terceria island’s internal, Jiaqian Cao, LA Design exploration Part 2, Archipelago studio, 2022

“Since childhood, I have always had a hobby - admiring the peculiar shapes in nature... I mainly like the changes of water, fire, smoke, clouds and floating dust, but there is also something more special , that is, the stains that float and swirl on the eyelids as soon as you close your eyes... No activity can so easily make people discover that they are a creator, and recognize that their minds have been continuously participating in the concrete creation of the world.”

Hermann Hesse

Figure 7 Montagnola (1933) Hermann Hesse

SPACE & PERCEPTION

Based on the concept of Anthropocene, we view humans as an integral part of a complex system, and we are always immersed in a web of interactions that are at every instant the result of our biological and cultural histories.[5]

This kind of ecological philosophy makes me struggle in the process of landscape analysis and design, thinking that the status of human beings is not dominant, but it is unavoidable to observe from the perspective of human beings.

From “outside”, I have been influenced by the literary works of Thoreau and Hesse. In their literature there is often a celebration of nature and a genuine and moving sense of being in nature. This inclines me to listen to the whispers of nature, to hold an attitude of minimal interference with the state of nature and to add more metaphors and natural mappings to the limited space given to humans.

That feeling to nature inspired me to think about the connection between human and the environment, as Tim Ingold said, which I quote directly here:

“Rather than thinking of ourselves only as observers, picking our way around the objects lying about on the ground of a ready-formed world, we must imagine ourselves in the first place as participants, each immersed with the whole of our being in the currents of a world-in-formation: in the sunlight we see, the rain we hear and the wind we feel in. Participation is not opposed to observation but is a condition for it, just as light is a condition for seeing things, sound for hearing them, and feeling for touching them”[6]

Participating in this world requires a sensitive insight into natural spaces. In James Turrell’s artworks, the light is used to creat space. It’s light – the sensory manifestation of light’s physical presence.

Focusing on the change of light and shadow, Turrell seems to have continued the style of Impressionism. The material of the physical world represented by light, through the artist’s works, helps to connect human beings and the world through perception.

[5]Escobar, A. (2018) Designs for the Pluriverse : Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds, Duke University Press, Durham.

[6]Ingold, T. (2011) Being alive : essays on movement, knowledge and description / Tim Ingold. London: Routledge.

“My work is more about your seeing than it is about my seeing, although it is a product of my seeing. I’m also interested in the sense of presence of space; that is space where you feel a presence, almost an entity — that physical feeling and power that space can give.” [7]

Figure 7 Wedgework, James Turrell, 2022

_James Turrell

Figure 9 Norham Castle, Sunrise, c.1845, oil on canvas, Tate Britain

J. M. W. Turner

Figure 8 Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway, 1844, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London

J. M. W. Turner

Dating back to the Impressionist period, a prime example of J. M. W. Turner’s style can be seen in Rain, Steam and Speed - the Great Western Railroad, where objects are barely recognizable. Intense tones and an interest in evanescent light ignited my observation of the landscape and felt the deep connection.

Figure 10 Imagine of Terceira island Jiaqian Cao, LA Design exploration Part 2, Archipelago studio, 2022

I browsed the image about the island on the Internet, and then used toner and charcoal to draw the impression of the island of terceira.

Transforma

tion

What are the roles of human and nature in the landscape change?

How to experience the dynamic process of perception?

Even if the concept of the Anthropocene is not fully defined today, such a perspective brings together many environmental crises in the world in which we exist to discuss them in one context. As a result, our perceptions of the past and the future are sufficiently influenced by such a concept to reexamine social and environmental changes based on a larger time scale. As Vincent Ialenti writes in Deep Time Reckoning, “if humans are judged to be agents of geological change, then the value of better syncing our everyday thought patterns with deeper timescales may become clear”[8]

Pushing back the time, starting from the historical dimension, the existing landscape was formed by natural factors or human activities. Here transformation will involve how the landscape has been transformed into what it is today and whether the history of the site is important. The mention of reductionism in landscape transformation in the article land to landscape is controversial in my opinion. In my study experience, historical elements are always emphasized in almost all design projects. However, questions often arise in my mind: what is the

relationship between the historical element and the landscape? How should landscape design be treated? Is the status quo future history?

Moving forward in time, from a future perspective, the landscape needs to face the challenges of time. In today’s increasingly serious environmental problems, the landscape needs to consider changes in sea level rise, extreme climate, hydrology, etc., as well as the growth of vegetation in the landscape, the evolution of habitats, and the weathering of materials.

In the process of landscape design, the intervention of unnatural elements is inevitable. I have always been cautious in understanding and facing the existing landscape. When I place my human perspective below nature, I often feel intimidated to change, and I want to leave the decision of the landscape to nature.

“Nothing is so plentiful as time.”

[8]Ialenti, V. & Bjornerud, M. (2020) Deep time reckoning : how future thinking can help earth now / Vincent Ialenti, Marcia Bjornerud. Cambridge, Massachusetts ;: The MIT Press.

Pastures, production forests, natural vegetation areas, and artificial areas are superimposed and intertwined.

Figure 11 Sketch-landform change, Jiaqian Cao, LA Design exploration Part 2, Archipelago studio, 2022

Express the historical dimension of terceira island in a timeline.

Figure 12 Terceira timeline, Jiaqian Cao, LA Design exploration Part 1, Archipelago studio, 2021

The High Line is a great example of incorporating timescales into the design. Taking into account the history of the site, elements such as railway lines are retained, and attention is paid to the selection of landscape materials. The detail design of seats, paving, and plants carefully balances the natural and artificial parts of the landscape.

Figure 13 The highline, James Corner

DYNAMIC

The Anthropocene is not simply a new geologic epoch; it is an opportunity to embrace a new ontology.

A mechanical perspective of reality is challenged by new materialism. The Newtonian Cartesian paradigm displays a belief in the knowability, predictability, and controllability of the universe and its operation. New materialists, on the other hand, contend that matter is not inert nor mechanical, but rather dynamic and connected.[8]

We are alyways lost in this globe, and dont know how to handle it. So there’s a very clear sense in which we need to have another imagination or anouther mythological imagination, and also scientific, to try to capture something. We have to consider environmental science when solving problems in the landscape. Biology and ecology are fields that are increasingly embracing the concept of dynamic complex systems. Complex systems theory emphasises the interactions between subjects within a system. Instead of a linear concept of cause and effect, it describes the relationships between elements that are always interacting and

adapting to each other, thus describing a world that is always moving and changing, rather than static and unchanging.

Different from architects or engineers, landscape architects pay more attantion to ecological system and land. Architecture and engineering treat soil/land as surface to be manipulated, while landscape architects should take into account the changes in the land that exist in the landscape, viewing soil as a design content, tool, or goal.

In my project, peatlands are wetland ecosystems in which waterlogged conditions prevent plant material from fully decomposing.Large amounts of carbon, fixed from the atmosphere into plant tissues through photosynthesis, are locked away in peat soils, representing a valuable global carbon store.

Research studies show that it takes 5 to 20 years after stripping for harvested peatland to return to an ecologically balanced system. Peat itself forms a layer of an inch every 15 to 25 years.

Planting on peatlands can lead to an

[8]Benson, M. H. (2019) NEW MATERIALISM: AN ONTOLOGY FOR THE ANTHROPOCENE. Natural resources journal. 59 (2), 251–280.

initial loss of carbon, the export of nutrients and some sediment depletion. And the agricultural drainage can lead the water table become low, which damages the peatland. Blocking drainage is necessary if the peatlands need to be restored. Grazing will make the peatland be trampled and compacted, which can also lead to soil carbon losses. Grazing cessation induced the regenerative succession that could lead to self-recovery, which, in optimal conditions, could be an alternative to active restoration in Azores.

In the previous stage, I work on identification of ecological networks for land-use planning with spatial conservation prioritization, evaluation the history and potential of different island industries, as well as peatland formation and restoration. Based on the previous analysis, I found that the peatland on Terceira Island is threatened due to agricultural activities and grazing. I hope to realize the regeneration succession of degraded peatland to prevent the deterioration of the ecological environment on the island and the carbon emissions caused by the degradation of peatland.

Regenerative succession reverses the state of degraded peatlands and returns them to nature through changes in landscape type and function as well as changes in human activities in the landscape.

Two consecutive drawings are used to express the formation and degradation process of peatland, reflecting the dynamic changes of peatland. The analysis of environmental science on soil uptake and emissions of greenhouse gases is presented with text and icons.

Figure 14 Peatland as a carbon storage - formation & deterioration Jiaqian Cao, LA Design exploration Part 1, Archipelago studio, 2021