A...kademie der bildenden Künste Wien
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Content ADP Rituals on the Making of Concert Halls 2 – 3 ESC Ground Expansions 4 – 5 GLC Battery City Athens 6 – 7 Master Thesis 8 – 9 ADP Via Diagenesis 10 – 11 CMT Building Biodiversity 12 – 13 HTC The Political Ecology of the Spit 14 – 15 Manifesto of the Third Landscape 16
Institute for Art and Architecture Academy of Fine Arts Vienna Schillerplatz 3, 1010 Vienna www.akbild.ac.at/ika Editor: Christina Jauernik Translation & Proof reading: Judith Wolfframm Graphic design: Beton
On the Potential of Places, lecture by Anne Lacaton at Prospekthof, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna June 2023. Photo: Roxane Seckauer
This edition of the Review gives an insight in the production, research and events at the IKA during the summer term of 2023. This issue highlights the ongoing vibrant discourses and collective interventions of students and faculty, extending our practices and debates with guests for an interested public: IKA’s contribution to engage in the complex, planetary challenges of today. Production: The bachelor students dealt with the acoustic conditions of concert halls and chamber music halls, with forms of co-construction and the shared use of land, through to alternative designs for public spaces using the example of Athens. In the Master’s program, geological transformations and architectural deposits of the “Domus Aurea” in Rome were traced, designs and a 1:1 installation on biodiversity were made, and an artists’ colony on the Baltic Sea coast was examined and mapped with reference to archive materials, natural conditions and ownership of real estate. Four thesis works presents the wide range of architectural thinking and practice at IKA. The design approach for an urban hospice reconsiders the sensual experiences towards the end of life. An expedition by foot initiates a series of interventions on the urban border territories of Vienna. Different techniques of observing and measuring space accumulate to a digital narrative of a journey through underground storage spaces. A proposal for a no-waste architecture introduces strategies for the community to reuse materials and foster a sustainable relationship to the built environment on the example of a village in Luxembourg.
Research and Events: The IKA Lecture Series Ruptured Landscapes curated by Aristide Antonas continued: Writer, artist and technologist James Bridle lectured on More-than-human Being and Intelligence, curator Lucia Pietroiusti spoke about Curating Ecological Practices in relation to her recent performance project »Sun&Sea« (Lithuanian Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2019). The lecture series concluded with an evening organized in cooperation with the Institut Francais on the work of the Paris-based office Lacaton&Vassal. During her lecture On the Potential of Places Anne Lacaton shared insights into their design approaches working with the resources of the existing and engaging in its possible extensions. The conversation continued during an open-air film screening of two filmic essays directed by Karine Dana and a reception in the courtyard of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. The IKA study project and exhibition Hitze takes Command (2020/21) was concluded with the book presentation Wiener Hitze, Architecture and Storytelling in Times of Heat. The publication with contributions by students as well as guest authors critically questions accustomed ways of living and coexisting in the face of climatic shifts. Former IKA guest professor David Gissen visited to present his new book Buildings, Cities and Landscapes beyond Access. Other guests at IKA included artist Christa Sommerer talking about The Artwork as a Living System – a focus on VR and AR works and neuroscientist Udo Maierhofer on Bionic Extremity Reconstruction. Christina Jauernik and Antje Lehn
Rituals on the Making of Concert Halls
ADP Analogue Digital Production
Wolfgang Tschapeller Valerie Messini
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Design Studio BArch2 Team 1 Sára Natalia Detreköi, Mika Karl Gahlen, Anna-Lena Helmer, Tatiana Sophie Herreiner Team 2 Fabio Hutter, Maite Ilija Hernandez, Leon Max Keyl, Emma Rosa Klarmann Team 3 Lieselotte Maria Krammer, Luisa Rosa Locher, Noah Marius Löffler, Pranja Manandhar, Stina Julika Kathrin Netzband Team 4 Thuy-Justine Nguyen, Aliki Peristeraki, Valentyna Smahliuk, Madlen Suntinger, Paul Tschimmel Team 5 Nico Schleicher, Julian Andrej Schönborn, Ruxandra-Bianca Ursu, Jakob Vranek, Emma Linn Rosa Zwettler
Team 3 A Structural System. Preliminary Study 01
Concert halls are a special type of building. They are made for sound. They house sound, not people. People are visitors. They do not populate a concert hall’s space, but only a few accessible portions of its surface. No Modulor. No Vitruvian proportions. Even the volume of air in the space follows the rules of acoustics first and foremost, and only serves a healthy CO2/O2 exchange in the second place. Rituals On The Making Of Cities, Concert Halls And Chamber Music Rooms was set up as a project and territory for 24 students and a number of teachers, lecturers, and reviewers to jointly engage in a critical discourse on the making of architecture. It was set up as both an architectural and a pedagogical experiment. And, of course, it was an exercise for all participants in how to act together, how to cooperate, and more fittingly, how to act in concert. So, this orchestra of architects was organized in 5 groups, which worked as a team or in isolation, on and off. Each of them contributed to a common goal, and each provided a piece of independent, subjective work, a solo part, so to say. The project was structured in a number of exercises, or rather rituals. Some were followed, some were rejected. Here are a few notes: Ritual 1 On How To Invent Cities Ritual 2 Visiting Concerts And Spaces For Music Together Ritual 3 Scanning Concert Halls Ritual 4 For The Making Of Concert Halls And Chamber Music Rooms Ritual 5 For The Making Of A Concert House
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Ritual 1 On How To Invent Cities
context. Instead of selecting one or the other aspect, Team 5 proposed to put all of them together, and to superimpose in graphics what was juxtaposed in language. Accordingly, the As for the invention of cities, the ritual involved interviews with ChatGPT. They were ideal city of Team 5 is a superimposition of obligatory. Interestingly enough, no obviously ten maps of ten cities, resulting in incredibly dense drawings, like fibres of a nervous system, futuristic designs surfaced. For example: In unison, Team 3 and ChatGPT decided to familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, work with an existing Asian city, »a city with a uncanny and strange. … dense fabric, a dense street system located in close proximity to the water, with an Ritual 4 extensive network of waterways … low-lying For The Making Of Concert Halls And areas and linear city developments along Chamber Music Rooms the water, which make it especially prone to flooding.« But in fact, it is not simply flooding; Ritual 5 it is a deluge. Not a sudden one, but one in For The Making Of A Concert House slow motion. It is a steadily rising plane of water which transforms the city entirely, and Rituals 5 and 4 are concurrent actions. Ritual the invented concert house is not a building 4 kicks off. »Select the type of music – for then, but a long-legged hybrid, something example, chamber music – then select the between an oil rig and a mangrove. A hybrid number of seats – for example, 500 – then that is now implanted above a city’s dense multiply the number of seats by approx. 8.6 fabric, but will soon hover above a plane of m3 of empty space (of air), which gives us water. More long-legged mangrove oil rigs 4.300m3 of air, the volume the chamber music might show up, imitating the long-legged room needs to have.« Now Ritual 5. »Each team prototype and collectively forming a stilt city member produces a rough proxy volume of one on quite a different scale. So after all, there is of the five halls in a scale of 1:100. Then all proxy invention, there is a prototype for future life – volumes are brought together. Next to each not on land, but on the sea. other, on top of each other, closer, balanced or Team 2 says, »We have heavy metal unstable, flying or falling. As in a chess game, industries, textile industries, and nuclear only with 5 or 6 players. Figures move forth and industries … For that, we picked an existing back, until favourable figurations emerge.« Now industrial area in Welzow, Germany and Ritual 4 again. »Now produce a model out of a started conceptualising a concert house flexible shell containing 4.300 m3 of air. Do it there. The idea was that the concert house in a scale of 1:50 or larger. The shell has to have should spread music all around the space, shapeshifting capacity. Insert tiny cameras bringing good energy into it, in contrast to the in the shell. Tweak and deform the shell with loud and polluted, industrial reality.« your hands and with measurable impact from the outside while simultaneously observing In search of an ideal city, Team 5 decided the camera recordings from the inside. Do it on a cross-examination of ChatGPT. Precise to your liking and joy. Such a model could be a answers to questions of the quality, form, first step towards detailed acoustic research future, economy, and functioning of cities … at the same time, it turns the inside of the were expected. However, the results of makers out.« Then back to Ritual 5. »Now be the grilling were not precise at all. On the more precise about all of it, read the models … contrary, many answers were given, all of continue to add detail and knowledge, them perfectly reasonable and fine, all of them within the bounds of common sense, hear sound, technology and structure, surface and all of them representing facets of a larger and light …«
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Team 3 Noah Löffler, Finger 06
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Team 1 Anna-Lena Helmer, Atmosphere 2
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Team 5 Sections
Noah Löffler, Bühne 08
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Dóra Kovács. Grape and Wine Research Facility – Excavation as a search for a lost identity
Ground Expansions Hannes Stiefel Luciano Parodi
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Ambrosia Köb. Cultivating public space
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Design Studio BArch4
Architecture as environment
Kári Arnasson Benjamin Baar Bilge Çillik Daniel Gaar Jasper Knaebel Ambrosia Köb Dóra Kovács Leon Lawson Valerie Mauerhofer Philipp Ortinger Oskar Pollack Sophia Rettl Manuel Rugo Elena Schlüter Hannah Schmidleitner Florian Schüly Hanna Thomaseth
The environment is a network of habitats. A habitat is a biotope: the totality of place and nature. Everything is nature – there is only one degree of naturalness. It is irrelevant whether a biotope comes into being by force of nature or by human hands. Eduard Neuenschwander, in: Niemandsland – Umwelt zwischen Zerstörung und Gestalt (1988) The studio brief called for reading and understanding buildings as environments, as networks of habitats diverse in scale and nature, integrated into and procedurally interacting with the constructions on the skin of the earth – buildings as expanded grounds. Such structures are characterised by their distinct relationship to the ground they sit on/in/above; and/or by its surfaces that offer extraordinary accessibility (walkability, trafficability); and/or by a specifically articulated relationship between building elements, flora and fauna. From a certain point of view, the upper edges of La Tourette’s “foundations in the sky” form a visual continuation of the horizon line of a mountain range far in the distance. From there, Le Corbusier suggested, one would build downwards selectively, until physical ground is touched at random points. This concept represents a radical thought experiment that fundamentally questions the notions of land, soil and air, as well as the positioning of architectural works in relation to them.
ESC Ecology Sustainability Cultural Heritage
Valerie Mauerhofer. Bodies of Water
An architectural research practice that is similarly experimental features buildings such as Seebad Kaltern in South Tyrol (2006), for which The Next Enterprise Architects conceptually brought a piece of lake ashore, elevated it above the ground, and thus established an artificial intermediate terrain that affords the pleasure of physically experiencing an imaginative space between water, earth and air – a space referring to realms that previously lay hidden beneath the lake, inaccessible to the human species, opens up new programmatic possibilities. Or the Blur Building by Diller+Scofidio, realised for the Swiss Expo 2002, a building that exemplifies environmental performance, where the medium (water) of the site (Lake Neuchâtel) becomes the primary material of a building that, by breathing, is unavoidably incorporated and metabolically processed by the visitor while crossing it. Architecture and its users merge into a dynamic environment, literally becoming an environment in constant flux. Architectural interventions of the recent past served as precedents for the studio’s explorations. They all have features that resemble one or more of the characteristics of the ground expansions described above. These properties were to be researched, strengthened, processed and further developed into architectures with enhanced environmental functions. The expansion of Seebad Kaltern, to give an example, became a light and complex network structure that both (visually) mirrors and (functionally) breaks the language of its precedent. The existing deep foundations in the form of long bored piles are extended
above the level of the uplifted piece of lake, where a new infrastructural system consisting of water circuits and additional water bodies is installed. Using gravel filters and aquatic plants, this system marks a shift from the chemical treatment of public swimming pools to the maintenance of selfregenerating processes. A third and last layer of the construction, high up in the air, consists of a net that harvests vaporised water from the air, feeding the circuit below as well as providing wandering shade and cooling for the area. (Bodies of Water by Valerie Mauerhofer) The brief called for a hybrid building type – a result of the interplay of diverse cycles between ground and air, and of new ways of sharing grounds. Constructed and grown elements, accumulated and deposited matter, inside and outside, above and below, analogue and digital, organic and inorganic matter, public and private, landscapes, infrastructure and opposing systems begin to fuse, adapt to new conditions, alter these conditions in turn, and finally result in a new relationship between form and performance. Architecture is environment.
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Battery City Athens
GLC Geography Landscapes Cities
Aristide Antonas Daniela Herold
fig. 1 Anne Thomsen, Thorup Poulsen Sidse. Exarchia Section 2
Design Studio BArch6 Sofia Abendstein Charlotte Beaudon Römer Vladislava Bugaeva Jakob Draz Planicek Elliott Griffith Luke Handon Lucia Herber Justa Jasaityte Marie Lang Clara Charlotte Lohse Majed Naseri Emma Malea Noll Paul Degenhard Panse Stefans Pavlovskis Franziska Räder Laurin Saied Florentin Schumann Barbara-Rosa Siévi Anne Thomsen Thorup Poulsen Sidse
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Battery City Athens was an investigation of the possibilities of a contemporary city’s social, literal, and electrical energy. The studio explored some existing squares in the city of Athens; the phenomenon of declining urban life was inverted by asking how to charge the city with alternative communal life. Energy was conceived metaphorically as an investment of a minimum material intervention to achieve maximum new energy for life in the city. The brief envisaged projecting its designed results as a literal quest for alternative battery technologies to feed into the city’s electricity grid, but only after decisions taken first on a social level. Together with the new urban implications of the increasing use of large or small electric vehicles, the expansion of battery and photovoltaic technologies creates a different context and new protocols of labour in any city. The city of Athens served as a case study. Having suffered from Greece’s financial turbulence and material decline, it provided a set of examples for pilot projects in a post-crisis urban space. The city still seems divided into different, secluded parts housing different groups of people and cultures. The studio investigated the new urban parameters and challenges based on the design of pilot projects, some of them related to the city’s new metro stations. The programming of these public parts of the project is also linked to legislation allowing the occupation of selected private or public spaces by new social entities or micro-institutions. The question of this common ground is furthermore related to contemporary life, updated and structured by the extensive use of networks. Common projects aimed towards a more sustainable cityscape and new options for alternative gathering spaces in the contemporary city are needed in order to adapt city life to the given structures of contemporary life. If the Airbnb phenomenon has highlighted the tension of greater fragmentation of built city centres and increased the value of small, independent
flats, the studio tended to shed light on the remaining city spaces, which could either maintain their character or perform new roles as well. Openings in the city and some characteristic urban blocks were considered in order to propose shared mechanisms for gathering or working together in public. The studio was divided into four case studies of squares, where the participants thought about ways of altering the normality of life around them. In this way, life in the squares was projected onto the new, impending realities of the city. The project Prototype for an Equipped Public Landscape dealt with Exarchia Square and the areas bordering the National Technical University and the Archaeological Museum. Recent plans for a new metro station right in the square have met with strong resistance and resulted in the closure of the would-be metro construction site, currently guarded by police around the clock. The loss of and need for public space in this area was addressed by proposing a series of actions and design guidelines to transform former commercial ground floor spaces that now stand empty so as to put them to public use. The multistorey polykatoikia blocks of flats lining the square became a fertile ground for these spatial manipulations. In these blocks, constructed as archetypal, modernist, concrete slab and column structures, the non-loadbearing walls were removed, empty ground floor spaces were opened up, and internal courtyards became accessible. Fragments and objects that served the former spaces were kept as relics of their use. They became available to the public. Line 4 is a project also developed in the context of Exarchia Square and its future metro station. This project accepted the consequences of the construction of the metro line and worked on the relationship between the new underground space and the square above it. Investigations into the construction process of the metro line have shown that the extensive excavations to
be carried out will cause severe perforation of the ground. The material that is to be excavated to clear the space for the station will be transported primarily through one large opening in the centre of the square. These discoveries led to the decision to maintain this essential spatial trace, to leave it uncovered, and to integrate it into the redesign of the square. The Ministry Building on Kanigos Square was a project that worked on the possible futures of a former government building that is currently still in use, but will soon be sold and transformed. Various scenarios were developed, encompassing the square and the infrastructure hub in front of as well as the underground garage underneath the building. Each proposal attempted to adopt and illustrate different characteristics from among a diversity of orientations. One scenario imagined the transformation of the ministry into residential units available for rent. Communal programmes like a kindergarten and a supermarket on the ground floor serve not only the building’s inhabitants but also the immediate neighbourhood. To address climate and heat issues, the facade was equipped with shading referencing postwar building typologies in Athens. The second scenario showed the building transformed into a luxury hotel. All of the facilities of the surrounding area embrace the capitalist aesthetic of urban seclusion and gentrification. All green areas in the square were removed, trees are merely decoration, and all axes lead to the entrance of the hotel. Part of the underground parking is converted into a space for wellness and recreation. In a third scenario, two public entities operate in coherence, the office building and the university. The upper floors will be dedicated to the nearby university, which is struggling with space shortage, while the lower part of the building is still used as office space. To solve circulation issues between the two programmes, a new staircase and elevators were added to the front facade.
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Anne Thomsen, Thorup Poulsen Sidse. Exarchia Section, Exarchia Square Top 1
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Jakob Draz Planicek, Luke Handon, Laurin Saied. Kanigos Facade
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Stefans Pavlovskis, Franziska Räder. Exarchia Ground Floor
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Sofia Abendstein, Florentin Schumann. Kanigos Square
Michelle Howard, Luciano Parodi
Aristide Antonas, Antje Lehn
Veronika Bauer An Architecture for Deceleration
Oscar Binder City’s End
Motion in a State of Immobility
The discovery of Vienna’s urban border spaces
In the past ten years, the percentage of the population over 65 years old rose by two per cent to 19.8% in Austria. Despite better healthcare, the last years of life deserve greater attention. Our society has trouble coping with death and even more so with the process of dying. We do not have a cultural or spatial way to deal with it. This master’s thesis will focus on the spaces of dying and the visibility of the end of the life cycle, with particular attention given to the last space inhabited by a person shortly before their death. Furthermore, the social isolation of the person dying is evident, as the next of kin are overwhelmed by the fact of their decline and the end of a life, while the dying person is reduced to being even more distant and passive. Instead, an effort should be made to give sick people a place in a community, albeit a small and select one, even if they have physical limitations. The design of a hospice is a starting point. Instead of banishing the elderly to the countryside and reducing their private realm to a minimum range of action, they should be able to have their own space. Instead of being patients, they should become inhabitants and play an active part in their daily social surroundings. Can architecture help us live towards the end of life? There is a desire to do everything as quickly as possible, just for the sake of finishing. Simple daily activities are not valued enough; there has to be deceleration in order to be genuine. This type of architecture invites people to slow down, enjoy, and spend time with others, maybe even with strangers. This hospice would create an important connection to the inner city. It is a place for three different groups of people to meet who find themselves in new tasks and roles: the guests, the caretakers, whose work goes beyond nursing, and the next of kin. Every single perspective is considered. The hanging handrail above the bed is reminiscent of a mobile – delicate and balanced, it moves with the airflow and is connected to a main axis. The project design should integrate aesthetics and playfulness, with the main purpose of having a calming and decelerating effect on the guests. The design project is placed on top of an existing building, a monastery (Freyung, 1st district of Vienna), which also influenced the concept design. Long corridors, connecting axes, interlocking elements, and links from the interior to the outside space form the spatial quality, and are the subject of analysis and reflection. To draw attention to this socalled “blind spot” (Elias; 1982), I would like to delve more deeply into the topics below. Forecasts predict that in 2100, the percentage of people over 65 years old will be as high as 29.8%. Since the 12th century, the building has been constantly renovated and converted. The goal of the design project is to develop a pattern language that is aligned and harmonious with the intriguing environment. The environment has a profound influence on our senses and experiences. Focusing on well-being helps humans in the healing process.
The border that surrounds Vienna is exactly 136.5 km long and passes through a vast number of different landscapes. While thousands of people cross it every day and live next to it, the terrains of the borderland are rarely recognized as such. Their geographic location at the edge of the city and their limited political and economic impact have turned them into zones of diminished interest. They might not be as important as the centre of Vienna, but they are still an important part of the city. This thesis project explores the phenomena of the borderland territories of Vienna through artistic methods and theoretical research on different levels. First, the act of walking was used as a tool for urban research in an eight-day expedition along the border of Vienna. The information gathered during this expedition was explored with different media. Together with historical research on the development of the Viennese border, these findings lead to an experimental urban strategy. This concept interprets the territories around the border as a coherent but heterogenous landscape that is shaped by the oddities, differences, and spatial qualities it produces. To connect these territories, a series of temporary interventions is proposed for selected spots along the border of Vienna.
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Veronika Bauer, Perspective
Oscar Binder, Perspective Market, Construction System
Wolfgang Tschapeller, Damjan Minovski
Michelle Howard, Antje Lehn
Dilâ Kırmızıtoprak Ground of Curiosities
Mona Steinmetzer Sampling a no-waste architecture in the countryside
Entering a vessel under the ground
A place full of drama and potential How to establish an architectural understanding when revisiting spaces under the ground that have been forgotten? How to talk about architecture? How to talk through architecture? Can language and various mediums of documenting and perceiving help enrich an understanding of space? How can history and personal experiences in a space contribute to the space itself and expand an understanding of architecture? A cellar is a storage space under a building. It can amount to one third of the entire building that rests upon it. At the beginning of a construction process, the first imprint is the outline of the building drawn on the ground. Once construction is underway, the cellar is covered, never again to be seen in its entirety. Vienna’s cellar spaces are spread-out underground sites to be discovered. These spaces cannot be perceived from the outside. Their information is all about the inside. These spaces that we walk over daily have hidden potentials and qualities, as we have come to find in precarious political and climatic conditions. This thesis uses various modes of documentation and literary approaches to extract a story and images “out of the ground”. The project “Ground of Curiosities. A story out of the ground” attempts to develop a language and a narrative to communicate the urgency of redefining underground cellar spaces and drawing inspiration from them. It further expands architectural and spatial thinking by developing a site-specific language and methodology of documentation. From a new perspective, it explores cellars unknown, left alone, dark, eerie, and hidden. These empty storage spaces metaphorically manifest themselves as places to start collecting new realities for the future. The thesis consists of poetry, fictional stories, historical research, digital scans, thermal imagery, and photography, as well as voice and video recordings. These multiple methods of documentation help develop a new language which supports the redefinition of what an underground cellar might become in the future. The thesis culminates in an exhibition. Through a non-hierarchical form of exhibiting, the visitor is confronted with non-biased audio and visual information. The space that is entered becomes a realm that combines all underground spaces that have been visited in the process. “... there is the nourishing and saving cellar, where foodstuffs are preserved, where oil and wine are kept, where one can seek refuge in times of war, where one can hide. The basement can be a place of resistance, a parallel world where there is a kind of freedom which is lacking outside in broad daylight. But the basement can also be a claustrophobic nightmare, a damp, gloomy dungeon, a prison that smothers the cries of those held captive there...” 1 1
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In Luxembourg, housing accounts for 1.5 million tonnes of emissions annually.1 February 14 is the day when the country has used up all its available resources for a year.2 Moreover, exorbitant rents and purchase prices of housing are one of the bigger challenges Luxembourg as a country has to tackle.3 Globally, the building sector is responsible for up to 40% of emissions, and raw material use is predicted to double by 2060.4 This poses the question: What could architecture without social and ecological exploitation look like in a small country with similarly few resources? This project tries to propose a way of tackling these challenges and intends to bring different materials and societal programmes together in a rural context. ‘No-waste’ requires non-linear handling of production and lifestyle. As such, “designing without depletion” 5 implies that every part of the built environment must be decomposable, reusable, or recyclable. The proposal consists of a strategy for the conception of material use and reuse in a village in the south of Luxembourg. An experimental and projective attempt, this project aims to compose a living environment for people to reside, work, and live in Fennange. Adopting mostly vacant, unused or soon to be unused buildings, the former centre of the village is revitalised and transformed into a centre of communal projects. To begin with, these comprise the storage, reuse, and production of material, and the creation of a community centre in addition to a market space. Thus, the design proposal for this case study plans to generate a place for building a sense of community while (re)constructing the village. By applying a no-waste approach to architecture, this project proposal anticipates potential developments in a village and a country that are currently under construction, by (re )connecting humans with their ecological, built and social environments. In this way, it defies the myth of endless capitalist growth by creating a relationship with our built environment and the materials we use and inhabit. 1 Integrierter Nationaler Energie- und Klimaplan Luxemburgs für den Zeitraum 2021-2030 [Luxembourg’s integrated National Energy and Climate Plan for 2021-2030], Ministère de l‘Energie et de l’Aménagement du territoire and Ministère de l‘Environnement, du Climat et du Développement durable, 2018. 2 Country overshoot day. Luxembourg is in second place worldwide. https://www.overshootday.org/ newsroom/country-overshoot-days/ 3 Purchase prices are 8513 €/m² on average for existing flats and 9064 €/m² on average for new flats (2021–22). STATEC Observatoire de l’Habitat, 2022. 4 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). 2022 Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction: Towards a Zero-emission, Efficient and Resilient Buildings and Construction Sector. Nairobi, 2022. https://www.unep.org/resources/publication/2022-global-status-report-buildings-and-construction. 5 Malterre-Barthes, Charlotte. ‘The Devil Is in the Details’. In: Non-Extractive Architecture Vol. 1, On Designing without Depletion, edited by SPACE CAVIAR and V-A-C Foundation. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2021.
Essay by Vincent Huguet, in the book by Jan Fabre, “From the Cellar to the Attic”, Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2008, p. 60.
Dilâ Kırmızıtoprak, 3D reconstruction, video stills
Ernst A. Plischke Award 2023
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Mona Steinmetzer, presentation in Fennange, Luxembourg
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Elvira Monti. Photo: Mario Buda
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Sara Grace Enab. Photo: Mario Buda
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Tim Julian Handl. Photo: Mario Buda
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Zoe Mo Chen. Photo: Mario Buda
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Via Diagenesis to Rome and Beyond
ADP Analogue Digital Production
Susanne Zottl Norbert Steiner
architecture (analogue and digital drawings and models) and from other disciplines (sound, choreography, painting, etc.). Along the path of diagenesis, the story of In the ocean of the studio, the team will pursue a specific site will be continued: the Domus a design strategy following the observations Aurea in Rome, itself a rumour for hundreds of made while looking into the process of years, but an existing structure that has been diagenesis. Every student will contribute altered, changed, lost, and found again over her or his individual skills and interests as thousands of years. “sediments”. Concepts for reuse will emerge. In geology, diagenesis describes a process We will focus on the existing structure, of transformation of sediments into solid spend time in and around it, document it, test matter – concretion – due to pressure and it, question it, compare it. temperature. It is therefore part of the rock Rumours condense into truth or fake news, cycle, in which every rock type is altered when or remain sediments – an archive of rumours. it is forced out of its equilibrium conditions. By the end of the summer term, your Solid matter is created, altered, process of experimentation, observation, changed, and eroded. This cycle takes up to and design will manifest itself in a specific approximately 200 million years. The time architectural proposal that is not meant to lapse of diagenesis is the guiding line of stay unchanged. architectural visions. Finding itself still a part of the process of This experimental process will be accompanied by us. We will observe, interpret, diagenesis, your project will consequently be disassembled, dismantled down to its newly question, motivate, and cheer up the team. defined initial components – to sediments We will provide signs of orientation while which in turn form the basis for a new simultaneously encouraging the team to transformation. venture into unknown territory. In an intense, Parallel to the work in the studio, an continuous search, you will eventually bump amplifier for the diagenetic process will be into surprising results … that will lead you towards a spatial interpretation of the process established. Along with the search and design process of diagenesis relevant for this hypothesis. in the studio, a supporting seminar offers input In order to keep this process alive, the through facts, shared observations, and a field objects created in the phase of concretion dissolve into fragments or sediments, which in trip. In this exchange, the seminar’s content will turn form the basis for a new transformation inform the design process, and vice versa. into solid matter. Heading towards diagenetic concretion, The MS Rumour is, of course, the studio: we will investigate strategies of architectural the team members, the studio space. sedimentation. In the first meetings, we will accumulate The project site will be the DOMUS AUREA the personal sediments that have been your in Rome, which was built as an opulent formative influences, such as talents, books, residence for the Roman emperor Nero in the sounds, particular spatial experiences, years 64–68 CE, after the great fire of Rome. observations … anything goes. The site is located in the area of the Forum In discussions, reviews, and presentations Romanum in the ancient centre of Rome. of intermediate steps, but above all in It included an artificial lake, which lay in exchange with the whole team, the dune the valley where the Colosseum stands today, of sediments will be explored, challenged, and stretched over the Palladian Hill, the condensed, and thus strengthened. valley of the Colosseum and parts of the Hills The experimental process includes all of Caelius and Esquilin. The entire estate is kinds of manifestations from the realm of The MS Rumour enters the sea of the summer term 2023
Design Studio MArch Zoe Mo Chen Sara Grace Enab Kayvan Sunil Gogri Patricia Griffiths Tim Julian Handl Mathew Manikkanamparambil Jayash Annahelen Josepha Mende Elvira Monti Diana Julia Mudrak Jay Bharatkumar Patel Ludwig-Valerius Rieger Matilde Rodriguez-Cano Mendez Sarah Juliana Schädler
estimated to have measured 80 hectares. As Nero was a cruel emperor, he was subject to “damnatio memoriae” after his death, which meant that his successors erased his memory. Everything connected to him was destroyed: paintings, sculptures, and of course the DOMUS AUREA – except for the Esquiline Villa, which was buried under the Baths of Trajan in the year 104. Today, both the DOMUS AUREA and the Baths of Trajan are buried under the Oppian Hill. It took only forty years for the DOMUS AUREA to be completely buried under newly constructed buildings. In the following centuries, Nero’s palace fell into oblivion and was only rediscovered in the 15th century. Due to an accidental fall through the ceiling of the DOMUS AUREA, its rooms and corridors were found under the Baths of Trajan. It was the time of the Renaissance. The rediscovery of the imperial palace prompted artists such as Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, Giulio Romano, and Raphael to venture down into the vaults, descending via ropes, much like in rock climbing. Illuminating the walls with torches, they studied the ancient murals, frescoes, and decorations for inspiration. Their signatures in some places on the walls reveal that they even copied frescoes. Thus the “grotesque painting” of the Renaissance was born, a genre widespread in the 16th century that reinterpreted the historical motifs of Roman wall decoration. It was based on the so-called “grotesques”, wall decorations consisting of delicate plant forms, people, animals, and hybrid creatures. In the studio, you will discover your projects along the Via Diagenesis, like the DOMUS AUREA, which transformed from Nero’s residence into a cellar under the Baths of Trajan, then into inspiration for the famous Renaissance painters, and finally into an unusual subterranean spatial structure which still holds secrets we do not yet know. Maybe we will discover some of them, or invent new ones.
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Building Biodiversity – Learning Biodiversity
CMT Construction Material Technology
Michelle Howard
Creating Biodiverse Environments
Design Studio MArch Nikol Dlabačová Moritz Schafschetzy Mona Prochaska Sven Flück Lukas Otrzonsek Fabian Schwarz Taiman Ching Johannes Wiener Vinzenz Hofmann Pierre Dumoulin
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The naturalist E. O. Wilson once said that, “if all humans were to disappear, the world would quickly regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. But if insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.” Wilson passed away in 2021, the same year we learned that 70% of all insects in Europe had been wiped out. Biodiversity is the variety of all life forms on Earth—the different plants, animals, and microorganisms, their genes, and the terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems of which they are a part. Biodiversity is not static; it is constantly changing, increased by genetic change and evolutionary processes, and reduced by habitat degradation, population decline, and extinction. Even though humans make up only 0.01% of all living biomass on Earth, humanmade mass now exceeds all global living biomass. Our countrysides have become deserts of biodiversity. In comparison, our cities often house differentiated and varied forms of habitats. Why have so many cities—the most artificial and human-dominated of all Earth’s ecosystems—grown rich with wildlife, even as it has faded from most of the rest of the world? And what does this paradox mean for cities, people, wildlife, and nature on our increasingly urban planet? A handful of hardy wildlife species have always thrived in urban areas, but most were driven out as cities grew bigger and denser. By the midtwentieth century, fewer animals than ever before lived in the world’s most developed cities. This arrangement started to seem natural, but then, beginning around 1970, wild animals that had not been seen there for decades—or in some cases ever—were showing up in cities. Conservationists called these creatures flukes or described them as the last gasps of a natural world choked by smog and buried under concrete. When most people picture “ecosystems”, they probably think of forests, deserts, coral reefs, or other natural environments. Yet the influx of wildlife into cities has made it clear that in the eyes of many creatures, cities are ecosystems too. They receive sunshine and rain; they
have rocks, soils, and water; they recycle energy, nutrients, and organic matter; and they contain diverse species that interact in complex ways and change over time. In some ways, cities more closely resemble natural ecosystems than the ones we call natural today. Contemporary efforts to include other life forms in cities are most often restricted to cultivated plants contained within welldefined borders outside buildings or inside them in pots. The viability or value of a building is usually judged on the ability to keep it “clean”, a practice that involves the removal of many forms of life, like insects, spiders, bats, algae, and mosses, or pests, as we usually define them. Conversely, our studio investigated how to let more non-human life into the hearts and lungs and cells of buildings, proposing new forms of interwoven cohabitation. The studio’s approach is a departure from conventional thinking. It seeks to explore new possibilities for incorporating non-human life into the very fabric of buildings. This idea challenges the traditional notion of urban spaces as purely human-dominated, and emphasizes the importance of cohabitation and coexistence between humans and other species. This shift in perspective not only has ecological implications but also raises questions about our relationship with the environment and our willingness to share urban spaces with diverse forms of life. It encourages us to reconsider how we design and interact with our built environments, and to seek out approaches that benefit both humans and the broader ecosystem. On the basis of our discussions, students were asked to suggest an area in the city for their research, and to propose interventions that would welcome biodiversity more fully into the life of the city. And because life, biodiversity, and architecture are not linear pursuits, at the same time, they were also asked to construct an urban oasis of biodiversity in the area in front of the Hinterland gallery in the fifth district, the Krongarten. We also laid down our tools, left our studio, and went on an excursion to Manchester, the city where the Industrial Revolution, and some would say the Anthropocene, began.
Krongarten – A biodiverse oasis replaces the space for two cars. HINTERLAND in Vienna’s fifth district is an independent art space and platform dedicated to the promotion of intercultural and interdisciplinary projects with emerging and established artists from the Middle East, with a focus on Iran. Every year, HINTERLAND asks artists to design and install an oasis in the space for two cars out front, and this year it was the turn of the CMT platform. True to the Iranian emphasis, we created a biodiverse version of a paradise garden. We made the garden principally from found materials from the immediate vicinity, many of which had been rendered useless due to changing demographics, habits, and rising rents, as well as by dismantling and reusing the materials from the previous Krongarten. We did the same to the signage from the neighbouring pet shop. This oasis is truly anchored in its neighbourhood. True to our decision to invite non-human life into our construction, rather than keeping it out as would normally be done, we decided to experiment with building against the grain. Old oriented strand boards, known for their strength in only one direction, were turned in the “weak direction” to allow easy entry of water and provide multiple habitats for nonhuman life. Bound together with long threaded rods, they were surprisingly stable, and when we looked at them more closely, they were already thriving with microscopic life. Although this oasis responds obediently to all of the constraints imposed by the city, we have performed one hidden act of public disobedience. We have extracted some paving stones in order to plant some of the trees directly into the ground, then camouflaged them as plants in pots. Our hope is that if we can keep them there for long enough, two years, the city will be obliged to conserve them, and the space will never again be ceded to cars. All images: CMT studio Building Biodiversity
fig. 1
Krongarten in construction showing the open osb panels and trees down to the ground.
fig. 2
Sven Flück, Lukas Otronsek, Gardening is Labour
fig. 3
Nikol Dlabacova, Ecotone 3rd Environment
fig. 4
Pierre Dumoulin, Unbuilding the Augarten
fig. 5
Moritz Schafschetzy, This is not the Danube
fig. 6
Vinzenz Hoffmann, no monument is an island
fig. 7
Mona Prohaska, Ways of Water
Christian Reinecke + Sebastian Seib Drawing the Curonian Spit
Dana Radzhibaeva A Time to Keep in Schwarzort
This film narrates the Curonian Spit’s ever-changing landscape, influenced by the intricate relationship between humans, the sand, the forest, and the sea. Through extensive archival research of maps, drawings, and texts, various actors who have shaped the terrain have been identified. However, pinpointing exact locations has been complicated by the constant transformation of the landscape. As a result, a method of drawing together was developed, which became an essential part of the project: drawing together, explaining through drawing, talking while drawing, recording, writing, and rewriting. This subjective process proposes an alternative narrative to traditional cartography, as it is not solely based on geographical foundations, but enhanced by intuitive ways of discovering and understanding.
In its first part, this project aims to explore the history of legends and myths of old Baltic tribes, their sacred places and rituals. Some stories can still be projected onto present-day sites, such as swamps, groves, and forest clearings on the Lithuanian Curonian Spit. Laima, goddess of the sky, fell in love with a human and decided to leave all godly privileges behind to join humans and their senses, suffering, and finiteness. In tales, she is known as a protector of women, orphans, and children, but she also oversees everyone’s fate. The second part of this project tries to reconstruct the story of a Jewish girl who had spent her summers with her parents in Schwarzort (Juodkrantė), a town located near the oldest and only natural forest on the peninsula that encloses a marshy spot of sweet water from the lagoon, where locals like to tell the story of Laima. Villa Liselotte, the house in which she, her siblings, and her parents stayed until as late as 1939, is still intact. Based on the memoir of Cherie Goren, the house opens up perspectives on the girls’ lives and experiences in this unique holiday resort at that moment in history.
Axel Strotmeier Deruny in Nida
Alexander Groiss An Assessment of the Policy of Conservation on the Curonian Spit
From a longer historical perspective, the former fishing village of Nida, like all villages and towns on the Curonian Spit, has been a place of departure and arrival, of happiness and tragedy for refugees and migrants. What would perhaps be less noticeable in cities and large urban agglomerations is undeniably visible in a place like Nida. The Nida Art Colony, near the Russian border, helps families discuss and share their worries about the future and the whereabouts of those they left behind. This film follows three Ukrainian women who prepared lunch and dinner for guests at the Nida Art Colony. Their dishes gave a glimpse into Ukrainian and Eastern European cuisine. Not only did they manage to prepare budget dishes with relatively simple vegetarian and vegan ingredients, which they would lovingly garnish with herbs and dips. They also cleverly prepared new dishes and desserts from leftovers. Their cooking ingredients led to stories about farmed food, to comparisons of the quality and taste of Lithuanian products with those they were used to in Ukraine. But it was also the food that led to deeper conversations about their escape from the war zones to the Nida Art Colony, where we could share time and tears.
In the year 2000, the Curonian Spit was recognised by UNESCO for its Outstanding Universal Value. Since then, the question of how to preserve a landscape in a world that is changing around it, as well as the paradox of protecting a specific form of artificial environment from more human intervention, has been the topic of a multitude of interactions between various stakeholders in the landscape. The procedural nature of democracy and the specific form that arguments over the future of the spit take are the material of this film. The research aims to explore the question of how the nature of Outstanding Universal Value is defined, and how the artificial stasis that constitutes conservation of past terraforming projects on the spit correlates with the interests of the adjacent populations and their government.
Helen Andres + Clara Rummer Potemkin Coastline
Martin Eichler Talent Keyhole
Through the eyes of a satellite, the documentary short film ‘Potemkin Coastline’ glances behind the scenes of fast-paced building development in Pionerski, a small town in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. Andrej Arburzov and his brother Dmitry grew up there, in a modest house situated on a large plot of land with apple trees, a small vegetable garden, and stunning views of the Baltic Sea. But as of 2007, an unusual demographic shift took place in their neighbourhood. Investors attracted wealthy oligarchs from Russia who built holiday residences on the Baltic Coast. Mysteriously, the satellite imagery stops exactly during that time. In 2013, satellite images of the area were again released. Where there had only been a vacant site for five years, a new palatial property could be seen. A villa in the Palladian style and symmetry now sits on a 43-acre estate. It was to give its new owner respite from Moscow’s political everyday life. Vladimir Putin called it the ‘Yantar residence’—an after-effect of 2005’s trilateral summit in the neighbouring city of Zelenogradsk, where he, Jacques Chirac, and Gerhard Schröder held a coffee meeting to define the future relationship between Russia and the EU, primarily the economic balance.
During the war and shortly after, large ammunition depots and weapons were reportedly stationed on the spit. Access to the coastal area and the dunes was strictly forbidden. To monitor people’s movements, the army began to clear the beach at dusk. In the 1980s, when the Cold War began to break down, people tried to escape through the Baltic Sea. When diving or swimming away from the shore, they hoped that the wind had blown away their footsteps. There is a satellite that can sense the warmth of plants. Trees are made visible in red. The light beam of the old lighthouse in Nida revolves as a series of flashes. Here is the key to this lock. The eye that leans on the door to spot what is on the other side turns the keyhole into an accidental optical device.
HTC History Theory Criticism
The Political Ecology of the Spit Ines Weizman Christina Condak
Design Studio MArch Helen Andres Martin Eichler Alexander Groiss Dana Radzhibaeva Christian Reinecke Clara Rummer Roxane Seckauer Sebastian Seib Axel Strotmeier Martin Sturz
High sand dunes, pine forests, and ‘climate holiday’ resort towns characterise the Curonian Spit on the Baltic Sea coast shared by what is now Russia and Lithuania. However, the pristine appearance of this narrow landscape hides a deep history of human intervention that politicised nature by adding monuments and milestones, gardens, roads, and border crossings, and even almost completely altering the geological and biological makeup of its terrain. In the late 19th century, when the area became part of Prussia, i.e. the German Empire, an enormous forest cultivation project was undertaken to colonise the land, but also to tame the dynamics of moving dunes and sandstorms. During the First World War, the famously high dunes of the spit were even used as military training targets for bombardment from the sea. Tragically, Second World War histories connect to present-day border hostilities relating to the war on Ukraine, including the intimidation of migrants across the Baltic region. This studio investigated the impact that the contestation of national borders through military occupation and changing political regimes has had on a vital, yet vulnerable ecosystem that uniquely interconnects cultural history and forms of habitation in the Baltic region. It aimed to explore and narrate unique histories entangled in a dynamic landscape of forests, dunes, agriculture, architecture, and artistic colonies. At the core of the studio was an excursion to the Nida Art Colony in the Curonian Spit National Park in Lithuania. The studio involved archival and media research, documentation, film making, and mapping, presented in a project exhibition, research script, and short documentary film essays.
Roxane Seckauer Haute Volée The research unfolds in two ways. On the one hand, it aims to capture the larger geographical history and movement of migrating birds that use the Curonian Spit as a place of rest and shelter for the next stage of their journey. On another, much smaller scale, it looks at the stories of refugees, migrants, and tourists who similarly frequented the Baltic coast as a place of shelter, temporary rest, and leisure. This short film depicts the Curonian Spit during the tumultuous period in history marked by two world wars, capturing excerpts from everyday life that were shaped by all-consuming historical developments. Until the late 1950s, crows were still part of a luxury dish served in fancy restaurants in the towns and villages along the coast of the Baltic Sea. Crows were caught by local fishermen, the crow-biters, on the spit – a tradition that came to an end with the migration of people, most likely at the end of the Second World War.
Martin Sturz Passport Control Passport Control revolves around two strands of research, which led to two separate film essays. The first short film is an investigation of the border station between Lithuania and Oblast Kaliningrad, and the road of about five kilometres from today’s Nida, the last stop before the border. I travelled this road, documenting it in five-minute sequences through analogue photography. My research began in the darkroom in Vienna when I fully grasped what my camera had captured. As I enlarged and experimented with the images, I reconstructed the atmosphere and the details of this border area. My film aims to tell the story of the difficulties of border controls and tries to capture the atmosphere at the border. The second point of interest is the life story of a woman by the name of Rosa Rubin, who was born in Memel (Klaipėda). Her passport, which was issued in Memel in 1921, tells a story of complicated travel, diasporic life, and restlessness. As I retraced her journeys in detail, I caught a glimpse of what traveling must have been like during the 1920s. I looked at the trains she took, which ship she boarded, as well as the railway stations and cities through which she passed. In my second film, I try to give an impression of her journeys through historical postcards. Similarly to the first film, zooming in became a method of choice as a means of emphasizing unnoticed details and particularities.
fig. 1 Gilles Clément. Source: https://www.fermedevillefavard.com/les-rencontres-de-villefavard/ (accessed December 2023)
Definition Undecided Fragment of the Planetary Garden Refuges for diversity, made up of the sum of neglected lands, reserves and primary sets. A neglected area is the result of the abandonment of a previously exploited site. Its origin is manifold: agricultural, industrial, urban, touristic, etc. Neglected areas and wasteland are synonymous. The reserve is an unexploited place. Its existence is due to chance or to the difficulty of access that makes it impossible or costly to exploit. It appears by subtraction from the anthropised territory. Reserves (primary sets) exist de facto but are also the result of administrative decisions. The undecided character of the Third Landscape corresponds to the evolution left to all biological beings that make up the territory in the absence of any human decision. The Planetary Garden represents the planet as a garden. The feeling of ecological finiteness makes the limits of the biosphere appear like the enclosure of living beings. Diversity refers to the number of distinct living species among animals, plants and simple beings (bacteria, viruses, etc.); the human number is included in a single species whose diversity is expressed by ethnic and cultural varieties. Manifesto (Each of the following sentences can be considered in the interrogative mode) Instruct the spirit of non-doing as one instructs the spirit of doing. Elevate indecision to a political level. Balance it with power. Imagine the project as a space with reservations and questions. Consider non-spatial organisation as
a vital principle through which all spatial organisation is penetrated by the flashes of life. Approach diversity with surprise. On the extent Consider the increase in Third Landscape spaces resulting from spatial organisation as the necessary counterpoint to the spatial organisation itself. Prioritise the creation of large Third Landscape spaces in order to cover the extent of species capable of living and reproducing there. Provide for the coupling of neglected areas with reserves to constitute territories of biological continuity. On the character Look at planetary cross-fertilisation – the inherent mechanics of the Third Landscape – as a driving force of evolution. Teach the drivers of evolution in the same way as we teach languages, sciences and the arts. Educate the users on the precautions necessary for the handling and exploitation of the beings on which they depend. The fragility of the system lies in the nature and number of practices. On the status Consider the planetary dimension. Protect the moral, social and political deregulation of the Third Landscape. Present the Third Landscape, undecided fragment of the Planetary Garden, not as a heritage asset, but as a common space of the future. On the stakes Maintain or increase diversity through the consented practice of non-spatial organisation.
The French gardener, botanist, entomologist, and writer Gilles Clément (1943) is not a designer or landscape architect in a traditional sense, but rather a curator of spaces, produced by humans as well as by non-human agents. He invented the term »planetary garden«, advocating for an inter-scalar exploration of an inhabitable »coating« of the Earth, in which life can thrive, but can also very easily cease to exist. In his view, knowing the limits of our biosphere helps to imagine it as something finite, an enclosed compound or a garth (it is no accident that the word garden comes from the Germanic word garten, enclosure). For Clément, all humans are (in)voluntary gardeners who take care of their many micro-ecologies and, at the same time, they are participants in much larger ecosystems, within which they play only a very humble role. His Manifesto of the Third Landscape (2004) is a sincere, poetic, and, perhaps, slightly mystical praise of places on the margins of the areas cultivated by human beings. Ones that can be found at the edges of planted forests, along highways, in abandoned factories and quarries, in between agricultural plots… The Third Landscape is the sum total of all these forgotten and neglected fragments, which, Clément claims, are in fact the territories most important for the survival of lifeforms. They prompt not only a biological diversity, but also – a radical biological invention. The manifesto is both a provocation and a very practical manual for all designers who want to effectively curate and protect the Third Landscape and, by doing so, shape our planetary future. Anastassia Smirnova-Berlin GLC professor, IKA
Initiate a process of requalification of the substrates allowing life – air, soil, water – by modifying the practices peripheral to the Third Landscape spaces in order not to alter their dynamics and to hope for their influence. Establish a territorial policy that aims not to diminish the existing portions of Third Landscape but even aims to increase them. On mobility and evolution Favour the dynamics of exchange between the anthropised environments and the Third Landscape. Orientate the interplay of land exchanges, reallocations and linkages between the poles of activity. Design a wide and permeable network of land. Create as many gateways as necessary for communication between them. On the scale Make available the tools necessary to understand the Third Landscape. Make satellite images, microscopic images accessible. Favour recognition at the usual scale of vision. Learn to name beings. On representation and limits Consider the limits as a thickness and not as a line. Consider the margin as a territory for investigating the wealth of different environments. Try imprecision and depth as a mode of representation of the Third Landscape. On the relationship to time Erasing administrative, political and territorial management deadlines. Do not wait: observe day by day. To offer the Third Landscape the possibility of unfolding according to an inconstant
evolutionary process, through the daily reinterpretation of changing environmental conditions. On the relationship to society Elevate unproductivity to the level of politics. Valuing biological growth and development as opposed to economic growth and development. Protect the sites of belief as indispensable territory for the wandering of the mind. On the relationship to culture Reverse the Western view of landscape. Give the Third Landscape the matrix role of a global landscape in the making. Declare the territory of the Third Landscape a privileged place of biological intelligence: the ability to constantly reinvent itself. Confront the hypothesis with other planetary cultures, in particular, those whose foundations are based on a fusional link between man and nature. Excerpts are chosen from: Gilles Clément, Manifesto of the Third Landscape. Halles: Trans Europe Halles, 2004.