People can find meaning in their lives by communicating, talking, writing and telling stories. Landscapes and places are not able to do this. And yet, they tell their stories to those of us who are able to decipher them. The identity of a place reveals itself to those who speak the language of landscape and know how to interpret shapes, structure, materials, form and function the same way they interpret words. We shape landscape and language – and they shape us. The articles in Topos 88, which are as diverse in genre and theme as always, ranging from short stories to films and dramas, question this narrative of the landscape.
“The Narrative of Landscape” was also the topic of a conference at EPFL university in Lausanne, organised by Cyril Veillon of Archizoom and Matthew Skjonsberg of LAB-U, laboratory of urbanism, EPFL, who was guest editor of this issue of Topos.
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A selection of articles from Topos 88:
Marieke Timmermans: Reading a landscape
Knowing how to read a landscape is the key to a competent analysis in landscape architecture. The act of reading includes the people who live in the landscape. For Texel, an island off the Dutch coast, the attempt has been made to capture this living landscape in drawings that explain a vision for the future.
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Martí Franch: A Journey into a Liquid Landscape
La Tancada Lagoon project is a low-cost intervention that shapes an archipelago to fit a hybrid nature-tourism program and celebrates the diverse landscape of the Ebro River Delta. It choreographs visits by sculpting the materiality and processes of the landscape.
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Abelardo Morell (photos), Nadine Gerdts (text): Magic in the Ordinary
The contemporary photographer Abelardo Morell explores landscapes of immense beauty in his latest camera obscura work, telling stories that span time in ways that only the minutiae of a landscape’s surface can reveal. His tent-camera images require viewers to admire sublime vistas while they concurrently ponder prosaic botanic, geologic elements and human-constructed details.
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Saskia Sassen: Land as Infrastructure for Living
Agricultural land destruction, climate change, and the mining industry lead to massive land degradation. These worldwide spaces of devastation are independent from political and economic organization of a country and are telling a story about the global attitude towards land.
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Adriaan Geuze: The Narrative of Stolen Paradise
For 12,000 years civilization has been craving for escape. Although nowadays -every authentic reference seems to have been banalized into permanent clichés by the media, the internet, and branded urban identities, people still need active psychic stimulation and long for perspective. So even the complex layered cities of today cannot exist without a second nature of metaphysical reality. The interpretation of human history and its influence on narrative, soil, and landscape drives Adriaan Geuze’s creative work.
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The Danish Pavilion reintroduces the forgotten power of aesthetics as the complementary to the rational. Danish landscape architect and curator of the Danish pavilion, Stig L. Andersson, argues that Niels Bohr’s philosophical aesthetic approach – and the forgotten modernity it represents – is essential for our common road into a sustainable future.
“For far too long, whenever we had to make a case for what our future should look like, we have focused only on the rational aspect. We have not understood that the aesthetic aspect complements the rational. This means that we must find an entirely new language to talk about the value of aesthetics: a language in which the sensuous amenity value of a tree is as important as the tree’s usefulness in terms of soaking up rain water, absorbing CO2 and making our house prices soar.”, explains Stig L. Andersson.
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The curator of the 14th International Architecture Biennale, Rem Koolhaas has asked the national exhibitions to adhere to the legacy of the previous century. By inventing The Nordic Welfare State Denmark assigned architecture a crucial role in planning and, almost obsessively, designing in detail the physical setting for a 20th century modern, urban, democratic lifestyle. However, today this authentic integration of architecture and welfare culture can no longer be taken for granted. We need to rethink our common future and to recall the aesthetic qualities of modernity and let them meet the more dominant rationalistic approach.
In the Danish Pavilion visitors are invited to sense, wonder, be curious and reflect when you meet the smell of dirt, read Niels Bohr’s letter to Einstein, hear the sound of poetry and burry your toes in pine needles. The exhibition “Empowerment of Aesthetics” insists on new sensuous and sustainable symbiosis between rationality and aesthetics – between architecture and nature. It is a reflection on the fundamentals of the modern Danish society, which emerged in the mid19th Century: The short pocket of time after the collapse of Romanticism but before the heralded Danish welfare state fully emerged; where the poetic interaction between architecture, literature, art, nature and science liberated an unprecedented energy and a belief in a dynamic society hitherto unseen in Denmark and elsewhere.
”My ambition is to present the interrelationship of forgotten, repressed or underexposed parts of the dynamic Danish modernity. Not only in the history of architecture, but also in science, art and poetry.” states Stig L. Andersson.
The 14th International Architecture Exhibition “Fundamentals” is open until 23 November.
Cities in the developing world are increasingly defined by non-formal patterns of urbanization. As a result, the physical character and economic, political and social dynamics of many of the world’s fastest growing cities fit only loosely with the professional perspectives and toolkits of planners and designers, which are largely oriented to the formal city. This tension was the focus of an international symposium on non-formal urbanism held from 20 to 23 November at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). During the event, several of the speakers came together for a first reading of a collaborative manifesto entitled “In Search of Process: The Laufen Manifesto for a Humane Design Culture”. The manifesto is intended to draw attention to the need for more socially-oriented design practices (text see below).
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Laufen Manifesto for a Humane Design Culture
Too many people worldwide subsist in undeserving living conditions, and their ranks are growing by the day. As representatives of the professions collectively shaping the built environment, it is our responsibility to resist this intolerable situation. We are speaking out to define an alternative position. We must produce spaces that counter exploitation, control and alienation, whether in urban or rural landscapes. With all our expertise, creativity and power, we need to contribute more dynamically and consequentially to the global quest for equality.
Across a range of pilot projects, we have begun to initiate a more humane design culture, working with a robust network of communities, craftsmen, planners, builders and organizations. These alternative practices demand not only further development, but also substantial scaling-up. Guided by a deeper understanding of individual needs and aspirations as our fundamental concern, we must urgently multiply our efforts to improve the ecological, social, and aesthetic quality of the built environment, while developing more effective design strategies to anticipate predicted future growth on a global scale.
01 COLLABORATING EYE TO EYE
We must commit ourselves to respectful communication and cooperation with residents and communities as key partners in achieving positive, measurable change. The impact of a participatory process extends beyond actual design outcomes – it should empower individuals and cultivate a constructive atmosphere with lasting effects. The process should allow sufficient time to facilitate a dialogue striving for respect, curiosity, flexibility and care.
02 DESIGNING WORK
Projects must be conceived in a way that creates meaningful work. A thoughtful approach to designing buildings, places, landscapes and products can nurture small-scale enterprises like construction, farming and crafts. By opting for labor-based techniques and non-standardized materials, we can foster a decentralized form of construction and production. Creating an atmosphere of entrepreneurship and innovation is essential in forming value chains connecting local craftsmanship and global industries. New models of self construction for low-income populations must be explored, combining education, training and long-term income generation. The creation of work is foundational for greater equality and peace.
03 UNFURLING BEAUTY
We believe that beauty is an essential human need, linked strongly to dignity. We must strive for an authentic harmony that resonates with people, the genius loci and their territory. The longing for beauty can be stronger than fear and thus a crucial catalyst for humane development.
04 IDENTIFYING THE LOCAL
Modernization has levelled cultural differences globally and hampered context specific design. Individual projects must be based on careful observation of geophysical conditions, local building traditions and space hierarchies. Global knowledge on building techniques must be adapted to the local climate, available materials, skill base and energy sources. Site and culturally sensitive design contributes to self-sufficiency and more sustainable local economies.
05 UNDERSTANDING THE TERRITORY
While designers and policy-makers devote significant attention to mega-cities and high density environments, larger agglomerations are deeply dependent on smaller living units and their landscapes. Truly humane design projects understand zones of impact and influence on many scales. They operate between the local, the regional, the continental, and the global, thereby revealing a rich network of dynamic social, economic, and ecological relations that must be respected, adjusted for, and improved as needed.
06 EDUCATING DESIGNERS
Designers are not trained sufficiently to achieve positive change for people living in undeserving conditions. Design education has to evolve radically to ensure young designers have the capacity to bridge the gap between design and construction, understand the nuances of diverse sites and territories, and communicate more profoundly with local communities and stakeholders. In short, instil a greater social empathy. Manual skills must be developed on the same footing as digital and intellectual skills. Designing the right process must be equally important as the outcome.
07 SHAPING POLICY
Integrated infrastructure, new collaborations, and innovative approaches to project development and financing must be translated into a global policy strategy. A vast change is necessary in the way we conceive, distribute and construct human habitats. We must connect top-down and bottom-up processes, with a view to fostering more productive exchanges between residents, policy-makers, financial institutions, the design profession and executing bodies. This will require the mobilization of both human and financial resources. We need broader and better solutions, at a lower cost, for a larger number of people.
You can add your voice: laufenmanifesto.org
Authors: Anna Heringer, Hon. Prof of the UNESCO Chair for Earthen Architecture, Germany; Andres Lepik, Director of Architekturmuseum of TU München, Germany; Hubert Klumpner, Architect, Urban-Think Tank, Dean D-ARCH, ETH Zürich, Venezuela/Switzerland; Peter Rich, Architect, hon. FAIA, South Africa; Line Ramstad, Landscape Architect, Gyaw Gyaw, Norway/Burma; Peter Cachola Schmal, Director at Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Germany; Andres Bäppler, Architect, Schule für Leben, Germany/Colombia;Emilio Caravatti, Architect, Italy; Dietmar Steiner, Director of Architekturzentrum Vienna, Austria; Christian Werthmann, Professor of Landscape Architecture and Design Hannover, Germany; Martin Rauch, Hon. Prof of the UNESCO Chair for Earthen Architecture, Germany; Dominique Gauzin-Müller, Editor EcologiK, France; Helena Sandman, Architect, Hollmén Reuter Sandman Architects/Ukumbi, Finland; Enrico Vianello, Architect, studio TAMassociatti, Italy; Rahul Mehrotra, Architect, Chair of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard, India/US; Alejandro Restreppo, Urban Planner, Colombia; Susanne Hofman, Architect, Baupiloten, Germany; Anh-Linh Ngo, Editor ARCH+, Germany; Louis Fernandez Galliano, Editor Architectura Viva, Spain; Alejandro Encheverri, Director of Urbam, Colombia
Photo: Township in the Cape Flats, South Africa; Robert Schäfer
