Insect city is a project that explores new approximations to reimagine the boundaries between human and nature, through a site-specific intervention that leaves spaces for new encounters. It is a public artwork, located in an undetermined fragment of an urban landscape in the city of Linz, Austria, composed of a series of geometric wooden pieces that aims to sensitize and raise awareness on ecological and biodiversity values.
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The project aims to develop a broader dialogue and new approaches to the diversity of plant and animal life in urban habitats. In this way, the intervention dialogues with the city landscape, creating new ways of coexistence between the natural and built environments. A new hybrid urban landscape, as a housing complex for our cohabiting insects -wasps, bees, beetles or bugs-.
Insect city is in a transitional area where several natural and cityscapes are diluted together. On the one hand, the site is close to the Danube River and its industrial port, and on the other hand, the site is bounded by a disused railway and the elevated highway. Although the area is characterized as an undefined public space, the site is privileged for its biological richness, since it is located in a self-maintained urban meadow surrounded by houses with orchards and community gardens.
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The project has been developed with the support and collaboration of the Architectural Forum of Upper Austria (afo), with the bio-consultancy of the Biologiezentrum, a biology center located in the city of Linz, which has one of the largest insect collection in Europe, and is dedicated to preserving, researching, documenting, exhibiting and transmitting knowledge about the flora and fauna. At the same time, during the process, a positive neighborhood consultation was carried out, with the aim of disseminating the public project among local residents as part of their own environment.
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Credits: x-studio : : Ivan Juarez
with the collaboration and support of architekturforum oberösterreich (afo)
Implementation: Leonie Reese, Thomas Kluckner, Roland Laimer and Dominik Leitner and Mariya Zhariy (afo) and Ivan Juarez
Production, organization: Franz Koppelstätter, Uschi Reiter (afo)
Bio-consultant: Biologiezentrum Linz, Dr. Martin Schwarz
Supported by Time’s Up and Hanger-Holz GmbH
Funding: by Linz Kultur
Thanks to: City of Linz, Linz AG and all neighbors of the Posthofstraße
Photography: Gregor Graf and x-studio : : Ivan Juarez
This year’s fifth edition of the Landezine International Landscape Awards – LILA – took place under extraordinary circumstances. The winning entries were announced without an award ceremony due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. The jury gave out 7 awards and 5 special mentions, while the editors of Landezine selected the recipients of the Office and Honour Awards. Editor-in-chief Zaš Brezar pointed out that the award winners illustrated the large variety of approaches and current dominating themes within landscape architecture.
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The winning projects in the categories Public Project – Phase Shifts Park by French landscape architects mosbach paysagistes – and Infrastructure – Girona’s Shores by EMF – stood out for their aspiration to give back to society and a relaxed, informal design approach instead of overdesigning spaces. With regard to the Catalan project the jury recognized the role of the landscape architect not only as designer, but as a social catalyst enabling positive change.
Phase Shifts Park by mosbach paysagistes:
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Girona’s Shores by EMF:
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Special mentions in these categories went to the projects Lifting The Palm Grove To a Higher Level in Morocco by Building Beyond Borders, Yongqing Fang Alleyways – An Urban Transformation by Chinese architects Lab D+H and the Ballerup Boulevard in Denmark by Marianne Levinsen Landskab.
Swiss project Fold’s Childhood by Gilles Brusset won the Playgrounds category. A play with topography and two different materials, the project takes its inspiration from the geological processes that shaped the Jura Mountains and creates an interesting contrast to the surrounding modernist residential housing complex. “While the design tools are simple, they offer a layered complexity within this simplicity,” the jury stated.
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Selected as winner of the Hospitality category was the Catalan project Terra Dominicata Hotel & Winery by SCOB Architecture & Landscape, with a special mention to Cloud of Hometown in China by gad · line+ studio. Danish architects Juul Frost Architects received the award for the Residential category for their project Flyvestation Værløse. A special mention went to the French project Square Maïmat by Emma Blanc. The awards in the Gardens category were handed out ex aequo to Ellipse Garden in Denmark by Kjeld Slot Havearkitekt and Dutch project Anticipating the Landscape by Andrew van Egmond.
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The Enfant terrible of the landscape architecture scene
Topotek 1 was selected as this year’s winner of the Office Award. “Enfant terrible” of the landscape architecture scene with a unique approach, attitude and confidence that dares to experiment, according to Brezar, something that “the Landezine team would truly wish to see more of in landscape architecture offices around the world.”
Honour Award winner Charles A. Birnbaum, founder of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, has been recognised for his outstanding advocacy work to foster the appreciation of landscape and landscape heritage within society. His promotion of the social, cultural and environmental values of landscape is of outmost importance to the profession, as the “condition for the landscape architecture community to thrive in a society lies in an understanding of the work we do.”
Diversity of contemporary landscape architecture
With the selection of this year’s award winners, the jury not only highlighted the diversity of contemporary landscape architecture, but rewarded the willingness to push the limits of the profession through process-based and flexible approaches, the exploration of new aesthetics and typologies, and a strong focus on the human aspect of our work.
Faced with the current situation, the Scientific Committee of the 11th International Landscape Biennial of Barcelona has decided to extend the deadline for submitting projects until the 30th of June.
The Rosa Barba International Landscape Prize, by Fundació Banc de Sabadell, integrated into the International Biennial of Landscape Architecture, will take place in Barcelona, on the next 30th September to 1st and 2nd October 2020.
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After closing the submission of landscape and planning projects, created around the world from 2015 to 2020, the International Jury will select 7-11 finalists.
The winner and finalists will present their projects during the symposium that will take place on the 1st October 2020. The projects selected by the International Jury will be published in the catalogue of the 11th Biennial, displayed on the Rosa Barba Prize exhibition by Fundació Banc Sabadell and published on this web under Biennial ATLAS tag.
For more information click here.
Since 1999, the Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) monitors the development of public space in European cities. Every two years, it awards the European Prize for Urban Public Space to projects that in an exemplary way create, upvalue, or enliven public space.
Award for Skanderbeg Square, Tirana
This year, the CCCB honors the redesign of Skanderbeg Square in the Albanian capital of Tirana. Brussels-based office 51N4E turned the urban space into an agora freed from all ideological symbols and motorized private transport. Before that, the Square was an incoherent place, filled with memories of propaganda parades of the Communist dictatorship. The award encourages the young Albanian democracy which lacks the experience and the funds to further invest in public space.
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Diversity of Public Space: Honorary Mentions
The jury acknowledges the complexity of public space by commemorating a number of urban interventions in their honorary mentions: “Cuypers Passage”, a tunnel for pedestrians and cyclists in Amsterdam, designed by Benthem Crouwel Architects; a temporary open air theater in Dnipro, Ukraine, realized by an NGO of musicians, designers, architects, curators and cultural managers with the help of crowdfunding; the Zollverein-Park in Essen, Germany, designed by Planergruppe GmbH Oberhausen; the remodeling of the “Superblocks” into spaces for pedestrians and cyclists in Barcelona, Spain planned by Area d’Ecologia, Urbanisme i Mobilitat and the city council Barcelona. PC Caritas by BAVO, architecten de vylder vinck taillieu in Melle, Belgium gets an honorary mention. The old, semi-public pavillon that is part of a mental hospital could be saved from demolition and now provides a quiet refuge for patients and their families.
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According to CCCB, the status of public space shows the health status of democracy in our cities. This stresses the importance of its engagement which uses publications, exhibitions, and events to point out serious deficits. The European Prize for Urban Public Space provides us with a guiding theme for the strengthening of open and fit urban communities.
This year, two 5-member juries evaluated a total of 119 eligible office profiles, 249 public projects and 44 gardens. There is one winner in each of the three category, one special mention in office category and one in garden category.
The LILA 2018 award ceremony will take place on Saturday, 13 October, as part of Landezine LIVE at HafenCity University Hamburg.
2018 Winner in Office Category:
mosbach paysagistes, France
The jury members praised Catherine Mosbach as an outstanding and talented force that drives the profession beyond excellence, reveals hidden levels of design and reflects on the landscape. The result is a portfolio of strong conceptual work. Particularly worth mentioning is the environmentally and socially responsible way in which the office works.
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2018 Special Mention in Office Category:
Strelka KB, Russia
Strelka KB act as a bridge between Russian society and the global design sector. They are characterised by their role as moderators, initiators and project drivers. They do not claim to be design experts, but help with their local expertise, their willingness to find their way around the local environment and their desire to make a difference. Strelka KB is a colourful collective of hundreds of young professionals who want to change their city and their country.
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2018 Winner in Project Category:
Renaturation of the river Aire, Geneva by Atelier Descombes Rampini, Group Superpositions, Switzerland
The project answers questions on the reintroduction of nature into the artificial landscape and on dealing with the landscape in rural-urban peripheral areas. It reactivates the old river channel for visitors by combining new modest elements and simple structures into a powerful experience.
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2018 Winner in Garden Category:
Lake Marion Private Retreat by Coen+Partners, USA
The members of the jury praised this garden as an excellent opportunity to bring the inhabitants into nature because it is easy to use and to explore. An ordinary place was curated by Coen+Partners and transformed into a dramatic landscape with different atmospheres and unique character.
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2018 Special Mention in Garden Category:
Salaam House by The Landscape Studio, Kenya
What is a “garden” and what does it represent? Salaam House is a landscape architecture project that sends a message: We can create a garden with a subtle approach, simplicity and a modest budget by preserving and appreciating what we already have.
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LILA 2018 PUBLIC CHOICE AWARDS:
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In large parts of Africa, urbanistic improvements are urgently needed. Although there are numerous suggestions to boost urbanization, most of them are not aimed at the population groups actually in need. The exhibition “African Speculations”, that runs from 21 June to 18 July 2018 in the Architecture Gallery Munich, takes a close look at current developments regarding urbanization activities on the African continent. The curators are Christopher Marcinkoski and Javier Arpa Fernández from the University of Pennsylvania School of Design.
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The exhibition displays selected findings from a survey of more than 100 territorial speculative urbanization projects planned or executed in Africa since the climax of the real estate boom and collapse in 2005. It became clear that exogenous models of settlement and infrastructure were imported into completely incompatible contexts without any sensitivity for the actualities of their intended destinations. African Speculations examines these events and effects in connection with recent speculative building projects pursued in Spain, Ireland, Dubai and China at the beginning of the 21st century – with particular attention to the fatal social, environmental and political consequences they had upon their failure.
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Examples can be categorized using nine different urban typologies: new national capitals, tourist enclaves, middle-class residential areas, new financial centers (CBDs), cities driven by technology and industry, luxury housing allotments, social housing districts, the occasional radical conversion of existing structures, and something that could be called greenfield mega cities.
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These case studies shed light on justification strategies to carry out these projects, on existing landscapes and ecosystem services they will inevitably expose, and on numerous players involved in their design and organization.
African Speculations critically examines a looming economical and ecological catastrophe. An impeding situation in which urbanization is exploited for the pursuit of economic advantages.
Trees are the most noticeable elements in the savanna country of northern Ghana. But the growing population and the need for farmland led to a drastic decline of the tree population. With devastating consequences: there are no more trees for natural protection. The local river of Guabuliga village has dried up each year. Since 2012, in cooperation with several institutes and the local villagers, the Austrian lab [applied] Foreign Affairs (‘[a]FA”) has been working to implement measures for sustainable village growth together with local residents.
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The planners refrained from dictating solutions from above, instead they proceeded cautiously: in a study project,[a]FA worked out a step by step, multi-layered growth agenda to be accompanied by several individual student projects. The basis for the agenda were talks and discussions with the local villagers, in particular about their relationship to trees. The main project had started in 2011, it continues until today.
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In the mapping project “Talking Trees”, [a]FA used art to explore the relationship of the people to their trees – with stories about the local trees that the villagers have passed only orally from one generation to generation. Accompanied by additional mapping projects discussing further topics such as water, vernacular architecture and social innovations in a traditional setting, the result was an exhibition. The exhibition became the basis of a discussion between the villagers and the planners before they travelled to the capital Accra in 2012 and then to Vienna.
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With the mappings [a]FA developed the two essential elements of the growth agenda: the name of the village, Guabuliga, recalls the place where it was founded, a waterhole close to an acacia tree. And there is no private land ownership in the village; properties are not fenced in.
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Guabuliga – Well by the Thorntree: Greenbelt
Location: Guabuliga, Northern Region, Ghana
Client: Guabuliga (Salifu Mahama Tampuri)
Sponsor: NGO Braveaurora
Design: November 2011 – September 2012
Realisation: September 2012, ongoing
Size: 7ha
Design team: Chrili Car (main author of „Talking Trees“, the „Greenbelt“ project), Antonella Amesberger, Lea Dietiker, Joseph Hofmarcher, Joana Petkova, Juergen Strohmayer, Stefanie Theuretzbacher, Theresa Theuretzbacher
Project Coordination [applied] Foreign Affairs: Baerbel Mueller, IOA dieAngewandte, Vienna
Chrili Car’s Phd-Research Supervision: Erwin Frohmann, ILA BOKU, Vienna
Local Consultants: David Agongo (ZEFP Walewale), Sulemana Fatawu Nantomah (Asiribisi Walewale)
Read the complete text with more background information in topos 103.
For the 10th time, the European Prize for Public Space will award projects that create, improve, or revive public space. All projects that were realized in the European Union in 2016 can be submitted until February 21, 2018. The jury considers all spaces public that allow for people to live together in harmony, offer room to serve many purposes, provide sustainable transportation and are formed by the partizipation of the inhabitants.
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Seven European architectural institutions tender the competition. Among them are the German Architecture Museum (DAM), the Architecture Foundation in London, the Center of Architecture Vienna and the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine in Paris. The awards ceremony will take place at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona in June. Laureates will be announced by the Prize Archive. A possible touring exhibition is being considered.
For more information on participation guideline click here.
