Table of contents for Dezember 2017 in Topos

Friend or foe? The range of creatures in the urban realm has been widening over years which rises the tantalizing question: How do we re-negotiate our claims to a territory? he world of fables is a simple world. Animals that appear in fables regularly embody precisely one human character trait: foxes are clever, monkeys scheming, hares fearful, goats gullible and wolves evil. In their one-dimensionality, which serves the purpose above all of holding up a mirror to the reader they invariably act in a predictable manner. Human as they are, the animals move quite close to us – sometimes so close that it becomes disturbing. This functions because the obvious dichotomy between human and animal is caricatured in a way that transforms it into its very opposite. However, the very…

Jimmy Norrman is a partner at Funkia, a landscape architecture office based in Nacka, Sweden. Funkia’s current projects include parks and squares that are part of the Fyrklövern urban development project situated north of Stockholm. Prior to studying landscape architecture, Norrman worked as a landscape gardener at his family’s business in Helsinki. 1 CAREER STARTING POINT? When I learned the power of the pen in the process of creating environments at my first job at landscape architect Gretel Hemgård’s office in Helsinki, Finland. 2 INFLUENCED BY Probably by the Swiss landscape architect Dieter Kienast. 3 INSPIRED BY Life and all the surrounding environments that are included in it. 4 WHY LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE? Can it be innate? I decided to be a landscape architect when I was 14 years old. 5…

Urban ecological research has shown that the built structures of cities, usually thought of as being distant from nature, offer numerous habitats for animals across a range of urban structure types. Inner courtyards typical of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the shared green spaces in residential estates of the 1950s to 1970s, gardens, schoolyards, and sports complexes as well as other green spaces, all of these offer room for urban biodiversity. However, this huge potential space for biodiversity is only rarely used specifically for furthering urban biodiversity. Instead, cities tend to eliminate many of the niches that animals inhabit in the urban realm, be it through densification, i.e. the commercial or residential development of previously unbuilt areas; by maximizing the energy-efficiency of buildings, resulting in reduced breeding or…

Today’s cities, not only Western but in general, have almost no animal life in their cores (…). There are roughly 163 million pets in the United States. Approximately 44 per cent of all households in the United States have a dog, and 35 per cent have a cat. Said another way, that’s nearly one pet for every two humans in the U.S. And while pet ownership is popular and likely on the rise, our interaction with animal life in general is increasingly prescribed, controlled, and in decline. But this has not always been the case, and is in fact contrary to the bulk of human history. Not all that long ago, animals and humans – though, really, we’re animals too – intermingled closely throughout the day in our public and…

Wildness can manifest in any landscape, and human communities can play a critical role in nurturing diverse and life-generating places. What is wildness? A jagged, slate-colored mountain, where one can see distinctly where the tree line ends, where the conifers give up on their climb and one can see the snowy summit, sheathed in distant wisps of torn cloud? Or an alleyway between tall buildings, where paint is peeling from backdoors and emerald green moss clings to a rusted gutter pipe; a single lavender flower, pushing from a lightning-bolt-shaped crack in the pavement, blooms in a dollop of sunlight and a bumblebee orbits the flower’s petals? What do you think of when you think of wildness? In Wildness: Relations of People and Place, 26 authors from a variety of landscapes,…

Cities are large common areas, and public open space is, so to speak, a city’s living room, which is, at best, accessible to everyone at all times. People meet here, relax, go for walks or to work, go shopping or just drift aimlessly through the streets. In order to make everyone feel comfortable, the design of parks, streets and plazas is just as important as one’s sofa at home. Light, seating, play equipment, bicycle stands, bollards, etc. often directly help shape and improve the image of a city or urban space. Useful and popular street furniture is generally flexible, mobile and modular, allowing plazas to be used for interim activities and users to decide where to place their seating, as is the case, for example, at Times Square in New…

#3 In the series From the Edges, ALEXANDER GUTZMER comments on urban phenomena taking place in the growing metropolises outside the classic urban New York-London-Tokyo triad. Editor-in-chief of Baumeister – The Architecture Magazine and Editorial Director of Callwey Publishing (which publishes Topos), he currently lives in Mexico. I am writing this while on unstable ground. To be more precise, from the very unstable ground of the earthquake-shaken, but not demoralised Ciudad de Mexico. This city has seen many attacks on its spirit. The last one came from its own soil – the 7.1 magnitude quake that took hundreds of lives, and tore down hundreds of buildings. And that raised the question of how unsafe life is in this megalopolis. On an abstract level, one can argue that such earthquakes undermine…

Thorbjörn Andersson has practiced landscape architecture since 1981. He studied landscape architecture, architecture and art history in Sweden and the United States. Recent office projects are the Novartis Physic Garden in Basel and the Campus Park at Umeå University. 1 CAREER STARTING POINT? When I saw Christo’s Running Fence, which made me see that landscape projects can do more than just solve problems. They can appeal to your emotions as well. 2 INFLUENCED BY Music, gastronomy, dance, literature. The German choreographer Pina Bausch, British novelist Bruce Chatwin, and Australian musician Nick Cave. And Rosseau, of course. 3 INSPIRED BY Rhythm, shadows, seasonal change, topography. 4 WHY LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE It can change people’s life, so it is political. It can touch your soul, so it is sensual. It is less programmed…

In 1904 William Beebe, a famous explorer and naturalist, spent an uncomfortable evening at the top of the Statue of Liberty watching migrating birds from this elevated perch. He became alarmed over the course of the night, as fog settled in, and “the birds began to pass through the periphery of illumination, then to strike intermittently against the railing and glass.” The next morning he counted 271 dead birds on the ground. It was a remarkable early episode demonstrating the extent of animal life in cities, and also the important ways in which urban design and planning can have serious, often fatal, effects on the faunal cohabitants of cities. Going biophilic Fast forward more than a century later, and cities continue to grapple with these issues. In an important positive…

Has 3D modeling killed the architectural drawing as a serious design tool? Looking at the evidence, it would be hard to conclude otherwise. Yet, with drawing now freed of its functional duties, we are already seeing architects resurrecting its corpse for the medium’s innate qualities of communication. In many ways, this trend can be seen as a reflection of changes internal to the discipline of architecture: in the design tools that architects use and in fashions in architectural representation. But this is only a small part of the story. A revolution is coming from outside the discipline in the form of augmented reality. Even in AR’s current early stages of development, it is clear that this technology poses a challenge to how we conceive, create and experience architecture, which I…

“Two Romes have fallen. The third stands. And there will be no fourth.” – Philotheus of Pskov to his son, Grand Duke Vasili III, 1510. Moscow is a hotchpotch of invisible networks: Intellectuals, artists and artisans; all sprouting in scattered bookshops, cafes, theatres and schools, but mostly hidden in private spaces. A young population runs creative industries. There are corrupt officials, lawenforcers and bureaucrats, mixing Soviet traditions with glamourous offices and sophisticated technology. And there are families, loners, immigrants, visitors, gastarbeiter and businessmen, and all those who keep this city up and running. Moscow became a capital more or less by chance, as the princes who were ruling it in the Middle Ages and competing with other principalities of Rus’ turned out to be the most influential, or reckless, or…

“The bees have a colourful menu available to them in the city. This diversity is often lacking in the country.”JÜRGEN TAUTZ Professor at Julius-Maximilians-Universität in Würzburg, Germany For years, bees have been conquering territory where one would least expect them: large cities. Whether New York, Toronto or Berlin – urban beekeepers are maintaining colonies everywhere. The trendy hobby got its start at one of the most opulent locations in Paris: the opera. Jean Paucton, the pioneer of urban beekeeping, had once been prop master there. He first placed a bee colony on the roof of the renowned Opéra Garnier in the early 1980’s. However, this hadn’t been planned. On the contrary, it was supposed to be just a temporary stopover. When the hobby beekeeper picked up his bees two weeks…

Ingo Arndt is a renowned animal and nature photographer. His images have been published worldwide and in magazines such as GEO and National Geographic. He has published fifteen books and won numerous prizes, among them several Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards. ingo@ingoarndt.com Timothy Beatley is founder and Executive Director of the Biophilic Cities Project as well as the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities in the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning at the University of Virginia. His work focuses on sustainable communities and ecological footprint reduction. timbeatley.org/ Irus Braverman is William J. Magavern Professor of Law at the State University of New York at Buffalo. She served as a public state prosecutor and as an environmental lawyer, both in Israel, and was also trained as a mediator and…

Rochelle Canteen, Arnold Circus, E2 7ES www.rochelleschool.org/rochellecanteen/ Green Rooms, 13-27 Station Road, Wood Green, N22 6UW www.greenrooms.london/ Saint Etienne – Sweet Arcadia (from Home Counties, 2017) www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB-6PZFULNY Tim Rettler is a Principal Regeneration Officer at the Greater London Authority. He studied architecture at the University of Applied Sciences Cologne and the University of East London. He has previously worked for ASTOC Architects & Planners, Sergison Bates Architects, and Design for London. 1 Arcadian Thames 51.454240, -0.299840 Carefully manicured over the last three centuries, the landscape between Hampton and Kew is so bucolic that one should only experience it in small doses. On the edge of Richmond Park sits King Henry’s Mound, a Bronze Age burial place that was the reputed spot where Henry VIII paused from a hunting trip to…