Tabla de contenidos para March 2017 en Topos

In November 2016 the profession of landscape architecture has lost one of its leading personalities. Diana Balmori was born in Spain, grew up in Argentina and emigrated to the United States in 1952 with her husband, architect Cesar Pelli. Although not trained as a landscape architect, she explored the field between architecture, landscape architecture and urban design from the beginning of her research for a PhD in urban history at UCLA in 1973, and in her professional practice. In 1980 she created a landscape department in Cesar Pelli’s architecture firm in New Haven and later, in 1990, set up her own professional practice, Balmori Associates, in New York. In a time when “landscape design had been thought of as beautifying a site rather than something fundamental” (Barry Bergdoll, Columbia University),…

The city of Chelsea, Massachusetts is the industrial staging ground for Boston and many other cities in New England. Within its 2.19-square-mile territory, Chelsea stocks road salt, jet fuel for Logan Airport, leather goods for foreign markets, and heating oil. It is also the home base for the New England Food Distribution Center, which runs diesel-powered transportation refrigeration units for many hours each day. Within a few short blocks of Chelsea’s commercial main street is a mountain of solid waste gathered there for sorting. While it was once called Winnisimmet, or the “land of good springs,” now in the 21st century the Mystic River and Chelsea Creek, which make up Chelsea’s waterfront, are some of the most polluted waters in the Boston region. Chelsea’s numerous brownfield sites are left over…

Munich, western periphery, Aubing suburban railway station – the view from the train reveals backyards and rear sides. Everyday things, nothing showy like those that run along wide arterial roads. Repetitive images: detached houses, commercial areas, allotments, housing estates. At the station a large board advertising urban living greets arrival passengers. It shows white houses with flat roofs, terraces and French windows. “We want to create urban living like you have in the city but green like in the countryside”, says Elisabeth Merk, head of Munich’s department of urban planning. The urban still seems a promise here. The road from the station runs between a cemetery and residential high-rises, lined with buffer planting and ruderal species. Suddenly there is a field boundary and the view opens up to the west.…

With the global population expected to grow to 9.1 billion by 2050 and food production projected to expand 70 percent from current levels, agricultural systems are increasingly pushing against the constraints of natural systems. Moreover, health costs associated with emissions from the industrial agricultural model are equal to nearly half of its generated revenue. In addition to natural resource limitations and toxic practices, emerging multi-scalar threats such as climate change are ushering in a new age of challenges in the built environment. As both agent of and subject to these threats, agricultural systems can be defined by their methods and jeopardized capacity to meet current and future needs, and will therefore need to play a progressively larger role in the foundation of rapidly urbanizing world populations. The Conservation Agriculture Studio…

The Heart of the Park project, the centre of Shelby Farms Park’s signature masterplan, has transformed the existing lake landscape in Memphis, Tennessee, into a new area of the park to become a diverse community hub, an environmental teaching tool and a place for health and recreation, relaxation and water adventure. The Hyde lake, which was not ecologically sound, experienced erosion and leaked from the bottom. The new lake is sustainably designed to minimize the amount of water that needs to be pumped to fill it by expanding the amount of surface water drainage and improving the watershed ratio (land-to-lake ratio) from 4:1 to 7:1. A lake liner, made from a vegetable oil-based product that is environmentally friendly, was tilled into the ground at the bottom of the lake, where…

The Hamburg Elbphilharmonie is open. We are well aware of the background; the increase from its initial budget of 77 million euros to the final 789 million will continue to stun critics for many years to come. Although the actual cost per square metre of an estimated 6,500 euros does not seem so exorbitant. Hamburg seems to be happy with its new gateway to the world. And likewise the world with it. The New York Times recently placed Hamburg on its list of most important travel destinations in the coming year. Visitors from New York will certainly rate the concert hall as a touristic highlight. That’s one viewpoint. And there are others. Perhaps this is the most interesting feature of Herzog & de Meuron’s (HdM) building: it can be read…

The fifth and final competition for large open spaces in Hamburg’s HafenCity has been decided. The largest and most eastern neighbourhood in HafenCity – the Elbbrucken Quarter – will be the second urban retail and residential quarter besides Uberseequartier which will comprise high-rises, water expanses on three sides and a large central square, the Amerigo-Vespucci-Platz at the far end of Baakenhafen. The neighbourhood could potentially generate 13,000 jobs and provide 1,100 homes. Swiss architects Hosoya Schaefer from Zurich won the urban design competition in 2015. The assignment of the landscape competition, which was decided in December 2016, mainly focused on the structure and design of the public spaces. How can the Amerigo-Vespucci-Platz in the centre of the neighbourhood be structured, the level difference between street and promenade be designed, a…

A lifetime of travelling in absence of a permanent residence has led me to a particular outlook on geography, and a fascination with the landscapes of the periphery, which have shaped my itinerary as a photographer. The word “periphery” originally meant “circumference” in Greek: the circumference of a spherical Earth, signifying a leap over the horizon, where the unknown dwells. By definition, the word itself with its connotations of a “boundary” and “transition” largely depends on one’s frame of reference. It is a relative mental structure. The constant reference, or put differently, the centre of the world for me, has always been the Mediterranean. Continually pulled back by the centripetal force of “earth enclosed” sea, I have been simultaneously attracted to the edges of the world; the limits of my…

As part of a decades-long pattern of urban and economic development, industrial activities have been steadily disappearing from American city centers for peripheral areas – the local and global hinterland. This ongoing practice has long been codified in American use-based zoning policy, derived from the perceived incompatibility between industrial uses and most all other urban activities. In cases today when industries are found in urban centers, they self-peripheralize – with borders reinforced by physical and operational measures in the form of corrugated metal or barbed wire fencing and security protocols that restrict access. The reasons for the division are many and seem inevitable – beyond the obvious reduction of noxious industrial impacts like noise, emissions, and congestion, cities benefit from post-industrial redevelopments that bring increased tax revenue and extra-large tracts…

The periphery forms the most active part in China’s urban development. Official numbers state a total amount of over 250,000 hectares of land designated for construction each year, including 188,000 hectares of cultivated land. Although China has taken measures to restrict the annual loss of arable land, the peripheries of cities are still rapidly spreading, leading to an urban sprawl which is more often than not accompanied by generic layouts, providing barely any distinction between the various cities nor identifiable destinations within the city itself On the contrary, the periphery, as the part of the city where the urban fabric meets the countryside, has a high potential of consolidating China’s rural past with its emerging urban future, by creating places of significance where the vernacular landscape patterns can inform the…

Since September 2016 the Brazilian city Sao Jose dos Campos owns a remarkable landmark. The Spanish architects IDOM created an exciting recreation area in a mountainous landscape with many attractions. Bright red handrails act as eye-catching features that guide visitors through the site. The biggest challenge for the two leading architects, Pedro Paes Lira and Eugenio Filipe Teixeira, was the topography of the 125,000-square metre site. Although the area lies within the city of Sao Jose, it is characterized by steep, wooded mountain sides. Instead of moving a lot of earth, the architects decided to use the topography to integrate their design into the landscape. An historic country house on one of the hills had to be preserved and now serves as a cultural centre. The transformation allowed the designers…

OMGEVING was awarded the joint first prize in the design competition for the Han Riverfront at Da Nang City alongside the “NetSong” proposal, which was developed by a joint venture between CPG Consultants, Consulus and Landscape Jardins Asia. Its two coastlines along the East Sea and the Han River Delta characterize Vietnam’s third biggest city, which is currently undergoing vast economic expansion and urban development. The purpose of the competition was to seek the best overall landscape development concepts for the riverfront as well as detailed landscape design solutions for the city centre. The aim is to bring new vitality to the Han River, in order to strengthen the city’s core values of being in harmony with nature, environmentally friendly, economically and culturally vital and providing a good quality of…

Mannheim finds itself in the fortunate position of being able to use many former military areas for urban development: 330 hectares had become available by 2015 and a further 200 will follow. One of these areas is Benjamin Franklin Village on the city’s eastern edge. Together with the Funari and Sullivan Barracks it forms a contiguous area of 144 hectares. In 2013 the city’s municipal council decided to develop this area, which is directly adjacent to forests and fields, into a “unique model community for housing, work, sport, education and energy”. In order to meet these high expectations, an iterative planning procedure was agreed upon: Working together with four international planning firms and diverse experts, members of the public administration developed an overall concept, arrived at an agreement internally and…

When it comes to street furniture the focus is mostly on seating – as in the following selection. Waste bins, bollards or bicycle stands mainly bring order into townscape and in the landscape. They act as dividers between different areas or direct the flow of traffic. Seating furniture prompts people to sit down, enjoy their lunch break, have something to eat and drink, communicate, study a map of the area or take in the view of the landscape, rest, stop and pause for a moment. At places like bus stops or railway stations benches make the wait, an unavoidable nuisance, a little more tolerable. Ranging from light, filigree, almost dematerialised looking chairs to monolithic, almost platform-like sculptures, everything is found in our urban environment and landscapes. Both types exist as…