Table of contents for Topos 97 in Topos

In the context of the many competitions that have been grandly celebrated in Italy over the last few years, the latest decision regarding the new “Parco Centrale” in Prato really stands out. This initiative generated significant interest at home and abroad during the spring and summer of 2016 – especially because it appeared likely that the successful proposal would be realised by a winning applicant with responsibility for the complete planning process. The new Parco Centrale is to be built in a strategic position on the outskirts of the historical old town, on the site of the former hospital that, as an eyesore from the 1960s to the 1980s, is more than ready to be demolished. In addition to a socioeconomic renewal of the inner city, the area is to…

Today, not even thirty years after the founding of the special economic zone, Shenzhen and its neighbouring cities in the South China Pearl River Delta are among the largest and fastest growing urbanised regions in the world. The whole zone was changed completely in the shortest time possible, with even the surrounding area marked by rapid urbanisation. Yet despite numerous master plans, the development of many areas in the special economic zone was largely informal and unplanned. Transformation of the landscape This process of urbanisation drastically changed the morphology and the water systems of the original landscape within just three decades. Rivers were turned into canals and relocated underground, while the natural hilly terrain was levelled. On the coast and the border to Hong Kong, the buildings soon became tightly…

“New and old shall become one”. “History lives. The future is formed”. “Experience a new kind of urbanisation”. These are just a few of the slogans used to advertise one of the largest urban development projects in Munich. Layout and demolition work for the Werksviertel started in 2015 in the Berg am Laim district, where old and exposed industrial structures provide an aesthetic that is rarely found in the Bavarian state capital. Representing one of the last remaining large-scale expanses of land close to the city centre, this one-time industrial area is now being transformed. The site covers around 40 hectares and is owned by a combination of the city authorities and eight other proprietors, all of whom are involved in the conversion project. The heterogeneous ownership structure and the…

On 17 October 2015, an amazing event celebrated the Grande Cretto in the small town of Gibellina in the Bèlice valley in south-western Sicily: One of the biggest and most important land-art works worldwide was finally completed 30 years from the beginning of its construction. The opening took place on the 100th birthday of its author, Italian artist Alberto Burri (born 1915, died 1995), and was accompanied by a participative performance, “Audioghost68”, by Giancarlo Neri and Robert Del Naja that attracted more than a thousand people who walked all night through the “wrinkles” of this art work. In 1981, Alberto Burri was invited by Ludovico Corrao, the mayor of Gibellina, to build a sculpture in a new town that had been relocated on a plain 20 kilometers away from its…

Presenting the plans for the Fresh Kills landfill in Topos 51, James Corner described his “lifescape” to transform the former New York City landfill within a 30-year timeline as “new forms of interactions between people, nature, technology and life.” The Fresh Kills concept identifies venues and facilities locations for events, roads, pathways, and new habitats. Layers of activities, circulation, and landscape provide an open framework for the future. Corner was less interested in developing a specific vision for the future park; his design focus was to create a process rather than a final object to be completed in a distant future. This open, process-oriented approach, intertwining diverse aspects of urbanized spatial systems, places the Fresh Kills project at the core of the landscape urbanism discussion. A NGO for supporting park…

The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) meets for its annual conference at a different venue each year. The 2016 event took place from 21 to 24 October in New Orleans – the cradle of jazz, the “Big Easy”, but above all, the city that after eleven years is still struggling to come to terms with the effects of Hurricane Katrina. Around 6,000 participants came together to discuss the current challenges in landscape architecture under the motto “A celebration of place”. At the end of August 2005, New Orleans was devastated not by the hurricane itself, but by the tidal waves that were whipped up by the immense winds. The dyke system broke, leaving 80 percent of the city under water. More than 1,800 people died and tens of thousands…

In August 2015 the Guardian architecture critic Rowan Moore ranked the Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park as one of the ten best parks in the world. Yet this icon of contemporary landscape architecture had already found recognition outside of specialist circles. In 2005 the Museum of Modern Art in New York used an exhibition entitled “Groundswell: Constructing the Contemporary Landscape” to showcase modern landscape architecture to an interested public. The park landscape on a former industrial site in Duisburg was one of the projects shown in the exhibition, while this magnum opus from Peter Latz has also come to feature regularly in expert discussions. Now Latz has called on more than 20 years of personal — experience to pen the book Rust Red – Landscape Park Duisburg-Nord. He seeks to present a…

One of the most famous squares in the world is shining brighter than ever before. St. Peter’s Square in Rome now features 132 LED floodlights, helping to reduce energy consumption by up to 70 percent. The square was extensively renovated in 2011 and the new lighting concept was inaugurated in October this year. The luminaires offer two lighting scenarios, with an everyday setting and a brighter mode for special occasions such as Easter or the election of a new Pope. St. Peter’s Square is located directly in front of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Italian capital and was created by Gian Lorenzo Bernini between 1656 and 1667. The elliptical forecourt covers 48,000 square metres and can hold around 400,000 people.…

In the eyes of many, Rotterdam is the Netherlands’ true architectural capital. While the inner city of Amsterdam is firmly beholden to the protection of its historical buildings and monuments, Rotterdam has made a virtue out of the destruction it suffered during World War II by engaging in constant experiments. Results brought forth by this exploratory principle can be observed in the city centre as well as in the southern harbour zones. For some time past Rotterdam has been moving towards a new phase of urban construction, one that could be described as a conquest of the third dimension. In fact, the steps towards a Dutch cité contemporaine which the city is currently taking, have been in preparation over the last 20 years. The first phase of this port city’s…

The vast majority of America’s single-family housing was built in the 20th century with values and spatial requirements that met the social, cultural, design, and economic needs and dreams of America’s working and middle classes. As great numbers of Latino immigrants move into these homes, they bring attitudes towards housing, land, and public space that often conflict with how the neighborhoods and houses were originally planned, zoned, designed, and constructed. Latinos moving into single-family homes add cultural living patterns to American spatial forms, creating a “Latino vernacular.” This vernacular offers cultural, economic, and environmental solutions to residents’ needs as they customize and personalize their homes. Every change that Latinos make to their homes, no matter how small, has meaning and purpose, representing the struggles, triumphs, everyday habits, and beliefs of…

On Cairn Street, Michael Simon, sociologist and head of the local Community Land Trust, points out the five houses that started the whole project. These have lots of plants in their windows, and façades painted in lively colours. A table has been set out in the street, the trees decorated. Here they live: five women who decided to take things into their own hands and become active. Or as one of them puts it: Things started happening when they chose to live their life in public. There is a history of strong political women in Liverpool. Eleanor Rathbone – who introduced the family allowance (today child benefit) – was part of the women’s-rights movement and Liverpool City Councillor for Granby Ward. Work was always transient in a city with docks…

It is a warm October day. The summer harvest has finished, and most garden plots are cleared. There is not much movement around the orchards, but a few gardeners are starting to plant calçots – a green onion variety that is grilled over open fire to make the famous regional Calçotada. An elderly gardener greets us while passing with a bucket of cat food for the four-legged residents of the Hortes de Baix in Caldes de Montbui, a town 30 kilometers north of Barcelona. Roman and agricultural past The municipality of 17,000 inhabitants still preserves the charm of small Catalan towns and, despite its proximity to Barcelona, has not yet been affected by growing tourism, although there has been an increased effort to boost the local economy through the town’s…

“Tomorrow Landscapes”: The 9th Barcelona International Biennial of Landscape Architecture, which took place in Barcelona from 29 September to 1 October, used this title as the stimulus for a debate about the future direction of the profession. The contribution of landscape architecture to the energy transition and the creation of new energy landscapes, as well as the importance of access, use and common property in the digital age, were also discussed. Anuradha Mathur from the University of Pennsylvania presented new ways of investigating and designing shifting landscapes using examples from the Mississippi River and Mumbai. The potential of landscape architecture in an age of increasing displacement and migration was revealed in Gabriella Trovato’s work. As Professor at the American University of Beirut, she has conducted research and organised student workshops…

September 2016 saw 10 Design announced as the winner of the competition for a mixed-use development in the Chinese city of Zhuhai – and construction has already started on the project, which stretches over more than two square kilometres. The key feature of the design is a green belt that forms a pedestrian-friendly connecting element within the urban fabric. The centre of the “Hengqin Wanxiang World” will be called the “Experience Central Square” and is set to feature a diverse mix of amenities such as the Central Green Belt, a retail axis, a waterfront promenade and a convention centre. “Sustainable design is a key driver for the master plan design. The first concept is to minimise the energy requirements through simple passive solar principles. Another goal is to reduce the…

“The most radical transformation is that between being and not being. When nothing turns into something, and something into nothing, then what we see is the pure force of change altogether.” Disappearance There are not many spatial arrangements that reflect on their relationship with similar intensity as the arts and music festival Burning Man, taking place annually in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. Burning Man is the temporary erection of a city for some 70,000 fun- and enlightenment-seeking people from all over the world. This virtual city grows out of nothing just before Labor Day in the hot desert sand. And – transformation par excellence in the sense above – it disappears just as rapidly as it rises. After one week, there will once again be only desert. This…

When City Engineer Gary Lee Moore stood with a dozen officials in hardhats watching the first pylon of the Sixth Street Viaduct turn to rubble in February 2016, the demolition marked a decisive turning point for transportation infrastructure in Los Angeles. A transition was underway, from a post-war era when infrastructure was once the exclusive domain of civil engineering to a broadened notion of civic ideals that embrace the public realm, the commons, and attitudes towards multi-modal mobility. The new Ribbon of Light Viaduct will not only replace the decaying Sixth Street Viaduct, it will also create a bold new connector as social collector that will finally incorporate, rather than disregard, the rich cultural, economic, and environmental complexities inherent in 21st-century Los Angeles. Iconic legacy The original 1932 Sixth Street…

In 2003, an additional runway was installed at Schiphol airport near Amsterdam. Its neighbors then faced a new kind of noise pollution: that of airplanes taxiing. This specific noise has large wavelengths, and therefore easily “rolls” over the terrain, the flat Dutch polder landscape being the ideal circumstances under which noise can spread. The Dutch government decided that a reduction of 10 dB (the bisection of perceived loudness) must therefore be attained. A large screen would have been the most obvious solution to repel the noise, but Schiphol aimed for more, organizing a design competition. However, submissions were unsatisfying. Schiphol and Stichting Mainport en Groen, a foundation dedicated to making the airport region more sustainable, approached Dutch landscape architects H+N+S. They took the landscape as a starting point, a new…

Play and fitness units for children and adults Sports and fitness equipment from Hags is designed to make exercise fun – for children and adults. The DNA structured product is a unique piece of equipment for any play area. The Climber provides a new type of horizontal climbing challenge that helps develop balance, strength, coordination and motor skills for children between the ages of five and twelve. This multi-user product has twisted rungs with ropes to support children during play and is great for social interaction. The 5.89-metrewide structure itself is made from powder-coated steel and steel core combination rope to make it strong and durable. The new range of low-impact fitness products is devised for people of all abilities. They are designed to aid recovery for those in need…