Table of contents for N. 117 in Topos

Client: The Trust for Governors Island Team: West 8, with Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects As a conversion of a former abandoned Millitary base, the spaces on Governors Island are designed with the necessary infrastructure to evolve and adapt in time. With longevity as the ultimate ambition, as well as adaptive reuse of existing architecture, the changing and diverse programming on the island - from arts events to urban agriculture workshops – engages communities to thrive. One of the main principles in the creation of Governors Island was holistic sustainability – the creation and preservation of 87 acres of open space combined with the idea of making this area accessible to the millions of inhabitants of the city, to achieve improved liveability and to offer a rich array of active and passive recreation…

Client: Shanghai Huangpu River Banks Development Construction Investment (Holdings) Co., Ltd. Team: West 8, Tongji Architectual Design (Group) Co., Ltd, Shanghai China Communications Water Transportation Design & Research Co., Ltd. One of the largest public green spaces of Shanghai’s City Centre, the Xinhua Waterfront Park stretches 1.9km along the Huangpu River. It was one of the first parks delivered as part of the 21km public waterfront transformation called the Huangpu River Open Space Project, which sought to transform Shanghai’s river banks into a green public waterfront. Industrial activities were relocated outside of the city, and the parks provide respite from the congestion and density of the city centre. West 8’s design took advantage of existing flood defense structures to create a multi-layered park with different levels capable of accommodating different scales of…

Client: Rijkswaterstaat; Consortium: Levvel (a joint venture of BAM, Van Oord, and Rebel) with Benthem Crouwel Architects The Afsluitdijk is a dam and highway that connects the Dutch provinces of Noord-Holland and Friesland. Originally constructed in the 1930’s, it was a massive engineering feat, responsible for changing the Zuiderzee from salt to fresh water, allowing the creation of new polders for food production, while simultaneously protecting them and a large amount of the Netherlands from flooding. Since 2018, West 8, together with Benthem & Crouwel, have been the aesthetic design team for Levvel, responsible for the raising and the expansion of the dike and introduction of pumps to prepare the almost century-old infrastructure for sea level rise of the coming century. By doing so we introduced a systemic approach aimed at layers…

DRAWING FROM GLOBAL EXAMPLES, MATTHEW SKJONSBERG OUTLINES HOW PARK SYSTEMS AROUND THE WORLD ACT AS RESPONSIVE INFRASTRUCTURES THAT BRING TOGETHER COMMUNITIES. THE CREATION OF THE ‘MISSING LINK’ BETWEEN EXISTING PARKS IS AN ESSENTIAL APPROACH TO DESIGNING PARK SYSTEMS AND CAN ACHIEVE SPATIAL CONTINUITY AND INTERCONNECTIVITY BETWEEN ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS PREVIOUSLY FRAGMENTED BY HUMAN SETTLEMENTS. WEIMAR. The creation of the “Park an der Ilm” was a process closely linked with Wolfgang von Goethe’s life and work in Weimar, and provides the first example we have found in the historic record of a deliberate park system for public use. Created as a Landschafts-park in the style of an English landscaped garden, it is thought to have been directly inspired by Goethe’s 1776 visit to the English Garden of Wörlitz – which had such…

HOW DO WE ADJUST OUR UNDERSTANDING OF KNOWLEDGE IN ORDER TO STAY CONNECTED? PIETER UYTTENHOVE PRESENTS THE ARGUMENT THAT THE EVOLUTION AND MIGRATION OF URBAN DATA FROM PHYSICAL TO DIGITAL IS CAUSING A NUMBER OF SHIFTS IN THE WAY OUR CITIES DEVELOP. For centuries, grand, lyrical descriptions in travelogues, chronicles and atlases praised large cities for their economic and administrative authority, the splendour of their architecture, the wealth of their trade, the robustness of their ramparts, and the elegance of their inhabitants. Portraits and bird’s-eye views depicted these cities from their best vantage point. Large maps illustrated fortressed borders, and graphically indicated a hierarchy of special importance, highlighting churches, monuments, estates, public works and other notables. It was mainly artists, civil servants, writers, and historians who created this narrative –…

The Retro series by Grijsen Grijsen presents a new line of street furniture: The Retro series is characterized by a design style from the past that has been given a modern twist. The line of street furniture was designed for a project in the German village of Alpen. All the products from Grijsen, including the Retro-series, have a fully modular construction. In the case of the Retro series, the bench forms the basis of this line. The furniture is made of hot-dip galvanized and two-layer powder coated steel and is finished with a seat and backrest made of tropical hardwood (durability class 1). The design of the bench has been extended to the designs of the other furniture in this series. This means that the round shapes and warm colors…

To be sustainable, aesthetically appropriate and create exactly the right welcoming lighting effect – nothing less than that was the requirement of Ravn's architects for the outdoor lighting when they designed the new headquarters of shoe manufacturer ECCO in Tønder, Denmark. Inspired by the traditional construction techniques of the rural marshland of southern Denmark, the contemporary building designed by Ravn embodies sustainable practices, using solar power and geothermal heat. When designing ECCO's new global marketing headquarters in Tønder, Denmark, Ravn Architects wanted to reflect the innovation and quality that the international shoe manufacturer is famous for. For outdoor lighting, ECCO and Ravn Architecture therefore selected three designs from Louis Poulsen's Flindt collection: The Flindt Bollard, the tall Flindt Plaza and the Flindt Wall. The Flindt Bollard has a minimal, cylindrical…

ABOVE, BELOW AND ONLINE On the water, the “Made in China” phenomenon and its permutations emerged. The physical space between production and consumption began to grow, enabled by the efficiencies of large scale global shipping networks and canal-building of gargantuan scales. At our home base in the city of Rotterdam, the presence of this shipping network is unavoidable and we therefore paid homage to its marine identity. We led masterplans and implemented designs transforming formerly industrial and polluted traffic-filled waterfronts into urban jewels in Toronto, Shanghai, and Madrid. Above and below ground, transportation alternatives to automobiles emerged in countries defined by a century of car-centric design. The high speed train network in Europe arrived and electric cars, scooters, and bikes hit the streets. Clients began asking us how to bury…

Client: Municipality of Madrid Team: Burgos & Garrido / Porras La Casta / Rubio & Álvarez-Sala / West 8 A radical intervention in Madrid’s urban fabric: the placement of the large waterfront highway below ground, in return, delivered over 360 acres of new public space in the heart of Madrid, along the Manzanares river. The team elaborated the winning masterplan and led the implementation of the 6.7km long site, which spans two riverbanks, and six neighbourhoods. Madrid Rio includes 8 sports facilities, 15 playgrounds, 29km of bike lanes, 2 open-air event spaces, as well as 8 cafes and restaurants, woven together by circuits of pathways and parks. Twenty new bridges provide fine grain transversal connections across the river and bring communities in closer contact with one another, while integrating three key historic…

Client: Rijkswaterstaat Team: Boskalis, Martens en van Oord, van Hattem en Blankevoort, Gebr. van Kessel, ipv Delft and West 8 The Noordwaard flood bypass project was the largest of the 27 Ruitme voor de Rivier (Room for the River) projects in the Rhine river delta. As part of the planning team, West 8 devised an alternative plan based on controlled inundation and raising of existing farm houses to allow for four different flood scenarios to occur, while preserving the cultural landscape and agrarian functions of the land. Interconnected trail circuits connected by forty bridges were added, which are fully accessible even in times of high water. They make the engineering and effects of flooding visible and have even formed a new infrastructure for “flood tourism” during extreme weather events. The pump houses…

CHANGING CLIMATES DEMAND CHANGING MODES OF REPRESENTATION AND COLLABORATION IN ORDER TO HELP GUIDE NATIONAL AND CITY SCALE ADAPTATION PLANNING. JESSE M. KEENAN, MARGARITA JOVER & OMAR ALI INTRODUCE A SERIES OF PLANNING METHODS AND HOW THEY CAN BE HARNESSED BY CITIZENS, DECISION MAKERS AND DESIGNERS OF THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT ALIKE. As countries and cities seek more robust flows of climate-related information to inform project selection, design and implementation, a digital civic universe (DCU) offers a public domain for engagement, performance benchmarking and validation. Whether it is projecting the real-time measurement of carbon equivalent emissions of an urban landscape or providing a central platform for public commentary on the spatial distribution of resources in an adaptation plan, a DCU offers the prospect for an infinite number of applications that shape…

WITH THE RISE OF THE SMART CITY, KATHARINE WILLIS OUTLINES HOW WE NEED TO ENSURE OPEN ACCESS FOR ALL RESIDENTS IN ORDER TO AVOID EXCLUDING PEOPLE, COMMUNITIES AND PLACES – A PROCESS THAT REQUIRES THINKING ABOUT BOTH THE DIGITAL AND SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURES IN PLACE. “Therefore, we refuse to be consumers, client and informants only, and reclaim agency towards the processes, algorithms and systems that shape our world. We need to know how decisions are made, we need to have the information that is at hand; we need to have direct access to the people in power, and be involved in the crafting of laws and procedures that we grapple with every day.” (The Smart Citizen Manifesto; Veenkamp, 2020) The smart city promises a new model of integrated urban design that…

IN COPENHAGEN, A CULTIVATED INFRASTRUCTURAL SYSTEM OF ARCHITECTURAL BRIDGES HELPS THE CITY COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE, WHILE CREATING BEAUTIFUL NEW URBAN CONNECTING ARTERIES. CAMILLA RICHTER-FRIIS VAN DEURS DISCUSSES HER EXPERIENCE, OBSERVED BENEFITS AND APPLIED METHODOLOGY FOR ‘COPENHAGENIZING’ CITIES. Getting to work or school, delivering goods, bringing children to kindergarten, or for the joy of experiencing the city on a sunny Sunday – cycling in Copenhagen is a dominating feature of the cityscape. The city offers a variety of favorable cycling conditions such as short distances and a flat terrain along with an extensive and well-designed system of cycle tracks. This has earned it a reputation as one of the most – possibly the most – bicycle-friendly cities in the world. Most Copenhageners choose the bicycle because it’s the easiest and fastest…

INFRASTRUCTURE PLANNING IS INHERENTLY ORIENTED TOWARDS THE FUTURE, REQUIRING ANTICIPATION AND PROJECTION. IT SHAPES BOTH THE FORM OF OUR BUILT ENVIRONMENT AND THE WAYS WE RELATE TO LANDSCAPES AND ONE ANOTHER. ZANNAH MAE MATSON PROVIDES A CASE STUDY FOR HOW THE RESULTS MIGHT BE DIFFERENT FROM WHAT WE IMAGINED. In the summer of 2019 I spent time travelling along a stretch of road in the southeastern piedmont of Colombia. No more than a muddy track, the road is passable only by trucks and Land Cruisers and the occasional dirt bike that bounces along on the heavily rutted surface. Depending on the season and the day’s rainfall, travel can either leave you in a cloud of red dust or mired in a pit of mud, asking passersby for help to get…

ADRIAAN GEUZE: Hello Nadim. It’s lovely to speak with you! In both of our practices, I believe we share the attitude of working across disciplines and wearing different titles: landscape architect, architect, engineer, artist, poet. The final outcomes and the processes behind a project influence their classification as art, infrastructure, or architecture. NADIM KARAM: I see myself as an artist who can do projects at the scale of an architectural project, of a building. Architects look at the context of things, study the different things around them; aspects that artists usually don’t tend to look into. If you want to look at the poetic part, the dream part, the dialogue with the city, there is an artistic side to my work. The architectural component is to make sure that the…

THE WEST 8 ROUTE…

Client: Houston Botanic Garden Team: West 8, Clark Condon Associates Inc., Overland Partners, Walter P Moore Engineers, Sweeney & Associates Inc. A world-class, ‘only-in-Houston’ experience in the bayou city. Conceived over thirty years ago by a small constituency of local Houstonians, Houston Botanic Garden takes its inspiration and structure from the best qualities of its location and transforms a former golf course into a living museum of plants. Bringing the 132 acre design to reality, the design team developed a mechanism to passively rehabilitate the clay soils of the bayou waterways through a series of sacrificial cover crops and experimental spore treatments. Elevating the existing topography to bring the new gardens and permanent structures out of the 100 year floodplain and creating dedicated wetland gardens, the garden celebrates the Bayou environment.…

Coolsingel – Client: Gemeente Rotterdam Design: West 8, Gemeente Rotterdam Toronto Central Waterfront – Client: Waterfront Toronto Design: West 8 + DTAH The before-and-after photos of these two sister projects in Canada and the Netherlands illustrate the innovative transformation of two urban streets by re-balancing them away from automobile-centric design toward inclusive, holistic streetscapes. In both projects, the design aim was to reduce the lanes of vehicular traffic from 4 to 2, delivering wider pedestrian boulevards with high quality natural stone paving, world class bi-directional cycling facilities for users on wheels, as well as bi-directional public transit tracks in the centre. More than just transportation projects, both Queens Quay Boulevard and the Coolsingel are celebrated for their placemaking qualities by employing signature paving patterns, seating and lighting designs to imbue the streets with pride,…

Client: Consortium Avenue2 (Ballast Nedam, Strukton) and Projectbureau A2 (Rijkswaterstaat, Provincie Limburg, Gemeente Maastricht en Meerssen) Partners: Ballast Nedam, Strukton, Arcadis, Humble Architecten, dGmR, in collaboration with Bex* Communication The “burial” of the A2 highway and transformation of the surface into a generous new 2.3km long public park landscape delivered improvements to Maastricht’s urban living environment at a city-wide scale. To increase the project’s feasibility, West 8 proposed a two-layered, double-stacked motorway below ground in order to create room for the development of 1000 new residential units above ground that border the Groene Loper and increase the density of Maastricht within the city’s limits. The noise, pollution and traffic nuisance caused by the highway were replaced by a “promenade plantée”: four to eight rows of lime trees and a cohesive furnishings palette give…

From a global vaccine rollout and data sharing to gridlocked ports and grounded air travel, rarely have the possibilities and limitations of infrastructure received as much public attention as they have in 2021. So, if not now, when it is time to rethink urbanism? To reflect upon how to read cities and built environments? Upon how to design future-proof landscapes? Our contribution to this “rethinking and reflecting” is CLOVER21 – a cumulative manifesto for designing the city of the 21st century – a cultivated, landscape-foreward, open, vibrant, ecological and responsive city. CLOVER21 is a layered series of categories for self-reflection and analysis, a moniker for putting overarching goals at the forefront of every intervention. Moreover, it is a mindset for how to read cities and built environments, and a way…

IN THE COMING DECADES, THE LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE ENERGY LANDSCAPE WILL BE FUNDAMENTALLY RECONFIGURED. CULTIVATED INFRASTRUCTURES CAN MEDIATE EVOLVING CULTURAL AND ECOLOGICAL VALUES HOLISTICALLY. DOUGLAS ROBB DISCUSSES HOW REGIONAL-SCALE TRANSFORMATIONS NECESSITATE US TO RETHINK THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HUMAN BEINGS AND THEIR ENVIRONMENT. Landscape architects increasingly find themselves at the centre of complex debates on decarbonization. We are repeatedly told that our current historical moment offers an unprecedented opportunity to “build back better” and to envision a more just and sustainable society centered on the decarbonization of the economy.3 As a generalist discipline committed to the preservation of social, aesthetic, economic, and environmental values, landscape architecture is uniquely positioned to guide the implementation of the low-carbon transition. However, debates surrounding net-zero decarbonization raise a number of questions concerning landscape architecture’s evolving…

COVERING KEY STAGES AND CHALLENGES ACROSS 50 YEARS, IAIN TUCKETT SHARES HOW BRINGING TOGETHER RESOURCES FROM THE PRIVATE AND PUBLIC REALM AND, MOST OF ALL, THE COMMUNITY ENABLED SENSITIVE DEVELOPMENT AIMED AT OPENING AND TRANSFORMING LONDON’S SOUTH BANK. London grew up on the north bank, yet it was only during the industrial revolution that fields and marshes to the south were replaced by wharves, factories, and densely packed housing for the poor – for the poor because the Thames was polluted with sewage and flooded frequently, while the air was fouled by smoke from countless chimneys. Concerns about public health sparked by regular outbreaks of cholera led, in 1855, to the establishment of London’s first city-wide infrastructure body: the Metropolitan Board of Works. The Board was charged with construction of…

This October the doors to the new Edvard Munch Museum in Oslo were opened. The museum is already a global destination for experiencing Edvard Munch's art and life. Of course, in a place like this – with thousands of daily visitors – the museum's seating furniture also has to be both durable and robust, but at the same time comfortable and blend into the museum's interior. It was Vestre who rose to the task and created the MUNCH series. The 13 storey, 58 metres tall building was designed by the Spanish architectural firm Estudio Herreros and includes eleven exhibition halls. Herrero's design is based on the idea of a tower-shaped museum, where the main functions are organized vertically. With its impressive height and the distinctly inclined top section, the tower…