Table of contents for N.107 in Topos

These are bad times for utopias. We are living in distinctly antiutopian times. In architecture, a high degree of scepticism reigns regarding efforts to imagine the unbuilt, the visionary. In politics, the global upsurge in populism is driven by a false sense of hyper-realism. “Saying things like they really are” is part of the branding that makes the new rightwing movements appealing for many. For us at topos, however, this is all the more reason to dare to take a journey into the unbuilt. For landscape architecture and city planning, a reflection about the boundaries of what there is has the potential to open up new venues of development. Be it new ways in which the landscape and built environment interact, or new ways in which we, as individuals and…

Hao Yan was born in 1994 and has been doing his internship at West 8 since April 2019. After studying Environmental Art Design & Landscape Architecture at Sichuan Agricultural University he started a Pre-master programme of Msc Landscape Architecture and Planning at Wageningen University where he is currently pursuing his Master programme in Landscape Architecture. 1 CAREER STARTING POINT? Right now – at West 8. 2 INFLUENCED BY I have been strongly influenced by the work ethic of my Chinese ink painting Master, an elder and famous artist from my province. 3 WHY LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE? I considered becoming a landscape architect or a chef because both involve creating things for other people to enjoy. 4 DESIGN PRINCIPLES? It is too early for me to talk about principle, I believe principle…

Optimistic visions for the future are in high demand. Unfortunately, the most well intentioned plans and designs for the built environment can lead to unintended consequences. When studying urban planning or architecture at a university, discussing the hopefully positive and possibly negative outcomes of a plan or a design is, essentially, what the studio format is all about. And pedagogy plays an important role in fostering an awareness of related risks among students. It also provides a context that gives budding planners and designers the necessary freedom to learn how to develop bold and innovative projects. Yet, this also occurs within a pedagogic space that is liberated from the constraints of real-life praxis and its long-term social and spatial outcomes. Gaining a sense of one’s own responsibility is key. For…

Since the beginning of time, utopians have been assuming that the world of tomorrow could be a better one, that it could be more just and more peaceful than the world we are living in now. The sociologist Max Weber believed that what is possible will remain unattainable, if we cease to keep reaching for the impossible. Quite swiftly our focus has shifted to one of the major issues of our time, to rapid climate change and the rising appeals to finally take appropriate action. Let’s take a few moments and imagine this scenario: We are finding ourselves in a not too far away future, let’s say in the year 2030. Roughly ten years before, a young Swedish climate activist had – with lots of courage and conviction – asserted…

I live a mile from San Francisco Bay, but you wouldn’t know it by the design of the landscape. There are street trees, parks and gardens that could be anywhere. The bay was once an estuary rich and teeming with a biodiversity that provided sustenance for the local native people. Today, large areas are filled in for buildings and trash, freeways line its edges, and the remaining wetlands are preserved and managed. What has happened to the bay is probably no different than other urban landscapes around the world. As ecological historians suggest, landscapes have already been altered by us. They are hybrid landscapes, formally shaped by our cultural patterns and practices, as well as by the infrastructure we need to inhabit them. We refer to them in double negatives…

Adriaan Geuze is one of the founders of West 8, an international urban design and landscape architectural practice established in 1987. Geuze received a Masters degree in Landscape Architecture at the Agricultural University of Wageningen. After winning the Prix-de-Rome award in 1990, Geuze, with his office West 8, established his international reputation with his unique approach to planning and design of the public environment. 1 CAREER STARTING POINT? At age 12, growing up in the Dutch countryside – a haven of manmade landscapes with hallucinating perspectives and horizons. 2 INFLUENCED BY Landscape architects of the modern era. 3 WHY LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE? It allows for engineering nature and human biotopes. 4 DESIGN PRINCIPLES? We don’t have any, instead we strongly anticipate the context both physically and culturally. 5 WHAT’S YOUR SPECIAL…

Utopianism has had a significant role in human history. Three thousand years separate the description of the Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis (1:26-1:31) – a social dream that encompasses a simple existence free from pain and evil, where food was available and animals were friendly companions – from Paolo Soleri’s visionary Arcology – a complex ecological architecture that “would take the place of the natural landscape inasmuch as it would constitute the new topography to deal with” (Soleri, 1969). In between these two extreme visions, humans have imagined better places to live, alternative physical forms and social settings for communities to thrive, prosper or simply to endure. Utopias have not randomly appeared in human history. They emerged intentionally and in crucial moments to propagate alternate views –…

The city above the ground and the city below the ground are closely linked. It is indeed virtually impossible for any city to exist without buried power lines and cables of information networks, underground water conduits, sewerage pipes, malls, basements, pedestrian tunnels and motorways, in the case of larger cities road and subway tunnels, etc. In the beginning, cities were usually built with materials extracted from their ground, which, by the way, left quarries of huge dimensions beneath our urban feet, with abandoned galleries that sometimes collapsed, causing a disaster. The urban underground is also full of deserted shelters and bunkers, catacombs, etc. Most of these spaces and the networks that link them are now abandoned, but they are still there. There is plenty of room down there. Why not…

Juri Agostinelli has always been fascinated by images and illustrations. Mostly, he enjoys depicting the grotesque side of things, which he finds intruiguing and challenging to work on. Loving animals, video games and music, he often tends to escape big cities to hide in nature for a couple of weeks. juri.agostinelli@gmail.com Darran Anderson is an Irish writer and infidel living in exile, co-editor at 3:AM Magazine and Dogmatika, art writer for Studio International, and occasional writer for The Guardian, Aeon, The Quietus, Gorse, Vice, etc. as well as secretary of the Bureau of Surrealist Research in Paris. www.darrananderson.com Claire Coulter is Manager of the Cluster for Sustainable Cities at the University of Portsmouth. Her research involves exploring how urban SMEs contribute towards social and environmental sustainability both within the cities…

“PHOTOGRAPHIC CONSUMPTION INFLUENCES THE SPATIAL UNDERSTANDING OF PARKS” Since the advent of smartphones and social media, people shooting selfies have become integral parts of cityscapes. And many a Millenial already bases their travel choices on Instagram-friendliness. So, it is hardly surprising that in a country like South Korea, with one of the highest smartphone densities, there is a park that is only viewed through the lens of a camera. But how does this change the perception of places, and thus, their design? Seonyudo Park, an oval-shaped island in the middle of Han River, is the site of a former filtration plant and was transformed into a park in 2002. What makes this park very special is that it has gained enormous popularity as an atmospheric stage for smartphone photography in…

When the European explorers arrived on Vancouver’s shores, they must have thought that they finally entered paradise. The enormous Douglas Fir trees, the beautiful mild rainforest atmosphere, game and salmon in abundance. Today, more than 200 years later, Vancouver houses the largest port in Canada and is the gateway to the Pacific Rim, connecting all major cities via air and sea. Vancouver is not only a hub for goods, but also has an important role to play as a cultural gateway between the Western and Eastern world on the Pacific Rim. However, the city has no major manufacturing industry and is therefore mainly a harbor for Canadian mining goods, oil and wheat from the prairies. In recent years, Vancouver has become known as a city where people retire when they…

The Coast Lake landscape The reference point is Lake Constance and the shoreline from Romanshorn to Rorschach. What is most important for this landscape is that it marks a transition. It is defined on one side (riparian zone, ownership, structures like outdoor swimming pools, boat stations, etc.), but is open towards the other side (view, water level, no borders, etc.). Here the view is directed towards the open, and the interconnection with the other coast and neighboring states becomes noticeable. The Crossroads Urban landscape The intersection links the A1 corridor and St. Gallen’s agglomeration, and creates connections with the Rhine Valley, the Swiss Plateau and neighboring countries: The zone includes the city, agriculture, the agglomeration, villages and cultural landscape. What they all have in common is the great degree of…

Cities are considered places where political self-administration and legal equality had the opportunity to develop, where strangers tend to be tolerated or welcomed, and where modern ways of life take root and bear fruit. They are also places where knowledge and resources can lead to scientific progress and technological innovation. At the same time, cities attract and concentrate risks, while possessing the resources to cope with and adapt to them. When it comes to envisioning the world and the cities of tomorrow, we are faced with the basic human limitation that we can neither know nor see the future. But, what if we could? Worlds of speculative futures are a common theme of Science Fiction (SF), just as cosmic cities. One might ask whether the urban fictions of SF literature…

Water is becoming an increasingly popular element in the design of playgrounds, as shown by the following selection of products and projects. Playful water features are an attractive alternative to slides, seesaws and the like, especially for small children who are not yet able to swim or where space at home is too scarce to set up wading pools. Older children love water as well, because, who doesn’t like to jump around and get wet in the cool water, when summer temperatures are high? The combination of different systems is especially good at providing users with a variety of haptic and cognitive experiences: Hand pumps and channels allow children to use as much water as they want, or to build weirs and dams. They learn about physical and mechanical relationships…

Pianostrada, Via delle Zoccolette 22 facebook.com/pianostrada/ G-Rough, Piazza di Pasquino 69-70 www.g-rough.com Baustelle – Piangi Roma (from Giulia non esce la sera, 2009) www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkOWg29O1gk 1 The Aventine Hill 41°53’03.3”N 12°28’48.7”E This historical high ground, one of the famous “Seven Hills of Rome”, has an incredible concentration of gardens and significant buildings. Climbing up its northern slope from the ancient Circus Maximus, two rows of majestic umbrella pines line an avenue which splits the vast green area into two parts. The Roseto Comunale, or Municipal Rose Garden stands on the grounds of the former Jewish Cemetery of Rome, which was moved outside the city walls in 1934. The layout of the paths still reflects its Jewish heritage, outlining a seven branched candelabrum. On top of the hill the Giardino degli Aranci…