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Urban Forestscapes
Full text linkThis issue of SPOOL elaborates a designerly perspective on urban forestry. Evidence has increased rapidly in the recent years to confirm the agency of trees and urban forests to cure a number of ills besetting urban societies. An expanding range of disciplines, in varying and novel combinations, are turning to an urban version of forestry to re-configure green (and grey) infrastructures, re-write neighbourhoods, re-purpose derelict territories and re-vitalize disparate peripheries. As such, in the face of the growing number of challenges facing cities globally, we see that urban trees and forests are becoming increasingly central to spatial planning and design practise. And yet, with all this work done on the environmental, ecological, technical and recently also urbanism-related aspects of urban forestry (cf. Journal of Landscape Architecture 1/2023), its site-specific, spatial, aesthetical, and cultural dimensions have received less attention in research. For us as SPOOL editors, this is an invitation to focus on trees and forests from the vantage point of landscape architecture and the related thread of SPOOL, called ‘landscape metropolis’. This thematic thread addresses the dynamic, composite, and layered urban landscape with all its biotic and abiotic elements from a design perspective, with the intent to transcend the conventional city-countryside dichotomy, and to understand landscape as a permanent underlying subtext of the urban condition, with repercussions into the remotest corners of the globe. From a landscape metropolis perspective, cities are understood as complex territorial mosaics where the conventional categories of urban and non-urban give way to a mix of material environments in various stages of ‘naturalness’, or to put it another way: natures in various stages of becoming ‘cultured’. Building on the potentials of an alternative reading of the urban territory then, in this issue we feature a number of select authors who elaborate on this condition, expanding on a designerly frame of knowing and doing in urban forestry. Publication formats also help: besides regular papers, visual essays are featured as a lesser-known yet highly appropriate category of exploration for design research
Interdimensional Representations: A Critical and Collaborative Shift of Perspectives within the Highland Boundary Fault Zone
Full text linkThis visual essay explores the translation of complex environments through representations with attributes that are summarized as ‘interdimensional’. These attributes are not yet elaborated, but the term emphasizes that these representations integrate different dimensions of experiencing and understanding various spatial scales and temporal perspectives. The process of producing these representations requires the Landscape Architect to encounter, investigate, and communicate life, materiality, and processes in an approach that values attentiveness and creativity.
The representations discussed were developed in the context of a design studio at the University of Edinburgh, which was elaborated and led by the author and situated within the Highland Boundary Fault Zone in Scotland. A studio collective, composed of Master’s students in landscape architecture over two years, was encouraged to traverse the fault zone, taking into account social, ecological, and geological fractures, as well as points of tension and upheaval.
Operating from within the ‘critical zone’, the late Bruno Latour’s and his collaborators’ provocation has been adopted: that working from this perspective is necessary to recognize that we humans are ‘living among the living’ (Société d’Objets Cartographiques [SOC], 2018). The author’s, and the design studio’s approach encourages experimental drawing and making to develop ‘ecologically explicit’ landscape architecture—landscape interpretations and design propositions—that foreground and support more-than-human worlds
Urban Forest Living Lab - ‘Urban Symbiosis’: Vital Soil as Foundation for Future Proof Urban Forestscapes - Experimenting in Real Time Locations with Different Actors in The Hague
Full text linkThis essay reports on a ‘living lab’ approach to develop a new understanding of below- and above-ground ecological processes as the foundation for robust urban forest habitats. This experimental approach includes a series of design and implementation projects in the city of The Hague, the Netherlands. In contrast to mainstream greening projects led by local governments, these experiments enable urban trees to form more robust forest-like systems by creating a symbiosis between soil (organisms), trees, plant communities, and species. As implemented reference projects are limited, a learning-by-doing methodology was adopted. A transdisciplinary team, consisting of landscape architects/designers, arborists, botanists, municipal and private green space maintenance organizations, has initiated, implemented, and monitored a series of pilot projects. Analysis of ten natural reference locations in the surrounding countryside has helped to define natural and forest-like soil conditions and plant communities for the three living lab locations in the city. Local residents have been engaged in the design, implementation and maintenance process. Sharing insights so far contributes to the transition of reconnecting soil, nature, and people in cities
Untangling Stakeholder Dynamics in Circularity of the Built Environment: A Comics-Based Approach
Full text linkComics are a known method to visually link characters to context through time. This article explores the medium of comics to untangle stakeholder dynamics in the context of a complex theme such as circularity of the built environment.
Circularity of the built environment tailors concepts of circular economy to the field of construction and urban development. Relying mostly on optimization strategies, context-specific characteristics such as stakeholder agency and spatial preconditions are often disregarded as resources in the design of circularity projects. This results in one-size-fits all circularity instruments formalized in generic toolboxes.
Circularity instruments should additionally engage with stakeholders, recognizing complexity and surfacing the resourcefulness of the territory. This comics series follows the researcher from analysis to design hypothesis, clarifying complexity at hand from the researcher perspective, including stakeholder agendas, spatial conditions, barriers and opportunities.
Part of an ongoing action-research project, the self-reflective comics show parts of a researcher’s journey untangling circularity in the built environment in its multiple stakeholder dimensions. It includes data sourced from mixed method research, such as ethnographic fieldwork, semi-structured interviews, and archival research on two Flemish industry parks, Kortrijk-Noord and Leuven-Haasrode.
These comics function as a narrative assemblage method for critical analysis, bringing together different data sources, and rendering our research process on circularity contextual and visual. Additionally, the comic allows us to communicate, challenge, and begin to design with (hidden) stakeholder agency
Drifting Space and Unruly Velocities: More-than-Human Marine Spatial Planning in the Fram Strait
Full text linkThis visual essay explores the translation of complex environments through representations with attributes that are summarized as ‘interdimensional’. These attributes are not elaborated yet, but the term emphasizes that these representations integrate different dimensions of experiencing and understanding various spatial scales and temporal perspectives. The process of producing these representations requires the landscape architect to encounter, investigate, and communicate life, materiality, and processes in an approach that appreciates attentiveness and creativity.
The representations discussed were developed in the context of a design studio at the University of Edinburgh that was elaborated and led by the author and situated within the Highland Boundary Fault Zone in Scotland. A studio collective composed of Master’s students in Landscape Architecture over two years has been encouraged to traverse the fault zone, taking into account social, ecological, and geological fractures, as well as points of tension and upheaval.
Operating from within the ‘critical zone’, the provocation of the late Bruno Latour and his collaborators has been adopted: that working from this perspective is necessary to recognize that we humans are ‘living among the living’ (Société d’Objets Cartographiques [SOC] 2018). The design studio’s approach encourages experimental drawing and making to develop ‘ecologically explicit’ landscape architecture—landscape interpretations and design propositions—that foreground and support more-than-human worlds
Multispecies Collages for Marais Wiels: Mapping More-than-Human Worlds in Brussels
Full text linkThis paper explores directions for a more-than-human conceptualization of urban space. We present five ‘multispecies collages’ for Marais Wiels (Wiels Marshes) in Brussels. This brownfield, inhabited by a wide range of animal species, has been the subject of various construction plans and debates over the past 20 years. In the article, we will first argue that the existing imaginaries for the site, as propelled by the designers and policymakers, fail to acknowledge its multispecies complexity. Such blindness can be linked to the analytical frameworks and representational methods used by urban design professionals. We will then explore an alternative methodology to read Marais Wiels as a space of (non)human cohabitation through a mapping and collage exercise. In doing so, we use alternative data sources and speculative drawing methods. We will show how these multispecies collages, built around five perspectives, reveal a more relational understanding of the site. We conclude by confronting existing spatial imaginaries with our re-reading of Marais Wiels and reflect on the collages as an attempt to bridge the gap between more-than-human theory and urban design practice
Plantations of the past: Tracing the Roots of the Urban Forest as Forestscape in the Early Modern Period of Delft 1500-1800
Full text linkThis paper expands on the term ‘urban forest’ through spatial historical research and via the concept of Forestscape. The city of Delft in the western part of the Netherlands is taken as a case study, with the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries as the sample period. Based on a methodology examining the spatial history of Delft from both a processes and a patterns perspective, we identify six tree planting practices or ‘afforestation events’. These plantings were integral to the early modern cityscape to the extent that the spaces in which they were planted were typologically incomplete without them. We identify tree plantings in group, line, and volume arrangements and posit these arrangements as a foundational scale in a multi-scalar understanding of the urban forest. The term ‘plantation’ formed the leitmotif for these plantings, interpreting natural features such as copses, groves, woods, and forests. The case study also demonstrates how, even in the early modern period, tree arrangements were established for a variety of benefits which ostensibly resonate with the contemporary notion of ‘ecosystem services’, but that were instead part of an alternative sensibility of what ‘city’ and ‘nature’ is. In this frame, the term Forestscape offers a way forward to retroactively interpret the historic urban forest and counter the current binary city-versus-nature discourse. We find that the collection of tree arrangements established in Delft in the period 1500–1800 presents a ‘wooded watermark’ of the city, which in many instances was reanimated with new tree plantings, demonstrating how parts of an urban forest can become a fixture in the morphology of the city and the lives of its citizens. At the regional scale, the extent of tree plantings around Delft with urban ‘roots’ extends far into the urban hinterland, while at the same time, trees and wooded areas with rural ‘roots’ extend well into the urban area. This condition opens a discussion on the inter-relationship between urban and rural realms and challenges the simplistic division between these two worlds apparent in contemporary spatial planning and design
The Forest Figure as Strategic Tool for Urban Transition: Research-by-Design on the Hollow Roads of the Western Witness Hill of Leuven
Full text linkIf the ambition of the Flemish territory is to become more forested, then an approximation is needed between forest and urbanization processes. Forest expansion can only be realized by developing a new understanding between forest and urbanization. This article discusses urban design explorations that stimulate a spatial transformation grafted on the forest as a structuring element of the Western Witness Hills of Leuven, through the ‘forest figure’. The forest figure is explored as a concept able to incorporate and mould urban and forest ambitions into a workable spatial frame
Building Biodiverse Urban Forests in the Post-Soviet City
Full text linkThis visual essay outlines how Ruderal, a studio based in Tbilisi, Georgia, has developed new approaches to urban forestry applicable to the legacy of Soviet-era forests. The collapse of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic and the resulting rapid privatization led to the reduction and degradation of Tbilisi’s public spaces. Ruderal’s approach to urban forestry is presented in three projects: the Mtatsminda Pilot Project (including Narikala Ridge), the Betania House Forest Garden, and the Arsenal Oasis Project. The projects illustrate how a new practice of urban forestry has grown from the limitations and opportunities of Tbilisi’s urban context. Ruderal’s practice pursues interventions at multiple scales along the following forestry principles: 1) grafting into baseline conditions; 2) utilising and expanding the ‘fertile section’; 3) incorporating genetic diversity and species competition
Do You See the Forest for All the Trees? Searching for Alnarp’s Urban Forestscapes
Full text linkRecent sustainability agendas come with the dual mission of responding to climate change and the loss of biodiversity. One strong trend is the increase in the number of trees in urban environments, initiatives often agglomerated under the label of urban forestry. The main focus of this article is to contribute to the development of this discourse by exploring the designerly aspects of urban forestry. This is done by unpacking the concept of ‘urban forestscapes’ as a dynamic and relational concept, derived from a landscape perspective that opens up to spatio-temporal, synthetic, and trans-scalar approaches, and further developed through a process of embedding the research both in relation to literature and in situ. Two wooded areas are studied at the Alnarp campus of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), in the Malmö- Copenhagen conurbation. The campus holds the first landscape laboratory in Scandinavia, a real-world experimentation site dedicated to the study of urban forestry and woods. The article suggests a recognition of the interpretative openness of the concept in addition to its hybrid qualities with the synthesizing power of overcoming divisions like that of nature/culture or forest/city. The results include insights into experiential characteristics of urban forestscapes as well as methodological considerations