Happy Birthday - Frederick Law Olmsted Sr.

In honor of Frederick Law Olmsted Sr's birthday today, April 26 (1822, so let's call it a round 190!), I would remind folks to go out and read more about the man in the great 2011 biography 'Genius of Place' by Justin Martin  (Da Capo Press, 2011). Genius of Place traces Olmsted from his beginnings in 1822 up until his death in 1903.  While most well known as the creator of Central Park and in some circles as the father of landscape architecture, it's telling that much of Olmsted's life was spent in pursuits aside from park-making and design - in areas of farming, public health, journalism and the literary arts.  Martin does a solid job of showing the quirks and uncommon path that Olmsted took through his varied life - captured in the subtitle "Abolitionist, Conservationist, and Designer of Central Park".

Also worthy of reading is the 2000 biography by Rybczynski  'A Clearing in the Distance' and Erik Larson's more fantastical page-turner on the 1893 Worlds Columbian Exposion in Chicago in 'The Devil in the White City'.  Olmsted, as the father of the profession is featured in any manner of great landscape history books (i read a good portion of the entire 7? Volume 'Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted' in college) - but for the less nerdy and bibliophilic there's plenty of summary material and locations to delve into.

While we often question is pastoral scenic aesthetic sensibilities (he was a man of his time), there is much to learn in his tireless work ethic, social sensibility, and focus on ecological as well as public health -- providing models for issues that we still grapple with today.  We should also emulate his shrewdness in navigating messy politics to further his agenda and get things done, which is something we could use a lot more of these days in our somewhat timid, politically safe professional bunkers.

Celebrate the man and the profession, first by spelling the name correctly, and justly honoring his contribution to our profession, our cities, and our imagination.

Waterscape Urbanism

I was struck by a recent mis-use of the term landscape urbanism in this article from the Atlanta Journal Constitution on the need for climate change inspired floating homes.  Quoting  Thai landscape architect Danai Thaitakoo on the need for dealing with innundation.

"Climate change will require a radical shift within design practice from the solid-state view of landscape urbanism to the more dynamic, liquid-state view of waterscape urbanism," says Danai, who is involved in several projects based on this principle. "Instead of embodying permanence, solidity and longevity, liquid perception will emphasize change, adaptation."

While amphibious architecture is nothing new, and i agree that it will become more common in the future there are two points.  The first is minor - that of the mis-characterization of landscape urbanism as 'solid-state' and 'embodying permanence, solidity and longevity'.  If there's any flavor of urbanism that emphasizes change and adaptation, it's landscape urbanism - so i think there's a disconnect in that above paragraph.  Just saying.

Second, and more troubling, is the idea that we must react to climate change by building floating structures - rather than address the topic at hand.  It's similar in nature to dealing with semi-urban forest fires by designating fire-safety clearing zones of tinder and brush around houses, rather than looking at not building homes in these areas - or heaven forbid - letting them burn.  Or coming up with vertical farms due to our misguided agricultural subsidies and policies that make it impossible to grow a variety of food on terra firm.   

Its cause.  Not effect.  We spend way too much time on solutions to problems and calling it need-inspired innovation - rather than getting to the real root of the problems themselves.  May not be as press-worthy of sexy, but at least its real.

To New Horizons

Oh the sick and twisted future... a film from General Motors in 1940 entitled 'To New Horizons' talking about the world twenty years later.  Yes indeed, "Man continually strives to replace the old, with the new!" 

Spotted on one of my favorite new sites - Copenhagenize.  Check it out.

Siftings: 01.11.12

"“All great art is born of the metropolis.” - Ezra Pound

 :: image via NY Times


A great little snapshot on urban serendipity from the NY Times that looks at the accidental 'curation' of spaces that the urban environment yields, such as the framed view from the subway to the Brooklyn Bridge.  Perhaps the uniformity of the grid is part of the magic, as the NYT also talks about the 200th Anniversary of the Manhattan Grid, along with the exhibition at the Museum of the City.  And speaking of paving here in Portland, local group Depave got some nice coverage on OPB for their continued work on rolling back pavement in the city.  As for making money on the urban agriculture and gardens - a study in Vancouver, BC finds that it is still a challenge to make a living wage farming, even in the city.  Perhaps we can lobby for urban farm subsidies?

:: image via Museum of the City

Nate Berg at the Atlantic Cities sums up Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne's year-long project to explore his city through its literature, and some of his conclusions on where we stand.  As quoted in the Atlantic article:

"“What the books have suggested to me,” Hawthorne argues, “is that we really don’t have – and need – a new framework for understanding the city at this moment in its history as it undergoes this transition.”

A review of his most recent reading of 'Los Angeles Plaza: Sacred and Contested Space' can be found here - which is an interested exploration of the role of space, and the role of social status, on the way we interpret urban histories.  Related, and probably not big news, but people are less enamored with the suburbs, and are re-urbanizing, in this case, Philadelphia along with living in more dense types of housing. 

:: image via Philly.com

More on Occupy, with the recent flurry of Global and US occupations bringing into question the 'limits' of how public spaces are.  As mentioned in the story:

"The Occupy Wall Street movement showed there are often limits to how long one can stay in the town square of a “free” state to express one’s opinion. Various kinds of force were used to get people out of New York’s Zuccotti Park."

An interesting article from The Dirt on the $50 million!!!!! dollars of planning documents and designs for the Orange County Great Park, which has failed to yield much in terms of output.  It brings into question the time-scale on these massive endeavors, and how much needs to happen to create a 'park' in a traditional sense to satisfy some - while allowing space (and budgets) to evolve over decades.

:: image via The Dirt

Finally, a new competition from the Land Art Generator Initiative asks how renewable energy can be beautiful with a planned site at the Freshkills Park - which has a similar time-scale to the Great Park above.  And Freshkills may be an apt model for Mexico City, who is planning to close their massive landfill... And for the squeamish, a new report from the National Research Council changes the tune of reclaimed wastewater (aka toilet to tap) from a 'option of last resort' to a viable strategy that poses no more health risks than other sources.  Drink up!

Siftings 01.06.12

Another round of Siftings from the past couple of days.  Starting off with a couple of Occupy-related posts, including a great article from Saskia Sassen and Hans Haacke from Artforum entitled 'Imminent Domain'.  The first sentence - "OCCUPYING IS NOT THE SAME as demonstrating..." points out a recent and annoying trend of calling any sort of protest an occupation.  It diminishes the act of occupying to do so.  Worth reading, but a snippet I will include:

"To occupy is to remake, even if temporarily, territory’s embedded and often deeply undemocratic logics of power, and to redefine the role of citizens, mostly weakened and fatigued after decades of growing inequality and injustice. Indeed, the occupations have revealed to what extent the reality of territory goes beyond its dominant meaning throughout the twentieth century, when the term was flattened to denote national sovereign territory."

The National discusses a competition for Egypt's Tahrir Square, particularly to provide a monument that is a "memorial competition to commemorate the actions of the revolution."  Particularly, the article mentions, is to remember the estimated 846 people who died in the protests (yes, that was a real occupation).  It points out also, that while in the US, we can claim public space, and also claim a measure of shared atrocity with the liberal use of baton and pepper spray to disperse crowds, we're still along way from bullets and grenades as a typical strategy, as is found in many parts of the world. 

On a different note, Richard Florida, if anyone is still listening to him, has an article in the Atlantic on 'How the Crash Will Reshape America' which is worth a read, along with an interesting exploration on 'The Case for Congestion' - which argues for some slow-ness, but perhaps not to the degree of the scenarios that imagined a "City Without Its Public Transportation" and what that would mean for automobile gridlock. 

An article from the NY Times 'Taking Parking Lots Seriously, as Public Spaces' includes some study from Eran Ben-Joseph, including some startling stats, such as that there are: "...500 million parking spaces in the country, occupying some 3,590 square miles, or an area larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined." 

The article and slideshow (thanks NY Times for not allowing pic downloads!!!) - also yielded a gem from Lewis Mumford, which has definitely made the rounds on Twitter and Facebook:

"“As the critic Lewis Mumford wrote half a century ago, ‘The right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle is the right to destroy the city.’"

 And finally, from 'Growing Your Greens', an interesting Incredible Edible Public Garden in Irvine, California (with apologies for the host yelling all the time)... The title is a bit misleading, as it would be quite a feat to feed 200k of people with 7.5 acres.  Enjoy.

Source: Whatever Happened to Urbanism? - Koolhaas

In 1995, Rem Koolhaas & Bruce Mau published 'S,M,L,XL', one in a line of oversized volumes so fondly disseminated by the Dutch.  Amazon mentions the work as "extraordinary, massive, and mind-boggling 1,300-page book combines essays, manifestos, diaries, fairy tales, travelogues, a cycle of meditations on the contemporary city--and complex illustrations..." giving shape to a mixed bag of visuals and texts on the work of OMA/Koolhaas and their speculations on the city.  One short essay, 'Whatever Happened to Urbanism?' by Koolhaas is fixed into the literature of landscape urbanism, quoted by many - specifically a key, oft- mentioned fragment:

"If there is to be a 'new urbanism' it will not be based on the twin fantasies of order and omnipotence; it will be the staging of uncertainty; it will no longer be concerned with the arrangement of more or less permanent objects but with the irrigation of territories with potential; it will no longer aim for stable configurations but for the creation of enabling fields that accommodate processes that refuse to be crystallized into definitive form; it will no longer be about meticulous definition, the imposition of limits, but about expanding notions, denying boundaries, not about separating and identifying entities, but about discovering unnameable hybrids; it will no longer be obsessed with the city but with the manipulation of infra-structure for endless intensifications and diversifications, shortcuts and redistributions - the reinvention of psychological space." (123)

The term 'irrigation of territories with potential' always struck me as akin to pissing in the wind - perhaps just in its alliteration, but as a phrase it does resonate with many of the formative elements of LU theory - particularly the idea of uncertainty, hybridization, infrastructure, and process above form.  The other important idea that fascinates me is the concept of 'urbanism' when realized in Euro-centric terms as 'study', whereas Koolhaas definitely considers urbanism as a more active endeavor, stating in the context of rapid urbanization, that "urbanism, as a profession, has disappeared at the moment when urbanization everywhere - after decades of constant acceleration - is on its way to establishing a definitive, global 'triumph' of the urban condition?" (122)

This demise of the urban is rooted in the reactions and rejections in the professional and educational realms to the mid-century pinnacle of high-modernism - which has caused a retreat into nostalgia.  Koolhaas considers the irony of this as the current form and idea of a city has totally shifted - becoming "beyond recognition," summed up as "'The city no longer exists."  Thus the clinging to nostalgia comes at the exact time when the classic idea of the city, the context urbanism, was snuffed out by rampant urbanization that erased our understanding and approaches to the fuzzy realm of urban/suburban/hinterland that currently exists.  Koolhaas claims then:

"For urbanists, the belated rediscovery of the virtues of the classical city at the moment of their definitive impossibility many have been the point of no return, [the] fatal moment of disconnection, disqualification." (122)

The result is that urbanism is gone, replaced with architecture... creating a gap in the overall understanding of the city beyond that of the architectural object.  This focus on architecture "exploits and exhausts  the potential that can be generated finally only by urbanism, and that only the specific imagination of urbanism can invent and renew.  The death of urbanism - our refuge in the parasitic security of architecture - creates an immanent disaster: more and more substance is grafted on starving roots." (123) 

While I would say there has been a re-emergence of urbanism since the mid-nineties (albeit an urbanism confused with urban design and planning), the overall idea of an urbanism project is still valid - and the resultant current dialogue/discussion is vital and gets to the root of non-design urbanism.  As mentioned by Koolhaas, "Redefined, urbanism will not only, or mostly, be a profession, but a way of thinking, an ideology: to accept what exists." (123)  Thus,

"To survive, urbanism will have to imagine a new newness... We have to imagine 1,001 other concepts of city; we have to take insane risks; we have to dare to be utterly uncritical; we have to swallow deeply and bestow forgiveness left and right."  (123)  

This is what we lost in the disaster of the modern project, the ability to think big, and perhaps fail, while trying to deal with this unprecedented urban condition.  This has left us with small ideas tiptoeing around the crisis under the rubric of safe interventions or tepid theorizations.  The final words then ring true:  "What if we simply declare that there is no crisis - redefine our relationship with the city not as its makers but as its mere subjects, as its supporters?  More than ever, the city is all we have." (123)

Originally published in 'S,M,L,XL' (OMA/Koolhass/Mau - 1995) - citations taken from Center 14: On Landscape Urbanism (edited by Almy - 2007).

Reading the Landscape: Terra Fluxus

This essay, Terra Fluxus by James Corner, from the Landscape Urbanism Reader is considered one of the seminal texts in formulating landscape urbanism theory.  Obviously it has had an impact on me personally, as I used it for the name of my firm, with a respectful tip of the hat to Mr. Corner.  The concept and imagery associated just with the term 'terra fluxus' is powerful, and encapsulates what I consider a new methodological paradigm for landscape architecture (which is the lens in which i tend to read and incorporate LU theory) that gives prominence to process while retaining the role of design. 

While formulating the conceptual basis of landscape urbanism, Corner mentions the dual binaries of landscape and urbanism - with the assumption that there are different states of 'being', mentioning "the total dissolution of the two terms into one word, one phenomenon, one practice.  And yet at the same time each term remains distinct, suggesting their necessary, perhaps inevitable, separateness." (24)  This sort of hedging is pretty common - leading to some of the gray area within discourse - is it landscape, urbanism, or both? (often leading people to throw up their hands and say - well what the hell is it!).  I think of it as indicative of the inherent urbanistic challenges which landscape urbanism seeks to address whereas the complexity of the urban condition cannot be oversimplified, at least in analysis. 

:: Fresh Kills Landfill - image via PSFK

In the true sense of urbanism, this is about analysis and development of theoretical positions in which to operate - many of which are not fully realized but are nonetheless, thought provoking.  As Corner mentions: "the union of landscape with urbanism promises new relational and systematic workings across territories of vast scale and scope, situating the parts in relation to the whole, but at the same time the separateness of landscape and urbanism acknowledges a level of material physicality, of intimacy and difference, that is always nested deep within the larger matrix or field." (33)

Corner's main argument includes development of  four provisional themes, which include processes over time, the staging of surfaces, the operational or working method, and the imaginary.  In brief, these include the following summaries:

• Processes over time:  derived from ecology, the temporal aspects of landscape urbanism eschews the deterministic modes of modernist planning and new urbanism, addressing "how things work in space and time" leading to a "more organic, fluid urbanism" (29)  The movement away from fixed, linear, mechanistic models complicates the development of solutions (including both design and representation, much less construction), but is captured in the title of the essay as oppositional to 'terra firma', and opens the new view of terra fluxus, which values "shifting processes coursing across the urban field." (30)
• The Staging of Surfaces:  gives proimance to the horizontal surface as a "field of action," and able to operate at a wide range of scales, from the sidewalk to the "entire infrastructural matrix of urban surfaces." (30)  This derives from Koolhaas in his 1995 essay "Whatever Happened to Urbanism" where he prioritizes urban infrastructure by the, "irrigating of territories with potential... staging the ground for both uncertainty and promise." (31)   Mechanisms to achieve this include the grid (an overlay of flexibility and legibility) that is operated by users through choreography (aka diverse groups of people interacting with space in time, creating "an ecology of various systems and elements that set in motion a diverse network of interaction." (31)
• The Operational or Working Method:  the complexity inherent in the first two themes means development of a new mode of representation that require new techniques "to address the sheer scope of issues here are desperately lacking."  While in the tradition of urbanism, the solutions are unresolved, Corner does imply the importance, stating that "this area alone, it would seem to me, is deserving of our utmost attention and research."  This implies a direction for future study in the contemporary metropolis to test and vet these techniques.
• The Imaginary:  Corner provides distance from his predecessor, McHarg, but invoking the need for creativity, not just rationality in coming up with solutions within this framework.  The implementation of design within public space engages the spirit of the urban population, acting as "containers of collective memory and desire" and furthermore "places for geographic and social imagination to extend new relationships and sets of possibilities." (32)

These four themes connect the temporal aspects of ecology with the intellectual history of design - something that at least for landscape architecture goes hand in hand, as we deal with the organic materials that never rest in a state of completion but are always active and evolving.  The distinction here is not purely literal, but captures landscapes' conceptual scope, in Corner's terms "its capacity to theorize sites, territories, ecosystems, networks, and infrastructures, and to organize large urban fields." (23)  This has parallels not just in manipulation of open space, but as a way to tackle the ongoing complex nature of cities, this yields a "looser, emergent urbanism, more akin to the real complexity of cities and offering an alternative to the rigid mechanisms of centralist planning." (23) 

 :: Master Plan Diagram - image via Shelby Farms Park

Therefore rather than a method to expand landscape architectural discourse, it addresses the much larger dichotomy of nature versus culture, repositioning landscape not as the city's 'other' but as coterminous in overlapping with the purview of contemporary urbanism.  This moves us away from the purely rational, oversimplification of the city process, and the blind faith in market forces to shape our urban areas and at the same time exploring new methods, such as Kahn's diagramming of Philadelphia vehicular circulation, aimed at "representing the fluid, process-driven characteristics of the city." (30) and derived from central place theory modelling of Christaller and Hilberseimer showing "flows and forces in relation to urban form." (28)

:: Diagram of Christaller's Central Place Theory

In the context of this nature/culture divide, there are two elements of importance in relation to built work.  First, although acknowledging the early integration of landscape in urban settings (epitomized by Olmsted's Central Park and the work of Jens Jensen) - there is the need to move beyond the idea of landscape as pure scenery or as a palliative (which is encompassed in the hollow, Radiant City concept of the 'green complex' championed by Le Corbusier, which is both formless and anti-contextual).  The towers in the park lacks purpose in its rationality, but there is also a need to expand the environmental rationality of McHargian analysis into a realm of philosophical grounding that is not anti-urban, but allows for creativity and imagination in combining the ecological to the urban.  The extension of the natural combined with the infrastructural is mentioned selected precedents, such as Olmsted's Back Back Fens projects in Boston, which is an oft-citied example of ecological urbanism, and a precursor to landscape urbanism, despite its cultural leanings towards the natural, as well as the configuration of the city of Stuttgart, Germany in funnelling mountain air through the city to both cool and cleanse the environment.

:: Back Bay Fens (Olmsted) - image via Landscape Modeling

An interesting modern precursor to the landscape (and) urbanism worth noting is reference to Victor Gruen's idea of 'Cityscapes' from the 1964 publication 'The Heart of the Cities: The Urban Crisis, Diagnosis, and Cure', which are part of a variety of different 'scapes' that define the city.  This distancing from landscape as urban 'other' is vital in forming a new view of urban nature and landscape as including "the built environment of buildings, paved surfaces and infrastructures... not the 'natural environment' per se, as in untouched wilderness, but to those regions where human occupation has shaped the land and its natural processes in an intimate and reciprocal way." (26) 

:: Plan for the Perfect City - Gruen - image via If I was an Imagineer

While mapping a potential conceptual approach to landscape urbanism, the essay also provides some of the fuel to current fires of competing urbansim, the viewpoint of desire for a new, more flexible planning alternative is clear.  Referencing Harvey's 1990s 'The Condition of Post-Modernity' in clarifying this line of thinking the aforementioned theme related to processes over time and yields the terminology of indeterminacy, as Corner mentions:

"In comparing the formal determinism of modernist urban planning and the more recent rise of neo-traditional 'New Urbanism,' the cultural geographer David Harvey has written that both projects fail becasue of the presumption that spatial order can control history and process.  Harvey argues that 'the struggle' for designers and planners lies not with spatial form and aesthetic appearances alone but with the advancement of 'more socially just, politically emancipatory, and ecologically sane mix(es) of spatio-temporal production processes,' rather than the capitulation to those processes 'imposed by uncontrolled capital accumulation, backed by class privilege and gross inequalities of political-economic power." (28-29)

To return to the distinction between terra firma and terra fluxus, from the fixed to the fluid - the power of the ideological shift is immense, whether you agree with the tenets of landscape urbanism or not.  The power of this essay, removed from the context of the debate over 'urbanisms' is that we need to develop a different, more expanded set of values in design and planning that will are response to a true accounting of the complexity of cities, whatever your ideological leanings.  I fall into the camp that gives us the ability to focus on multiple 'urbanisms' to exist to address these complex urban phenomena.  In this view, the role of 'urbanism' is understood as the study of urban systems and not the development of solutions - providing an understanding and not a blueprint.  If one can take anything from this essay, it provides some possible tools to address complex systems in planning and design, to understand a wider contextual viewpoint, and develop new methods for understanding and representing these systems.   

:: Stommel Diagram - image via resilience science

In the ensuing application of disciplinary practice, we can then use this information and employ the imaginary in crafting solutions armed with our best information, not a predetermined idea of what should happen.  The sum total of this approach and these solutions are grounded in the view, from Corner, that "the projection of new possibilities for future urbanisms must derive less from an understanding of form and more from an understanding of process - how things work in space and time." (29)  

Reading List: Landscape Infrastructure: Case Studies by SWA

'Landscape Infrastructure: Case Studies by SWA' published in 2011, is edited by the Infrastructure Research Initiative of SWA including Los Angeles office principals Gerdo Aquino and Ying-Yu Hung.  This is supplemented with contributions from Charles Waldheim, Julie Czerniak, Adriaan Geuze, Matthew Skjonsberg and Alexander Robinson.  While ostensibly about landscape infrastructure, this type of book is a new sort of publishing hybrid that has emerged, combining the firm-specific work of a monograph within a more topical subject matter on a particular typology or approach to project work.

I think this may become a new trend in publishing, as it provides firms with the opportunity to showcase work, but also offers a more expansive vehicle for exploration of themes and inclusion of more collaborators, making the book both more widely marketable while putting the work of the firm in the forefront of emerging trends.  This differs somewhat from the Dutch examples and their production of brick-like graphic tomes of research and work.  This collection of essays and case studies benefits from the inclusion of more voices, although is similarly directed at positioning a firm within a certain intellectual and conceptual frame of reference.

This frame of reference, landscape infrastructure, is not altogether new, but is definitely one of the more emerging ideas within landscape architecture and urban design, which is reflected in the description of the book, per the SWA website:

"INFRASTRUCTURE, as we know it, no longer belongs in the exclusive realm of engineers and transportation planners. In the context of our rapidly changing cities and towns, infrastructure is experiencing a paradigm shift where multiple-use programming and the integration of latent ecologies is a primary consideration. Defining contemporary infrastructure requires a multi-disciplinary team of landscape architects, engineers, architects and planners to fully realize the benefits to our cultural and natural systems."

The book exhibits some of the exploration of these topics, picking up on what Aquino mentions as the aim of SWAs Infrastructure Research Initiative "as a testing ground for engaging and redefining infrastructure in the context of future growth in our cities and towns." (p.7)  This is echoed by Waldheim, and the research of the firm and the position of infrastructure as a way to "enter contemporary discourse on landscape as a form of urbanism." (p.9) and is thus connected to the more well-known broader goals of landscape urbanism and other 'adjectivally modified' forms of urbanism. (for more on this, read Aquino's interview on Archinect 'What is a Park?')

Waldheim's essay is followed by exploration of landscape urbanism and infrastructure by Hung, which gives some more detail on the history and specificity of these connected trends.  The distinction offered is that this is a 'next step' "for the further inquiry as a city's development and economic future is in direct proportion to its ability to collect, exchange, distribute goods and services, resources, knowledge, and people across vast territories." (p.16)  The ideas of landscape infrastructure therefore are given more detail, including the relationship to 1) performance - allowing for metrics; 2) aggregation - scalable collectivity; 3) networks - working towards connectivity; and 4) incrementalism - allowing for changes and adaptation, as well as expansion over time.   While I'm not convinced this is altogether new territory, it is important nonetheless, and the sum of this exploration in defining what I would call a subset, not an expansion of what falls under the rubic of landscape urbanism.

Further essays include Czerniak's exploration of making infrastructure more 'visibly useful' (p.20) and additional discussion by Geuze and Skjonsberg on 'Second Nature' expanding on previous writings derived from John Dixon Hunt and the expanded concept of the cultural landscape that is not pastoral, but is made up of the entire working landscape (infrastructure) that is shaped by man through direct and indirect means.  The final essay by Robinson takes on the ability to modulate, not to suppress or to make off-limits, flows by implementation of new infrastructural systems, using examples like the Los Angeles River, with the goal of providing expanded open space opportunities in the metropolis.  All offer ideas worth exploring, giving an additional dimension of understanding to the infrastructural landscape.

If this new type of book is the trend, it's a welcome one.  The idea of a monograph is somewhat anachronistic and indulgent - so I can see how firms and publishers alike would move towards this value-added approach.  The book is richly detailed and provides interesting exploration of topics.  The 14 case studies of projects - organized per Hung's four areas of performance, aggregate, network, and increment - are introduced with a concise description and many graphics, exploring the process as well as the product - showcasing innovation beyond merely showing off a project.

While not comprehensive case studies with data and other information, there is some meat on the bones of these cases, making it useful beyond the 'wow' factor in informing other projects.  Obviously the urban scope of SWAs work makes this a broader geographic range of work that touches North America, as well as China and South Korea.  This gives the work a context of both our indigenous urbanism as well as developing solutions in rapidly expanding globalized urban areas as well.

This cross cultural and multi-scalar range of projects offer a glimpse into the complexities inherent in tackling large-scale infrastructural projects.  This applies to both the content as well as the visualization, with interesting graphical representations that attempt to communicate temporality, adaptability, and fludity (which is no small feat).  I will leave you to check out the book for more and decide if the $70 (US) price tag is worthwhile, but the breadth of information makes this a valuable addition to the library of those landscape and urbanists working in these arenas and interested in ways, as Waldheim mentions in wrapping up his essay, to identify "the discourse around landscape urbanism generally, and infrastructure more specifically, as an entry point into contemporary readings of landscape as a cultural form." (p.13)

[images from the book - copyright SWA]

Mississippi Modelling

An article that came up amidst discussions on the Landscape Urbanism Reader revisits the question of scale brought by up Linda Pollak in her essay 'Constructed Ground'.   On Design Observer, Kristi Dykema Cheramie investigates the wonderful history of the massive model built to simulate river conditions in her essay The Scale of Nature: Modeling the Mississippi River.

 

:: images via Design Observer

RBC: Zeekracht (OMA)

Zeekracht | OMA

A related follow-up to the essay by Koolhaas, this short essay explores Zeekracht, a master plan for the North Sea, driven by it's "high wind and consistent wind speeds and shallow waters..." making it "...arguably the world's most suitable area for large-scale wind farming."  The project master plan (below) outlines the strategy.  "Rather than a fixed spatial plan, proposes a system of catalytic elements, that, although intendted for the present, are optimized for long-term sustainability." (72)

From an ecological perspective the proposal looks to incorporate elements call 'Reefs' which are described as "simulated marine ecologies reinforcing the natural ecosystems (and eco-productivity) of the sea." (72)

 

The local implementation is "...designed to be sited, programmed, and phased to meet the evolving demands and plans of North Sea regional development," fulfilling the potential of the area as "...a major player in global energy production and trade through wind power alone." Aside from the energy potential, there is the idea thinking of this in tandem with ecological restoration, as "Farms developed along ecological zones and around existing decomissioned platforms create marine remediation areas, new recreational parks, and recreational sea routes." (72)



The project offers the example mentioned by Koolhaas as a "combination of politics and engineering" (71) that is essential to attain and ecological urbanism, attaining both productivity and remediation: 

images via OMA website
more from the official Zeekracht site


(from Ecological Urbanism, Mostafavi & Doherty, eds. 2010, p.72-77)

The Red Brick Chronicles - 'Advancement verus Apocalypse' by Rem Koolhaas

As I mentioned in the recent reckoning of the L+U blog, I wanted to focus on a number of recent texts that I've had the chance to delve into (by disconnecting myself from the nefarious teat of the RSS feeder)  Of significance is finally getting around to expanding on the initial readings of the book Ecological Urbanism (check out Intro by Mohsen Mostafavi, 'Why Ecological Urbanism?  Why Now?, in two parts here and here) which although gigantic, dense and brick-like, is also yielding some engaging content.


Thus in lieu of another option for a book with over 100+ essays and snippets from various authors, I'm going to chronologically post on each one on a mostly, time permitting, daily basis - in some cases just a fragment or two worthy of discussion - sometimes in more length.  Hope you enjoy.  Here's the first installment - follow by regular installments with the moniker RBC.

________________________________________________________

Advancement versus Apocalypse |  Rem Koolhaas

In this essay, which I gather is a short-form version of a presentation, Koolhaas provides a hybrid chronology of modern progress, focusing on  “…the coexistence of modernity and endlessly improvised, spontaneous conditions that don’t consume much energy or material. For me, a hybrid condition is the condition of the day.” (56)   Through searching history in the framework of ecological urbanism, he finds some precedents in the early indigenous knowledge of people, noting that over 2000 years ago, the basic tents of ecology were known, expressed in the vernacular, utilitarian architecture where people would “…build to be economical, logical, and beautiful.” (57)  This concept and focus on the site and siting of cities was echoed in the Ten Books of Vitruvius, through the Renaissance, and to the Enlightenment, which."...had a phenomenal effect on reason, in terms of triggering the apparatus of modernity in a surprisingly short time.” (58)

Thus along with the science and technology of modernity can the apocalyptic baggage best expressed by Malthus in the late 18th Century, and continued in more modern times through authors like Paul Ehrlich in the 1970s (Population Bomb) and even into today's discussions of peak oil and environmental degredation, referenced by James Lovelock (The Revenge of Gaia).

 :: Amazon Burning - image via expertsure

Koolhaas mentions an earlier formative experience with the ecological in the late 1960s, mentioning instructors working with tropical architecture that instilled a “respect for the landscape” and the ability to “look at other cities to see how they work , and to look at seemingly nonarchitectural environments.” (60) and expressed in attempts at the time to combine design and science such as Ian McHarg's 'Design with Nature' referred to as “...one of the most subtle manifestos on how culture and nature could coexist.” (62)

Koolhaas expands this with a quote from Frederick Steiner in‘The Ghost of Ian McHarg: 

“Almost 40 years ago, Ian McHarg proposed a bold theory and a set of ecologically related planning methods in Design with Nature (1969). While the proatical measures he proposed have been incorporated into subsequent design and planning practices, the theoretical implications have not yet been fully realized. Present-date forms of the model include the amalgam ‘landscape urbanism,’ with its focus on infrastructure an\d urban ecology, a hybrid discipline arguably indebted to McHarg while distinct in its avoidance of the more strenuous effects of his project.” (62)

In addition to McHarg the text mentions contemporary Buckminster Fuller's focus on the "...combination of nature and network...” expressed in this network diagram of global high voltage transmission networks (62) and also the work of the Club of Rome – Limits to Growth in 1972 (strangely enough a notable reason in Jonathan Franzen's recent book 'Freedom').

:: High Voltage Transmission Network diagram - image via GENI

The environmental intelligence of the 1970s was soon quashed by the market economy, as Koolhaas mentions, “...had a devastating effect on the knowledge that had accumulated at this point.” (65)  The current situation of economics gain over ecological approaches has continued since the 1970s.

Shifting gears a bit, the current focus on ecological urbanism is the role of technology, specifically indicative of the engineering/technology will save us paradigm epitomized by Freeman Dyson – quoted in the NY Times: “...proposed that whatever inflammations that climate was experiencing might be a good thing because carbon dioxide helps plants of all kinds to grow. Then he added the caveat that if CO2 levels soared too high, they could be soothed by the mass cultivation of specially bred ‘carbon-eating trees’…” (66)


In addition to noting these radical technological fixes, Koolhaas also bemoans the current trend of boutique green-was expressed in the application of greenery to buildings, mentioning that, "Embarrassingly, we have been equating responsibility with literal greening." (69), mentioning specifically the Ann Demeulemeester store in Seoul, the work of Ken Yeang and the recent Renzo Piano design for the California Academy of Sciences building as examples of this travesty of architecture.

 :: Ann Demeulemeester Store in Seoul - image via Style Frizz

 This confuses me, as while I am not as excited about the green application of vegetation, the inclusion of the specifically bioclimatic architecture of Yeang seems misplaced, as it seems an expression of ecological urbanism.  Instead, Koolhaas finds merit in building new eco-cities in the desert, mentioning Norman Foster’s Masdar zero-carbon city as "serious", and a step forward from the boutique natural interventions of Yeang and Piano, mentioning:  “...we need to step out of this amalgamation of good intentions and branding in a political direction and a direction of engineering.” (70)

:: Masdar City - image via Menainfra

While a somewhat interesting exploration, it is somewhat circuitous and peppered with Koolhaas' self-professed doubt in the overall project, mentioning in the intro "I did not assume that anyone in the academic world would ask a practicing architect in the twenty-first century, given the architecture that we collectively produce, to participate in a volume on ecological urbanism..." (56)  This perhaps colors the text somewhat away from individual buildings and more towards the massive, techno-centric solutions from Koolhaas/OMA - such as the large-scale wind energy project in the North Sea mentioned in the end of the essay.

It's obvious therein lies a distancing from the individual ecological building in the context of these bigger, more significant infrastructural interventions - which marks a distinction, notably with the architecture of Koolhaas being rigorously programmatic, urban-engaged, but typically non-ecological.  Maybe the realization that one building here or there isn't going to be the solution is valid and worthy of discussion?  Is ecological urbanism about large-scale ecocities or infrastructure, or the aggregation of interventions at a variety of scales - maybe even including buildings?

(from Ecological Urbanism, Mostafavi & Doherty, eds. 2010, p.56-71)

More Hidden Rivers - NYC

An interesting post from Urban Omnibus from earlier in January entitled 'Grey vs. Green: Daylighting the Saw Mill River' is less intriguing in design concept that in larger idea of envisioning the expression of the variety of waterways that are hidden/buried/forgotten within our urban areas.  As referenced by Eric Sanderson through  his work on the fabulous Mannahatta project "The movement of water is universal. What takes it out of the ordinary is the infrastructure we have built around and in spite of it. Mannahatta notes that there were once 34.9 miles of “rocky headwater stream communities” and 14.2 miles of “marsh headwater stream communities” on our island, in addition to numerous springs, ponds, and intermittent streams."


The idea of  a more artistic expression comes out in the great image from the article.  The idea, as mentioned in the caption: "Spanning the corridor between the 42nd Street/Bryant Park BDFV station and the 5 Av 7 station, Samm Kunce’s mosaic “Under Bryant Park” is an evocative imagining of the root and water paths behind the tiled walls. ."

:: image  via Urban Omnibus - Photo by Zach Youngerman

The design concepts seem pretty standard fare visually, although the are made up of highly artificial and engineered system.  The authentic expression of 'system' seems an interesting challenge for designers, similar to restoration processes for the LA River which has elicited terms like 'Freakology' to describe the hybridized ecological system.

More Hidden Rivers

Always a fan of explorations of lost rivers, this one is takes the existing urban pattern and erases the former route of the Fleet River in London (via the Londonist)

"As most readers will know (and we’ve seen first hand), the river is now entirely underground and used as a sewer, but you can still pick out its course in the sloping streets of its former banks and, occasionally, a telltale street name. Reader Simon Dovar is one of many to be intrigued by this vanished river, and has put together a map of its route:  " I did a bit of research to trace the path of the lost River Fleet as it meanders under the streets of London. As you can see the map is completely hand drawn in pencil as well as the street indicators. The river is indicated by the rubbed out streets."  Nice touch – a vanished watercourse marked out in erased pencil lead."

:: image via  The Londonist

Environmental Urbanism Panel Discussion

As an addenda to the previous post, on Chris Reed's lecture, a round-about summary of the panel discussion that followed.

Panel Discussion - Environmental Urbanism: 

Ecological Design for Healthy Cities

The panel was moderated by Peter Steinbrueck, with Reed joined by additional panelists including Randy Hester (who lectured the previous evening on Design for Ecological Democracy) and Frumkin (newly installed as Dean of the UW School of Public Health).  Definitely a diverse group which ranged into ecological democracy and public health, paired with Reed's landscape urbanist approach - which offered a potentially interesting exchange of ideas, the result was less than satisfying.  A summary of some of the highlights.

The Potential for Public Health (HF)

Dr. Frumkin has written quite a bit recently about Biophilia and it's usage in a wider arena of public health, and started the discussion with a summary.  The evolutions from Environmental health (dealing with Toxicity), Urban health (focused on the urban poor), and Health Promotion (typically behavioral changes) could be married to create a new approach to urban environmental health.

The key concepts necessary for this were response to equity, considering differing health disparities, and the development of a viable body of evidence-based design strategies (proven through scientific methods) that achieved the dual public health goals of efficacy and safety.  He mentioned that design, although backed with some new environmental science, is not evidence-based, and this would make it difficult to convince public health officials of its worth, due to lack of scientific data.  While Frumkin's ideas of expanding the realm of biophilic design and evidence-based concepts to cities was interesting, a quick reading of some of his reading work shows that a mere translation of site-scale biophilic concepts to public scale is difficult.  The other issue is that there is a definite problem with balancing the cultural aspects of design with the scientific models - to avoid a overtly deterministic reading and application of ideas.

Design for Ecological Democracy (RH)

Not having a chance to hear Hester's talk from the previous evening (and only having skimmed his new book) it's difficult to capture the essence of his idea, but as he mentioned - it involves design that supports values, specifically democracy, equity, access to nature.  As he mentioned, in this context, place matters, and he outlined 3 approaches:

1. The Uniqueness of Place matters to our health (there are different flavors of democracy, much like there are different systems of ecology.

2. Awareness of Personal Ecology: Design and form matters

3. Applying Democracy and Ecology - both can be informed by key principles but are influenced by external forces (for instance free-markets) which augment their level of success.

Our typical mode of operation currently, in an age of consumerism, is that we get democracy, but rarely give back to it - and similar factors are at work in our relationship with ecology.  Take but no give.

Natural Processes & Community (RH)

Requires understanding through experience, ecology of knowledge which leads to stewardship. access to wild nature, but innately this has little evidence (other than anecdotal study - nature=good).  Connecting this back to design, Hester mentions that access to constructed nature, we want to experience nature, but also appreciate the mentorship of the designers intervention - teaching through design.  In this way, we can connect something simple, like a species of bird, to a much larger process of ecological function.

Interaction with Ecology (CR)

Reed mentions that one aspect is that it isn't a duality of nature/city that we need to provide access to, but to provide the same range of interactions to those inside the City... He defines three concepts 1) Wilderness preserve - outside; 2) Central Park - cloistered; 3) interactive ecology - inside and incorporated into the fabric of the urban area.

Landscape Urbanism Theories (CR)

The question posed was how did these connect to public health, but Reed strongly cautioned against a focus on evidence - arguing for the cultural aspects of design that can't be quantified.  In his terms, the concept of health is closely tied to ecological principles of the work - such as survivability and resilience - things found in healthy ecosystem.  Most interactions with nature are anecdotal, and the research should fit within design strategies of diversity and choice for users.

The project work, particularly small scale solutions, involve the testing of theories in metropolitan environments, trying out ideas, innovations, materials, and venues - and experimenting with small-scale ecologies.

The project work, particularly small scale solutions, involve the testing of theories in metropolitan environments, trying out ideas, innovations, materials, and venues - and experimenting with small-scale ecologies.  He mentions the role of the designer changing to accomodate monitoring over time, with landscape architects taking over more roles and responsibilities.

He also mentioned the upcoming ideas of Corner's work on the Seattle Waterfront, an opportunity to apply some landscape urbanism principles (but something developed in context).  The major opportunity is to rethink large scale systems, and redirect existing resources (waste heat, stormwater) in looped systems available in urban agglomerations.  In short, it becomes a wholly economic idea to push an ecological concept because they have value that needs to be quantified (this is where we need evidence)

Unified Field Theory of Public Health, Ecology, and Landscape Urbanism (all)


Frumkin:  Sustainability is a model - 3 legged stool and ability to specify outcomes to acheive prosperity, equity, and social goals.

Hester: The Intention of the System - develop a shared language; there are three different languages that exist: 1) those that are different, 2) those that are words for the same thing (different disciplinary languages - potential for obfuscation), and 3) those that are purposely convoluted (making something simple sound very complex - which leads to it being the next hot thing.

Reed:  Defending language, there are many ways to use it which are all appropriate (public, private, academic) - these different modes have the same principles.  We talk in public in pragmatics (design informed by professional perspectives, using disciplinary language, a different language for structuring projects and frameworks for projects,  They are in competition, but able to co-exist.  Rather than focus on language, Reed sums up the point (in what I think is the best quote of the day):

"The goal should be to use social/ecological dynamics that are flexible for futures we can't imagine."

Planning for these Spaces (CR)

There is the need to determine what we know, and what we can't know - thus the need for open-ended projects.  Some models of determination include preparedness planning - looking 30 to 40 years into the future to plan for spaces.  This will involve working at a wide range of scales - with a range of resources, for the entire lifecyle

Ephemera

• Need to plan for aging populations - loss of ability to drive and less mobility (HF)
• Look at co-benefits of designing for the old, the young, the disabled - all with specific by interrelated needs for space (RH)
• The approach to research/evidence based design requires new ways of working together, identifying which types of issues to accomodate (HF)
• Define the outputs for a range of systems, redirected within the city (CR)

Summary

Honestly, what could have been a really engaging dialogue of disparate (but related ideas) was somewhat handicapped by poor choices of questions from the moderator and audience led to a mishmash of  concepts - rather than a response and relation to the topics offered by Reed (which I guess I was predisposed to want)... the divergence from the original presentation was problematic, and the trying to tackle public health, ecological democracy, and landscape urbanism under a wide banner of 'Environmental Urbanism' left me feeling like in trying to do it all, nothing was accomplished.

While Frumkin had ample time to offer thoughts on public health implications, the focus on evidence based design was not fully discussed, and was divergent from concepts of ecological democracy (at least in this context.  Perhaps an all day exploration would yield results, but a short panel discussion was not enough to even ask, much less discuss, many of the relevant questions.

Ecology.Agency.Urbanism

I warn the reader that my take on the recent NOWurbanism lecture featuring Chris Reed, Randy Hester and Howard Frumkin may be skewed by a really bad cold and the influence of massive doses of cold medicine, along with spilling an entire water bottle inside my bag that literally muddied my notes into a semi-decipherable pulpy mess.  As all histories are individual, this will be my reading of the nights events (and I fear I will not do them justice).  But then again, perhaps this is the perfect storm of dissociation in which to warp and skew the voices into a coherent narrative.

I was really excited to hear from Reed, Principal at Boston-based Stoss Landscape Urbanism and adjunct associate professor of landscape architecture at Harvard GSD.  As recipient of the 2010 Topos International  Landscape Award, "...in recognition of the “theoretical and practical impulses the firm provides to the advancement of landscape architecture and urbanism as dynamic and open-ended systems.”  As a practitioner who embraces the project-oriented aspects of landscape urbanism, I think Reed is unique in straddling the line between theory and praxis - and approach that is often attempted, but rarely done in a legible way.  I was keenly focused on finding out the methods for achieving this balance.

Ecology.Agency.Urbanism

The bulk of Thursday's time was given to Reed's lecture entitled 'Ecology Agency Urbanism' in which he frames landscape and ecology in a context beyond the current concepts of 'sustainability' and 'LEED', arguing for the 'agency of ecology' that is not used as a palliative but as an instigator.  In our search for a positive performative approach, we often rely on the crutches of simple definitions or rating systems, which move towards luke-warm, incremental changes, but not paradigm shifts.

Some History

Reed first frames some of the historical elements of ecology as it relates to planning and design, mentioning Ian McHarg's ecological assessments (inventory, mapping, overlay) and giving value systems to data to use for design and planning-based decision-making.  While acknowledged as important in elevating the discussion, there is also the flip side of criticism's of this objectivty and quantification of processes, alluding to the lack of a cultural lens in which to perform interventions with this information.  The most interesting idea, according to Reed, from McHargian theory was that of 'propinquity', an innate acknowledgement of the proximity, but also the kinship of the environment and it's actors - aligning the needs of the people with that of the surrounding ecological landscape.

:: image via Gardenvisit

He follows this with the next phase of landscape ecology, best expressed in the work of Richard TT. Forman which "catalyze the emergence of urban-region ecology and planning", using the concepts of matrices, interconnections, and networks to express exchange of materials.  The major contribution of this is the visual, using mapping to acknowledge not a static ecological system, but to facilitate flows that observe an active and dynamic nature.   On a practical front, Reed mentions the work of Richard Haag and George Hargreaves as innovative early examples of built projects using these environmental dynamics as generators of form under the mantle of landscape architecture.  The realizations contributed to a conceptual shift of ecology from the static (equilibrium theory) to one that included fluctuations in response to disturbance and change.

:: Louisville Waterfront Park (Hargreaves) - image via Hargreaves Associates

The final phase came in some of the early large scale landscape competitions, such as Downsview Park in 1999, which featured time as part of the design brief.  All of the entires worked time into the solutions, which laid some foundations of modern landscape urbanism theories of indeterminancy.  Not the finalist, but of interest was the proposal from James Corner and Stan Allen, "Emergent Ecologies, which is described on the Downsview site: "The framework consists of an overlay of two complimentary organizational systems: circuit ecologies and throughflow ecologies. These systems seed the site with potential. Others will fill it in over time. We do not predict or determine outcomes; we simply guide or steer flows of matter and information."


Four Tendencies
The next section discussed the 'Four Tendencies' that have emerged into a set of typologies of ecological systems, summarized by Reed here (and hopefully captured in some sense of legibility):

1. Structured Ecologies:  Active habits of plant growth, water movement, habitat use - manipulated over time in response to change, factoring in resiliency and incorporating landscape as a dynamic field.


2. Analog Ecologies: Use ecological elements to achieve non-biological products, epitomized in the work of Ned Kahn and Chuck Hoberman.


3. Hybrid Ecologies:  Responsive design systems that tap into large scale system dynamics, including human and non-human interaction in space.


4. Curated Ecologies:  Structured interactions with dynamics over time, not under specific control, but poked and prodded - designers role shifts as project demands.

The work evolved from the Harvard GSD, particularly the work of Nina-Marie Lister, for a May 2010 event 'Critical Ecologies' which synthesized the historical and current practices of biology, horticulture, and anthropology as antecedents to design.  (need to find out more on what happened here, as it sounds like a great event with some amazing speakers.

Work of StossLU

In the next part, Reed explained some of the work of Stoss, to give a physical reality to some of the ideas of open-endedness and concepts in action. To provide a framework for these approaches, these were intermixed within a number of larger ideas.

Thicken the Surface:
Using the concept of multiple uses and meanings for land, imbued with both form and performance - but not strictly in a sculptural sense.  This best expressed in Riverside Park, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, an eco-park that elaborates the performance aspects of topography, with formal sculptural qualities as a result of the underlying processes.

 

:: Riverside Park - images via stossLU

Draw on Local Practices:  
The project mentioned was the Competition for the Herinneringspark in regional West Flanders, Belgium, which used ephemeral interventions over large spaces for this historical WW II site - specifically focusing on agricultural cycles to highlight specific forms.  (sorry, couldn't track down any pics on this one)

Flexible Spaces for Social Interaction:
Using the Erie Street Plaza in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as an example, mentioning the patterning of materials (lawn and pavement) and the interplay as a randomized surface that allows for a flexibility of uses.  The other aspect of interest was the connection to the water table and the fluctuating levels of moisture and the use of steam to melt portions of the snow for year-round use.

:: Erie Street Plaza - image via Architect's Newspaper

Open Ended Design:
The garden festival in Grand-Metis, Quebec is the example for open-ended design, 'Safe Zone' was designed with simple materials in new forms, for a flexibility of uses... a play area, but not prescriptive, rather a safe and injury free surface for experimentation and adaptable play (one as Reed mentions, kids get intuitively, but adults take time to adapt to)...

:: images via playscapes
(more pics here on L+U)

Civic Scale:
A more expansive explanation included the concepts of civic scale, expanding some of the more ephemeral and small-scale interventions into significant projects in urban areas.  One example Reed noted was the Fox Riverfront in Green Bay, Wisconsin, which is built above a sheetpile walll, and required the manipulations of various surfaces to accomodate a range of spaces.  The stepped benches form seats and chaise lounges, reacting to the different heights of the subsurface conditions.

:: image via Minnesota Public Radio

The overall site also responds to the flooding conditions that come up and over the bulkhead, creating a reactivated civic space while simultaneously incorporating a functional piece of civic infrastructure.

:: image via National Design Awards

Engaging/Recalibrating Infrastructure
The representative project for this concept was the controversial (locally) competition for capping the Mt.Tabor Reservoirs in Portland.  Stoss's concept was one of the more innovative, blending a new ecology while creating a social spaces.

:: image via National Design Awards

An Integrated Project: Lower Don Lands


A larger example of a project was the competition for the Waterfront and Lower Don River area in Toronto, Canada, which Reed explained in a bit more detail.  The concept (the competition eventually won by MVVA) by Stoss offers a chance to provide an integrated approach, with a goal towards both restoration of the Lower Don River and the subsequent urbanization.  This river first, city second does resonate with the landscape urbanism principles of new form-making driven by landscape/ecological processes.

:: image via The Torontoist

The condition of the existing 90 degree bend of the river, and the need for a more modulated river/lake interface required designing a river, which had both a performative and aesthetic requirement.  This involved a couple of what Reed refers to as principles and flexible tactics:

1. Amplify the Interface: between the river ecosystem and the restored estuary
2. Hybridize the Parts: changes between armored and porous materials, restoring the marsh condition and then letting the ecological systems take over, which provides flood control while creating spaces for urban activities.
3. Modify the Harbor Wall:   establishing a vocabulary of marshes and channels, which form courtyards as catalysts with flexible programs.
4. Unique Building Typologies: Flexibility of form, and flow of landscape across spits and islands, then up the faces of the buildings - green machines.

:: image via The Torontoist

:: image via Penn Design

As Reed mentioned, this provides an example of using ecologies as generative forces (agencies), which as seen from the above examples provides a snapshot into the conceptual framework that is applied to projects at a variety of scales.  Be sure to check out the full range of project work on the Stoss website and get more information on some of these projects mentioned.

Stay tuned for a synopsis of the Panel Discussion coming in a separate post.
Thanks to all the great folks at UW, as well as Chris, Howard, Randy, and Peter for the great after lecture discussions and dialogue.

NOTE: Anyone in attendance wanting to clarify, contest, or expand any of these thoughts, feel free to comment.  Look forward to hearing more.