Publisher
Editorial
-
Since its first issue, SPOOL has used the term ‘landscape metropolis’ to address urban formations beyond the traditional city that – despite their increasing ubiquity - still lack in-depth attention from the perspective of aesthetic appreciation, designerly concepts of development, guidelines for planning and governance, and design theoretical apprehension. The prefix ‘landscape’ is used to describe attention to these topics through the lens of landscape architecture, and offers, we feel, some novel potentials: in considering the metropolis as a cultural phenomenon that is constructed mentally as well as physically and socially; which relies on human as well as on natural driving forces; and which contains, somewhere in the cracks of the mosaic, in the ‘in-between’, places with distinguishable qualities – particular places.
Since its first issue, SPOOL has used the term ‘landscape metropolis’ to address urban formations beyond the traditional city that – despite their increasing ubiquity - still lack in-depth attention from the perspective of aesthetic appreciation, designerly concepts of development, guidelines for planning and governance, and design theoretical apprehension. The prefix ‘landscape’ is used to describe attention to these topics through the lens of landscape architecture, and offers, we feel, some novel potentials: in considering the metropolis as a cultural phenomenon that is constructed mentally as well as physically and socially; which relies on human as well as on natural driving forces; and which contains, somewhere in the cracks of the mosaic, in the ‘in-between’, places with distinguishable qualities – particular places.
Since its first issue, SPOOL has used the term ‘landscape metropolis’ to address urban formations beyond the traditional city that – despite their increasing ubiquity - still lack in-depth attention from the perspective of aesthetic appreciation, designerly concepts of development,...
Articles
-
The presented paper builds on theoretical language borrowed from post-modern philosophy and humanist geography to investigate particular features of the artistic and participatory “Yes We Camp!” The article emphasizes a mutually reinforcing relationship between static properties of the site – its spatial organization, built environment and selection of materials – and its dynamic characteristics – social interactions, organizational form and the emotional resonance evoked in people. The paper shows that place particularity is symbolically conveyed by the spatial organization and built environment and is collectively lived and felt as a unique atmosphere. Thus, our understanding of particular places cannot be complete without accounting for the complex interactions between their spatial, material, social and human dimensions.
The presented paper builds on theoretical language borrowed from post-modern philosophy and humanist geography to investigate particular features of the artistic and participatory “Yes We Camp!” The article emphasizes a mutually reinforcing relationship between static properties of the site – its spatial organization, built environment and selection of materials – and its dynamic characteristics – social interactions, organizational form and the emotional resonance evoked in people. The paper shows that place particularity is symbolically conveyed by the spatial organization and built environment and is collectively lived and felt as a unique atmosphere. Thus, our understanding of particular places cannot be complete without accounting for the complex interactions between their spatial, material, social and human dimensions.
The presented paper builds on theoretical language borrowed from post-modern philosophy and humanist geography to investigate particular features of the artistic and participatory “Yes We Camp!” The article emphasizes a mutually reinforcing relationship between static properties of the...
-
The article addresses the theme of ‘particular places’ in the contemporary landscape metropolis by focusing on the temporal, climatic and geographic specificity that determines each place as unique. In particular, it explores how design can support the appreciation of a ‘particular place’ by enhancing the readability of its temporal, climatic and geographic constituents through an engagement with local weather phenomena.
The article considers the capacity of design to foreground the particularity of a place by connecting to its weather through a critical reading of SLA’s redesign of the seafront of Brattøra in the city of Trondheim in Norway. My critical approach to the project juxtaposes a personal investigation of the design work based on primary experience and the insights of a conversation with SLA’s principal Stig Lennart Andersson, performed and transcribed in 2012 as part of my doctoral thesis. Elaborating on this conversation, the article is articulated in three successive thematic sections, dealing respectively with the concepts of ground, exposure and wonder. Albeit specific to the project, these notions afford the possibility to expand upon more universal considerations of the capacity of design to foreground diffuse, changing and immaterial components of space in human experience. In the conclusive part of the article, I attempt to verbalise why SLA’s work can be considered a valuable reference for the design of ‘particular places’ in the contemporary landscape metropolis.
The article addresses the theme of ‘particular places’ in the contemporary landscape metropolis by focusing on the temporal, climatic and geographic specificity that determines each place as unique. In particular, it explores how design can support the appreciation of a ‘particular place’ by enhancing the readability of its temporal, climatic and geographic constituents through an engagement with local weather phenomena.
The article considers the capacity of design to foreground the particularity of a place by connecting to its weather through a critical reading of SLA’s redesign of the seafront of Brattøra in the city of Trondheim in Norway. My critical approach to the project juxtaposes a personal investigation of the design work based on primary experience and the insights of a conversation with SLA’s principal Stig Lennart Andersson, performed and transcribed in 2012 as part of my doctoral thesis. Elaborating on this conversation, the article is...
The article addresses the theme of ‘particular places’ in the contemporary landscape metropolis by focusing on the temporal, climatic and geographic specificity that determines each place as unique. In particular, it explores how design can support the appreciation of a ‘particular...
-
This article explores a site-specific, narrative approach to placemaking in order to reveal ways of reading and reacting to spatial atmospheres. The contribution presents an MSc Architecture project that results in the design of three particular places on the fringes of the Dutch urban landscape by means of utilizing a narrative approach to reading and analysing the existing site-specific atmospheres. The three architectural follies designed within the landscape present opportunities for the insertion of narrative through experience, illuminating the contents within the existing context. The intention of the project was to explore how an architectural installation could serve as a locus for the generation of new trajectories of perception and understanding. Through a sequencing of events within each landscape folly, the existing site is revealed to the reader in a new way, establishing new circumstances to engage with the landscape. The implementation of narrative within the processes of placemaking allowed for the overlay of subjective interpretations through personal experience, creating spaces saturated with personal signification and interpretation. The three projects demonstrate the necessity of freedom of imagination and interpretation in placemaking and how a narrative approach to design can allow one to be fully involved in the creation of personal and particular place.
This article explores a site-specific, narrative approach to placemaking in order to reveal ways of reading and reacting to spatial atmospheres. The contribution presents an MSc Architecture project that results in the design of three particular places on the fringes of the Dutch urban landscape by means of utilizing a narrative approach to reading and analysing the existing site-specific atmospheres. The three architectural follies designed within the landscape present opportunities for the insertion of narrative through experience, illuminating the contents within the existing context. The intention of the project was to explore how an architectural installation could serve as a locus for the generation of new trajectories of perception and understanding. Through a sequencing of events within each landscape folly, the existing site is revealed to the reader in a new way, establishing new circumstances to engage with the landscape. The implementation of narrative within the...
This article explores a site-specific, narrative approach to placemaking in order to reveal ways of reading and reacting to spatial atmospheres. The contribution presents an MSc Architecture project that results in the design of three particular places on the fringes of the Dutch urban...
-
The presented strategy reflects on the theme of sustainable urban regeneration, focusing on the importance of the role of public spaces in creating liveable cities. The theoretical background of the strategy deals with the changes taking place in the fields of public art and urban rehabilitation methodologies. The parallel drawn between the evolvement of the two fields leads to the introduction of a method which integrates public art interventions into the process of urban rehabilitation. Public art interventions become platforms that enable people to take an active role in creating and forming their future, and enable future landscape/public space design elements to become more site-specific and unique.
The presented strategy reflects on the theme of sustainable urban regeneration, focusing on the importance of the role of public spaces in creating liveable cities. The theoretical background of the strategy deals with the changes taking place in the fields of public art and urban rehabilitation methodologies. The parallel drawn between the evolvement of the two fields leads to the introduction of a method which integrates public art interventions into the process of urban rehabilitation. Public art interventions become platforms that enable people to take an active role in creating and forming their future, and enable future landscape/public space design elements to become more site-specific and unique.
The presented strategy reflects on the theme of sustainable urban regeneration, focusing on the importance of the role of public spaces in creating liveable cities. The theoretical background of the strategy deals with the changes taking place in the fields of public art and urban...
-
In an age when it is becoming increasingly apparent that disturbed sites (or any other sites for that matter) can never be fully managed, nor can their future development be entirely predetermined, this paper looks at disturbed sites’ landscape as a complex and metastable system. While it deals with disturbed sites in particular, more broadly it aims to encourage a general re-examination of landscape design that relies on the world in harmonious balance and the experience of visual pleasure, which, according to long-established structures, may please or offer timeless experiences but in most cases hold little power and no potential to change, enhance or diminish (our own) bodily capacities to act – to stimulate thought, influence ideas, judgements and desires.
In order to explore ways of moving away from the desire for a stable portrayal of ‘the natural’ that often motivates disturbed sites’ immediate ecological remediation and later programmatic transformation, the paper firstly, in order to clarify the understanding of the proposed alternative, imagines landscapes where such an approach is driven to extreme. Next, it places focus on the concept of territory and through the processes behind territory-making argues for a rethinking of the common ways of reading, intervening in and representing complex (in this case disturbed) sites. Alongside this, it proposes a reinterpretation of the notion of place, presents an alternative search for ‘the specific’ and questions what could specificity, once cleared of any ‘essence’, actually stand for.
Ideas and concepts developed throughout this paper begin with writings on territory by Deleuze and Guattari on one side, with further elaborations by Bogue, Brighenti, Grosz, and others. On the other side, ideas of post-humanism and new materialism provide a new view on disturbed sites to broaden the conception of territory as a relational, process-driven and open-ended mode of organization. They are accompanied by diagrammatic mappings that describe and analyse a very particular place – Fort de Vaujours, an abandoned uranium-contaminated site near Paris.
In an age when it is becoming increasingly apparent that disturbed sites (or any other sites for that matter) can never be fully managed, nor can their future development be entirely predetermined, this paper looks at disturbed sites’ landscape as a complex and metastable system. While it deals with disturbed sites in particular, more broadly it aims to encourage a general re-examination of landscape design that relies on the world in harmonious balance and the experience of visual pleasure, which, according to long-established structures, may please or offer timeless experiences but in most cases hold little power and no potential to change, enhance or diminish (our own) bodily capacities to act – to stimulate thought, influence ideas, judgements and desires.
In order to explore ways of moving away from the desire for a stable portrayal of ‘the natural’ that often motivates disturbed sites’ immediate ecological remediation and later programmatic transformation,...
In an age when it is becoming increasingly apparent that disturbed sites (or any other sites for that matter) can never be fully managed, nor can their future development be entirely predetermined, this paper looks at disturbed sites’ landscape as a complex and metastable system. While it...
-
This design critique explores how a top-down approach of conventional planning coincides with a do-it-(y)ourself project that evolved from the site and is facilitated by a designated mediator working within in city administration with the purpose of bridging the city’s disconnected departments. Hence, the project called Jubileumsparken 0.5 was instigated in 2013 as a place making project in concurrence with urban planning undertakings in order to facilitate a redevelopment of the harbour area of Frihamnen in Gothenburg, Sweden. The purpose of this ongoing project is to make use of the intervening period to explore the site and its specific qualities and relationships, and to test these through prototypes and events before plans and protocols are set in stone. Only three years later, at a point when this specific time period is starting to run out and the first development plans are being drafted, this article demonstrates – through a transformation analysis – that the abandoned site has been turned into a particular place through people’s engagement and the processes of building together. Furthermore, it shows that the embedded narratives of these actions are starting to challenge the planners' otherwise distant and abstract understanding of this place.
This design critique explores how a top-down approach of conventional planning coincides with a do-it-(y)ourself project that evolved from the site and is facilitated by a designated mediator working within in city administration with the purpose of bridging the city’s disconnected departments. Hence, the project called Jubileumsparken 0.5 was instigated in 2013 as a place making project in concurrence with urban planning undertakings in order to facilitate a redevelopment of the harbour area of Frihamnen in Gothenburg, Sweden. The purpose of this ongoing project is to make use of the intervening period to explore the site and its specific qualities and relationships, and to test these through prototypes and events before plans and protocols are set in stone. Only three years later, at a point when this specific time period is starting to run out and the first development plans are being drafted, this article demonstrates – through a transformation...
This design critique explores how a top-down approach of conventional planning coincides with a do-it-(y)ourself project that evolved from the site and is facilitated by a designated mediator working within in city administration with the purpose of bridging the city’s disconnected...