Metropolitan Gardens – gardens in the interstices of the metropolitan tissue

The heterogeneity of the contemporary metropolitan landscape has led to a multiplicity of intermediate spaces, in between and within the different tissues of the metropolitan landscape. These interstices can provide favourable conditions to be transformed into gardens. What design instruments can be discovered for these gardens to address the characteristics of the interstice? And what is the value of doing so? In this essay three contemporary examples are compared, which explicitly address the different metropolitan landscapes in which they are located.Paley Park (New York, USA) is a transformation of an interstice within a dense urban tissue.Crazannes Garden (Crazannes, FR) creates a point of contact between motorway and rural landscape.Reflection Garden (Seattle, USA) addresses the inclusion of what used to be the hinterland into the metropolitan realm, which has so little physical impact that the interstitial space between the urban fragments constitutes practically the entire surface.The gardens are compared focusing on the landscape, the metropolitan condition of their situation, and the formal, spatial and visual transformation of the context in the composition of the garden. From the case studies one can conclude that gardens can define specific places in a generic metropolitan landscape, employing several design tools: centring, enclosing and highlighting a specific selection of existing landscape qualities

Landscape architectural perspectives as an agent for generous design

Landscape architectonic compositions that draw on the underlying landscape structure can function as a carrier for changing programmes, cultures, processes, etc. Precisely such an explicitly spatial design is required to foster the inclusive city, one that is not only socially just but also sensitive to the environment while allowing for and evoking diverse social and natural processes. The objective of an ‘inclusive city’ is  often related to social issues, which might easily lead to the exclusion of ecological values; the opposite approach may prove equally exclusive. Inclusivity also means creating room for the unexpected. From a design point of view, this requires two underlying attitudes: a willingness to see any design assignment from different perspectives as well as a readiness to create sustainable, flexible and open designs. These two attitudes are inherent to landscape architecture, which traditionally prioritizes the site over the programme, and—because of the long term, time-based condition of the landscape—is forced to think in open-ended designs. In this paper we discuss a selection of graduation projects of the landscape architecture track at the TU Delft in order to illustrate how inclusivity is inherent to a complete understanding of landscape architecture. Four essential perspectives on analysis and design—perception, palimpsest, process and scale continuum—are discussed in order to reveal their capacity to serve as a basis for designing inclusive urban landscapes

Capturing particularities in the metropolitan landscape

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

Practicing design for 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

Representing nature: Late twentieth century green infrastructures in Paris

The appreciation of green infrastructures as ‘nature’ by urban communities presents a critical challenge for the green infrastructure concept. While many green infrastructures focus on functional considerations, their refinement as places where concepts of nature are represented and where nature can be experienced and understood, has received little attention in research and praxis. Contemporary urban societies entertain varied and distinctive ideas on nature and their relationship to it, themes explored in contemporary urban park and garden design. These projects can provide insights into the representation, comprehension and experience of nature in green infrastructures. This article expands on contemporary conceptions of nature in urban parks and urban gardens such as those realised in Paris between 1980 and 2000. The projects all display articulated expressions of conceptions of nature, reflecting both a return to the classical garden tradition, as well as elaborations of nature via the sensorial, ‘abundant nature’ and nature as process. These conceptions can be positioned within the theoretical framework of three forms of nature – first nature (wilderness), second nature (cultural landscape) and third nature (garden). In Paris, contemporary parks and gardens not only express new forms of nature, they also form part of a green infrastructure network in their own right. As a series of precise moments connected by rivers and canals, this network differs markedly from prevailing green infrastructure models. The network of parks and gardens in Paris represents a green infrastructural network made up of a layering of historical and contemporary elements connected in compound ways. The completeness of representations and elaborations of nature – gathered in the three natures – can be dissected and spread out over different constructed landscapes in the city, and it is up to the green infrastructure to unite them

The Landscape Form of the Metropolis

When the city disintegrates into an archipelago of fragments a new role is imposed on the landscape as a carrier of topographical characterizations, cohesion and continuity. Patterns such as transportation corridors, settlement areas and landscape voids can be regarded as latent macro-landscape forms of the metropolitan territory. In the staging of the metropolis these forms need to be embedded in a compositional structure that addresses fragmentation and disorientation, without relapsing into utopian forms of the traditional city that have proven inadequate for the metropolitan condition.The potential basis to inform this structure is the landscape itself: permanent, neutral and ubiquitous. The underlying landscape also contains an annotated catalogue of situations, in which the genius loci is recorded and secured. These latent compositional elements are transformed into landscape architectural ‘narratives’ within the topography of the emerging metropolis. The enlargement and distortion of specific topographies result in a field of new topologies, drawn from the genius loci and from local cultures and customs. The question is not so much if metropolitan form is determined by landscape, but how we can use it to structure and give meaning to dispersed territories. This involves a delicate choreography of macro-landscape forms and the micro-topography of landscape places.

The Vicissitudes of Criticism in the Landscape Metropolis

The editors of this themed issue of SPOOL place the discussion on the possibilities and impossibilities of criticism within the field of the design disciplines at centre stage. We are especially interested in how criticism can make an active contribution to taking a position vis-à-vis what we have called, in earlier issues of SPOOL, the contemporary condition of ‘the landscape metropolis’. Criticism is an important means of reflection on the creative processes and interventions that are part and parcel of this landscape metropolis. It throws light on particular projects by describing and explaining them, but also by evaluating and generalising these reflections in relation to an entire discipline, be it landscape architecture, architecture, or urban design. As Miriam Gusevitch sharply notices: “Criticism is riskier than commentary. It is willing to judge and to condemn, to stake out and substantiate a particular position. Serious criticism is the careful and thoughtful disclosure of dimensions that might otherwise elude us...

The vicissitudes of criticism in the landscape metropolis

In the field of the arts, criticism often plays a key role in situating artistic production and instigating debate, but especially in propelling theory and practice. As Dave Hickey suggests “Criticism, at its most serious, tries to channel change.” However, in the domains of landscape architecture, architecture, and urban design, criticism seems to have a more distanced role from reflection and design. Besides a few notable examples, such as the influence of the critical writings of Reyner Banham and Alan Colquhoun on a generation of British architects and urban designers in the 1960s, criticism seems to hold a marginal position in these fields