Book review of Territory: On the Development of Landscape and City by ETH Studio Basel: Contemporary City Institute

H Lefebvre

R Diener

City Territory and Architecture

Book details:



ETH Studio Basel: Contemporary City Institute.



With contributions by Roger Diener, Liisa Gunnarsson, Mathias Gunz, Vesna Jovanović, Marcel Meili, Christan Müller Inderbitzin, and Christian Schmid.



Territory: On the Development of Landscape and City



Zürich: Park Books and University of Chicago Press; 2016.



228 pages, ISBN 978-3-03860-023-

McEwan, Cameron

Northumbria Research Link

Northumbria Research LinkCitation: McEwan, Cameron (2018) Review of Territory: On the Development of Landscapeand City by ETH Studio Basel: Contemporary City Institute. With contributions by RogerDiener, Liisa Gunnarsson, Mathias Gunz, Vesna Jovanović, Marcel Meili, Christan MüllerInderbitzin, and Christian Schmid. City, Territory and Architecture, 5 (1). p. 6. ISSN 2195-2701 Published by: SpringerOpenURL:  https://doi.org/10.1186/s40410-018-0081-9  <https://doi.org/10.1186/s40410-018-0081-9>This  version  was  downloaded  from  Northumbria  Research  Link:http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/49038/Northumbria University has developed Northumbria Research Link (NRL) to enable usersto access the University’s research output. Copyright © and moral rights for items onNRL are retained by the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners.  Single copiesof full items can be reproduced, displayed or performed, and given to third parties in anyformat or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposeswithout  prior  permission  or  charge,  provided  the  authors,  title  and  full  bibliographicdetails are given, as well as a hyperlink and/or URL to the original metadata page. Thecontent must not be changed in any way. Full items must not be sold commercially in anyformat or medium without formal permission of the copyright holder.  The full policy isavailable online: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/policies.htmlThis document may differ from the final, published version of the research and has beenmade available online in accordance with publisher policies. To read and/or cite from thepublished version of  the research,  please visit  the publisher’s website (a subscriptionmay be required.)                        McEwan  City Territ Archit  (2018) 5:6  https://doi.org/10.1186/s40410-018-0081-9BOOK REVIEWReview of Territory: On the Development of Landscape and City by ETH Studio Basel: Contemporary City Institute. With contributions by Roger Diener, Liisa Gunnarsson, Mathias Gunz, Vesna Jovanović, Marcel Meili, Christan Müller Inderbitzin, and Christian SchmidCameron McEwan* Keywords: Architecture, City, Territory, Landscape, Urbanisation© The Author(s) 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creat iveco mmons .org/licen ses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.Book detailsETH Studio Basel: Contemporary City Institute.With contributions by Roger Diener, Liisa Gunnarsson, Mathias Gunz, Vesna Jovanović, Marcel Meili, Christan Müller Inderbitzin, and Christian Schmid.Territory: On the Development of Landscape and CityZürich: Park Books and University of Chicago Press; 2016.228 pages, ISBN 978-3-03860-023-7Review articleTerritory: On the Development of Landscape and City (ETH Studio Basel: Contemporary City Institute 2016), edited by ETH Studio Basel under the guidance of architects Roger Diener and Marcel Meili explores the concept of territory through an analysis of how the non-urban hinterland of the city, its resources, struc-tures, infrastructures, cultural and historical systems, is increasingly fundamental to the process of urbanisation and thus reverses the conventional city-centric view of examining how compact forms of the city dissipate into the wider city-territory. A reference point is Henri Lefebvre’s thesis that put forward the “the complete urbanization of society,” (Lefebvre 2003[1970]) which read the urban spaces and typologies formerly beyond the traditional city core (such as agricultural and industrial zones, communication infrastructures, tour-ist enclaves), as now integral to the urban fabric as productive places and centres of activity. Indeed that notion helps frame Territory as an updating and testing of Lefebvre’s thesis within an architectural framework and discussed in the first chapter of the book by Chris-tian Schmid.Territory consists of three chapters entitled “Termi-nology,” “Places” and “Sections,” which investigate how six territories characterised by different urban condi-tions are occupied, administered and given form. The first chapter, “Terminology,” comprises two texts by Christian Schmid and Marcel Meili, which outline the keywords with which a redefined concept of territory can be understood, including: nature, water manage-ment, networks, infrastructure, agriculture, produc-tion, and settlements. Those categories are used to analyse the six territories and the development of the territorial spatial structure but have different implica-tions for each territory thus revealing a degree of ter-ritorial specificity. The spatial structure is discussed in terms of networks, borders and differences: networks are the traces of society appropriating the territory, borders mark and are marked by the various powers Open Access*Correspondence:  cmcewan4@uclan.ac.uk Institute of Architecture, University of Lancashire, Preston, UKPage 2 of 3McEwan  City Territ Archit  (2018) 5:6 that organise a territory, and differences come to light in the territory through juxtapositions of material and immaterial relationships.The central chapter of Territory, “Places,” presents the readings of the six territories—the Nile Valley, Rome-Adriatic, Central Florida, the Red River Delta, Muscat and Oman, and Belo Horizonte. Each territory is under-stood as a paradigmatic case and discussed in a concise essay which describes how the landscape is divided, con-trolled and administered spatially and politically, and is illustrated with carefully selected photographs. In each case, further categories are elaborated to elucidate spe-cific characteristics. For instance Christan Müller Inder-bitzin discusses the “autonomous hinterland” between Rome and the Adriatic referring to the historically con-ditioned autonomy of regional centres rooted in Italian culture, which remains traceable today. Roger Diener speaks of “suspended urbanization” in Florida to describe the equivalence between a constantly extending settle-ment and landscape development, toward a critique of the notion of “complete urbanization” (with resonance of Lefebvre). Vesna Jovanović writes about the “even field” of the Red River Delta as a way to describe the division of the rice fields as the patterning of the territory.The last chapter, “Sections,” comprises four essays on the following aspects: water management, agriculture, the role of industrial production and mining, and set-tlements. While the essays in the second chapter are specific to each territory, the essays in the concluding chapter develop common themes and cross-reference the prior analyses.The book opens and closes with a suite of double page images. The opening photographs present each territory from the point of view of occupying the landscape. So the photograph of the Nile Valley shows two opposing edge conditions—the green fields and the ochre sands of the desert—divided by a road that cuts through the landscape with a watery horizon beyond, while the photograph of Vietnam’s Red River Delta shows people working the rice fields and the lines that define their edges. The book ends with a suite of satellite images in which the territorial structure can be read in, for instance, the multiple grids of Florida, the linear development of the Nile Valley or the archipelago of settlements in Belo Horizonte.A constant reference point for ETH Studio Basel has been their Switzerland: An Urban Portrait (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2006). The thesis of An Urban Portrait was to understand Switzerland as a fully urbanised country because of its spatial condition, geographic and cultural connection to major European cultures and Switzer-land’s compact size. In that book Studio Basel identified various urban typologies—including: Alpine Resorts, City Networks and Metropolitan Regions—and put for-ward the concepts of networks, borders and differences as a way to describe the urban character of Switzerland. The concepts and typological descriptions of that pro-ject, while specific to Switzerland, opened up questions about the nature of the urban territory, which ETH Stu-dio Basel have since explored in numerous studies on cit-ies and their territories including Nairobi, Belgrade and Hong Kong leading toward books such as The Inevitable Specificity of Cities (Basel: Lars Müller Publishers, 2015) and here in Territory: On the Development of Landscape and City. Each Studio Basel publication builds on the preceding one and so a dialogue across the research is developed. The material presented in Territory is in dia-logue with that compiled in The Inevitable Specificity of Cities. For instance the study of the Nile Valley is present in different forms in both books, Schmid’s introduction to Territory extends his conclusion from Specificity, and the development of concepts extracted from An Urban Portrait extends with the present text.Territory develops analytical strategies and a cata-logue of concepts through which the interaction between power and space, hinterland and city, and the forms and processes of urbanisation of the city-territory, can be understood, defined and therefore critiqued and rethought. What the book does particularly well is to demonstrate that territory is a material and mental con-struction, keeping at a distance the language of “self-organisation,” “ecology” and “indeterminacy” as well as the imagery of statistics that often pervades texts that deal with the notion of territory. At the same time the book documents the territory through photo-essays which allude to a possible formal language. However, what the book lacks are maps, plans and drawings that would provide a more specific architectural knowledge. So while knowledge of the territory is narrated and given an image, and while the book itself is beautifully pro-duced, it stops short of being an operative working tool for architects and urbanists who face the critical issue of the continuously extending urban territory.Authors’ contributionsCM read the book under review and drafted the manuscript. The author read and approved the final manuscript.Competing interestsThe author declares that he has no competing interests.Publisher’s NoteSpringer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in pub-lished maps and institutional affiliations.Received: 27 March 2018   Accepted: 25 July 2018Page 3 of 3McEwan  City Territ Archit  (2018) 5:6 ReferencesDiener R, Herzog J, de Meuron P, Meili M, Schmid C (2006) Switzerland: an urban portrait. Birkhäuser, BaselETH Studio Basel: Contemporary City Institute (ed) (2015) The inevitable speci-ficity of cities. Lars Müller Publishers, BaselETH Studio Basel: Contemporary City Institute (ed) (2016) Territory: on the development of landscape and city. Park Books and University of Chicago Press, ZürichLefebvre H (2003[1970]) The urban revolution. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis

Review of Territory: On the Development of Landscape and City by ETH Studio Basel: Contemporary City Institute. With contributions by Roger Diener, Liisa Gunnarsson, Mathias Gunz, Vesna Jovanović, Marcel Meili, Christan Müller Inderbitzin, and Christian Schmid

CLoK

McEwan  City Territ Archit  (2018) 5:6  https://doi.org/10.1186/s40410-018-0081-9BOOK REVIEWReview of Territory: On the Development of Landscape and City by ETH Studio Basel: Contemporary City Institute. With contributions by Roger Diener, Liisa Gunnarsson, Mathias Gunz, Vesna Jovanović, Marcel Meili, Christan Müller Inderbitzin, and Christian SchmidCameron McEwan* Keywords: Architecture, City, Territory, Landscape, Urbanisation© The Author(s) 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creat iveco mmons .org/licen ses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.Book detailsETH Studio Basel: Contemporary City Institute.With contributions by Roger Diener, Liisa Gunnarsson, Mathias Gunz, Vesna Jovanović, Marcel Meili, Christan Müller Inderbitzin, and Christian Schmid.Territory: On the Development of Landscape and CityZürich: Park Books and University of Chicago Press; 2016.228 pages, ISBN 978-3-03860-023-7Review articleTerritory: On the Development of Landscape and City (ETH Studio Basel: Contemporary City Institute 2016), edited by ETH Studio Basel under the guidance of architects Roger Diener and Marcel Meili explores the concept of territory through an analysis of how the non-urban hinterland of the city, its resources, struc-tures, infrastructures, cultural and historical systems, is increasingly fundamental to the process of urbanisation and thus reverses the conventional city-centric view of examining how compact forms of the city dissipate into the wider city-territory. A reference point is Henri Lefebvre’s thesis that put forward the “the complete urbanization of society,” (Lefebvre 2003[1970]) which read the urban spaces and typologies formerly beyond the traditional city core (such as agricultural and industrial zones, communication infrastructures, tour-ist enclaves), as now integral to the urban fabric as productive places and centres of activity. Indeed that notion helps frame Territory as an updating and testing of Lefebvre’s thesis within an architectural framework and discussed in the first chapter of the book by Chris-tian Schmid.Territory consists of three chapters entitled “Termi-nology,” “Places” and “Sections,” which investigate how six territories characterised by different urban condi-tions are occupied, administered and given form. The first chapter, “Terminology,” comprises two texts by Christian Schmid and Marcel Meili, which outline the keywords with which a redefined concept of territory can be understood, including: nature, water manage-ment, networks, infrastructure, agriculture, produc-tion, and settlements. Those categories are used to analyse the six territories and the development of the territorial spatial structure but have different implica-tions for each territory thus revealing a degree of ter-ritorial specificity. The spatial structure is discussed in terms of networks, borders and differences: networks are the traces of society appropriating the territory, borders mark and are marked by the various powers Open Access*Correspondence:  cmcewan4@uclan.ac.uk Institute of Architecture, University of Lancashire, Preston, UKPage 2 of 3McEwan  City Territ Archit  (2018) 5:6 that organise a territory, and differences come to light in the territory through juxtapositions of material and immaterial relationships.The central chapter of Territory, “Places,” presents the readings of the six territories—the Nile Valley, Rome-Adriatic, Central Florida, the Red River Delta, Muscat and Oman, and Belo Horizonte. Each territory is under-stood as a paradigmatic case and discussed in a concise essay which describes how the landscape is divided, con-trolled and administered spatially and politically, and is illustrated with carefully selected photographs. In each case, further categories are elaborated to elucidate spe-cific characteristics. For instance Christan Müller Inder-bitzin discusses the “autonomous hinterland” between Rome and the Adriatic referring to the historically con-ditioned autonomy of regional centres rooted in Italian culture, which remains traceable today. Roger Diener speaks of “suspended urbanization” in Florida to describe the equivalence between a constantly extending settle-ment and landscape development, toward a critique of the notion of “complete urbanization” (with resonance of Lefebvre). Vesna Jovanović writes about the “even field” of the Red River Delta as a way to describe the division of the rice fields as the patterning of the territory.The last chapter, “Sections,” comprises four essays on the following aspects: water management, agriculture, the role of industrial production and mining, and set-tlements. While the essays in the second chapter are specific to each territory, the essays in the concluding chapter develop common themes and cross-reference the prior analyses.The book opens and closes with a suite of double page images. The opening photographs present each territory from the point of view of occupying the landscape. So the photograph of the Nile Valley shows two opposing edge conditions—the green fields and the ochre sands of the desert—divided by a road that cuts through the landscape with a watery horizon beyond, while the photograph of Vietnam’s Red River Delta shows people working the rice fields and the lines that define their edges. The book ends with a suite of satellite images in which the territorial structure can be read in, for instance, the multiple grids of Florida, the linear development of the Nile Valley or the archipelago of settlements in Belo Horizonte.A constant reference point for ETH Studio Basel has been their Switzerland: An Urban Portrait (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2006). The thesis of An Urban Portrait was to understand Switzerland as a fully urbanised country because of its spatial condition, geographic and cultural connection to major European cultures and Switzer-land’s compact size. In that book Studio Basel identified various urban typologies—including: Alpine Resorts, City Networks and Metropolitan Regions—and put for-ward the concepts of networks, borders and differences as a way to describe the urban character of Switzerland. The concepts and typological descriptions of that pro-ject, while specific to Switzerland, opened up questions about the nature of the urban territory, which ETH Stu-dio Basel have since explored in numerous studies on cit-ies and their territories including Nairobi, Belgrade and Hong Kong leading toward books such as The Inevitable Specificity of Cities (Basel: Lars Müller Publishers, 2015) and here in Territory: On the Development of Landscape and City. Each Studio Basel publication builds on the preceding one and so a dialogue across the research is developed. The material presented in Territory is in dia-logue with that compiled in The Inevitable Specificity of Cities. For instance the study of the Nile Valley is present in different forms in both books, Schmid’s introduction to Territory extends his conclusion from Specificity, and the development of concepts extracted from An Urban Portrait extends with the present text.Territory develops analytical strategies and a cata-logue of concepts through which the interaction between power and space, hinterland and city, and the forms and processes of urbanisation of the city-territory, can be understood, defined and therefore critiqued and rethought. What the book does particularly well is to demonstrate that territory is a material and mental con-struction, keeping at a distance the language of “self-organisation,” “ecology” and “indeterminacy” as well as the imagery of statistics that often pervades texts that deal with the notion of territory. At the same time the book documents the territory through photo-essays which allude to a possible formal language. However, what the book lacks are maps, plans and drawings that would provide a more specific architectural knowledge. So while knowledge of the territory is narrated and given an image, and while the book itself is beautifully pro-duced, it stops short of being an operative working tool for architects and urbanists who face the critical issue of the continuously extending urban territory.Authors’ contributionsCM read the book under review and drafted the manuscript. The author read and approved the final manuscript.Competing interestsThe author declares that he has no competing interests.Publisher’s NoteSpringer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in pub-lished maps and institutional affiliations.Received: 27 March 2018   Accepted: 25 July 2018Page 3 of 3McEwan  City Territ Archit  (2018) 5:6 ReferencesDiener R, Herzog J, de Meuron P, Meili M, Schmid C (2006) Switzerland: an urban portrait. Birkhäuser, BaselETH Studio Basel: Contemporary City Institute (ed) (2015) The inevitable speci-ficity of cities. Lars Müller Publishers, BaselETH Studio Basel: Contemporary City Institute (ed) (2016) Territory: on the development of landscape and city. Park Books and University of Chicago Press, ZürichLefebvre H (2003[1970]) The urban revolution. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis

Crossref

Cameron McEwan

Directory of Open Access Journals

http://clok.uclan.ac.uk/23702/1/McEwan-2018-City_Territory_and_Architecture.pdf

Review of Territory: On the Development of Landscape and City by ETH Studio Basel: Contemporary City Institute. With contributions by Roger Diener, Liisa Gunnarsson, Mathias Gunz, Vesna Jovanović, Marcel Meili, Christan Müller Inderbitzin, and Christian Schmid

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Northumbria Research Link

CLoK

Crossref

Directory of Open Access Journals