Topos January 2018

to po s. no 101

2018

MAKING ROOM FOR LIFE – How biophilic cities change the way we interact with urban animals 28

TIMBER TALK – Social network: Communicating trees leave humans speechless 34

ANIMAL ARCHITECTS – Under construction: Architectural design made by nature

ISBN 978-3-7667-2356-7

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Creatures

to po s. no 101

2018

T H E I N T E RN AT I ON A L RE V I E W OF LA N DS CA PE A RC H I T E CT URE A N D URB A N DE S I G N

Creatures

DESIGN TANK PHOTO JÚLIA MARTINS MIRANDA

Times Square New York City

Enjoying the outdoors since 1947 vestre.com

Vestre Stoop Design: Julien De Smedt Vestre April Go Design: Espen Voll, Tore Borgersen & Michael Olofsson

COVER PHOTO: Michael Zegers

Photo: Picture Alliance, Westens61, Michael Zegers

Friend or foe? The range of creatures in the urban realm has been widening over years which rises the tantalizing question: How do we re-negotiate our claims to a territory?

T

he world of fables is a simple world. Animals that appear in fables regularly embody precisely one human character trait: foxes are clever, monkeys scheming, hares fearful, goats gullible and wolves evil. In their one-dimensionality, which serves the purpose above all of holding up a mirror to the reader they invariably act in a predictable manner. Human as they are, the animals move quite close to us – sometimes so close that it becomes disturbing. This functions because the obvious dichotomy between human and animal is caricatured in a way that transforms it into its very opposite. However, the very animals we normally only know from fables and fairy tales are coming closer to us in real life, too. And there are many of them: in cities around the globe, wild creatures have been finding a new, ideal home in the urban realm, or at least consider it an alluring destination for an excursion. In Rome, for instance, wild pigs, more precisely boars, have long become part of the urban scenery. In New York, an impressive number of peregrine falcons regularly makes circles in the skies above the city – the agile predator counts among the fastest animals of the world. Wolves have been conquering abandoned industrial sites in Germany, and Los Angeles keeps being visited

by mountain lions who rather unsuspectingly take walks on its streets and freeways. What is the impact of these developments for us humans? What does it mean that a familiar dualism – so familiar that it runs in our blood – between “nature” and the urban realm, between wilderness and an “ordered” world created by man, finally between humans and animals, melts into the air? How do we re-negotiate our claims to a territory and space? How close will we come to each other in the future? To be sure, there have always been those who, utterly fearless, stuck their head in the lion’s mouth and at times paid for it dearly. The beast as our friend or even life companion – can this end well? That question has fascinated and inspired mankind from time immemorial. The new edition of Topos is devoted to finding answers to it. Ultimately, the topic is this: what will cities look like if humans are no longer exclusively in control, but if instead a new balance of different creatures is bound to emerge? In this context it is interesting to consider that man automatically assumes animals will invade their cities. Quite often, however, it is exactly the other way round, as a writer for the British Guardian once remarked quite pertinently: cities grow and thereby automatically encroach upon the sovereign territory of the animal kingdom. Keep this in mind when you meet a fox on your way home . . .

TANJA BRAEMER

Editor in Chief [email protected]

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Contents

THE BIG PICTURE

CURATED PRODUCTS

Page 8

Page 102

OPINION

REFERENCE

Page 10

Page 106

TALENT VS. MASTERMIND

EDITOR´S PICK

Page 12

Page 108

METROPOLIS EXPLAINED

Page 14 FUZZY NEIGHBOURS

Page 18

BACKFLIP

Page 110 ESCAPE PLAN FUZZY NEIGHBOURS

BE(E)ING ON TOP

Page 112

Photographer Sam Hobson tracks creatures in the city Page 18

Urban space as dining room for bees Page 58

FROM THE EDGES

MAKING ROOM FOR LIFE

COMPANION SPECIES WANTED

The Biophilic Cities Network Page 28

How to promote animal life in urban cores Page 66

Page 114

TIMBER TALKS

ANIMAL ARCHITECTS

Are trees social creatures or even human? Page 34

The constructed world of fauna Page 72

TAMING THE SHREW

NATURE AS SPECTACLE

Animal Aided Design: How to plan with the beasts Page 42

Wilderness among us: Is there an expiry date on the institution of the zoo? Page 80

IMPRINT

Page 113

BERLIN’S DAKTARI

An interview with Berlin’s former wildlife consultant Derk Ehlert Page 46

THE WILD CONTINUUM

How to create cityscapes that celebrate humans’ kinship with other species Page 86

WAR OF THE GAZES

How Hollywood and its media mechanisms influence our view on animals Page 50

NATURE NEEDS NUTURING

Woolly beasts – The loss of landscape by overgrazing Page 92

CREATURES: FACTS AND FIGURES

Page 56

CONTRIBUTORS

Page 100 WAR OF THE GAZES

Page 50

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OPINION

METROPOLIS EXPLAINED

Architects must resist the undirected march of augmented reality Page 10

Kiril Ass on Moscow Page 14

THE BIG PICTURE

The Skyscraper Stratus, Cirrus, Cumulus: Meteorologists recognise ten different types of clouds. The common feature for all of them is that they float in the sky far above the ground. At the Himalaya Art Museum in Shanghai, one cloud came nearly close enough to touch. As if riding through the window on a breeze, it hovered over the staircase like it happened all the time. The force behind this seemingly surrealistic event is Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde. As part of his Nimbus series, he has created many of these unexpected encounters since 2012 by perfecting the art of creating ideal conditions for cloud formation indoors. Transported from their natural context, the artists stages, with the aid of precise illumination, the cloud as if it were a volatile yet beautiful sculpture. After just seconds it evaporates as if it had never been there. Accordingly, photos taken at the right moment are the only opportunity to experience and exhibit Smilde's gossamer-fine art. TEXT: Ines Dorn

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Photo: Berndnaut Smilde, Nimbus Duguan Himalayas Museum, 2015, Courtesy of the artist and Ronchini Gallery

The Big Picture

THE BIG

PI CT U R E

For more photos go to

toposmagazine.com/ smilde

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OPINION

Owen Hopkins Architectural writer, historian and curator

ARCHITECTS MUST RESIST THE UNDIRECTED MARCH OF AUGMENTED REALITY Architects are leading the way in incorporating augmented reality into their work. However, there is little debate about the potential of AR to revolutionize not just how architecture is designed, but the ways we experience it. Owen Hopkins argues that architects and landscape architects must start steering the conversation about AR – not just for their own profession but also for the common good.

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Opinion

Has 3D modeling killed the architectural drawing as a serious design tool? Looking at the evidence, it would be hard to conclude otherwise. Yet, with drawing now freed of its functional duties, we are already seeing architects resurrecting its corpse for the medium’s innate qualities of communication. In many ways, this trend can be seen as a reflection of changes internal to the discipline of architecture: in the design tools that architects use and in fashions in architectural representation. But this is only a small part of the story. A revolution is coming from outside the discipline in the form of augmented reality. Even in AR’s current early stages of development, it is clear that this technology poses a challenge to how we conceive, create and experience architecture, which I predict will see drawing become more important than ever before. Indeed, architecture itself may become a form of drawing. AR capable devices are becoming increasingly prevalent. Soon we will no longer be stuck experiencing AR through our phones or clunky, oversized goggles, it will be woven into our lives – with our every experience capable of being augmented with digital overlays in some way. The implications of AR for architecture and landscape design are troubling. Why bother to commission anything more than a simple functional frame or box, when every aspect of a building can be overlaid with some kind of digital surface that is live and interactive? Why in this environment would there even be a need for architecture to exist at all? To find a way out of this bind, one of the first things architects can do is focus their attention on what exists outside the realm of augmented reality. It appears that AR will remain a relentlessly visual medium, so architects would be advised to emphasise those aspects of their work that are not visual – the feel,

texture, even smell of their creations. Landscape architects are already geared up to do this. That said, the possibilities of working around the AR revolution will be limited given how pervasive it will become. Whether they like it or not, the majority of architects will be forced to embrace AR’s transformations for better and for worse. However, the situation takes on a rather different complexion when we realize that the digital overlays that define AR are just new forms of architectural drawing: drawing that is dynamic, personalized and produced not just on computers but by computers, but still recognizably drawing. As a result, architects are ideally placed to take a leading role in creating the AR overlays that will shape our experience. Not only does this offer architects a way of halting the atrophy affecting their profession, but it gives them the opportunity to shape or define the nature of these worlds. As a profession committed to the public good, architects should play a crucial role in the resistance of the undirected march of AR. While the tech giants of Silicon Valley are driving this technology forward at an ever increasing speed, they seem to be giving little, if any, consideration to its social and political consequences. With the rise of “fake news” and similar attempts to manipulate popular opinion, we are already witnessing the effects of algorithms that determine what we see online in reinforcing our existing likes, interests and persuasions. When the social media echo chamber is transferred to our everyday physical realities, the risk is not just a further shattering of the public sphere but its destruction. Architects must therefore lead the way in showing how the drawn digital overlays do not have to divide us into own individual worlds, but must bring us all together.

OWEN HOPKINS is an architectural writer, historian

and curator. He is senior curator of exhibitions and education at Sir John Soane’s Museum and was previously architecture programme curator at the Royal Academy of Arts. His most recent book is Lost Futures: The Disappearing Architecture of Post-War Britain (2017).

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TALENT

Jimmy Norrman INTERVIEW: Alexander Russ

Jimmy Norrman is a partner at Funkia, a landscape architecture office based in Nacka, Sweden. Funkia’s current projects include parks and squares that are part of the Fyrklövern urban development project situated north of Stockholm. Prior to studying landscape architecture, Norrman worked as a landscape gardener at his family’s business in Helsinki.

CAREER STA RTING PO INT?

When I learned the power of the pen in the process of creating environments at my first job at landscape architect Gretel Hemgård’s office in Helsinki, Finland. 2

INF LU ENCED B Y

Probably by the Swiss landscape architect Dieter Kienast. 3

INSPIRED BY

Life and all the surrounding environments that are included in it. 4

WHY LANDSCAPE A RCH ITECTURE?

Can it be innate? I decided to be a landscape architect when I was 14 years old. 5

DESIGN PRINCIPL ES?

I adapt the design to each project – the concept must always be strong and viable. 6

WHAT IS YOUR SPECIAL FO CUS?

To exceed the client’s expectations. 7 FORMULA FOR SUCCESS?

Work hard and believe in yourself and the team. 8

WHERE WILL YO U B E IN 1 5 YEA RS?

Together with my team, working to create good and sustainable living environments for everyone, independent of economic or social conditions. 9 OBSTACLES FO R TH E PRO FESSIO N

One concern is the trend of privatising public space and making it market-driven.

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Talent vs. Mastermind

MASTERMIND

Thorbjörn Andersson Thorbjörn Andersson has practiced landscape architecture since 1981. He studied landscape architecture, architecture and art history in Sweden and the United States. Recent office projects are the Novartis Physic Garden in Basel and the Campus Park at Umeå University.

CA R E E R S TA R T I N G P O I N T ?

When I saw Christo’s Running Fence, which made me see that landscape projects can do more than just solve problems. They can appeal to your emotions as well. 2

I N F LU E N C E D BY

Music, gastronomy, dance, literature. The German choreographer Pina Bausch, British novelist Bruce Chatwin, and Australian musician Nick Cave. And Rosseau, of course. 3

I N S P I R E D BY

Rhythm, shadows, seasonal change, topography. 4

W HY L A N D S CA P E A R C H I T E CT U R E

It can change people’s life, so it is political. It can touch your soul, so it is sensual. It is less programmed than architecture, so it is poetic. 5

D E S I G N P R I N C I P LE S

Photos: left Mikael Johansson / Funkia, right Magnus Bergström

Try to get the most out of the least. Don’t overdo things. Ask yourself what is necessary instead of what is possible. It is a very Scandinavian attitude, but that is my origin. 6

W HAT I S YOU R S P E C I A L FO C U S

The aim of my generation was to improve the world and make it fair. Even if that was naive, the traces of this still stay with me. 7 FOR M U L A FO R S U C C E SS

I would say stay inside your box. Excel in what you are good at, and leave the rest to other people with other boxes. And work with them. 8 W HE R E W I L L YO U BE I N 1 5 Y E A R S

In Shangri-La, drinking Margerithas. 9

OB S TAC L E S FO R T H E P R O F E SS I O N

We need to claim our land.

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METROPOLIS EXPLAINED

Moscow “Two Romes have fallen. The third stands. And there will be no fourth.” – Philotheus of Pskov to his son, Grand Duke Vasili III, 1510. Moscow is a hotchpotch of invisible networks: Intellectuals, artists and artisans; all sprouting in scattered bookshops, cafes, theatres and schools, but mostly hidden in private spaces. A young population runs creative industries. There are corrupt officials, lawenforcers and bureaucrats, mixing Soviet traditions with glamourous offices and sophisticated technology. And there are families, loners, immigrants, visitors, gastarbeiter and businessmen, and all those who keep this city up and running. Moscow became a capital more or less by chance, as the princes who were ruling it in the Middle Ages and competing with other principalities of Rus’ turned out to be the most influential, or reckless, or both. They devoured the duchies and principalities, collecting titles and domains. The fall of Constantinople made them feel like they reigned over the only Orthodox Christian State in the world – and were thus infallible. The capital of the Grand Duchy of Moscow became the central point of their country. Its spiderweb-shape is inherent to Russian geography and logistics and to Moscow, where all roads lead to the Kremlin. But Moscow is as much the stronghold of an imperial worldview as it is a focal point of all Russian virtues and flaws. Its grandiose avenues, enormous squares and high-rises are magical tools intended to make poverty and ignorance disappear. The endless concrete residential blocks may provide housing, but (in settings) Corbusier wouldn’t approve of in his worst nightmares. And these blocks became the background and backdrop of the worldviews of several generations of Muscovites – and of Russians in general. The space of Russia – and Moscow, which serves as Russia’s showroom – is marked by two opposites: the ever-present attempt to beautify its space and a constant disregard for privacy and private property, which doesn’t encourage people to take care of either themselves or the spaces they live in. So everything decays – and the climate is only one of the factors; the main one is disregard. The

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Moscow is the dream city for most Russians and for many neighbouring lands’ peoples; a haven of hope, hardship and often success. But the city has another face, one that goes beyond beautified space and that mirrors the very essence of a proud and complex cultural and intellectual system.

KIRIL ASS works in Moscow, where he combines artistic research and architectural activity in collaboration with one of the main proponents of Soviet “paper architecture”, Bureau Alexander Brodsky. Ass was born in Moscow in 1974 and graduated from the Moscow Architectural Institute in 1998. Among other places, he teaches at the Moscow School of Architecture.

decay is frustrating and reassuring. It marks the futility of all endeavours, and testifies to the constancy of things that prevent life from being (seriously) spoiled by any ruler’s will. Sadly, this means that all traces and habits of the past are doomed to oblivion, and those in love with the past are left with little to enjoy. The ever-busy streets lined with incomprehensible signage run to the central area, where there are few residences, but an abundance of state administration buildings, luxury shops and vast voids of squares once intended for parades. The centre of today’s Moscow is a mix of shiny streets and shady backyards, of architecture of all scales and periods. This dissolves into the grey belt of decaying factories that are being replaced by new housing developments. Then one enters the suburbs, an amalgam of former villages, small towns and gated communities. Daily migration fills the centre in the morning and empties it in the evening, leaving only party-goers and a few locals behind. This ritual is repeated daily, regardless of the season. But every year there are three moments when Moscow becomes magical. The first is the New Years break, when the snow is fresh and it is cold and sunny. The streets are empty, the cars don’t spoil the snow, and one can walk carelessly in the glitter, free of obligations. The second is the height of summer, when the nights scarcely get dark and the dusk is postponed till midnight. The school kids are on vacation and half of the city is away in their dachas. The third moment is in late autumn, when the sun sends its low light through the leaves of the trees that fill the city. “Third Rome" one had once called Moscow. Some people still call it so today. But this notion is not played out in life. This was said in a religious context back then, but the religious connotations were displaced by imperial sentiment, as lands were acquired to the east, west and south. The centre of an ever contracting and expanding empire, a capital whose cultural elite was always kept separate from its aspirations, a city which is always being torn up from its foundations, which is always tense, and yet always relaxed thanks to the everlasting inevitability of this tension. It is not a Rome – it’s a place in its own right.

Map: SCHWARZPLAN.EU/OpenStreet-Mitwirkende/openstreetmap.org

Metropolis explained

MOSCOW MAP

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MAKING ROOM FOR LIFE

BE(E)ING ON TOP

How the otter returned to Singapore thanks to biophilic city planning and design Page 28

On the roofs of the city the bee finds its new home Page 58

TIMBER TALKS

NATURE AS SPECTACLE

Wooden chatterboxes? About trees and their ability to communicate with each other Page 34

Why zoos still attract people Page 80

Creatures

Fuzzy Neighbours What does the public expect a wildlife photographer to do? Of course, get as far away from the city as possible, search for wild animals in their natural habitat and take pictures of them. The British photographer Sam Hobson follows a different approach – his target of attraction are the animals that live in the city. Armed with his camera, he tracks their nocturnal path through the urban jungle, depicting the animals within our immediate surroundings. SAM HOBSON

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The Fox Curious, adaptable and intelligent, the red fox is the perfect urban survivor. In Bristol, their territories vary strongly in size. An outbreak of mange in the mid 1990s killed 95 per cent of the fox population. On a slow path towards recovery, the surviving foxes have become more resistant to the disease.

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The Pigeon Urban pigeons are the feral relatives of the rock dove, and the architecture of our cities offers useful substitutes for coastal cliffs. Towns are good places for scavengers, as human-produced waste creates greater feeding opportunities than on the countryside.

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Fallow Deer On winter nights, fallow deer venture from the woods to London’s outskirts to feed on the city’s lawns. Its grass grows throughout the year, due to a warm microclimate and continuous light pollution. These lush lawns are worth the risk of urban adventure.

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The Toad For a few days each spring, a migration wave towards the city centre takes place. Unnoticed by most, this march of the toads is just as dramatic as their mass migrations across the African plains. Many toads perish while crossing the tarmac, driven by their instinct to pass on their genes.

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The Robin The Robin is very popular in the UK. In 2015 it won a countrywide vote to be named the national bird. This iconic red-breasted specimen was photographed in the vicinity of an equally iconic Bristol landmark, Cabot Tower.

Spending time in a natural environment seems to be inseparable from leaving behind the city – getting out into the great outdoors, where wildlife exists in a state that is considered natural, beyond the influence of civilisation. Unfortunately, this merely reflects romantic ideals. No wildlife on this planet exists unaffected by the actions of humankind. Even the most remote areas of wilderness can suffer from pollution in the atmosphere or the oceans. There is substance to the notion that nature is not truly natural if the impact of humans is apparent. Wildlife and landscape photographers will go to great lengths to ensure that no trace of human activity is present in their pictures, but by doing so they often edit the story – i.e. the impact of human intervention – out of the picture. My approach is to do the exact opposite. I show the environment and how we influence it in an explicit way, in order to give the subject a context and add the human angle to the story. Around 75 per cent of Europeans live in urban areas; by telling this kind of story and showing wildlife in a setting viewers can relate to, the image provokes a much more personal reaction.

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To briefly sum up my approach to wildlife photography: for me, it is about taking something commonplace that can be found on your doorstep and turning it into something worthy of attention. By getting as close as possible and shooting at eye level, I try to create a connection between the viewer and the animal, and by doing so, elicit a better understanding of the world the animals inhabit. To follow this approach, I had to develop fieldcraft and an understanding of animal behaviour – the latter simply so that I could get close enough to take a picture. That developed into a skill that helps me recognise quickly when an animal seems to feel undisturbed when being photographed at close proximity. In urban areas, wildlife can be more approachable – as animals are accustomed to the sight, smell and sound of humans. This is not always the case, and there is a need to adjust to such situations. Sometimes I use remote triggers and infra-red camera traps to get close-up pictures without having to hold the camera. With the help of techniques such as long exposures and creative lighting, I draw attention to the subject and aim to obtain a striking image. Further-

more, I often spend a lot of time with my subjects. In a certain, personal way, I get to know them and consider them as individuals. As a result, I communicate something of their individual personalities in the pictures. By doing so, the viewer will hopefully show more empathy towards my subjects and more compassion for wildlife in general – particularly in urban environments, where animals have just as much right to exist as humans. Urban wildlife photography has become my speciality, and I have a clear understanding of how I first got into it. During my childhood, my urban neighbourhood and the animals that inhabited it were a major part of my life. I also felt a strong desire to document and share the discoveries I made here. My motivation for choosing to photograph wildlife in the city is as complex as it is personal: it is about exploring my own relationship with nature. There have been times when nature felt increasingly distant to me, as I was living a busy life in the city. Being occupied with meetings, paperwork, emails, social media, bars and parties, nature started to take a back seat and slowly fade further and further away, until it ceased to

Photos: Sam Hobson

exist almost entirely. I had let myself become surrounded by people so disconnected from nature that it became nothing more than a nuisance or inconvenience – a pigeon aimlessly wandering the street, a cockroach crawling beneath the bed, howling foxes waking all of us up in the night. Yet I was also finding myself in situations that encouraged me to pick up the camera and return to my roots. When I was a child, I sought sanctuary in nature – digging for worms in my back garden to feed the birds or climbing trees in my local woods. In those days, I had no worries about paying bills, meeting targets at work or improving unfulfilling relationships – my relationship with nature was all I needed. Photography helped me ground myself in nature once more. It encouraged me to slow down and tune in – to open my eyes and ears and start to notice the small daily changes in my environment as the seasons passed. Letting go of stress and distractions was actually much easier than I had thought. It is just as easy to do so in the city as anywhere else – all one needs is a slight shift in attention towards the surroundings. The motivation for taking

these pictures developed as a method to counteract the alienation I felt between myself and nature. Along the way, it also became a mission about reminding others that nature exists all around us and that wildlife can be just as exciting and dramatic in the city as anywhere else. You do not need fireworks or starry nighttime skies or dramatic sunsets, you just need to remember what it was like to be a child and appreciate the very moment you find yourself in. Most people dislike the daily trudge home from work, but remember that time you saw a fox on your way home? How exciting! That is precisely the image I intend to capture. If I can photograph an unusual animal in a familiar context, even better. Through my work, people should expect to see the unexpected, start to open their eyes and pay attention to the wildlife in their neighbourhood. My aim is for them to begin to think about nature as something that we coexist with. If people feel compassion for their local wildlife, it can also encourage an interest in wider conservation issues, which can contribute to personal fulfilment and perhaps even global change.

C O N Q UE S T O F T HE C IT Y For more of Sam Hobson’s photos go to toposmagazine.com/hobson

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In both open and hidden places, in the light and in the dark: Animals such as bats, otters, birds and fish have all made our cities their homes. Nevertheless, we hardly include them in our planning efforts. There is hope, however: The Network of Biophilic Cities, a cooperative project among cities all over the globe that values residents’ innate connections and access to nature. TIMOTHY BEATLEY

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In 1904 William Beebe, a famous explorer and naturalist, spent an uncomfortable evening at the top of the Statue of Liberty watching migrating birds from this elevated perch. He became alarmed over the course of the night, as fog settled in, and “the birds began to pass through the periphery of illumination, then to strike intermittently against the railing and glass.” The next morning he counted 271 dead birds on the ground. It was a remarkable early episode demonstrating the extent of animal life in cities, and also the important ways in which urban design and planning can have serious, often fatal, effects on the faunal cohabitants of cities. Going biophilic Fast forward more than a century later, and cities continue to grapple with these issues. In an important positive trend, cities are implementing a variety of measures to make themselves more bird-friendly. San Francisco, for example, has now adopted mandatory bird design guidelines that require bird-friendly glass and glass treatments for new structures. This shows a new sense of the important role cities can play as safe havens for biodiversity and as places

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where urbanites can connect with wildlife and nature more generally. It is part of a larger and promising new way of understanding cities – not as divorced from or disconnected from nature, but deeply embedded in the natural world, with a new imperative to design for and design in nature in every way possible. At the heart of this is the concept of biophilia, or our innate connection with and love for nature, an idea championed by Harvard biologist E.O.Wilson. During the last five years the idea has been gaining traction, and the vision of “Biophilic Cities” – cities that make room for nature, that put nature at the centre of design and planning, and that seek to foster new connections with the natural world – is taking hold as a compelling (and essential) parallel vision to the goals of urban resilience and sustainability. In 2013 a global Biophilic Cities Network was launched. It is now comprised of around fifteen cities and is growing in size. As an aspirational network of like-minded cities of nature (not a green certification organisation), it is working to share model codes, tools for implementation and stories of success, producing films, webinars and articles, and building a global community of cities willing to reimagine the role of urban life. Early leaders in

this network include San Francisco, Singapore, St. Louis, Wellington, Edmonton, Austin, Pittsburgh and Washington, among others, and each city has a unique set of stories about ways to include animals and nature. Singapore has proven to be a best practice city, few cities have done more to advance the goal of connecting residents to nature. In this increasingly vertical city-state, nature seems to be everywhere. New high-rise structures include new nature in the form of skyparks, green roofs and living walls. The city has even changed its motto from “Singapore, a Garden City,” to “Singapore, a City in a Garden”. It is a subtle but significant shift, and suggests that nature is not simply something to visit within the city, but rather is the city. We are immersed in nature – why visit the garden, or the park or the forest when we can live within it? This vision is everywhere on display in Singapore, from its impressive multi-layered tree canopy coverage to its 300-km-long system of Park Connectors, to the innovative ways its hospitals and health facilities integrate trees and nature as healing elements. But can dense and highly developed cities like Singapore also serve as biological reservoirs and play an important conservation role? Yes they

LITERATURE AUTHOR: Timothy Beatley TITLE: Handbook of Biophilic City

Planning & Design

can, is the answer. The increasing numbers and expanding habitat of the smooth-coated otter, a species rated as being vulnerable by the IUCN Red List and which has surprisingly returned to the city, are an indication of this. Max Khoo, who is studying the otters for his senior thesis, states: “To see otters and to see wildlife in our highly urbanised country, it kind of gets people excited and they want to know more about wildlife.” And with a little education and engagement, urban residents can learn how to coexist with species like otters, coyotes and bears. Austin: The bat cave Many other cities around the world are experiencing similar connections with nature. They are becoming biophilic in many big and small ways. And we are beginning to appreciate that cities can and must do a better job planning for and accommodating all kinds of animals and nature and that they can play a significant role in global conservation. The urban centres that are part of the Biophilic Cities Network have made remarkable efforts to make room for other forms of life. Austin, Texas is famous for its 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats that have taken up residence under the newly renovated

Congress Avenue Bridge. While the initial impulse was biophobic (i.e., eradicating the bats due to a health risk), the city eventually changed course with help from organisations like Bat Conservation International. Today, watching the bats emerge as the sun goes down. This is now a city that embraces bats as both a natural asset (and a tourist attraction) and a nightly opportunity for awe. Similar events happen now in other cities as well. If Austin has gone a bit bat crazy, partner St. Louis has gone a bit butterfly crazy, expressing its special love for and commitment to monarch butterflies. The now-former mayor Francis Slay committed the city to planting 250 butterfly gardens – a goal that has been wildly exceeded (there are now nearly 400). Habitecture is the new thing As can be seen, there are many ways that design and planning can better accommodate animals and nature, of course. Cities like Edmonton have embraced ecological connectivity in land use planning, and have already designed and built some 27 wildlife passages to make it easier for animals large and small to move through this city. At the other end of the spectrum we

WAN T TO B ECO M E A BIO PHILIC CI T Y ? Find out more about the Biophilic Cities Project at toposmagazine.com/biophilic-cities

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must find ways to design new habitats into buildings, something that architect Joyce Hwang calls habitecture. She is pioneering, for instance, new building wall and facade concepts that make space for many different kinds of creatures, including birds, bats and insects. Opportunities for connections with animals and nature in cities – physical, visual, mental – offer the possibility of creating moments of awe and wonder, and a chance to revel in the beauty and otherness of the world around us. Some cities, such as Wellington, New Zealand, are beginning to recognise and prioritise their connections with the marine realm. Here and in other coastal cities, much of the nearby fauna is marine. It is a special challenge in that this nature is often just beyond the edge of the land, is hidden to us, though there are dramatic moments which the life of the sea presents us, for instance when humpback whales appear in New York Harbor, or in the case of Wellington when orcas appear in the harbour. Studying watery spaces Cultivating a connection to water and marine habitats at an early age is important as well. The Harbor School in New York, is one example. One of the city’s many specialised high schools,

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students who choose to go there can pursue skills and a career focused on the water – whether it be scuba diving or marine ecology. Even more significantly, the school serves as a base of operations for a remarkable citywide initiative called the Billion Oyster Project. The aspiration is embedded in the name, i.e. growing a billion new oysters in the harbour, and engaging schools and their pupils directly in this mission and in the process of education about the ecology and the nature of this place known as a the City of Water. When the Europeans originally arrived in this area, there were billions of oysters growing in the harbour, which were both an important food source and a natural water filtration system. The water quality of New York’s harbour is still too poor to allow these oysters to be eaten, but they do have an important ecological function and most importantly serve as a mechanism for a physical and emotional connection to the water. Part of the task here is to reimagine the watery spaces of cities like New York. Because the biodiversity and nature of these spaces is harder to see or appreciate, we tend to view them as empty or irrelevant. That is certainly the message we send when we draw planning maps that simply indicate an area with black or grey shading – sending the signal there is nothing of biological

importance there. Strategies for reanimating these spaces by acknowledging their biological richness and complexity on the maps we prepare would be good first step. We need to make room Biodiversity around the globe is facing many challenges, of course. One of the most significant is climate change. As temperatures rise and habitats shift, many species are presented with the Herculean task of tracking or shifting with these changes. Cities can play an increasingly important role in many of the ways mentioned above. In the process, we can create important new dimensions regarding the enjoyment of urban life – if we see otters (or birds, or whales or ants), there is a chance that we can experience some essential and badly needed moments of awe, wonder and joy. We will benefit individually and personally in many ways of course, as will the many other people we encounter in daily life. Experiencing nature has the effect of softening and deepening all the relationships in our lives. For these reasons we need to build a new model of cities that includes otters, birds, whales and ants – we need to make room for them in our cities and in our (biophilic) hearts.

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Sending messages in an olfactory language, plants appear to communicate with each other by different modes and means. Perceived as pleasing scents by humans, trees release chemicals to repel insects or even warn fellow trees.

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Timber Are trees human? Are forests the most social networks of all? In his book The Hidden Life of Trees, German author and forester Peter Wohlleben describes trees as social entities. They even have the ability to communicate feelings to one another, he claims. Published in Germany in 2015 the book sold more than 320,000 copies, before beeing translated into English in 2016. The San Francisco Chronicle described it as the perhaps most important environmental book of that year. How sound are Peter Wohlleben’s ideas? STUART THOMPSON

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While different from communication between humans understood as a form of social interaction, plants gain evolutionary advantages through exchanges of information. Translating this information creates bridges of understanding between trees and humans.

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The evidence is now reasonably strong that plants transmit and receive information from other individuals of the same species, plants of other types and other living organisms including some animals. The “language” of this communication does not use sounds as ours does, but instead is mostly chemical. Plants are master chemists, producing a vast range of different substances. They release many of them into the air and we can sense quite a few of them as smells. The scent of spring is mostly the cocktail of substances that plants start to make as they stir from their winter rest. Other chemicals escape if a plant is damaged, for example by a herbivore or a lawn mower. Freshly cut grass smells as it does because of these. Anyone who pays attention while gardening, cooking, or just walking in the country or a park will know that every plant species has its own signature mix of aromas. These can be finely tuned to carry information about the status of the plant releasing them. Warning chemicals If plants are being eaten by insects or experiencing an infection, others nearby will prepare their defences so that they are ready when they are attacked as if they had received a warning. Jasmine and other similar chemicals were amongst the earliest messages to be identified

that carry this type of information. They are produced by many types of plant when attacked by disease or insects and stimulate other plants nearby to produce chemicals that make them resistant to infection or harder to digest. Sometimes the chemicals released by a plant infested with herbivorous insects can also act as a cry for help, summoning carnivores to devour them. For example, citrus plants release limonene, the compound that gives oranges their scent, and this attracts predatory worms to protect the plants’ roots from beetle larvae. Unfortunately, whilst the scents that trees release into the air can be pleasing to us, sunlight converts some of them into other chemicals harmful to our health. Therefore, their effects on our quality of life can be mixed. Fungal networks But not all chemical signals travel through the air. The roots of most plants are associated with fungi in the soil around them. When we think of forest fungi, we perhaps visualise mushrooms and toadstools, but these are just temporary structures used by the fungi to spread their spores. The real fungus is a mat of long thin cells spreading through the soil and many of these connect with the roots of trees and other plants. In return for sugars and other nutrients made by the plant using

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Plant communication is more than a soliloquy. Taking place within an invisible network based on individual and community interest, its interactions can be beneficial, adversarial or both, and are reflected by the physical formation of trees.

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photosynthesis, the fungus helps provide the plant with the minerals that it needs from the soil. Exchanging nutrients is not the only way that the plant and fungus help one another. One fungus can also form a network with the roots of many plants and act as a conduit carrying messages between them. Such fungal networks have been shown to carry messages from plants, suffering an infection to surrounding plants causing them to prepare their immune defences, or from plants infested by insects telling their neighbours to release chemicals that attract predators or parasites of the species attacking the original plant. What is more, the fungi can also carry other resources such as food to neighbouring plants. Invisible to us, communities of plants exchange resources and information beneath our feet. Because their connections are invisible, we have only considered how they are affected when plants are transplanted into new environments. In fact, studies now suggest that although there are some differences between species and locations, the effects of a transfer from a rural to an urban location have sur prisingly little impact on interactions between tree roots and fungi. However, urban trees could still be alienated from the broader benefits of exchanging information and resources with other trees if none are within range of fungal networks or airborne signals.

Communication or soliloquies? It may seem that exchanging chemicals is not genuine communication in the sense that we understand it. A human conception might expect some type of intent, but we should note that we can’t be sure that this exists for many phenomena that should be included in a biological definition, such as the complex social interactions of ants and bees. Instead, biologists look at whether the organism sending the message gains anything from doing so. This is because for genuine communication to have evolved, it must help the organism sending the messages to pass on its genes. For example, signals that trigger defensive responses can also carry information to other parts of the same plant and hypothetically this might be why they are produced. Are other plants or animals that learn about dangers or sources of food from them just eavesdropping? There are indeed instances where other organisms are clearly taking advantage of information not intended for them. Some parasites use plants’ chemical signatures to find their victims, and herbivorous insects have been reported to home in on the substances released by diseased plants, which are less likely to be able to fight them off. On the other hand, the advantages of other signals are clear. The colours and aromas of fruit invite animals to spread a

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plant’s seeds. The scent of a ripe melon or tomato is a message telling you that it is good to eat. Likewise, the colours and smells of flowers can be seen as calls to pollinators such as bees and butterflies. Nor are the ways that flowers pass information to their pollinators limited to light and smell. It seems that some flowers also use electrical fields to guide bees to them, and flowers pollinated by bats interact with their sonar, using sound-reflecting surfaces. There also do seem to be evolutionary advantages to sending warnings to surrounding plants, suggesting that these are not just soliloquies. A summons to aphid-eating insects will be much stronger if a plant attacked by aphids can get its neighbours to join in. If more plants in an area are resistant to infection, it becomes harder for disease to take hold, in the same way that everyone benefits from the “herd immunity” created by vaccination programmes. Therefore, it seems that these too can be considered as real communication. Self and community interest But there is a fine balance between competition and cooperation. All organisms exist in a web of interactions with communities of their own species and the other species that surround them. Some of these interactions can be negotiated to the benefit of both parties, others are solely

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adversarial, and others still are some combination. The formation of tree canopies in forests is an example of the third type. Each individual tree has to balance gathering as much light as it can against wasting precious resources in competition. The result is a slow dance guided by touch, reflected light and airborn chemical signals, creating almost jigsaw-like pavements of treetops in a phenomenon known as “crown shyness”. There is also a potential balance between self and community interest in communication via fungal connections as the exchange of information and resources is controlled by the fungus. It may give most help to the plants most useful to it. However, the fungi can sometimes be duped by one plant into delivering toxins to poison its rivals. Peter Wohlleben has made trees seem less unfamiliar by translating their responses to their neighbours and their environment into human terms. But how would we ever know whether a tree’s experiences are like ours? Trees may not be people but the behaviours of all organisms have been shaped by the same types of pressures, and our interactions with the world, our community (in the broadest sense) and our environment reflect our evolutionary history as much as a tree’s do. Ultimately, perhaps, Wohlleben’s success in building bridges between plants and humans tells us as much about our place in the natural world and the commonalities that exist between all living things as it does about trees.

Photos: Beth Moon; images are from the book: Ancient Trees: Portraits of Time

Peter Wohlleben has made trees seem less unfamiliar by translating their responses to their neighbours and their environment into human terms. But how would we ever know whether a tree’s experiences are like ours?

Sonora: cosy & comfy – enjoying the view

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aming the Shrew In Germany, urban nature conservation mainly focuses on protecting habitats for plants and animals. Animal Aided Design takes this traditional approach to the next level: It provides designers with tools that allow them to put the beast into the middle of the planning process. By that, animals – which are often difficult to integrate in landscape architectural projects – become true stakeholders in the urban realm. THOMAS E. HAUCK, WOLFGANG W. WEISSER

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Design by Rupert Schelle, Georg Hausladen and Sophie Jahnke

Urban ecological research has shown that the built structures of cities, usually thought of as being distant from nature, offer numerous habitats for animals across a range of urban structure types. Inner courtyards typical of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the shared green spaces in residential estates of the 1950s to 1970s, gardens, schoolyards, and sports complexes as well as other green spaces, all of these offer room for urban biodiversity. However, this huge potential space for biodiversity is only rarely used specifically for furthering urban biodiversity. Instead, cities tend to eliminate many of the niches that animals inhabit in the urban realm, be it through densification, i.e. the commercial or residential development of previously unbuilt areas; by maximizing the energy-efficiency of buildings, resulting in reduced breeding or hibernating opportunities for animals such as birds or bats; or by using public spaces more intensively. As a consequence, urban biodiversity is shrinking, shown by the decrease in population densities of synanthropic birds (birds living in close association with humans) in Germany or of the house sparrow in Great Britain. In Germany, urban nature conservation is primarily geared towards protecting and interlinking existing habitats for plants and animals. The planning concept behind this approach views the urban realm as a fabric in which green spaces, so-called patches that constitute the habitats of various species, are embedded in a matrix consisting of the rest of the city. This matrix is considered to be hostile to animals. Typically, patches are remaining natural habitats, water bodies, riparian areas, but also parks, or the trackbeds of abandoned railway lines. The intention of most conservation planning is to interlink

these patches, creating a network by implementing additional patches or some ‘corridors’. However, given the continued decrease of animals in cities, the focus on patches seems to be insufficient. Instead, maintaining and increasing urban biodiversity requires measures that move beyond care and protection of existing patches. It appears necessary to turn towards the urban matrix itself and combine the construction of urban environments for humans with the creation and development of suitable environments for plants and animals. Such an approach requires that the dogma of the city-nature dichotomy be overcome, in which cities are viewed as a human realm to be protected from nature and opposed to a natural realm that does not include humans. Overcoming the dogma allows us to take a planning perspective that perceives the built structure of the city as constructed urban nature and consequently views any proposal to alter and design it as a true planning issue. In terms of methods to be applied, it seems reasonable to tap into the tradition of proactive urban nature conservation. This tried and tested practice comprises the sowing and planting of care-intensive and aesthetically pleasing types of vegetation, the construction of nesting and breeding sites, and the settlement, or conservation, of urban-friendly animal and plant species through targeted feeding. Such bottom-up conservation measures are usually carried out by conservation associations and supported by citizens who are not professional biologists. However, due to the fact that this is a decentralized and often spontaneous form of activity, bottom-up nature conservation is hardly able to make a systematic and plannable contribution to settling and maintaining stable species populations. Furthermore, singular measures, such as the installation of nest boxes or

“bee hotels”, are often insufficient because they only partially fulfil the needs of the targeted species; nest boxes, for example, only fulfil the requirement of a nesting place. Other essential needs such as food supply or cover from predators go unnoticed and are left to chance. Using the method of Animal-Aided Design (AAD), we have attempted to endow the proactive bottom-up approach in urban species conservation with a systematic city planning strategy. Above all, AAD aims to synchronize the planning for animals with the planning processes known from urban and landscape planning, and from architecture and landscape architecture. AAD provides an interface between the biologists or conservationists who aim at conserving species, and the experts who design the urban space, i.e. architects, landscape architects, urban planners, civil engineers, or traffic planners. The goal of the cooperative planning process is to explicitly plan the settlement of animals in both urban open spaces and built-up areas, and to integrate this into the overall design. The question of which animals should live in a particular area provides the starting point of the planning process. In other words, species selection, like other programmatic planning decisions, takes place at the beginning of the design planning phase. The selection principles are to involve the different parties in the selection process and thereby guarantee that participation takes place before any decision has been made or the building work is completed. Once target species have been selected, the needs of the particular animals can be included in the design. The toolbox of landscape architecture and urban development disposes of sufficient instruments at the appropriate levels of scale to be able to develop a catalogue of measures that

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cater to the needs of the selected species. Conversely, AAD can inspire the design itself. Various design proposals that were developed through AAD show that it is worth the effort to treat the special needs of animals, i.e. their habitat requirements – nesting place, food, mating places –, as an additional starting point for the design process. In Munich’s Brantstrasse, for example, the municipal housing developer GEWOFAG is currently realizing the first residential housing project that uses AAD, in cooperation with the AAD research group and the State Association for Bird Conservation (LBV). The research project for integrating AAD into the housing development has been financed by a three-year research grant from the Bavarian State Ministry of the Environment and Consumer Protection. The research group is part of the Centre for Urban Nature and Climate Adaptation at the Technical University of Munich. The project consists of two residential buildings comprising 99 flats and two daycare centres for children. The buildings are being erected in an open space between existing blocks of flats from the 1950s. Under standard planning procedures, the animals that used to live in the green space that is now being covered with buildings (hetchhogs, sparrows, etc.) would have lost their habitat. The purpose of using AAD is to ensure that the newly built structures as well as the remaining open spaces continue to fulfil the critical needs of the existing species. In addition, AAD allows to create new habitats for other species from adjacent areas. Based on mappings conducted in 2015 and consultations held with GEWOFAG and LBV Munich, the following species were selected to be targeted by the AAD measures: European green woodpecker (Picus viridis), house sparrow (Passer domesticus), common pip-

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istrelle (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) and the European hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus). The team created species profiles and identified critical habitat factors for the selected species; it also researched biologically relevant characteristics of these species in cooperation with other experts, in order to feed this information into the species profiles. These profiles served as the basis for integrating the critical needs of the species into the design and detail planning of the buildings and open spaces. This took place in close cooperation with the client, the architects bogevischs buero, and the landscape architects michellerundschalk. The planning of the above-ground construction and open spaces accommodates the following elements: “barrier-free access” as well as breeding, day and winter habitats for the European hedgehog; breeding burrows and habitats for selected bird and bat species in the facades of the buildings; vertical deadwood structures for the European green woodpecker; and a planting scheme that fulfils the habitat functions (especially food) of the selected species. The resident species were protected during the construction phase; this was accomplished with the help of members of LBV, who provided interim habitats for birds, collected the hedgehogs and helped them to hibernate. As the construction in Brantstrasse is being realized, the status of the species that existed in the planning and adjacent areas prior to construction is inspected and mapped in regular intervals. Whether these measures will achieve the desired success for the target species will be determined by an evaluation after completion of the project. A given species will only be able to live at a particular planning site if the animal’s critical needs are met. The designers and planners thus need to be competently informed about the critical needs of the animal in the different phases of

its life cycle in order to factor this knowledge into the planning. AAD conveys the species’ needs by means of a species profile containing a life cycle diagram that describes the critical location factors pertinent to each phase. The critical needs include various requirements, such as food supply for both juvenile or adult animals, specifications for nesting or wintering sites, or protection against predators. To assist the planning, the species profiles also include information on plant species that can be used to provide sufficient food or shelter for the animals. The information provided in the profiles allows planners to design the environment of a planning area in ways appropriate for the species. Even so, the list of critical location factors is nothing more than a form of assistance for the design task. The actual creative challenge consists in devising appealing and innovative design solutions for the entirety of the critical location factors as part of the overall design proposal. Once the design process has been completed, the planners should be in the position to mark the places in the preliminary plan where the particular critical needs of the species are met; the plan thus makes the entire life cycle visible. Contrary to concepts that view nature as by definition “unblemished” by any design activities, AAD is based on the idea of designing a new image of nature or, respectively, “reconstructing” an image of nature that already exists and conveying it to an observer or user for the purpose of aesthetic experience. AAD integrates living beings, here animals, in a design context, similar to how plants have been integrated in garden design and landscape architecture for a very long time. In setting up guidelines for the individual species and creating the actual designs, the various participants of the plan-

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ning process are the ones who make the crucial decisions. Yet, like any technology, AAD is not neutral in its ideas and design principles, but instead based on certain basic premises. These are 1. the premise that nature is fundamentally something that can be made, 2. the premise that the evolution of nature is open-ended, and 3. the idea that nature can be experienced aesthetically through games and experiments. These ideas can be summarized under the concept of individualistic nature conservation, based on a similar approach in ecological theory. AAD, therefore, is not primarily a method to protect already existing parts of nature or a form of conservation of natural monuments. Rather, it is a method for initiating open-ended settlement processes of animals that have moved into the urban realm. Since the repercussions and effects of these settlement processes cannot be completely controlled, AAD initiates real-life experiments in order to test and explore the possibilities of settling animals under different urban conditions, the evolution of the populations of these animals, and the possibilities, conflicts, and limits of “cohabitation” of humans and wild animals in the city. How well the target species accept the designed elements will only become apparent after these have been realized. For AAD to hold its place in the daily practice of design and planning two things are needed: firstly, research that determines the critical habitat factors through specific experiments, and secondly courageous municipalities and real estate owners who are willing to try out AAD projects and maintain them in the long term so that it becomes possible to determine how functional the measures are and to verify their effectiveness through monitoring.

Life-cycle and detailed AAD planning for house sparrow: The different pictograms show where in the urban green space particular critical needs of the species are met. For the house sparrow, all of these needs are fulfilled within 50 metres of the nest boxes.

SPECIES-SPECIFIC DESIGN COMPONENTS HOUSE SPARROW The house sparrow lives in colonies and often breeds indoors. Nesting opportunities are provided in the eastern fronts of the building. As the species has a very small home range, all critical needs such as seeds and insects for food, shrubs for shelter, a water bath, a dust bath and nest boxes are provided within a circle of 50 metres.

CRITICAL NEEDS Protective sleeping and resting places in thorny hedges with dense branches at the east facades of buildings (hawthorn, privet, European hornbeam)

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Ears of grasses and other seeds of the species-rich fertile meadows and dry-grass expanses in the extensified courtyard areas

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Arthropods and their larvae on open ground and plants; in particular in areas with sun-exposed dry grass and areas devoid of vegetation; especially important for supplying the fledglings with food Nesting place in the east façade, integrated in the insulation layer in the shape of a nesting brick, height 3–10 mm, openings 35 mm and 45 mm, distance from adjacent nests 50 cm minimum Dust bath for parasite control in vegetation-free sand and dust areas, in the sandy play area and the boules court

Fruit of specimen plants for food supply in autumn and winter; species: hawthorn, serviceberry, cornel cherry, crab apple, wild roses Water bath in puddles artificially created in depressions in the asphalt hill 5

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Detail of “facade animalisation” (facade greening)

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Berlin’s Daktari Wild boar, beaver, peregrine falcon? Berlin has them all! Germany’s Capital city is a paradise for wild animals. Yet the city also needs to learn how to share its urban space with wildlife or integrate it into urban planning measures. This is the cause Dirk Ehlert fights for. For his efforts, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in September 2017. Topos author Susanne Isabel Yacoub spoke with Berlin’s former wild animal consultant.

SUSANNE ISABEL YACOUB

topos: Derk Ehlert, you worked for the Berlin Senate Administration for many years as wild animal consultant – in the very centre of the city. In the meantime, you have taken a new position as press secretary and become known as an advocate for animals. How did you arrive at this unusual job? EHLERT: About 20 years ago people in Berlin began to experience wild animals in ways different from what they had been used to, that is seeing them only in the forest. Instead, the animals were appearing in built-up urban areas. Wild boars were digging up front yards, foxes were crossing inner-city streets. And worried citizens called the Senate Administration in growing numbers. We were forced to react to that. As the city’s wild animal consultant, I was able to hire a number of volunteer wildlife rangers who would capture the animals or, for example, assist the police in dealing with injured martens.

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Taking action: Derk Ehlert fights the stereotypes and prejudice with which many Berliners react when seeing or hearing about wild animals.

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topos: How do you defend your clients? EHLERT: Our main task was, and still is today, to explain to the people of Berlin why animals such as foxes, raccoons, etc. even appear in the city and how they live. We actively engage with the public and try to make people understand and accept that humans are not the only living creatures in the city. topos: Do the Berliners take a critical stance towards wild animals? EHLERT: Actually no. Basically they are very open to them. Because of the Berlin Wall they are used to living on a kind of island and having to get along with animals in the city. topos: So when wild animals became more noticeable in the city, there was a surge of phone calls? EHLERT: It is important to take citizens seriously. Many felt insecure because they didn’t know anything about how wild animals live. Or they were frustrated because there was no one to help them and give advice. topos: Do more wild animals live in Berlin than in other cities? EHLERT: Yes, because Berlin is a very green city: 40 per cent of the city’s surface area are green and agrarian spaces, wasteland or water surfaces, and allotment gardens. In addition, there are 19,000 hectares of forest land. Certain species were able to develop better here than in other places, not least because hunting rights were restricted exclusively to the Allies and little hunting took place on city grounds. topos: There is a lot construction taking place in Berlin, the city is being massively densified, wastelands disappear. Are you worried for your protégés? EHLERT: Any surface area lost to construction causes concern regarding places of refuge for wild animals. But many of today’s redevelopment areas are the living spaces of tomorrow and as of yet there still is a reserve of spaces. In the inner city, however, we are slowly running out of refuge spaces as even the smallest vacant lots are being built up. This is where animals

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really have to prove themselves as genuine generalists. Otherwise they really could not live in certain areas. topos: You have invented a beautiful term for the animals who live with us… EHLERT: Yes, I introduced the term the “Big Five” for the mammals whom we encounter most frequently in Berlin, based on the number of citizen calls: wild boar, marten, fox, rabbit, raccoon. If one considers the particular species that live in our urban area, this group could easily be extended to the “Big Ten”, also comprising the beaver, striped field mouse, hawk, seaeagle and peregrine falcon. topos: The sea-eagle? How did this bird come to Berlin? EHLERT: Well, Berlin is situated in the centre of Brandenburg and the prohibition of the insecticide DDT lead to a recovery of this endangered species. We are very proud of our two breeding pairs, who for about ten years have profited from ideal living conditions. In winter for example, they live off deer, wild boars and other animals that are failing to survive. topos: What is your mission? The protection of the animals or the protection of the people of the city? EHLERT: It is the public relations work, listening to people’s concerns and getting them interested in our work. I would like to prepare people for the changes the animals bring about. The images of wild animals we have in our minds, where and how they live, are no longer accurate. Perhaps they never were accurate. The idea that a roe lives in the forest is our view. In reality, the roe inhabits fields and meadows – it is we who have turned it into a forest animal. topos: So, your strategy is that city dwellers have to tolerate wild animals? Do we really want to keep all wild animals that migrate into the city? EHLERT: Whether this really applies to all animals remains to be seen. What matters to me is the living together. We need to show understanding for animals, not least because hunting does not bring about a reduction of wild animals.

VITA DERK EHLERT studied landscape planning at the Berlin Technical University of Applied

Sciences. In 1999 he was employed by the Berlin Senate Administration for Urban Development. He was hunting consultant of the state of Berlin from 2001 to 2007, and wild animal consultant from 2007 to 2014. Since 2014 Ehlert has been the wild animal expert of the City’s press office. He has also worked as a freelance instructor for more than 30 years.

topos: Some immigration stories are true success stories in terms of species protection. The beaver is a case in point. EHLERT: Indeed, as recently as 25 years ago we could only dream of a species that had become extinct in our region, a wild animal like the beaver, re-establishing itself. When the beaver reappeared in Berlin, this was kept secret at the time. Gradually, the beaver reconquered the city and soon made an appearance in every part of Berlin. Where there are neither dikes nor flood protection areas, the beaver cannot wreak much havoc. But if the animal intrudes upon historic park facilities and private waterfront properties, one has to cooperate to find solutions for protecting special trees or replacing a young tree here and there.

Photo: dpa/ Gregor Fischer

topos: In your work, you rely on a high media presence. You have camera teams accompany you. What are you aiming at when you do that? EHLERT: In certain situations, I purposely take media partners with me in order to demonstrate situations, solutions and correct behaviour in front of a running camera. And it’s important for me to involve the next generation of city dwellers, the children. There is no use in sugarcoating the world, but what we can do is relieve people of their fears. Children’s books used to teach us that foxes who don’t shy away from humans are rabid. We need to change our thinking and understand that this is not the case. In fact, wild animals have learned that they survive more easily if they go near humans because humans feed them. topos: In Europe, the species we come across tend to be comparatively friendly like the beaver or the fox. Do animals in India or Africa cause more serious confrontations? EHLERT: All wild animals are potentially dangerous. Even ant bites can be lethal to humans. There is still a lot of educational work that needs to be done and we realize that society is not ready yet. Europe and Africa are different continents and their approaches to these questions are worlds apart. What I can say is this: outside Europe people react with less panic to the appearance of wild animals, people are more relaxed about it. Despite the fact that warthogs are really aggressive and there is little one can do against monkeys.

topos: Are all wild animals in Berlin equally welcome, or do we have to set priorities? EHLERT: An interesting question. The German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation has published a species list for such purposes. Whether that is meaningful and sustainable and will be successful is another story. Invasive species may become a danger to native ones or even displace them. Look at the raccoon for example. Thousands of raccoons are hunted across Germany every year and yet the population is growing. topos: Other European cities, Paris, London or Zurich, for example, struggle with similar problems. Do these cities have their own experts with whom you exchange ideas? EHLERT: In the German-speaking countries there are exchanges between Vienna, Berne and Zurich. The Zurich wildlife guard is well-staffed and has been doing very professional work for years. Contacts with London and Paris tend to be incidental, for example when individual people turn to us with their questions. Internationally, we are currently seeing the emergence of a cooperation on the question of how animals can be better integrated into urban architecture. Animal Aided Design is one of several joint projects, co-directed by TU Kassel, TU Munich and the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation. topos: Animal Aided Design. What are your expectations towards such an approach? EHLERT: Our goal is to achieve a higher degree of integration of wild animals into urban development planning. Structures made of steel do not offer much in terms of living space for animals and glass causes the death of many birds; architects forget that over and over again. The point is to provide assistance to the architects and urban planners of tomorrow on how to deal with different species. This is a complex field as every species naturally has its own demands. What is clear, however, is that cities need to make steps towards the animals if we want to attain a holistic system. It’s not going to work the other way round.

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War Animals are inherently close to us, but at the same time stranger than ever. Our understanding of these creatures and our relationships with them are formed by media mechanisms. This is not a bad thing. But these images cover up an existential element of human insecurity when we are confronted with the world of the beast. A cultural studies-informed essay. ALEXANDER GUTZMER

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“No one wants to be eaten ...”

FIN SHEPARD IN SHARKNADO 2

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Sometimes, you have to get close to the plagues that haunt you. We are taught this by one of the most hilarious scenes Hollywood has ever produced, i.e. a scene from the cult trash thriller series Sharknado. In the films, cities are attacked by sharks flying through the air. In the above mentioned key scene, which is the culmination of the tone-setting 2013 opener, hero Fin, having performed a number of mind-blowing deeds of heroism, deliberately jumps into the mouth of one giant shark, only to cut his way out again with a chain saw. In this way, he kills the final member of the plague of swimming, and later flying, sharks attacking Los Angeles. He gets right in the middle of things. Only by actually seeing and learning about the animals’ intestines is he able to get rid of the plague.

Animals are still dominated by humans, but no longer only through deadly adversity, but instead by proximity. We don’t kill the strange beast, but instead try to get cuddly with even the scariest of them. Certain reminders of the fact that this is still dangerous, such as the attack on German circus hero Roy of the duo Siegfried & Roy in 2003, do not change that. You may remember that the 300-kilogram tiger Montecore first bit Roy’s arm, then his neck, eventually pulling him off stage. Roy, who suffered severe injuries from the attack, later argued that it had not been an attack at all. Obviously, he wanted to defend the tiger, thereby emphasising to the immense proximity both had had before the attack. Estrangement

Proximity Through this scene Sharknado becomes a strange symbol for the highly ambiguous relationship between man and beast. It is an awkward representation of the way in which we engage with the animals around us, and with the idea of the “animal kingdom” in general. On the one hand, we get ever closer to animals, understanding them better and cultivating the idea that we can engage in a meaningful relationship with them. The feeling that we are Mowgli is in all of us.

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Which brings us to the essential distance between animals and humans. There is an everwidening rift between the two. Animals are strange to us. They form what psychoanalysis calls “the other”, as is also argued by sociologist Joanna Latimer. The ambiguous relationship between man and beast, or, as it is called in this issue of Topos, “plague”, is of course a media phenomenon. We do not operate on any “essentialist” level with animals; but instead, we imagine and perceive them as a mass-media

presence. We are used to engaging in a smart, almost all-knowing way with animals as media images, much more so than interacting with them in real life. This is why a film like Sharknado is possible. As viewers, we understand how hilarious the idea of flying sharks is because we are acquainted with hundreds of other films purveying assumedly more “realistic” images of animals. We can only deal with their real nature through images. And we are increasingly experienced in doing so. In a way, such criticism might be tempted to employ some kind of natural essentialism itself. This, however, would be a mistake. It doesn’t make sense to try and return to an understanding of animals “like they really are”, as opposed to how they are represented in the media. Images and their processing form a productive part in our making of culture and in our understanding of the relationships between animals and humans. Any attempt to separate them from one another is bound to fail. Iconoclasm and iconocentrism are in line with one another and essentially support each other. This argument is also put forward by cultural theorist Mimei Ito. In the criticism of certain images and their assumed essentialist value, we will only succeed if we create new and perhaps more complex or informed imaginaries.This is even more true, as it seems at times nature itself now

“I hate the subway!”

FIN SHEPARD IN SHARKNADO 2

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A WEATHERMAN IN SHARKNADO 2

Photos: SYFY Media LLC

“I never saw a weather pattern like this.”

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FILM SHARKNADO 1-5 directed by Anthony C. Ferrante, written by Thunder Levin. SYFY, 2013-2017.

appears to work in an iconocentric way. Only through images does it create moments of, at times, shocking iconoclasm. It is in these moments that one can indeed talk about a return or a revolution of the “real”. It seems indeed possible that the occasional crocodile enters a house during a flood – reality meets its own image here. Time Magazine writes that right before a storm hits, people might see more sharks and other fish than at other times. Time quotes an expert as saying “Usually there’s a lull in the weather [before storms]. Conditions get better so it may be easier to see them in those time periods”. Opposition However scary this vision might be, it is not as intimidating as the many social media memes of sharks swimming up a Houston highway that circulated in the aftermath of hurricane Harvey. These, of course, were hoaxes. Which did not, however, prevent Fox News (the key channel in Donald Trump’s campaign against an alleged fake news syndicate) from assuming the memes were real. Obviously, the journalists at Fox overestimated the capacity of reality to take products of the film industry to heart. This is just media people believing too much in the power of the media. We put ultimate trust in our own

media products. This trust is connected to another human-centric type of hubris: Our ultimate belief in the human gaze. We believe in our capacity to give order to the world through what we see. This, however, is an overestimation. And this overestimation is also a general theme regarding the engagement humans have with animals. Here as well, it is always our perspective that counts. One thinker who was intrigued with this idea was the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. For Derrida, human overestimation was a constant source of fascination. In contrast, he postulated a theory about a gaze that was not human, but instead animal. The idea is that humans look at animals, and the animals look back. This unnerves humans. We can deal with the gazes of other humans, but we find the idea of animals staring hard to comprehend. They make us feel as if we are being observed by an alien observing force. And they make us feel naked. Derrida plays with the idea that there is a certain gazing animal identity that cannot be subsumed under human recognition, or understood by human-centric categories. Which brings us back to the initial scene of Sharknado. If the gazing shark is a problem, then what’s the best way to escape this gaze? Where can we go to avoid being seen by the shark? Right! Inside the shark itself.

DAN C IN G W I T H S H A R K S More pictures from the Sharknado movies toposmagazine.com/sharknado

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Lack of diversity: on London‘s Trafalgar Square only very few starlings and sparrows are met by a huge pigeon population.

Diversity counts: Singapore boasts 500 plant and animal species, many of them previously unknown to science.

Urban refuge: 170 bird species reportedly breed in Berlin, and 97 (57%) of them are on the Red List of Threatened Species.

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High density: Surveys indicate population densities of up to 15 possums per hectare in Melbourne's parks. In a natural environment, the typical densities range from one to three possums per hectare.

Prowling the hills: in Los Angeles, the famous mountain lion P-22 shares Griffith Park with millions of people.

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City slickers: according to estimates, 500 million pigeons live in cities worldwide.

500 MIO

60.000

Backyard bears: bear sightings reported in Florida increased from a meagre 99 in 1990 to more than 6,600 in 2013.

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Sharing ecology: Manhattan ants survive on discarded junk food, equalling 60,000 hot dogs per year along Broadway alone.

Not quite domestic: the roughly 6000 boars that roam Berlin's urban area can be experienced up close.

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The sky's the limit: in 2011 a red fox found a temporary home at the top of the then-partially completed Shard.

Hatching up high: lacking proper breeding places, Berlin mallards opt for balconies.

Creatures

Be(e)ing A new agratrend has emerged in our cities on the heels of urban gardening: Urban Beekeeping. This trend is possible because bees are now able to find a more varied diet in the cities than in the country. Whether in New York, Paris or Berlin – entire colonies are coming and going above the rooftops.

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Photo: shutterstock/ Daniel Prudek; Fortnum & Mason, London

UTE STRIMMER

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Several thousand bees live in an elegant turquoise-green pagoda atop the roof of the renowned delicatessen Fortnum & Mason in London.

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“The bees have a colourful menu available to them in the city. This diversity is often lacking in the country.”

Photo: Fortnum & Mason, London

JÜRGEN TAUTZ Professor at Julius-Maximilians-Universität in Würzburg, Germany

For years, bees have been conquering territory where one would least expect them: large cities. Whether New York, Toronto or Berlin – urban beekeepers are maintaining colonies everywhere. The trendy hobby got its start at one of the most opulent locations in Paris: the opera. Jean Paucton, the pioneer of urban beekeeping, had once been prop master there. He first placed a bee colony on the roof of the renowned Opéra Garnier in the early 1980’s. However, this hadn’t been planned. On the contrary, it was supposed to be just a temporary stopover. When the hobby beekeeper picked up his bees two weeks later to take them to his house in the country he was very surprised: They had produced much more honey than their colleagues buzzing through countryside. After that, Jean Paucton decided to move five bee colonies to the original location and obtained approval. But, is a large city like Paris really a hospitable place for bees to live? Where can they find food in this environment with all of that asphalt, cars

and so much stone and concrete? “Paris has an unusually large number of green spaces”, says Jean Paucton. The parks and gardens are home to a variety of exotic plants and trees that are more than 300 years old. In fact, the range of flowers is often larger in the cities than in the country given the prevalence of mono-cultural agriculture. Trees and flowers grow along the streets, in parks, cemeteries, balconies and in gardens. “The bees have a colourful menu available to them in the city. This diversity is often lacking in the country”, explains Jürgen Tautz, Germany’s leading bee researcher. This is because fields and meadows are mown too frequently - along with the flowers that are such an important food source. The expert notes that “bees in the country sometimes even starve to death in the summer”. In addition, everything blooms longer in the city because cities are two to three degrees warmer on average than the country. For two years now, it has not only been new parks providing green space but also rooftops

that had previously gone unused. Herbs, vegetables, fruits and hops are now thriving in these spaces planted on vast membrane walls. For example, several thousand plants atop the roof of the traditional French department store Galeries Lafayette and the new lifestyle shopping centre BHV Marais are providing additional habitat for bees. The metropolis on the Seine is a paradise for the humming insects – in Paris alone there are now 500 urban beekeepers. But is honey from the city even healthy and what about pollutants? The beekeepers have their product tested regularly – in the laboratory of the Parisian Prefecture of Police. Chemists at this laboratory test whether the honey contains heavy metal residues. Lead represents their primary concern. The substance is no longer contained in exhaust since leaded petrol was prohibited. However, it is still used in building construction and roofing materials. The bees absorb it via rainwater. In turn, the lead could pollute the honey and in the long-term the people who eat it.

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Chemists examine the contents of the honey using a spectrometer and give the all-clear. This means that it is safe to eat the “concrete honey”, as the urban beekeepers in Paris call it, without worry. The city has since even come to be seen as a refuge for bee colonies. This is because there are no pesticides. By contrast, they are often used on a large-scale in the country and are seen as a significant factor in the massive die-off of bees. “This is dramatic”, says Henri Clement, the chairman of the French beekeepers’ association Unaf (Union Nationale de l’Apiculture Française). If a field of sunflowers is treated with an insecticide, this also harms the bees’ nervous system. “They don’t return to the colony and get lost.” Apparently, exhaust in the city has less of an effect on the bees. Beekeepers explain it like this: The flowers themselves are well-protected from polluted water, particulate matter and exhaust. The nectar that the bees collect and make into honey is located deep within the flower where harmful

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substances can’t reach. Should the bees absorb pollutants via the pollen or rainwater nonetheless, they store them in their bodies and not the honey. Other Parisian institutions have emulated the example set by the opera. For example, two bee colonies were located atop the Grand Palais and have since been joined by three more. By contrast, the Bastille Opera and the Centre Pompidou have proven to be poor colony locations: At one location, the façades were undergoing renovation and the ventilation system was too loud at the other. Incidentally, fans of the Garnier honey bees pay the impressive price of 15 euros for 125 grams at the Opera boutique. Bees are hard at work making honey in London as well. Several thousand bees live in an elegant turquoise-green pagoda atop the roof of the renowned delicatessen Fortnum & Mason, where they fan out every day toward Kensington, Mayfair, St. James’s Park and Buckingham Palace - with its 6,500 plants and 420 trees, the Queen’s private garden is seen as an especially

bee-friendly oasis. They return to their home with flower pollen from the most exclusive addresses in the city. Fortnum & Mason, purveyor to the court, only sells the honey produced in this manner in the fall – and there is even a waiting list. There are additional bee colonies located atop the roof of the National Portrait Gallery. In the meantime, some one hundred hotels around the world host bee colonies on their rooftops. The Fairmont Royal York Hotel in the Canadian city of Toronto claims to have been the first. According to beekeeper Melanie Coates, the hotel manager took his inspiration from the Paris Opera. “You can’t have a supplier that is any closer”, she says. “In a manner of speaking we are a part of the urban agricultural landscape and beekeeping is an extension of that”. Hotels from Amsterdam to Washington have their own bees. In the currently closed New York’s Waldorf Astoria, six hives are located on the 20th floor. The bees fly up Park Avenue and turn left into Central Park.

Photo: Collection Rmn-Grand Palais, Paris/Didier Plowy

In the early 1980’s a bee colony was placed on the roof of the Opéra Garnier, Paris. Today bee colonies are located atop the Grand Palais in Paris, too.

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FACTS & FIGURES ONE-THIRD of our food is pollinated by honey bees. THE TOTAL ANNUAL VALUE of insect pollination is

estimated to reach $ 577 billion worldwide. FROM THE ARCTIC TUNDRA TO THE PEAKS OF THE HIMALAYAS: Bees can be found anywhere in the world. THE UNITED NATIONS COUNTS ABOUT 80 million

hives worldwide. THERE ARE BEEHIVES which can accommodate up to

50,000 bees (apis mellifera).

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Photo: shutterstock/ Daniel Prudek

There are more than 20,000 bee species in the world. Their size ranges from tropical stingless bees (1.5 mm) to a 40 mm long bee in Asia (Apis laboriosa).

Manhattan’s best-known beekeeper is David Graves. He has thirteen bee colonies with some 60,000 bees each. They live in Brooklyn, the Bronx and in Manhattan – on the barren, hard-to-reach rooftops of hotels and office buildings or in the green of privately-owned rooftop gardens. “When it all started”, he says “I hung out flyers looking for ‘adoptive parents’ for my bee colonies from among the owners of the largest and mostblooming rooftop terraces and quickly found a few.” Rooftop terraces in New York cover nearly a quarter million square metres. They are complemented by small neighbourhood parks, and in particular, lush vegetation growing in courtyards along the residential streets of Lower Manhattan and Central Park on a combined area almost as large as 500 football pitches. They are the private refuges and retreats of the wealthy residents of the city and represent idyllic gardens on a small scale. David Graves’ bees work non-stop from spring to late fall. He sells the results of his industrious workers’ efforts in 40-gram jars at the Union

Square Farmers Market every Wednesday and Saturday: “You can see and taste what time of year the honey was made. In early summer it’s clear and light, as fall gets closer it takes on a darker colour and has a sort of caramel taste.” He has also trademarked his brand: “New York City Rooftop Honey”. Urban beekeepers are very much in vogue. For growing numbers of the younger generation, this hobby once dismissed as something for pensioners has even become a part of the modern lifestyle. There are some 95,000 hobby beekeepers in Germany with more than 500 hobby beekeepers in Berlin alone. And now, even people who have neither a garden nor a roof can join in: Hobby beekeeper Johannes Weber has developed a small bee box that can be hung on a balcony. The inventor received the Galileo Knowledge Prize at the GreenTec Awards, one of Europe’s biggest environmental prizes. Today, bees are no longer solely the concern of specialists and scientists. They have long since been discovered by hipsters – and marketing has followed.

URBAN BEEK EEPI N G IN LO S AN G E L ES Learn more about urban beekeeping guru Kirk Anderson at toposmagazine.com/urbanbeekeeping

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Animals, with their myriad superhuman senses, can teach us new unprecedented ways of occupying space.

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Companion Species Living with animals is not a new idea. Though today our animal cohabitants are generally limited to our pets, scarcely 100 years ago, we lived with more animals in more shared spaces, more frequently. Where did they go, and why has this changed? And moreover, what would a return to greater cohabitation look like in today’s world?

Illustration: Brandon Youndt

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There are roughly 163 million pets in the United States. Approximately 44 per cent of all households in the United States have a dog, and 35 per cent have a cat. Said another way, that’s nearly one pet for every two humans in the U.S. And while pet ownership is popular and likely on the rise, our interaction with animal life in general is increasingly prescribed, controlled, and in decline. But this has not always been the case, and is in fact contrary to the bulk of human history. Not all that long ago, animals and humans – though, really, we’re animals too – intermingled closely throughout the day in our public and private lives. Cities were filled with non-human life: Horses pulled trollies, street carts, and wagons down urban streets; pigs, chickens, and other fowl were kept loose in small city plots; pets and domesticated animals roamed neighbourhoods. The great cities of the 18th and 19th centuries like New York, London, Paris, and Berlin were rife with animal life. Between 1718 and 1852 the number of London cows grew from 6,000 to over 20,000 at its peak,

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dropping slightly to 18,000 by 1914. Similarly impressive figures can be found for other animals: 200,000 horses in London at the end of the 19th century, and hundreds of thousands of pigs, sheep, fowl, and other animals. Animal cities The Georgian and Victorian city was filled with a constant animal presence in almost every aspect of city life, with all of the accompanying sounds, smells, blood, guts, and frankly, disease-inducing conditions. But by the 19th century, things began to change. City planners had taken a proactive attitude towards reducing animal waste in urban centres, and popular attitudes towards cleanliness, miasma, and disease were also changing. The presence and popularity of the newly built London Zoo was a further indication of a growing trend of separating and reconsidering animal life and value in the European city. And by the start of the Second World War, most animal life had been dramatically reduced in

European cities. In Paris, for example, the horse population plummeted from 110,000 in 1902 to 22,000 in 1933. Today’s cities, not only Western but in general, have almost no animal life in their cores, and if they do, it is strongly curtailed. But perhaps this is all soon to change. Despite the century-long trend of declining urban animal life, there is an increasing desire among many designers, planners, and thinkers to reintroduce an animal presence in our contemporary lives and cities. Driven by the growing threats of climate change, population growth, and rising species extinctions, their projects ask questions about how we could co-exist with a greater biodiversity in denser, more populated areas, about the benefits of animal cohabitation, and about what the messy, less romantic consequences of this would be. Several strategies have presented themselves: Co-species cohabitation, urban agricultural projects, and urban greenscaping each offer new and varied lenses through which we can start to rethink living more

Illustration: Sarah Gunawan

Today’s cities, not only Western but in general, have almost no animal life in their cores (…).

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A population of raccoons are invited by helping to aerate and distribute compost to keep a chimney flue warm for a population of swifts.

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Prevents rain and predators from entering into the chimney and attacking the chimney swift nests

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Food and garden waste are combined to begin composting process.

After one month, material transitions to second chamber. Raccoons aid the digestion process by ciculsting the compost.

Decomposed matter is transitioned to the last chamber where aerationholes accelarate the process and reduce odour.

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closely with our animal counterparts. Some of these are a reawakening of dormant ideals, some are indeed boldly avant garde. Co-species cohabitation Living in closer proximity with our animal companions, as any devoted pet owner will tell you, is a foundational, loving, and transformative experience. And there are numerous benefits to living with pets: decreased stress, decreased blood pressure and levels of cholesterol and triglycerides, as well as decreased feelings of loneliness. Overall, pet-ownership results in increased longevity, and a greater desire for physical activity and socialisation. If we can happily coexist with dogs and cats, why not with racoons, owls, or squirrels? Though the thought of inviting “pests” into our homes might strike some as off-putting, several designers are proposing just that – if not quite to the extent of our domesticated companion species.

The works of two architects, Sarah Gunawan and Joyce Hwang, stand out in this field for their beguiling and sensitive invitations to non-human life. Sarah Gunawan, currently the Reyner Banham Fellow at the University of Buffalo, NY, developed her graduate thesis at the University of Waterloo, entitled Suburban Appendages, to address synanthropic species in the typcial North American suburb. In her thesis, she displays an array of ways in which the average Canadian or American home could be host to more than a nuclear family. In the proposals shown here, a small roost is constructed on the home for nesting barn owls, bats are invited to hang out between wooden slats along an exterior wall, and a population of racoons are invited by helping to aerate and distribute compost while foraging through residential waste. Moreover, the project suggests that these non-human activities can be symbiotic, not only benefitting the human inhabitants but the other animal lives. In this newly outfitted animal-centric suburb,

compost-turning raccoons keep a chimney flue warm for a population of swifts, insects drawn to the residential waste become food for the bat population, and owls feed on smaller rodents. Each action creates an interlinked and interdependent world – a web of animal life. Joyce Hwang, director of the experimental practice Ants of the Prairie and associate professor of architecture at SUNY Buffalo, has developed several built animal-centric designs. Two projects, Bat Tower and Bat Cloud, also show how successful animal habitats can be when designed for symbiotic uses: In Bat Tower, an installation outside of a park in upstate New York, native plants known to draw insect life are encouraged to colonise a structure for roosting bats. Similarly, Bat Cloud elevates a planted garden into a tree canopy to provide food and roosts for local bats. But clearly, other than personal, emotional, or ecological benefits, the main reason that people have lived with other animals is agricultural.

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Insulated and nominally heated cavity specifically designed for barn owls. Sized to accomodate a full clutch of 2-18 eggs and designed to prevent infiltration by predators

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A small roost is constructed on a home for nesting barn owls. Bats are invited to hang out between wooden slats along the exterior wall.

in g nurs

Attic space ventilates into Barn Owl Box providing warmth for young

BR0WN BAT Myotis lucifungus

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Echolocation combined with 38 sharp teeth enable bats to catch insects mid-flight

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Heart-shaped, concave facial disk and asymmetrically placed hears heightens hearing capacity

FLYING Move silently with slow wingbweats and bouyant, looping flight patterns allowing them to locate prey without being detected

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HUNTING Nocturnal hunters who fly slowly over the ground, even hovering, locationg prey through acute hearing and ability to see in lowlight conditions

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Again, the period in Western cities from the 17th to 19th centuries seems to be an aberration of human history: Throughout the majority of human civilisation, the garden has been a central and arguably centralising part of normal life. But as the large metropolitan cities of the 18th century modernised and densified, agricultural activities were driven further and further out, and the small urban garden disappeared. But more and more designers are harvesting the potential of urban agriculture in their designs, for instance Carey Clouse and Zach Lamb of the Massachusetts-based architecture office Crooked Works. Both architects by training, they address the tough issues of urban identity, food security, and environmental stewardship through design interventions. Their projects Cart Coop and Window Unit reenvision domestic life with food-producing domestic animals. In Window Unit, fish, chicken, and bees are each positioned within reach of the kitchen. Cart Coop transforms your basic

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shopping cart into a sophisticated chicken roost, repurposing a discarded commercial tool and suggesting a kind of literal farmto-table approach to farming, where one can push a mobile coop right up to your doorstep. Still, many other architects and landscape architects are designing apiaries on urban roof tops, raised planter beds, and indoor hanging gardens. Urban Greenscaping One line of thinking, and an increasingly popular strategy for promoting animal life in our urban cores, views the city as a whole as a place for increased biodiversity. For decades, a pervasive sense that “nature” does not exist in city centres has dominated how we define animal life in and outside of cities. But a growing group of landscape architects, ecologists and planners, bolstered by increasing scientific studies in ecosystem services, are changing this perspective. They argue that

animal life indeed already exists in urban centres and can in fact flourish there. Urban landscapes, rather than commingling the human and animal spheres as closely as in the above, aim to achieve a kind of pan-species balance between our built and unbuilt environments. These are projects that generally seek to soften urban infrastructure and to create “green ways” in, around, and through metropolitan areas. Many of these projects are large-scale landscape projects like Arc Wildlife Crossing located along I-70 in Colorado’s Vail Pass, the acclaimed Highline in New York City, and Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Park, a beautiful, snaking greenway through the heart of a major urban metropolis. But urban greenscaping interventions can be smaller – working at the scale of a bird house, a bee hive, an insect hotel, or a bird perch. The projects of the Houstonbased Expanded Studio, the London-based 51 per cent Studios, and Lisa Lee Benjamin’s Zurich-based studio are all represenative examples of the myraid ways in which small-scaled

Illustration: Sarah Gunawan

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There are numerous benefits to living with pets: decreased stress, decreased blood pressure (…) as well as decreased feelings of loneliness.

interventions can be deployed within the built environment to encourage animal colonisation. There is yet another way of approaching this discussion of alternative-species roommates. And that is through the lens of posthumanism – or rather, through our own and generally neglected animalism. There are two basic truths here: First – we are already animals. Second – we are also already multiple animals. Even alone, we have roommates, permanent roommates. Our bodies are home to millions of micro-organisms that are certainly not human. The micro-biome in our stomachs and intestines is probably the best example of these symbiotic housemates. But there are countless other mites, bacteria, and small organisms that make human life possible. We are all of them. From this perspective, the idea of living with other animals is a centrally human condition. In fact, it would contradict a key part of our humanity to not recognise non-human lives in our world. Artists, designers and architects working in this field

show us a new, or neglected, side of our humanity and offer that in a posthuman world, a world where possibly humans recognise that they are one of many, many key species, a truer sense of cohabitation could be achieved. Designer and architect Simone Ferracina’s Theriomorphous Cyborg, for example, offers a human user the ability to enter into the animal world of a pigeon or a mouse. Sense perception would be reorganised according to the animal of choice and the world would appear to be a very different place. In praise of dust, a student project by Young-Tack Oh, and a recipient of the 2015 Expanded Environment Awards, celebrates the microcosm of microbial life in a series of architectural ornamental designs. Similarly, the work of Brandon Youndt, an LA-based designer focused on the coexistence of animals and architecture, illustrates ethereal worlds where traditional boundaries of animal/human, animate/inanimate, are transgressed, reshaping human and animal perceptions of the environment.

Future thoughts Architecture, cohabitation, and animal life are not your typical bed-fellows – or at least haven’t been in the Western world for the last century. After peaking in the 19th and 20th centuries, animal populations in urban life quickly declined and the animals themselves have been continuously marginalised since. But, while we grapple with cataclysmic ecological events and as the world’s population soars to new heights, how we relate and inter-relate to other animal life will become critical to our own survival. Whether it’s living more closely with a greater variety of synanthropic animals or by understanding ourselves to be more complexly animalistic, our future will depend on the value we place on a rich urban ecology. Should we return to a time where horses pulled trollies and pigs roamed the streets? Perhaps not… but should we marvel at and welcome other life into our urban cores – a coyote, a hawk, or a moose? Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.

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Animal Architects

Nests, dams and lodges: Animals can be very gifted builders indeed! On his trip around the world, photographer Ingo Arndt spent time taking pictures of animal-built architecture – from the ingenious construction of beaver dams to the structural wonder of anthills. JÜRGEN TAUTZ

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Anthills Compared to the size of their bodies, which are around one centimetre in length, the structures red wood ants create are true skyscrapers. The structures are built using plant materials and earth, and can reach a height of over two metres. They have a diameter of up to five metres. Using pure muscle power, the ants transport building materials in the form of pine needles, small branches and pieces of wood – burdens sometimes weighing 40 times their own bodyweight. Anthills have complex systems of galleries and chambers within them, and are designed so that no water can enter. Several hundred thousand of these small insects live together in an anthill.

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Baya weaver nests Baya weavers skilfully build their nests using thin blades of grass. Fresh stalks of grass are torn off by the birds and weaved together. Within a short time the green blades of grass dry out under the tropical sun, the nest hardens and changes its colour. The weavers only use tear-resistant varieties of grass, which give the nests a high degree of stability. The artful structures are water resistant and even withstand violent tropical storms without falling off the trees they are attached to.

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Beaver dams Beavers create their own habitats through their construction activities and use dams to regulate both the water level and size of the ponds they create within their own territory. They also create secure entrances to their lodges, open up new food sources and facilitate the transport of food and building materials. To build their dams, they primarily use branches, trunks and mud.

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Termite mounds Northern Australia has vast fields of towers built by compass termites. These towers have an average height of three metres and are laterally flattened with an exact north-south orientation. Together with an ingenious ventilation system, this orientation ensures that the underground structures have a constant internal temperature. Sunlight in the morning and evening shines on the flat sides of the mounds, warming them up during cooler periods of the day. At noon, when the temperatures are high, the sun only hits the narrow upper edge of the mound, which prevents the internal temperature from rising more than a few degrees.

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LITERATURE

ENGLISH EDITION AUTHOR: Ingo Arndt, Jürgen Tautz TITLE: Animal Architecture

GERMAN EDITION

Photos: Ingo Arndt

AUTHOR: Ingo Arndt, Jürgen Tautz TITLE: Architektier. Baumeister der Natur

What if animals actively shape their environment or at least parts of it? This actually does involve active and deliberate design and is not merely an accidental environmental impact. This latter occurrence is what elephants do with the soles of their feet, which have an enormous mechanical influence on the soil and everything found in it. But what is the fundamental difference between this and the influence that a beaver’s dam or lodge may have on its surroundings? An elephant’s footprints are of no real importance to its actual life; they are the random results of the pachyderm’s comings and goings. A beaver dam, on the other hand, has a purpose: It changes the environment in a way that is very beneficial to its builder. Intent means purpose. At this point the difference between footprints and animal-built structures should be obvious. The expression and function of the

various organs animals have can be addressed according to their function – the question of causality (how do they work and what is the purpose) and according to their significance (why are they necessary). The same is true for the structures animals build. What is the purpose of nests, what advantages do they provide their builders and what consequences do they have? The advantages that nests provide for their builders are based on the functions of these structures. They often fulfil several purposes at the same time. They offer the builders protection against adverse environmental influences or serve as miniature universes that provide optimal living conditions. Nests can also serve as a means of communication, linking the inhabitants to one another or sending signals that provide information about the builder. A location is binding.

AN IMAL ARC HIT E CT S For more photos go to toposmagazine.com/ animal-architects

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Nature In today’s society of spectacles, an ancient institution such as the zoo still attracts millions of people. Why is that, and how were zoos transformed over the last century? In this essay, Irus Braverman reflects on the relationship between zoo design and the broader societal definitions of nature in order to find answers to these questions.

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Photo: Hagenbeck

IRUS BRAVERMAN

The famous entrance of the Hagenbeck Zoo in Hamburg, Germany. It was opened in 1907.

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“Here you don’t see animals killing animals. Our visitors could never see that. They make no connection between a piece of hamburger on a Styrofoam plate and a cow.” JIM BREHENY Bronx Zoo Director

One would expect that an ancient institution such as the zoo would have long exhausted popular appeal, particularly in comparison with high-tech attractions like amusement parks. But the zoo continues to attract the masses: Alongside churches, museums, theaters, shopping malls, and theme parks, zoos occupy a central place in western culture. But what is it that makes zoos so attractive in today’s society of spectacles? Although there might be many sophisticated answers, it can be summarised in a single word: nature.

Carl Hagenbeck, often considered the founder of modern zoos, made the first steps in this direction when he opened the first bar-less zoo in the world in 1907. Whereas in traditional zoos, the means of achieving separation and enclosure were highly visible, Hagenbeck contrived to make them invisible. Specifically, he attempted to make all apparatuses and attempts at classification – indeed, any trace of human intervention – vanish in favour of seeing the animals themselves. The American model

Back to nature Zoos’ particular presentations of nature have changed through the ages, depending on the focus and goal of the exhibits. These changes are all apparent in the zoo’s design, and are most obvious in the shift from the zoo’s ancient origins as a menagerie – an aristocratic exhibition of exotic animals – to its 21st-century manifestation as a conservation park. One way or the other, a great deal of human work must be invested to create nature amidst an urban landscape, and even more work must be invested to make such human work invisible.

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In America, zoos came into existence during the transition from a rural and agricultural nation to an urban and industrial one. In 1860, Central Park Zoo, contestably the first public zoo in the United States, opened in New York. Influenced by the English garden theory of informal landscapes, the legendary founder of American landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted, believed that nature could offer psychological recreation to tired city workers. Nature, under Olmsted’s interpretation, was to be represented by winding paths and wide vistas to picturesque pastoral spots, with the least visible artifice

possible. Zoos added a variation to this theme by placing animals in the pastoral landscape. American zoos were also products of the movement to create public parks on the outskirts of cities, a trend tied to late 19th-century anxiety about urban moral and social decay. As such, many American zoos were founded as divisions of public parks departments. Although European zoos served as both a model and source of inspiration for building zoos in the United States, American zoo planners conceived of their parks as distinct from the formal urban gardens that were European zoos. Having more land to work with and guided by a puritan aesthetic, American zoos portrayed themselves as places of moral recreation, often making reference to scripture. Moreover, American architects have increasingly departed from Europe’s colonial-style architecture in favor of more exotic and natural forms of design that are meant to enhance the visitor’s experience of nature. Claiming the mantle of scientific truth, zoological parks encouraged popular natural history studies, using their landscape layout to advance this mission. Like public parks, they provided a retreat for city dwellers and a balance of nature

Carl Hagenbecks zoo was the first bar-less park in the world that had animals on show.

and culture where a middle-class ethos could be enforced. Finally, the emergence of the discipline of ecology and its associated environmental movement in the 1970s has brought about the most recent stage in the zoo’s institutional evolution: the zoo as a biopark or conservation society.

Photos: Archiv Hagenbeck (below); Wikipedia, gemeinfei

Immersion design Immersion is currently the bon ton of zoo design. Carefully designed to immerse zoo-goers in nature, zoos increasingly provide an escape for their visitors by transplanting them from the urban space in which they live into a completely different geographical space that is natural and wild. “Our guests come here to get that respite from the urban environment”, says Susan Chin, vice president of planning and design and chief architect of the Bronx Zoo. “You have places to go where you can see trees and squirrels and ducks and muskrats. It’s an oasis. It’s Eden. It’s a place where you can get away from the dust, the dirt, the grime, the buildings.” Through immersing their visitors in nature, zoos attempt to instruct them to care for all of nature. The award-winning Gorilla Forest

exhibit at the Louisville Zoo by designer Jon Coe was planned to immerse zoo-goers in an experience of the Congo rainforest and to connect that experience with knowledge of habitat destruction. According to the zoo’s website, “this multi-faceted exhibit immerses you, the visitor, into the world of gorillas… (where) you are in the gorilla’s realm.” Unique design features use illusions to bridge the audio and tactile barriers between zoo-goers and zoo animals.

Visitors enter a two-story atrium constructed of glass walls for unobstructed viewing of the gorillas. The gorillas can press a button to broadcast gorilla sounds into the public atrium. As a result, “the public becomes part of the troop, being surrounded by the gorillas in a space that is detailed in a similar manner as the exhibit space”. Or as Jon Coe explains: “The ropes inside the gorilla rooms actually extend out above the public space where they support a

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cargo net filled with straw, like a nest. So when the gorillas move the rope network, sometimes straw shakes down on the public. But the big idea is to try to make the gorilla areas and public areas indistinguishable from each other, all one family.” Above all, immersion design creates an illusion of nature in the midst of the modern zoo’s urban space. Jon Coe, who first coined this term in 1975, explains that immersion design is not only the idea of showing animals in the context of nature rather than in the context of architecture. It is also the soliciting of experiences that make people feel part of, rather than external observers of, this nature. He recounts the evolution of this concept: “The immersion concept was not just about the visitor. From the beginning, it was equally about animal welfare… I developed the idea that immersion is a biocentric view, especially for the animals. In other

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words, we do not know what the animals need… So the closer you can recreate the environment in which they evolved, the more apt you are to meet needs which you did not even know existed. Initially, naturalistic design was the central component of immersion; it was also what distinguished this form of design from earlier zoo designs, and even from Hagenbeck’s zoos of the future.” Authentic and artificial However, even the founders of immersion design soon realised the problems with adhering to strictly naturalistic exhibits. According to Coe, “even these really nice diverse exhibits are still a fraction of what (animals) have in the wild and they are still bored out of their skins most of the time. So then we realised that you have to have enrichment and training”. A debate ensued:

Should zoo exhibits be more naturalistic or more realistic? “Naturalistic meant… soft architecture rather than hard, climbing structures with poles as compared to concrete”, Coe explains. “But realistic means that the animal does not care what it looks like as long as it can function naturally… In practical terms, we can give them a whole lot more that’s artificial in an indoor environment… And if I can use very high-tech Wi-Fi things to give the animals control over the gates, absolutely!” Under this hybrid paradigm of immersion and welfare, the zoo exhibit is designed to be a place of “stunning realism and authenticity”, with naturalistic scenes to immerse the zoo-goer and realistic functions to enrich the animal. In order to design a naturalised exhibit, zoo designers have been playing on the tensions between authentic and artificial. Bronx Zoo designer Susan Chin explains the strategic “blurring of lines”

Photo: Eric Lee, Buffalo Zoo

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Immersion design: Buffalo Zoo’s Rainforest Falls exhibit 22 June 2009.

between the two: “We don’t want you to know where that line is. We want to blur the line so you feel like you’re in nature. We don’t want you to feel like you’re in a contrived space.” Better than nature At the zoo exhibit, the eye alone cannot be trusted to distinguish the authentic from the artificial. By making visitors feel as though they are part of nature, the exhibit thus erodes the boundaries between nature and artifact. This way, zoos not only take on the role of representing nature, but they also make people believe that the zoo’s representation of nature is nature, or, better yet, an improved version of this nature. At the same time, the zoo’s nature is distinguished from wild nature. Zoo design must include elements that promote a safe and sanitized environment for both zoo-goers and zoo animals, including moats, glass windows, air pipes, exit signs, and water sprinklers. Other distinctions between the zoo’s nature and wild nature also exist. For example, most predatory relationships are eliminated from zoo exhibits. Unlike in the wild, “here you don’t see animals killing animals”, says Bronx

Zoo Director Jim Breheny. “Our visitors could never see that”, he adds. “They make no connection between a piece of hamburger on a Styrofoam plate and a cow.” To maintain the zoo-goer’s immersion in a pleasant image of nature, even nonviolent natural events such as sickness, aging, and death are rendered invisible at the zoo. Zoo designers thus constantly negotiate the image of nature reproduced at the zoo. This nature must be harmonious, pleasant, and manicured so as to elicit compassion and awe on the part of the zoo-goer, rather than alienation and fear. Additionally, this nature should not distract zoo-goers from the zoo’s central mission: conservation. Designing a zoo nature that is accessible to the human zoo-goer yet devoid of signs of human presence contributes to the objectification of wild nature and thus to its alienation. In other words, the zoo’s sanitised and human-free depiction of nature makes wild nature remarkably inaccessible, thereby further reinforcing the humannature divide. This text is an edited version of paragraphs from the book Zooland: The Institution of Captivity (Stanford University Press, 2012).

LITERATURE AUTHOR: Irus Braverman TITLE: Zooland, The Institution of Captivity

WAT E R DESIGN since 1999

www.watersculpture.com

Israels Square, Copenhagen

[email protected] | +45 5944 0565

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The The days of mankind's rule over the city have passed, nature is crawling into our urban areas. In their book, Gavin van Horn, the Director of Cultures of Conservation at the Center for Humans and Nature in Chicago and his co-editor John Hausdoerffer explore how people can become attuned to the wild community of life and contribute to the well-being of all those who inhabit the wild places in which we live, work, and play. They call for the creation of cityscapes that celebrate our kinship with other species.

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Photo: Gavin van Horn

GAVIN VAN HORN

A bird cautiously eyes its observer while perched above an environment that reflects both human intervention as well as generative processes of "wildness".

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A trio of turtles charts its own path along the urban landscape continuum, metaphorical companions within an environment that reflects the recovery of urban ecosystems.

Wildness can manifest in any landscape, and human communities can play a critical role in nurturing diverse and life-generating places.

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The Urban Wild Celebrating the “entire blessed continuum” of wildness, as the lepidopterist Robert Michael Pyle phrases it, is what we, the contributors, attempt to do in the book. This may account for why one section of the book (out of four) is dedicated to the “Urban Wild”. We think the concept of wildness can be a unifying one, an affirmation that we all have access to wildness, at different scales and degrees, and that caring for the wild nearby can lead to caring about the faraway wild places that other people call home. Over half of the world’s population now resides in urban areas, so it stands to reason that if we are to learn to care for our more-than-human communities, a primary context for building such relationships will be in cities. In the “Urban Wild” section of the book, wildlife biologist Seth Magle takes the reader on a ride through the city to check on the wildlife he monitors, revealing the ways that scientists are beginning to turn toward the city’s “complex, interconnected ecological systems”, which “might be just as or more complicated than tropical rainforests, estuaries, or any other natural biome”. Such an on-the-ground perspective leads Magle to conclude that “maybe, years from now, we will look around these city skylines, once the great villains of our ecology

soap opera, and see a place that humans and rare wildlife are both eager to call home”. If this comes to fruition in urban areas, it will likely be due to cultivating wild places and encounters that provide opportunities for learning, caring, and play. The other contributors to the “Urban Wild” section of the book – Michael Bryson, Michael Howard, Mistinguette Smith, John Tallmadge, and me – each address the varied small-scale acts and mindful practices that foster a sense of human connection to a multispecies urban community. These stories express a sense of hope about wildness in cities and offer perspectives as to how this wildness can be further nurtured. The other sections of the book provide lessons along the wild continuum that are equally applicable in an urban context. Journey through the city’s wildlife To raise some of these suggestive themes, it might be best to take a metaphorical and literal journey down an urban river. I recently acquired an inflatable kayak – basically a portable, blow-up, boat-shaped air mattress that, when not in use, can be folded into a backpack. Paddling even short distances on the muchabused yet now-recovering Chicago River allows me to experience a life-giving aquatic corridor that has become a magnet for wildlife.

Photo: Gavin van Horn

What is wildness? A jagged, slate-colored mountain, where one can see distinctly where the tree line ends, where the conifers give up on their climb and one can see the snowy summit, sheathed in distant wisps of torn cloud? Or an alleyway between tall buildings, where paint is peeling from backdoors and emerald green moss clings to a rusted gutter pipe; a single lavender flower, pushing from a lightning-bolt-shaped crack in the pavement, blooms in a dollop of sunlight and a bumblebee orbits the flower’s petals? What do you think of when you think of wildness? In Wildness: Relations of People and Place, 26 authors from a variety of landscapes, cultures, and backgrounds aim to chart a path across the landscape continuum, sharing stories from the most densely human-populated urban areas to the most remote hinterlands. The book makes what may seem a surprising claim: Wildness can manifest in any landscape, and human communities can play a critical role in nurturing diverse and life-generating places. Whether it is a place, a nonhuman animal or plant, or a state of mind, wild indicates autonomy and agency, a will-to-be, a unique expression of life. Whereas “wilderness” designates an area specifically zoned for protection, wildness represents the generative processes that flow through any landscape as well as our own bodies – or as I sometimes put it, from the gut to the sky.

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The cultivation of urban wild places fosters interactions between multispecies urban communities. Transcending past notions of colonisation, transhuman kinship comes home.

Other animals – including great blue herons, beavers, kingfishers, snapping turtles, and even rare species such as mink – rely upon this waterway for their lives and livelihoods. Often we watch one another as I float by. They are wise to be wary. As much as I champion the wildness of urban areas, cities often offer visible testimony to a set of values based on control, anthropocentrism, and colonisation. I’m convinced, however, that there are alternative stories to tell about cities – stories that can shift the plot from acquisition and exploitation to inhabitation. Stories in which a city is more than a means to acquire more. Stories in which the city becomes life-affirming instead of life-denying, a generator of biological complexity and diversity rather than simplicity and impoverishment.

As I arc around a bend in the river, I think of Curt Meine’s essay in the “Wisdom of the Wild” section of the book, a section that includes many stories about how close attention to the natural world can be a guide for human endeavors. The conservation biologist and historian Meine writes about the Driftless Area of Wisconsin, where farmers, in order to protect their watershed from the crippling impacts of

Photo: Gavin van Horn

Learning from nature

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LITERATURE AUTHOR: Gavin van Horn, John Hausdoerffer TITLE: Wildness – Relations of People and Place

soil erosion, have learned to “turn” with the land, adapting their plowing methods and shaping their lives to be more in keeping with this unique landscape. We have a lot to learn in urban areas about attending to the wildness of soil and water, about turning toward the landscape for guidance and working within nature’s cycles and contours. As I lose myself in the flickering leaves of the cottonwood trees that arch over the riverbanks, I think of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s and Jeff Grignon’s essay entitled “Listening to the Forest” from the “Working Wild” section of the book. They discuss the regenerative forestry management practices of the Menominee Nation, and the ways in which the health and resilience of their pine and maple trees are based on a practice of deep listening – a reciprocity between people and place that ensures the health of both. I wonder how we can better listen in our cities, places where distractions are innumerable. How can we allow the nonhuman voices that surround us a greater role in the shaping of our cities, taking our cues from wild processes and proactively and intentionally creating cityscapes that celebrate our kinship with other species? As I tip my chin back, let my paddle rest on my lap, I think of Julianne Warren’s (she holds a Ph.D. in Natural Resource Ecology and Conservation Biology) contribution to the book from

the “Planetary Wild” section. “The Story Isn’t Over” is Julianne’s meditation on what wildness might signify in a world of anthropogenic climate, soil, and wildlife crises, including her yearnings for new stories and practices of belonging. Cities are intimately connected to energy uses and outputs – not only in their immediate regions but globally. While we think about the prospects of our shared atmosphere in a world beset by climate change, we would do well to consider the wild forces, carbon cycles, and feedback loops with which our cities are grossly misaligned at present. I float on, shoulders pinched by a bit of an ache but my spirit refreshed. This corridor through the city brings me into contact with other wild creatures, their curious eyes reminding me that any urban area is part of a larger community of life, part of the wild continuum. As I disembark from the river and fold up my kayak, I can’t help but feel that those wild eyes are upon me, wondering how I will choose to respond. Wildness: Relations of People and Place don’t supply definitive answers, but it does provide portraits of hope – stories of human lives and livelihoods that are intentionally woven into their larger wild communities, including the urban areas that provide so many of us with a common habitat for our shared journey.

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Nature Glasgow-based landscape architect Stuart Malcolm recently embarked on a study trip to the Northwest Highlands of Scotland. It was his first visit to the region and he expected to find a natural wilderness. The quaint views of woolly sheep scattered across the landscape and the herds of wild deer roaming the hills, however, present an almost twodimensional aspect, which made him wonder what the future of Scotland’s landscape should look like.

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Photo: Marie Montocchio

STUART MALCOLM

Grazing sheep, North Coast 500 road near Red Point with the Isle of Skye visible in the background

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“Our perception of sheep is so different to the reality of the sheep. The Highland Clearances, when people were put off the land, the landlords put sheep on the land and moved people away. And they’ve left their story behind them and it’s written in the place, in the landscape. There is an absence in the landscape because of sheep.” ANDY GOLDSWORTHY Land artist

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which reflects the extent of human intervention in its establishment. In order for this landscape to remain moorland, seasonal burning is carried out to stop woodland from returning. This practice, known as muirburn, dates back hundreds of years and is traditionally used to provide new shoots for livestock grazing and to increase the number of red grouse for hunting. Muirburn and overgrazing both constitute a process called arrested succession, whereby natural regeneration is halted by anthropogenic impact. Furthermore, recent findings in a five-year study undertaken by scientists at the University of Leeds reveal that such drying out of peatland causes significant carbon emissions. In the last 50 years, the population of red deer alone has risen from 150,000 to an estimated 400,000. Natural predators such as the lynx and wolf have been driven out of the country and in order to keep numbers down

and protect what native woodland is left, large culls – undertaken at public expense – are required. Deerstalking takes place on private estates across the country and the landowners need high numbers of deer visible in the landscape to attract hunting clients. The romantic image of the majestic deer in its natural habitat, for all its appeal, lies at the heart of the matter. But is it defensible that a landscape monetised towards tourism, sport and human-focused solutions should come at the cost of a sustainable, balanced and ecologically healthy environment? Overgrazing the landscape As of 2017, there are approximately 6.83 million sheep and 5.3 million people in Scotland. If deer are the wild illustration of overgrazing, then sheep are the animal husbandry equivalent. Ecologist George Monbiot, who is an advocate

Photo: Marie Montocchio

Imagine the magnificent stag, standing proud with vast swathes of purple heather rolled out like carpet across the surrounding landscape. This image is arguably the postcard picture most people visualise when they think of Scotland. It is undeniably beautiful, unique and in terms of landscape management, intensely topical. That these two elements in the picture are part of an increasingly heated debate about the future of Scotland’s landscape is perhaps less common knowledge. Over the past two or three centuries, large herbivores such as deer and sheep have been allowed to overgraze on naturally regenerating vegetation before it is able to grow into mature trees or shrubs. This problem, coupled with deforestation, has transformed the ecosystem: The lost woodland has become heather moorland. Around 75 per cent of the world’s heather moorland is in the UK, mostly in Scotland, and it is perceived as a cultural landscape,

The wet desert: view from the North Coast 500 road between Durness and Rhiconich.

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FACTS & FIGURES PEOPLE LIVING IN SCOTLAND: 5,400,000 SHEEP POPULATION IN SCOTLAND: 6,830,000 DEER IN SCOTLAND: 750,000 MOORLAND: 50 per cent of the land area of Scotland WOODLAND: 17 per cent of the land area of Scotland

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Illustration: Stuart Malcolm

The area of heather moorland in Scotland covers approximately 50 per cent of the land.

for rewilding, has savaged the decision to award Unesco World Heritage site status to the similarly overgrazed Lake District. He points out that trees and shrubs in upland areas absorb rainwater and release it steadily to lowland vegetation, but when there is only grassland with heavily compacted soil from animal’s hooves, water runs freely off the slopes and causes flooding downstream. When the flooding subsides, water levels also fall, and a continuous pattern of flood and drought is triggered, causing significant damage to lowland vegetation. Although Monbiot promotes the re-introduction of predators such as the wolf, he is aware that farmers’ livelihoods depend on their flocks. Many supporters for rewilding would argue that the risk of re-introducing predators so that they can coexist with livestock is an acceptable one. Historically, this is a relationship with only one bloody outcome. In

1992, for example, wolves from Italy returned to France of their own volition and have, of course, in the following decades, killed many thousands of sheep. There is no easy solution, but most balanced opinions would give credence to the view that wolves are a part of nature and deserve to inhabit it as much as sheep. The Isle Martin Project It is a widely held myth that the predominant reason for the lack of trees in the Northwest Highlands is the weather. In fact, it is one of a number of factors causing the poor quality of shallow soil, as the Isle Martin Project has shown: In 1981, Bernard Planterose was a warden for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) who moved to the uninhabited, 160-hectare Isle Martin off the mouth of Loch Broom in the Northwest Highlands in order to oversee an ambitious

woodland regeneration project. The island was home to a treeless landscape consisting of badly eroded and shallow soil lacking in nutrients. However, heather burning had ceased, red deer had never been present on the island and sheep had been removed 13 years previously when rabbits were still ubiquitous. Bernard saw a unique opportunity in this part of the Highlands to confront what he calls the “mamba” (“miles and miles of bugger all”) and proposed trialling the restoration of ecological succession. During the course of a decade he oversaw the planting of Scots pine, birch, willow, hazel, oak, aspen, gean and nitrogen-fixing plants such as gorse, broom and alder, all which became established with varying rates of growth. The island was then given to the local community by the RSPB, during which time the rabbits died out, allowing the woodland to thrive. The grasses and bracken they maintained

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A rowan tree (Sorbus aucuparia) out of reach of deer, sheep and fire on the north slope of Sgurr Dubh, Wester Ross.

The beauty of sustainability Small though it is, and without the additional pressure of grazing animals, Isle Martin is a valuable precedent of a well-managed Highland ecosystem. The island provides a convincing model for a balanced approach to ecological and productive land management, and one which in no way detracts from the beauty of Scotland’s landscapes. Though the island is currently unpopulated, a community-led trust has been set up with the long-term goal of

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making it habitable again. There are four buildings that can house guests, with running water from an upland reservoir, a sustainable supply of wood fuel and a variety of fruits, berries, nuts and other edible plants. Once the island is capable of generating all of its own electricity and the infrastructure is in place, there is no reason why a community could not be established there again. Over the last 15 years, thousands of hectares of native woodland have been planted elsewhere in the Northwest Highlands, though Bernard suggests that so far it has been a slightly “onedimensional” approach. He argues that tracked access into the woodland would allow for longterm maintenance and the potential diversification of species, including high-value timber, would provide more productive environmental benefits than mass tourism. Furthermore, agroforestry combines controlled grazing with woodland production to offer a symbiotic

approach to agriculture and forestry. Additional advantages include improved shelter for livestock, an incremental harvest of timber products and valuable increased biodiversity, with all of its attendant benefits. The wet desert The island is a scalable example of woodland restoration in this vast region of Scottish “wet deserts.” Bernard’s pioneering work in ecological succession over 35 years at this remote site potentially has great significance for landscape architects and thus merits wider research. The challenge now is to build on his groundwork and develop it to accommodate human habitation and grazing animals within a sustainable model. Once this ecological infrastructure is established, the landscapes of Scotland and beyond could be further enriched through enlightened design.

Photo: Bernard Planterose

under the woodland were replaced by a diverse understorey of regenerating trees. The resulting mosaic of habitats is now full of wildlife and in a state of soil building. Bernard expects that this dense undergrowth together with deciduous leaf-litter will create a more mineral-rich and deeper brown forest soil, which will significantly improve the biodiversity of the island.

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Contributors

Alexander Gutzmer

Ingo Arndt is a renowned animal and nature photographer. His images have been published worldwide and in magazines such as GEO and National Geographic. He has published fifteen books and won numerous prizes, among them several Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards. [email protected]

Timothy Beatley is founder and Executive Director of the Biophilic Cities Project as well as the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities in the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning at the University of Virginia. His work focuses on sustainable communities and ecological footprint reduction.

is Editor in Chief of Baumeister – The Architecture Magazine, and Editorial Director of Callwey Publishing. He currently lives in Mexico.

[email protected]

Thomas E. Hauck is a landscape architect and holds a Ph.D. from the Chair of Landscape Architecture and Public Space, TU Munich. He is a partner of Polinna Hauck Landscape+Urbanism. Since 2014 he has been a lecturer in the Department of Open Space Planning at Kassel University. [email protected]

Sam Hobson

Stuart Thompson is a Senior Lecturer in Plant Biochemistry at the University of Westminster. He also lectures on food security and bioethics. He studied biochemistry at the University of Oxford, where he received his D.Phil. in plant science in 1991. [email protected]

Gavin Van Horn is the Director of Cultures of Conservation at the Center for Humans and Nature in Chicago. He is the co-editor of Wildness: Relations of People and Place. Currently he is working on a book of creative nonfiction, The Channel Coyotes: Otherworlds of the Urban Wild (forthcoming in 2018). [email protected]

http://timbeatley.org/

Irus Braverman is William J. Magavern Professor of Law at the State University of New York at Buffalo. She served as a public state prosecutor and as an environmental lawyer, both in Israel, and was also trained as a mediator and worked as a community organizer for environmental justice issues and as a political activist.

is a wildlife photographer. A champion of the commonplace, his intimate portraits of doorstep wildlife have been widely published, including the National Geographic Magazine, and awarded many prizes internationally. He was named Wildlife Photographer of the Year in 2014 and 2016. [email protected]

Wolfgang W. Weisser studied biology and mathematics in Germany. After completing his doctoral degree at Oxford University, he took postdoctoral positions in London and Basel. Since 2011 he has held the Chair for Terrestrial Ecology at TU Munich, devoting his research to the causes of biodiversity losses. [email protected]

Stuart Malcolm

[email protected]

Ned Dodington is an architect and designer working to develop new practices for biologically inclusive design. He is the Founding Editor and Creative Director of The Expanded Environment, a web-based investigation into the performative role of design in ecology. [email protected]

is a landscape architect based in Glasgow and a co-founder of GRAFT, a creative collective whose work combines elements of art, ecology, architecture and other related fields into holistic and multilayered landscape intervention and research projects. [email protected]

[email protected]

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studied landscape planning at TU Berlin. Since 1997 she has been a producer of documentary films under the label Landschaftsarchitektur+Video, working simultaneously as a freelance specialised journalist. www.laview.de

Ute Strimmer is Editorial Manager of Restauro, Callwey Publishing’s German-language magazine on conservation and restoration. For many years she was Editorial Manager of Weltkunst, the art magazine published in German by ZEIT Verlag, Hamburg. The journalist holds a Ph.D. in art history.

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CURATED PRODUCTS

REFERENCE

Street Furniture – Flexible, Mobile and Modular Page 102

Parklets 2.0 – Oslo’s Car-free City Life Project Page 106

Products

Street Furniture – Flexible, mobile and modular 102

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Cities are large common areas, and public open space is, so to speak, a city’s living room, which is, at best, accessible to everyone at all times. People meet here, relax, go for walks or to work, go shopping or just drift aimlessly through the streets. In order to make everyone feel comfortable, the design of parks, streets and plazas is just as important as one’s sofa at home. Light, seating, play equipment, bicycle stands, bollards, etc. often directly help shape and improve the image of a city or urban space. Useful and popu-

lar street furniture is generally flexible, mobile and modular, allowing plazas to be used for interim activities and users to decide where to place their seating, as is the case, for example, at Times Square in New York which was redesigned by the Danish landscape architecture firm Snøhetta. Their commission came on the heels of the NYC Department of Transportation’s “Green Light for Midtown” pilot project in 2009, which used temporary paving and street furniture to close Broadway to vehicular traffic.

Creatures

Domus

Photos: Vestre AS, photo: Júlia Martins Miranda; Richter Spielgeräte GmbH; Escofet/Mikkel Møgelvang

Domus is a landscape furniture designed by Ramón Úbeda and Otto Canalda. Its unique innovations were made possible by its revolutionary UHPC concrete technology. This one-piece product is not just a bench. Its closed configuration provides intimate shelter from wind, rain and sun for users who can sit in different positions, individually, in pairs or in small groups. www.escofet.com

Play Cube The Play Cube from Richter Spielgeräte, Germany, consists of a spatial element designed according to child-oriented ergonomic findings that offers a variety of opportunities to hide in and climb through its different openings. In addition, its cosy niches provide children enough space in which to play fantasy-filled role-playing games. They can access the structure, which is built of nonimpregnated mountain larch, via a small, slanted wall or an inclined climbing net, and can also quickly escape down the stainless steel slide. The Play Cube is suitable for all children three years and older, and is designed to be used at public playgrounds, kindergartens and elementary schools. www.richter-spielgeraete.de

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Mobile Green Isles Streetlife’s Mobile Green Isles allow you to make the most out of your outdoor space, even on roofs and parking decks. The planters with integrated hardwood seats are mobile, so they can be adjusted to meet the needs of the site where they are installed. The base structure is made of individual sheet steel units. Using these modular units, a durable green rectangular or oval oasis can be easily created. The seats consists of Solid Topseats with FSC® hardwood slats. Arm- and backrests as well as a tree planter are optional. Prefabricated elements can be placed on the patented Streetrail® system. Using the modular elements, an infinite amount of designs can be created in lengths of 6, 9 or 12 metres. www.streetlife.nl/en

Sonora Double-width Lounger The basis for the Sonora lounger from Runge is the company’s double-width modular bench system of the same name that was recently developed together with A24 Landscape from Berlin. For the extra-wide, two-person lounger both the angle of the back and the lower section were carefully designed, as it was especially important that the backrest was neither too steep nor too flat. Users need to feel very comfortable when relaxing on the lounger, and should have the possibility of viewing the surrounding landscape and not only the sky above. The lounger has a sturdy subsurface foundation that effectively keeps it in place, and its construction uses longlasting hardwood – either varnished or untreated – with solid, hot-dip galvanised steel sides and feet available in a variety of colours. www.runge-bank.de

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LED Street and Area Luminaire WE-EF CFT540, a post-mounted LED luminaire available with medium symmetric or rectangular light distribution, was developed for lighting public spaces and car parks. The OLC technology is ideal for achieving a uniform and energysaving lighting solution, providing visual comfort. Looking at the luminaire, you see a ring of pearls when lit. There’s no glare. In addition, the body made of die-cast aluminum with 5CE corrosion protection is optimally protected against weather conditions. 37 CFT540 luminaires were recently installed on existing masts in Fogerty Park in Cairns, Australia. They illuminate the park with only 36 or 72 watts (instead of 70 or 150 watts) and have thus halved energy use. www.we-ef.com

Photos: Streetlife; Runge GmbH & Co KG; WE-EF; WIBRE

Surface-mounted Spotlight The 4.0100 compact, surface-mounted spotlight by WIBRE has been developed to illuminate fountains, water features, buildings and exterior areas. Made entirely of V4A stainless steel, the product has an IP68 ingress protection rating and can be submerged to a depth of up to 3 metres. The mounting bracket is adjustable through 180 degrees. A choice of two illuminants are available: either a board with four individual Power LEDs in cold, warm or neutral white, or a 4-Multichip POW-LED RGB-CW with four Power LEDs each in red, green, blue and cold white, which can be operated separately or blended into numerous colours by a controller. The illuminant and five metres of underwater cable are supplied with the spotlight. www.wibre.de

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Reference

Parklets 2.0 – Oslo’s Car-free City Life Project 106

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Studio Oslo Landscape Architects (SOLA), in collaboration with Vestre AS, have developed a robust modular parklet system that can be combined and adapted to suit urban needs. The project is an important contribution to Oslo’s Car-Free City Life project, Bilfritt Byliv, where cars are to be restricted from driving in the city centre by 2020. Oslo has invested in temporary installations as the primary intervention and parklets will play a leading role. For the municipality it is important that parklets are accessible and are robust enough to withstand use and climatic conditions. The parklets are acting as a test bed in the transition between today’s Oslo and the future carfree city, and facilitate dialogue between the community and the municipality before the council commits to permanent changes in the streetscape. Parklets are temporary installations that extend the pavement and replace parking spaces with city life. They contribute to a greener and more liveable city that has increased street planting and provides new functions and more safety for pedestrians and cyclists. Parklets also create new destinations and meeting places in existing streetscapes, help inspire a new type of urban life and have a proven, positive economic impact on local commerce. Customisable Configuration Parklets 2.0 consists of a versatile frame (base module) with adjustable supports to ensure accessibility and optional railings that protect

users against traffic. Different floor modules extend and activate the sidewalk and a wide range of new furnishing elements can be combined to create parklet “personalities”. SOLA has developed a series of customisable configurations for a variety of “personalities”, fulfilling important urban functions such as outdoor dining, display, transport, planting, gathering and activity. Through standardisation, Parklets 2.0 simplifies the design, planning and production processes by offering ready-made solutions, shifting the focus of both the applicant and the council to content and ideas. SOLA partnered with Vestre for the design, production and delivery of Parklets 2.0 as a new furnishing concept. Manufacturer Vestre has 70 years of experience in designing furniture for cities, parks and public spaces. The products are built in Norway and Sweden using high-quality materials for maintenance-free use for many years. The modules consist of galvanised or powder-coated steel and linseed-impregnated PEFC-certified pine from Scandinavia, ensuring longevity and safety regarding fire, traffic and rat problems. Parklet permeability helps prevent water damage, and generous planters contribute to local surface water use and treatment. The Parklets’ modular system enables them to be moved and reused time and time again. This flexibility and reuse helps make the system a recognisable part of Oslo’s ambitious urban transformation. www.vestre.com; www.so-la.no

Photos: Vestre AS/Adam Stirling

Oslo is transforming former parking spaces into “mobile” parks in order to make the city more social and liveable.

Creatures

Kebony Clear at Slussplan Park in Malmö: Due to weathering the modified wood now has a beautiful patina, which has no effect on its durability, however.

Slussplan Urban Park – Design without Tropical Wood 108

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Slussplan, a 1,200 square-metre urban park in Malmö, Sweden, connects one of the city’s highest residential buildings with the historic Rörsjo Canal. The triangular park consists of circular vegetation beds with a variety of shrubs and plants as well as an urban plaza. Four large wooden sculptures located between these two main elements provide seating. One of these is the large, inviting wooden staircase that runs along the edge of the water and is oriented toward the sun. All of the outdoor furniture is made without the use of tropical hardwoods, which is luckily often the case regarding the design of public space in Scandinavia. Kebony Clear was used instead, which was impregnated with bio-alchohol and then gently cured. The result is an especially long-lasting, dimensionally stable product comparable in quality to teak, and which can also be processed like hardwood. It is mainly used in outdoor areas. Because the entire

product chain is sustainable, FSC-certified and has no synthetic chemicals, disposal is entirely trouble-free. Kebony Clear (22 x 142 millimetres) recently became the first modified timber to receive General Type Approval Z-9.1-863 and can thus be used for “load-bearing, timber construction in service classes 1 to 3, that are rated and executed according to DIN EN 1995 1-1 in conjunction with DIN EN 1995 1-1/NA”. This means the wood is equally suitable for both dry and wet areas. This greatly expands its possibilities for use in Germany because balconies, walkways and raised terraces can now also be made of this wood. Without a general type approval, it was previously only possible to use proven timber species for load-bearing construction such as larch, oak, bongossi or ipé that had the appropriate quality grading. www.kebony.de

Photo: Anthony Hill

Editor’s pick

BACKFLIP

ESCAPE PLAN

Schouwburgplein, Rotterdam

London

Page 110

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BACKFLIP – Schouwburgplein, Rotterdam

Rotterdam’s Schouwburgplein is more polarising than almost any other plaza in the Netherlands. You either love it or you hate it – whereby architects and planners tend to belong to the first group while a majority of Rotterdam’s citizens are more likely to belong to the second. Critical voices have existed right from the beginning, and the plaza is still being worked on in order to address its shortcomings.

ANNEKE BOKERN

ANNEKE BOKERN is a freelance writer who covers

architecture, design and art – often, but not always in the Netherlands, where she has lived since 2000. With her company architour she organises guided architectural tours for groups in Holland. She is currently writing an architectural guide to Rotterdam.

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When the Schouwburgplein was completed in 1996, it was one of the flagship projects of the “SuperDutch” generation of architects from the Netherlands, who won international acclaim for their projects, which were generally both impressive and pragmatic. The plaza in Rotterdam’s centre is flanked by the municipal theatre and a concert hall, on its west side there is a cinema while its eastern edge is lined by sidewalk cafés. High-rise buildings are stacked up on all sides. Between all this, West 8 created a plaza that followed no classical traditions, but was rather designed to reflect the character of the harbour city and was intended to serve as an interactive urban stage. With this in mind, the entire surface of the Schouwburgplein was raised about 35 centimetres. As the strip of light that runs around the circumference shows, lights and interactivity are the design’s two major themes. Because an underground car park is located beneath the Schouwburgplein, the surface structure had to

be light and the use of plants was limited. West 8 thus decided to explore the potential of the void and furnished the plaza with nothing more than a row of benches along the eastern edge, 15-metre-high parking-garage ventilation tubes with LED displays, the design of which is somewhat reminiscent of industrial smokestacks, and four bright red hydraulic lighting masts, whose shape was inspired by cranes in the harbour, and which perform a mechanical ballet at the push of a button. The Pathé cinema, designed by Koen van Velsen, fits into the overall design of the plaza, and due to its backlit corrugated façade, becomes a huge island of light at night. Criticism of the plaza’s design was quick in coming. Initially this revolved around the paving materials: a patchwork of perforated sheet metal, wooden planking and epoxy resin in which anchor points and electrical sockets were integrated for events, and which proved to be very slippery in the rain. In 2010, West 8 reacted to the rebukes and replaced the original black resin

Illustration: West 8

Backflip

paving in front of the cinema with a more course, bottle-green layer of epoxy with white motifs that were supposed to represent seamen's tattoos. The connection the green colour has to the overall concept remains somewhat puzzling, however, and the images are strangely awkward. It certainly hasn’t done wonders for the plaza. At the same time, several ramps were added to ease access to the raised platform. This hasn’t helped much either. The plaza is still considered to be inaccessible, inhospitable and slippery, and a decision was recently made to make more radical changes. Last spring most of the plaza was covered with a huge, colourful carpet of artificial grass surrounded by bamboo planting containers. This somewhat desperate attempt to create a more cosy atmosphere will luckily be removed after only nine months. Next year it is planned to add more steps to the plaza, to exchange the benches and offset the void with chairs and planters full of geraniums. If Joost Eerdmans, the current alderman for security

and open space, has his way, however, these will only be temporary measures. In five years he wants to rebuild and reinforce the roof of the parking garage so that the entire plaza can be redesigned from scratch. “Urban dwellers are no longer unfortunate victims of the city who need to be taken care of and protected by a gentle green environment”, wrote historian and architectural critic Bart Lootsma in reference to the Schouwburgplein in his 2000 book SuperDutch. Perhaps this assessment was somewhat too optimistic. The Schouwburgplein demonstrates a fundamental dilemma the city of Rotterdam has, i.e. the fact that it still struggles to define its own identity. In this modern, rather rough postwar city, with its love of experimentation, there is at the same time a marked longing for cosiness and smallscale solutions. In this sense, it could be said that Adriaan Geuze and West 8 have successfully created a plaza that is truly reflective of Rotterdam.

Polarising from the very beginning: the experimental design of Shouwburgplein. With its custom furniture, iconic crane-like lights, and a trademarked floor pattern it reflects the Port of Rotterdam and the identity of the city.

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Escape Plan

TIM RETTLER

Rochelle Canteen, Arnold Circus, E2 7ES www.rochelleschool.org/ rochellecanteen/

Green Rooms, 13-27 Station Road, Wood Green, N22 6UW www.greenrooms.london/

Saint Etienne – Sweet Arcadia (from Home Counties, 2017) www.youtube.com/ watch?v=xB-6PZFULNY

Tim Rettler is a Principal Regeneration Officer at the Greater London Authority. He studied architecture at the University of Applied Sciences Cologne and the University of East London. He has previously worked for ASTOC Architects & Planners, Sergison Bates Architects, and Design for London.

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Arcadian Thames 51.454240, -0.299840 Carefully manicured over the last three centuries, the landscape between Hampton and Kew is so bucolic that one should only experience it in small doses. On the edge of Richmond Park sits King Henry’s Mound, a Bronze Age burial place that was the reputed spot where Henry VIII paused from a hunting trip to ensure that Anne Boleyn had been duly executed. To the east, a keyhole vista leads to the dome of St. Paul’s: The view has been faithfully preserved by generations of landscapers, who have created a tree-framed sightline from the

mound to the dome. It is one of the key views protected by the London Plan, leaving one wondering how the lanky Manhattan Loft Gardens skyscraper in distant Stratford was permitted to photobomb Wren’s masterpiece. To the west, the picturesque panorama across the fields of Ham and Petersham remains intact. Retaining a distinctly village character, Petersham is one of London’s more quaint and quiet corners. The fashionable Nurseries offer plants, food, and drink to the sauntering middle class, while cattle graze nearby.

2

Rainham Marshes 51.497028, 0.216684 In the east, beyond the heavy industry accumulated around the Ford Dagenham car plant, the vast expanses of Rainham Marshes remain one of very few ancient landscapes in London. Closed to the public for over a century while being used as a military firing range, this palimpsest of wetlands and more recent manmade features can be enjoyed thanks to Peter Beard’s carefully designed access infrastructure. A rather heroic elevated trackway on raking columns, reminiscent of medieval jetties that existed in the area, extends from the existing footbridge across the Eurostar line, forming the entrance from the village. From there, a network of paths, boardwalks, dark russet steel bridges and concrete way markers help to explore the area and its resident birds, water voles, and dragonflies up close. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds operates a visitor centre at nearby Purfleet for more serious birdwatching. A short detour into Rainham itself leads to the restored 18th-century Rainham Hall, built by sea captain and merchant John Harle partly as a show home for the building supplies he imported. From the first floor, Harle could see his ships in the distance – the view now is of pylons, windmills, and sheds, and with the recent haemorrhage of London’s industrial land, it may only be a matter of time before these become as sacrosanct as the birds.

Map: SCHWARZPLAN.EU/OpenStreet-Mitwirkende/openstreetmap.org

ESCAPE PLAN – London

London’s offer of iconic places is abundant, but the Thames remains its epitome. Beyond the well-trodden embankments of the centre, peripheral riverside places offer different stories of the city. Within the confines of the Green Belt, the ordinary high street remains the emblematic structure of everyday London, giving way to the conviviality of the many migrant communities. Its deep-rooted authenticity, in combination with improved transport and developments, has brought places like Peckham into sharp focus.

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Peckham 51.469661, -0.068100 Peckham’s narrow Rye Lane is a pulsating microcosm of the world, where traders from countries like Afghanistan, Iran, Jamaica, Somalia, Ireland, and Vietnam share space and collaborate. Almost a third of proprietors can speak four or more languages, and many of the shops are subdivided and sublet into smaller units, creating a dense, day-glo’d strip surrounded by traditional Victorian terraces. Some handsome buildings extend the depth of this South London high street: the station, the Bussey factory, and the municipal car park, on top of which a rather unusual space is situated. Not-for-profit creative enterprise Bold Tendencies has taken on the top of the open concrete frame hulk, over the last decade progressing its sustained transformation through an annual commissioning programme of art, music, and pioneering architectural interventions. This year’s addition, the Peckham Observatory, designed by Fawcett Cooke and built by local suppliers and contractors, provides a new vantage point for artist Richard Wentworth’s expansive floor painting Agora, the surrounding neighbourhood and cranecrowned central London beyond. Perhaps in doing so it can also offer space to reflect on the proliferation of mixed-use high-rise blocks and the risk of losing deep urban structures like that of the high street that give place to the manifold activities of Londoners.

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From the Edges

#3 FROM THE EDGES – Shaking Ground in Mexico City ALEXANDER GUTZMER

In the series From the Edges, ALEXANDER GUTZMER comments on urban phenomena taking place in the growing metropolises outside the classic urban New York-London-Tokyo triad. Editor-in-chief of Baumeister – The Architecture Magazine and Editorial Director of Callwey Publishing (which publishes Topos), he currently lives in Mexico.

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The two recent earthquakes in Mexico have awed the inhabitants of the capital city. They made them, and all of us, rethink what a city is all about. We have seen new fragilities, but also encountered an impressive degree of urban, and civil, strength.

I am writing this while on unstable ground. To be more precise, from the very unstable ground of the earthquake-shaken, but not demoralised Ciudad de Mexico. This city has seen many attacks on its spirit. The last one came from its own soil – the 7.1 magnitude quake that took hundreds of lives, and tore down hundreds of buildings. And that raised the question of how unsafe life is in this megalopolis. On an abstract level, one can argue that such earthquakes undermine our very notion of safety in big cities. Normally, “safe” is inside one’s own walls. The danger is always “out there”. When earthquakes occur, however, this is reversed. Suddenly, walls and ceilings are traps, and the outside, even in rough urban areas, becomes a space of relative comfort. Architecture is not just the creation of urban beauty. It is also a way to manage life’s risks. A quake like the one in Mexico makes it clear that there are lessons to be learned. One thing that became apparent is that the strict building codes implemented after an earlier, terrible quake have not solved everything. Mexicans tend to adhere to a do-it-yourself urbanism. Architecturally, one might sympathise with this rolled-up sleeves mentality, like Alejandro Aravena does. But that also creates risks. The earthquake showed how important an efficient warning system is. Every single loss of life is terrible, but there could have been many more. UN Representative Robert Glasser was quick to ask countries vulnerable to seismic activity to join the existing alliance with a commitment to make buildings, in particular schools, safer.

And then, there are the architects. They play an essential role in maintaining public safety. It might be true that real estate investors look for ways to get around regulations, but they can only do so with the help of those who know how to build. Architects have to redefine their role, and not only fight for the creation of pleasing, or even socially productive spaces, but also for the development of safe ones. If this means losing the occasional client, then so be it. This is part of what I call civil society. We have seen civil society in Mexico. The wave of practical, no-questions-asked help all around Mexico was impressive. This is how civil society works. This is how cities work. And this is also how architects work. Many participated as volunteers in the program to check the more than 3,000 damaged buildings for their stability. What we see here is very direct proof that architects and city planners are indeed part of society, and not some elite unconnected to the rest of us. The quake is a reminder of the inherent complexity of the urban realm. Yes, Mexico has been built on soft and therefore challenging ground. And yet, its people have learned to manage, and live with risks. That, however, does not mean they are or should be careless. On the contrary: It means that all the loopholes where carelessness was allowed to prevail have to be found. While I was writing this, a friend came to my table and told me about a new, smaller quake that had just occurred further to the south. I hadn’t heard about it, but she had and it visibly shook her. But it did not break her. “We Mexicans are strong”, she says. “We have always needed to be.”

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