WALK21 - VI, EVERYDAY WALKING CULTURE THE 6TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON WALKING IN THE 21ST CENTURY ZURICH, SWITZERLAND, 22 – 23 SEPTEMBER 2005
Designing Walkscapes in Suburbia Jacqueline Parish MA (Hons) in Landscape Architecture / Dipl. NDS ETHZ in Raumplanung Director of Studies of the Master of Advanced Studies in Landscape Architecture, ETH Zurich Chair of Landscape Architecture, Prof. Christophe Girot NSL, HIL H 57.1 ETH Hönggerberg CH-8093 Zürich Tel. +41 1 633 29 82 Fax +41 1 633 12 08
[email protected] www.landschaft.ethz.ch
Abstract
Urban sprawl creates a new open-space reality, in which the quality of walking - as a sensual experience - is neglected. The development of suburbia opened a new range of space for which our current models and public space approaches are not valid anymore and are still to be developed; spaces that are neither city nor landscape, which need to be read at a new scale with a new vocabulary. How can the design of open spaces in suburbia support the implementation of a walking culture? What models and reference systems in landscape design and art do we know, which allow us to understand the role of walking and the order and quality of these globally continuously growing open spaces? This essay examines the culture of walking in the contemporary design of new public spaces of suburbia. It explores the relationship between the shaping of the environment to reinforce the sensual experience of a place (landscape architecture) and the culture of walking as an aesthetic practice. How should we design these spaces and improve the quality and attractiveness of the walk-ability in public space? And how can walking generate new design? The landscape of the suburbs is the subject explored in the Master of Advanced Studies in Landscape Architecture at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and the projects of this programme show some visionary project-examples relating to the walking culture of the 21st century. Historic and contemporary theories in landscape design as well as a selection of projects of the students illustrate design approaches and the question of walking, path-design, public space and the overall role of the human body in landscape architectural projects in suburbia.
Qualifications of author
Jacqueline Parish, born in England in 1972, studied landscape architecture at Heriot-Watt University, the College of Art in Edinburgh (GB) and Wageningen Agricultural University (NL). Her master’s thesis was awarded the Heriot-Watt medal. After graduation, she worked in Berlin for arthesia Imagineering and in Zurich for Atelier Stern and Partner, Landschaftsarchitekten und Umweltplaner AG for four years, during which she pursued part-time postgraduate studies in spatial planning at Network City and Landscape, ETH Zurich. Since 2002, she has been developing and directing the postgraduate studies in landscape architecture at the chair of Prof. Ch. Girot, Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and working as a freelance landscape architect in Zurich. 1
Designing Walkscapes in Suburbia Jacqueline Parish MA (Hons) in Landscape Architecture / Dipl. NDS ETHZ in Raumplanung Director of Studies of the Master of Advanced Studies in Landscape Architecture, ETH Zurich Chair of Landscape Architecture, Prof. Christophe Girot
Introduction
The development of suburbia creates a new open-space reality – for which traditional urban models and public space approaches are not valid anymore and are still to be developed – spaces that are neither city nor landscape and are changing quickly. How can the design of public open spaces in suburbia support the development of a walking culture? Which contemporary project references in art and landscape design illustrate and help to understand the role and potentials of walkscapes in suburbia as an aesthetic practice? This essay explores the relationship between the shaping of the environment to reinforce the sensual experience of a place (landscape architecture) and the culture of walking as an aesthetic practice. The text is structured in four parts: the first part introduces in a wider context the contemporary western walking culture as an aesthetic practice; the second part focuses then on this aesthetic practice in relation to landscape design; the third relates the design question to suburbia for which, in the fourth part, projects examples illustrate visions for walkscapes in suburbia.
Walking culture as an aesthetic practice
Although walking in the contemporary environment of the suburbs concerns nowadays all classes and cultures its history and in particular the effect of walking on landscape design is one of court and aristocracy. As in so many other things, the court led the way in upgrading and civilizing the common act of walking. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, setting the fashion for the West, the French and English taught anyone who was someone, or aspired to be someone, how to put best foot forward. In this way strolling, processing and promenading became a refined activity 1. “The history of walking goes back further than the history of human being, but the history of walking as a conscious cultural act rather than a means to an end is only a few centuries old in Europe, and Rousseau stands at its beginning.”2 In his writings The Confessions, which were published after the death of the Swiss writer and philosopher in 1762, Rousseau describes walking, solitude, and wilderness as favourable conditions to experience nature. With this he can be seen as the founder of describing walking as an aesthetic experience. In the sense of Rousseau, who introduced a new awareness of nature and its’ perception, walking appears as an act of resistance to the mainstream. Walking became something consciously chosen. In many ways the walking culture was a reaction against the speed and alienation of the industrial revolution.3 Rousseau expressed these believes and discoveries of Romanticism. Starting in the last decades of the nineteenth century, Romanticism offered a new definition of walking as it directed walkers towards solitude, on the one hand and communion with the countryside and nature, on the other.4 With its defining aspirations for feeling, expression, and union with self, nature, and others, as well as its simultaneous preoccupation with the unique, singular, and historical, Romanticism opposed the Enlightenment’s quest for order and control. This changing understanding of the walking culture as an aesthetic practice is also demonstrated in art: for example Hiroshige’s Fifty-three Views on the Tokuida Road, a nineteenth-century Japanese printmaker. This work shows sequences of a 312-mile journey from Edo (now Tokyo) to Kyoto, which most then made on foot. It is a road movie from when roads were for walkers.5
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Ill. 1: Hakone Pass, Oka, Ill. 2: Hiroshige, Japan’s Great Landscape Artist Land-art reacted in the middle of the 20th century directly to the expansion of scale and the experience of walking as an aesthetic practice. A contemporary artist most dedicated to exploring walking is the English artist Richard Long. In 1967 Richard Long produced A Line Made by Walking, a line drawn by stepping on the grass in a field. The action left a trace on the land, the sculpted object was completely absent, and walking became an autonomous art form.
Ill. 3: The Crooked Path, 1991 by Jeff Wall. 3
That same year Robert Smithson, an American land-artist, made A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic in the suburban context. This was the first voyage of a land-artist through the empty spaces of the contemporary urban periphery. The tour of the new monuments led Smithson to draw certain conclusions: the relationship between art and nature had changed - the contemporary landscape is produced continuously creating a new space reality6.
Effect of walking on the shaping of landscape design
The art of landscape and garden architecture appears as one of few expressions of culture which sets the experience of walking and motion in the centre of its’ design. “Is it even possible to experience a garden or a landscape without moving through it? Don’t we move through a garden in response to its design?”7. The shaping of landscape and garden as an art – in more general terms – is a reflection of culture and expresses the attitude to nature at a specific time. The underlying method of representing our image of nature as physical space is primary by means of the perspective, which does not incorporate movement in space. Horizon line and point of vision set up the order of this image of nature. If the perspective is still the basis of our understanding of open space and the shaping of it: when and how was this “harmony” established? A crucial moment in perceiving an image of nature as an aesthetical experience leads back to the 14th century, as the poet Francesco Petrarca climbed up the Mont Ventoux in 1336. Detached from the landscape, such as a sheppard or farmer would not have been, he described firstly, after having walked up the mountain, the beauty of the perceived landscape and its’ scenic view. Whilst the medieval garden had been surrounded by high walls to exclude the dangerous wilderness outside, this experience of Petrarca illustrates a different cultural understanding of landscape and nature. Four hundred years later the image and perception of landscape and nature had developed in a design culture - expanding in scale. “As the world became safer and the aristocratic residence became more a palace than a fortress, the gardens of Europe began to expand. Flowers and fruit were disappearing from the gardens; it was the eye to which these expanded realms appealed. The Renaissance garden was a place in which one could take a walk as well as sit, and the Baroque garden grew vast.”8. The Baroque garden, such as Versailles designed by André Le Notre and completed 1760 exemplify the supreme control of nature and movement, setting the palace in the centre of the park-layout. The jardin anglais, the landscape garden broke the formal garden tradition, creating a landscape setting with the walk as a kind of circuit. In the eighteenth century this was to become the standard manner for viewing gardens and parks. Among the influences on the emerging English landscape garden were the seventeenthcentury Italian landscapes of Claude Lorrain, Nicholas Poussin and Salvatore Rosa, with vast grounds reaching to the horizon, tree clumps setting the perspective frame, water bodies and classical buildings and ruins setting references to classical Rome’s virtues and beauties. “All gardening is landscape painting,” said Alexander Pope, and people were learning to look at landscape in gardens as they had learned to look at landscape paintings.9 An exemplary garden for this evolution is Stourhead in Wiltshire. The garden was made by Henry Horare II (1705 – 1785), Stourhead’s owner, between the early 1740s and his death, in the middle of a landed estate that his father had bought. The park is a landscape allegory of a travel through the classical world. It consists basically out of one central circular pathway around an artificial lake. Along this pathway the visitor traverses through the allegory of Aeneas life – a roman myth. The allegory starts with the birth of Aenea in the temple of Flora, goes through the depth and grottos of hell continues through the gate, which reminds of mortality and ends at the Apollo Temple. The narration is constructed linearly along the walkway and is experience when walking. The illustrated garden examples show a strong link between the landscape design and the aesthetical experience of walking in it. How does this aesthetical practice apply on contemporary environment of suburbia? And what explanation models and references do we have for the environment of suburbia?
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Suburbia?
Urban landscapes expand vastly in the world that we presently experience. Referring to John Dixon Hunt, the picturesque garden is the tradition of the landscape architectural profession that still shapes the designers mind. This is a model, which has very limited impact on today’s urban environment and developments. “And the fixation on that one hypothetical model doubtless explains some of the great missed opportunities of the twentieth century: airports, the highway, the railroad...”10 The growth of suburbia explodes the definition of park into a new big scale. Urban theorists, such as Yu Fu Tuan, stress this new scale and speed growth that suburbia has generated.11 In general, suburbs are a stage in the process of urbanization. It is the suburban image, living in the countryside with all comforts of the urban density at a close distance that moves people out into suburbia. Quick development of mobility and wealth of the middle classes made suburbia “sprawl” to road cities with no organised public spaces and links or walks. What aesthetic models do we know for this phenomenon? „Even relatively large cities are now pulling down their walls, the moats even of princely castles are being filled in...Nobody feels comfortable in a garden which does not look like open countryside: there should be no reminders of constraint, we want to be completely free to breath the air without restriction.“12 Thomas Sieverts, an urban theorist, quotes Goethe in his book Zwischenstadt (cities in between). to describe the beginning of the phenomena of urban sprawl. The „city“ of the modern age extends into its environment and thus creates the peculiar forms of an urbanised landscape or a landscaped city. He calls these structures, which consist of fields of various uses, construction forms and topographies Zwischenstädte (cities in between). Zwischenstädte according to Sieverts, take up large areas and have both urban and rural characteristics. André Corboz, also an urban theorist, introduces for this phenomenon of Zwischenstadt the word Hyperville (Hypercity) analogue to Hypertext. Text can be understood as a collection of numbered paragraphs with a beginning and an end. In contrary to this the hypertext is a collection of text on screen with an independent order and without a clear hierarchy. Spatially the Hyperville has no centre and activities are scattered between different poles. This characteristics of the Hyperville forces the observer to think in networks and not in terms, that relate to physical surfaces and a clear order. In his book “Die Kunst, Stadt und Land zum sprechen zu bringen” (the art to make city and landscape speak) Corboz states that our understanding of the contemporary urban landscape is still based on the belief in “harmony”.13 Our search and urge for harmony restricts our perception of reality, which limits our understanding of the contemporary city and landscape. Art should have opened our eyes not to try to think in harmony but in contrasts, tensions, discontinuity, fragmentation, montages and events: a dynamic system, which does not rely on familiar aesthetics. In summery suburbia introduces a new scale and new aesthetic references, which we are still trying to understand: fragmentation, complexity, changing programmes, overlapping programmes are descriptions that maybe grasp this realty. Four student projects, which have been developed in the Master of Advanced Studies in Landscape Architecture (MAS LA) at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, demonstrate different approaches within the suburban landscape of the airport. The project-thesis and its definition form a central part of the work and achievement.
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Project-examples
The landscape space around Zurich’s Kloten Airport (ZHR) is the project site of the one-year full time Master of Advanced Studies in Landscape Architecture of the first two courses 2003/04 and 2004/05. The airport is located just 12 km from the citycenter where urban sprawl has expanded into the Glatt valley. Old maps of the late 19th century show the main road connections running parallel to the valley whilst a just a few connect adjacent towns (for example Rümlang and Rüti) across the wetland of the valley. Today this landscape is not a simple. Historical village cores, large-scale industrial structures with a short life expectancy, residential districts, archaeological excavations, pastoral to industrial farmland and intensively protected nature reserves form a dense network, intersected by and interwoven with gigantic infrastructures which characterise this wetland. This landscape doesn’t appear unique at first glance. It illustrates in an exemplary fashion the suburban landscape of the Swiss Mitteland region. This is exactly what makes it the ideal experimental territory for the laboratory situation of design.14 In the course of the academic year, the students worked over 7 projects with increasing complexity to research the qualities of this landscape and find new organising structures for this space.
Decompression By James Melsom, Architect, Melburn (AUS) A new walk and road system invents a new landscape. This landscape is trans-formed out of existing traces of movement – for example the military road systems - and is generated through various phases of different occupation-groups and uses. With this a model of urbanistic succession evolves. Central in the shaping of these new hills, fields and uses is the road network.
Ill. 4: student Project of the MAS LA 04, ETH Zurich
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Shifting focus between location and motion by Siri Frech, Landscape Architect, Berlin (D) Motion is the central theme of the project. Especially in the fast growing area near the airport of Zurich two motion circles have developed: one around the airport site and the other around the adjacent forest Hardwald. The two circles superpose at the centre of the airport. The project reinforces the circular movement around the fence of the airport as a quality of the site. It is this walk, starting from the entrance space and “heart” of the site in front of the airport, which the student develops to an experiential roller- and walkway. A new path “the small circuit” is meant to vitalise the site with a play of topography and motion. This circuit is directly connected to the public transport and to the “big circuit”, the ring around the whole airport. In a small circuit the student worked with the motion of the landscape itself: topography. Close to the airport centre a highway cuts through a hill area, divides it and creates an artificial valley. In this unsolved spatial situation the student created a walkway, which undulates between path and plain, and creates a new point of balance within its context.
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Ill. 5.1., 5.2., 5.3. student Project of the MAS LA 04, ETH Zurich
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Conduit Aviopolis By Damien Pericles, Landscape Architect, Sidney (AU) In order to establish an entire landscape that does participate with the airports internal landscape, perpendicular “conduits” of open space integrate the airport into its setting. Conduits plug into the airport like it was a “power-board” creating points of maximum exchange. The airports voluminous resource of open space is transmitted along conduits to establish conductivity with surrounding urban/farming spatial logic. They are lines of energy transfer - from erosion to deposition or vectors in time. Ancient hilltops and farming homesteads now connect with the airport. This infrastructure is lead along a new walkway and greenbelt system (conduits) from the airport site up the hills. With this the conduits link the airport site and generate an experience, when walking along them, of a constant longing for the open field of the airport as well as for the open spaces maintained by the conduits. In time, the entire airport basin is reconfigured; so anchor points of intense interaction with the airport trail off into the surrounding sprawl of Zurich to assist in establishing an identity and focus for the region – the airport landscape.
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Ill. 6.1., 6.2., 6.3.: student Project of the MAS LA 04, ETH Zurich
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Looking closely from far away
In a MAS LA-workshop conducted by Prof. Charles Waldheim, Toronto, students developed projects for an island-site at the intersection of a complex urban airport and various fragile ecosystems on the inner harbour of Toronto. After defining a possible walking route based on the analysis of the site through different forms of representation (for example the map and aerial pictures) all students were asked to “figure” the kinds of spatial, temporal, and phenomenal experiences they imagined to be articulated through the walk on the site. In so doing they were encouraged to amplify their understanding of narrative structure and temporality as mediated through the body on the site. With this the medium of representation was strongly questioned.
Project E2 By Miguel Chaves Gentil, Architect, Sevilla (E)
The student illustrates the changing characteristics and topography coming from the sea and walking to the city through the section. Site lines indicate how, whilst moving from the landscape to the city, the visitors view is more and more directed in the transitions from sea to land and from rural to urban.
Ill. 7: student Project of the MAS LA 04, ETH Zurich
Conclusion
Walkscapes in suburbia open a wide field of investigation in which the design of open spaces is a central task to be challenged. The history of garden and landscape design reflects explicitly a strong link between reading aesthetical images of nature and walking culture. Suburban opens spaces challenge design approaches with a rising complexity. Fragmentation of sites, parks, gardens and the design with fragments and juxtaposition are an answer to this reality. Urban theories such as collage city by Collin Row have described this approach already in the late 60ies 15. The model of thinking with networks is another approach to this space reality. Urban theorist such Andre Corboz – mentioned earlier on – or as Franz Oswald and Peter Baccini proclaimed in their texts in Netzstadt (Netcity) a new urban model, the net, to understand and design suburban landscapes.16 It is the rejection of the still-dominant picturesque aesthetic in landscape design that might allow us to read, experience and design walkscapes in juxtaposed yet contextual, sequential and continuous way. Walkscapes in Suburbia appear as an aesthetic potential and contemporary answer to an urban landscape out of control, in which sustainable links need to be generated.
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Footnotes and Bibliography
1) Amato J. A. (2004) on foot, A History of Walking, New York University Press, New York. 2) Solnit R. (2001) wanderlust, A History of Walking, Verso, London, p. 14.. 3) Solnit R. (2001) wanderlust, A History of Walking, Verso, London, p. 267. 4) Amato J. A. (2004) on foot, A History of Walking, New York University Press, New York. 5) Solnit R. (2001) wanderlust, A History of Walking, Verso, London. 6) Careri F. (2002) Walkscapes, Walking as an aesthetic practice, Editorial Gustavo Pili, sa, Barcelona. 7) Conan M. (2003) The experience of Motion, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C.. 8) Amato J. A (2004) on foot, A History of Walking, New York University Press, New York, P. 87. 9) Solnit R. (2001) wanderlust, A History of Walking, Verso, London, p. 90 10) Hunt, J. D. (1992) Gardens and the Picturesque, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, Cambridge 11) Tuan Yi-Fu (1974) topophilia, A Study of environmental perception, attitudes, and values, Pretice-Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. 12) Sieverts T. (2001) Zwischenstadt: zwischen Ort und Welt, Raum und Zeit, Stadt und Land, Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel, Berlin, Boston. 13) Corboz A.: das Territorium als Palimpsest, in: Corboz André (2001) Die Kunst Stadt und Land zum sprechen zu bringen, Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel, Berlin, Boston. 14) Parish J. und Stählin S. (2005) Designing Unique Landscapes, Pamphletreihe des Instituts für Land schaftsarchitektur, ETH Zürich. 15) Rowe C. and Koetter, F. (1975) Collage City, MIT Press, London. 16) Oswald F. und Baccini P. (2003) Netzstadt, Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel, Berlin, Boston.
Illustrations
Ill. 1,2: Hakone Pass, Oka I. (1992) Hiroshige, Japan’s Great Landscape Artist, Kodansha Internationall, Tokyo, New York, London. Ill. 3: The Crooked Path, 1991 Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (2003) Jeff Wall, Photographs, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln. Ill. 4 – 7: student Project of the MAS LA 04, ETH Zurich
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