Flowscapes Design studio for landscape infrastructures

Designing infrastructure as landscape Flowscapes. Designing infrastructure as landscape Social, cultural and technological developments of our society are demanding a fundamental review of the planning and design of its landscapes and infrastructures, in particular in relation to environmental issues and sustainability. Transportation, green and water infra-structures are important agents that facilitate processes that shape the built environment and its contemporary landscapes. With movement and flows at the core, these landscape infrastructures facilitate aesthetic, functional, social and ecological relationships between natural and human systems, here interpreted as Flowscapes. Flowscapes explores infrastructure as a type of landscape and landscape as a type of infrastructure. The hybridi-sation of the two concepts seeks to redefine infrastructure beyond its strictly utilitarian definition, while allowing spatial design to gain operative force in territorial transformation proces...

2015

Social, cultural and technological developments of our society are demanding a fundamental review of the planning and design of its landscapes and infrastructures, in particular in relation to environmental issues and sustainability. Transportation, green and water infrastructures are important agents that facilitate processes that shape the built environment and its contemporary landscapes. With movement and flows at the core, these landscape infrastructures facilitate aesthetic, functional, social and ecological relationships between natural and human systems, here interpreted as Flowscapes. Flowscapes explores infrastructure as a type of landscape and landscape as a type of infrastructure. The hybridisation of the two concepts seeks to redefine infrastructure beyond its strictly utilitarian definition, while allowing spatial design to gain operative force in territorial transformation processes. This academic publication aims to provide multiple perspectives on the subject from d...

2012

Authors: Nijhuis, Steffen. · Jauslin, Daniel. · De Vries, Christopher. Flowscapes explores infrastructure as a type of landscape and landscape as a type of infrastructure, and is focused on landscape architectonic design of transportation-, green- and water infrastructures. These landscape infrastructures are considered armatures for urban and rural development. With movement and flows at the core, these landscape infrastructures facilitate aesthetic, functional, social and ecological relationships between natural and human systems. Through transdisciplinary design-based case studies at different scale levels Flowscapes seeks for a better understanding of the dynamic between landscape processes and typo-morphological aspects; here interpreted as flowscapes.

Journal of Automated Reasoning, 2012

Flowscapes explores infrastructure as a type of landscape and landscape as a type of infrastructure, and is focused on landscape architectonic design of transportation-, green- and water infrastructures. These landscape infrastructures are considered armatures for urban and rural development. With movement and flows at the core, these landscape infrastructures facilitate aesthetic, functional, social and ecological relationships between natural and human

ACSA, 2018

The contemporary practice of designing the built environment is dominated by a top-down approach that imposes rules and boundaries from above, favoring grid-based geometries and hard edges, regardless of the latent potential in the landscape. By not working with the place-specific landscape in the design process, we have been altering the environment in uniformed ways that have led to generic urban form, ecological degradation, and cities that lack resilience and adaptability in the face of growing threats from climate change. We are unlikely to fix the problems of cities by using the same toolbox that got us there in the first place. It is time to define a new approach that begins with a knowledge of the landscape past, present, and future. This will be of particular importance at the edge of cities that mitigate the relationship between the “built” and “natural,” especially coastal communities that are threatened by inundation from sea-level rise and storm events. By utilizing techniques in site analysis as a design driver, I propose that we reflect on past landscape conditions, urban transformations, and a layering of present environmental conditions to inform speculative future scenarios that lead to new relationships between urbanism and ecology.

2015

This paper explores infrastructure as a type of landscape and landscape as a type of infrastructure. The hybridisation of the two concepts, landscape and infrastructure, seeks to redefine infrastructure beyond its strictly utilitarian definition, while allowing design disciplines to gain operative force in territorial transformation processes. This paper aims to put forward urban landscape infrastructures as a design concept, considering them as armatures for urban development and for facilitating functional, social and ecological interactions. It seeks to redefine infrastructural design as an interdisciplinary design effort to establish a local identity through tangible relationships to a place or region. Urban landscape infrastructures can thereby be used as a vehicle to re-establish the role of design as an integrating practice. This paper positions urban landscape infrastructure design in the contemporary discourse on landscape infrastructures. The space of flows, as opposed to ...

106th ACSA Annual Meeting Proceedings, The Ethical Imperative, 2018

This paper examines the potential of a holistic approach for urban and regional strategies in order to understand the way this might contribute more effectively to current global challenges. Part of a wider research strategy investigating the extent to which low carbon and spatial quality can be delivered at a regional level, it demonstrates benefits of adopting a range of processes to deliver integrated and sustainable urban development. The case studies examined include the Landscape Observatory (Spain), the Room for the River (the Netherlands) and HS2/HS2LV (UK). The Landscape Observatory has raised public awareness of the value of landscape to the extent to which there is now a public law protecting landscape in Catalonia. An investigation of projects dealing with climate adaptation in the Netherlands demonstrates the potential and significance of introducing low carbon and the quality of space in urban and regional infrastructure projects. An examination of the HS2 high-speed rail project in the UK illustrates how it might be possible to impact on the perception and development of a singular engineering project in order to convey a wider sustainable vision and the impact that this might have on future landscape in towns, cities and rural areas. The significance of development of procurement processes, policies and legislations as part of the administration phase of urban and regional landscape schemes are also considered necessary for future landscape strategies. Initial outcomes indicate that successful delivery requires the development of a landscape vision and the understanding of low carbon and spatial quality concepts through design in order to be better expressed in the infrastructure and create added value to our cities and regions.

2010

Contemporary architecture has been strongly influenced by the concept of landscape in recent times. The landscape analogy that accompanied architecture for a long time in tectonics or ornament is now transforming the concepts of form and space. The landscape analogy has moved from marginal subjects to the core of the discipline. We are looking for principals of architectural theory, which can not be derived anymore from an big predominant ideology. What framework for architecture do we still need in the more or less lucky freedom of our time? We might want to use the proposed exercise of knowledge transfer to rediscover some basic principles. A study of landscape as a means of architecture could lead to such a basic theory, not derived from any ideology nor adopting philosophical terms to a practical field. We prefer looking in our own backyard, enjoying the freedom of thoughts about our own subject matter.