35

Landscapes
Kelly Shannon

The profound complexity inherent in landscapes precisely because they embody

culture and nature, art and science, the collective and the personal, the natural and the
artificial, the static and the dynamic has led
to the use and abuse of the term (Berrizbeitia
2001). In an era when the city is progressively built by an ad-hoc project modus, the
widespread (re)emergence of landscape is

5633-Crysler-Ch35.indd 625

indicative of a paradigmatic shift. Indeed,

over the course of the twentieth century,
there has been a change from landscape as a

Figure 35.1 (Below) Investigation site

at Fresh Kills Landfill, Staten Island,
New York, looking South with empty
debris barges at lower right. (Cryptome)

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THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF ARCHITECTURAL THEORY

negotiated condition between natural and

artificial, towards landscape as a richer
term, embracing urbanism, infrastructure,
strategic planning, architecture and speculative ideas. Landscape discourse has shifted
from landscape-as-picture (and its historical
associations to painting) to landscapeas-process (and thus the contemporary metanarrative of biology) (Somol 2001, 128);
landscape has evolved from the pictorial to
the instrumental, strategic and operational.
This chapter will document and critically
analyse a global spectrum of changing development conditions and the way landscape
engages with them. It will focus on projects
that exemplify what has become known as
landscape urbanism, a mode of landscape
architecture and urbanism that goes beyond
conventional park and garden design on the
one hand, and avant-garde topographical landscape manipulations on the other. Landscape
urbanism emerged as a new term in the United
States in the 1990s (Corner 1999); it became

5633-Crysler-Ch35.indd 626

part of European theory a few years later

(Marot 2003; Mostafavi and Najle 2003). It
was introduced as a saviour to the discipline
of urbanism and the more conventional and
static tools of land-use and master-planning.
Landscape urbanism cuts across numerous
disciplines (landscape, urbanism, architecture) and approaches (design and engineering), and is an attempt to re-emphasize the
importance of particular sites and the ecological/artificial processes they encompass.
Landscape urbanism claims to benefit from
the longstanding lineage of regional environmental planning from Patrick Geddes
through Lewis Mumford to Ian McHarg yet
remains distinct from that tradition (Waldheim
2006). As a whole, the field addresses
sites in relation to the broader ecological/
environmental, infrastructural and social/
Figure 35.2 (Below) Field Operations
phase diagram for Fresh Kills Park.
(Field Operations)

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cultural processes and systems that constitute

them. Much of the discourse on landscape
urbanism and the projects aligned with
this emerging field focus upon the challenges posed by post-industrial urban voids
and concerns that are congruent with the
politically correct, ecological biases and
priorities of the developed, Western world.
The recovery of brownfield sites and the
reintroduction of natural processes and
habitats are key issues linked to landscape
urbanism.
The discipline is not yet widely known
beyond the American-European context, but
it can be argued that perhaps the rapidly
urbanizing, developing world is indeed where
landscape urbanism can have significant
agency. Landscapes are seen as potential
receptors of new economic development,
sites of transformation and areas to be
reclaimed. At the same time, they also have
the potential to become an operative tool
to actively resist the globalizing and

5633-Crysler-Ch35.indd 627

627

homogenizing tendencies of built environments (Frampton 1995; Shannon 2004). In

the developing, urbanizing world, landscape
urbanism can be understood as structuring
landscapes to guide their occupation, use and
urbanization an integral system of urbanization which is tied to the logics of landscapes.
Meanwhile, much of the developed world
is engaged in the restructuring of territories
terrain vague, interstitial spaces, urban
peripheries, zones of disturbance, obsolete
areas and urban voids. Reclamation of postindustrial sites has resulted in innovative
landscape projects concerning design
approaches and the larger management and
transformation of sites and regions. Not only
must fundamental ecological issues be dealt
with, but also new aesthetic and symbolic
Figure 35.3 (Below right) and 35.4
(Below left) French Gulch/Wellington
Oro project. (Alan Berger & P-Rex)

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THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF ARCHITECTURAL THEORY

forms are appropriated. A project that is

becoming increasingly influential is one
developed for the 890 ha Fresh Kills Landfill
site on the western coast of Staten Island,
New York. It is emblematic of a huge twentyfirst century reclamation project where
healing the Earth and reconstituted ecologies
are to result from an interaction between
human, natural and technological systems. It
is also characteristic of a design approach in
which a rhetorical and metaphorical cloud
floats above projects that have embraced the
instrumentalities of process. Field Operations,
the firm headed by James Corner and which
won the international design competition, is
among a school of landscape architects and
urbanists who claim to have abandoned complete and determined designs in lieu of an
intricate layering of multiple flows through
sites. The flows take their clues from larger
territorial modes of production and result
in continual change on site. The fifty-year
working history of the site, its consequential

5633-Crysler-Ch35.indd 628

pollution and recovery and reprogramming as

a public landscape was the challenge. Fresh
Kills opened in 1947 as a temporary landfill;
it officially closed in mid-2001 but was reopened months later to receive the ruins of the
World Trade Center catastrophe. The four
large mounds (2570 m high) of landfill (primarily household waste) leach toxic chemicals and heavy metals into the soil and
methane gas into the air. Yet, as part of
New York Citys largest drive to create parks
since the 1930s, the site is to become a
recreational area and undisturbed natural
habitat three times the size of Central Park.
The four mounds are to be capped and
transformed into different landscapes and the
site will host a broad range of activities
not typically available in New York City
Figure 35.5 (Below left and right)
French Gulch/Wellington Oro project.
(Alan Berger & P-Rex Associates)

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LANDSCAPES

parks including waterways for kayaking, an

Olympic-level mountain-bike course and
64 km of trails and paths. Redevelopment of
the landfill site was deliberately phased over
thirty years which involves fixing permanent
structures and setting up long term processes.
Phase 1, seeding, is the initial implementation of securing public access into safe areas
of the Reserve, beginning the restoration of
native habitat and creating some landscapes
of recreational amenity for the immediate
neighbourhoods. Phase 2, infrastructure, is
to occur after closure and stabilization of the
landfill and installs new roadways, utilities,
plantings and structures necessary to prepare
the site for a wide range of programmes.
Phase 3, programming, conveys the dynamic
and flexible way in which the landscape will
be occupied (ranging from suggestions of
golf courses, to education to greenhouses).
The landscape infrastructure is designed as
open and flexible, able to accommodate any
number or combination of programmes as

5633-Crysler-Ch35.indd 629

629

needs and desires may demand. Phase 4,

adaptation, is an extension of Phase 3, the
free-form modification of the landscape and
its programmes over time as communities and
public agencies negotiate changes in response
to needs and circumstances.
As is evident, the emerging discourse
is replete with terminology of change,
dynamics and indeterminancy in contrast
with permanence, reserve and long-term
regeneration. However, it must be recognized
that this project, and others following a
similar trajectory, are defining form, fixing
permanent structures and setting up longterm processes. They are designed landscapes even though they provide little
programmatic guidance. Instead, they extend
the conceptualization of ecology to include
precise openness the potential change
that, according to Anita Berrizbeitia, is
entirely different from generic openness
that often passes for flexibility (Berrizbeitia
2001). Spatial configuration of the landscape

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THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF ARCHITECTURAL THEORY

is precisely designed; however, there remains

flexibility in the possible programmes that
may appropriate the determined form. Field
Operations embraces change vis--vis strategically framed rules of organization and variables for the recolonization of the site. They
also develop an operations ecology plans
for administering the parks. Their notion of
colonization implies the power to appropriate
space, sometimes against the will of those
who already occupy or control it; they address
the reality that the public is not always consensual or even necessarily well-ordered, but
rather contestory and perhaps even violent
(Mitchell and Van Deusen 2001, 112). Field
Operations projects articulate the relationship
of physical design not only to the complexity
of geological, hydrological and biological
processes, but also to administration and
operations of the inherently contradictory
nature of public space.
In another landscape reclamation project
this time in the western United States the

5633-Crysler-Ch35.indd 630

French Gulch/Wellington Oro project by

Alan Berger reconfigures a site of extensive
Gold Rush placer mining (active from
18901960) into a speculative housing development with constructed wetland parks and
topographical manipulations that creatively
re-use dredge rock (waste gravel tailings).
The Wellington Oro neighbourhood, of four
hundred new homes in the 3400 m alpine
setting of Colorados Rocky Mountains, is to
be built on a polluted site where subsurface
water contamination and lead/arsenic soil
poisoning are the primary concerns. Large
parts of the territory are to be capped with
a soil cover and vegetated to eliminate
direct contact and prevent erosion of contaminated soil while daylight, air, vegetation

Figure 35.6 (Below) Expansion and

protection of the public realm in Rio de
Janeiros Favela Bairro project.

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LANDSCAPES

(phytoremediation) and the sites natural

topographic gradients are utilized as tools of
water purification. The polluted water (dissolved metals) is largely in a complex network of tunnels and shafts, buried by the
massive amounts of dredge rock that fill the
valley floor. In order for it to be cleansed, it
requires exposure to air and therefore
demands extensive rock moving some of
which is crushed and sold as gravel creating
a budgetary surplus for construction. Other
portions of the non-polluted rock are crushed
and used as a surface treatment for the
high access trail areas or as earthworks
along the access road to the development
framing views and providing privacy to
housing areas. The landscape infrastructure simultaneously reclaims the stream
corridor, revitalizes the processes that
allow ecological regimes to resume activity,
broadens the public realm through the
creation of recreational/didactic constructed wetlands and creates platforms for

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631

reprogramming including parking areas

near the back-country open-space trail system
and staging locations for the stockpiling of
soil-making materials, for site-maintenance
sheds, and for greenhouses and incubation
beds for re-vegetation.
In Europe, there are numerous exemplary
projects of post-industrial landscape recovery projects, ranging from the well-known
Emscher Park in Germany (by Peter Latz and
others) to the Lyon Confluence project in
France (by Michel Desvignes) to scenarios
for mining sites and shrinking cities of
Eastern Europe (by Florian Beigel and
others) to name but a few. The structuring
capacity of landscape and infrastructure is
also an operative strategy in the revitalization
of agricultural territories and restructuring of
dispersed urbanity.
Figure 35.7 (Below) Urbanism framing
a dynamic wetland landscape, Cayenne,
French Guyana. (Agence Ter)

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THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF ARCHITECTURAL THEORY

Paola Vigan, who has been working over

the past years in partnership with Bernardo
Secchi, has developed a landscape urbanism
strategy for the Salento region in Italys
Province of Lecce. The region 1800 square
kilometres, of which 865 is covered with
olive trees and vineyards has a population
of 800,000 and is visited by 2.2 million tourists annually. In many aspects it is representative of citt diffusa, but, at the same
time, it differs in that its modernization has
been remote from mainstream western
development; as a part of Italys poorer
southern area, the territory of the Salento
region has widely been regarded as marginal.
In the proposal, the territory has been conceived of as a park an extensive, articulated
and complex habitat. The term park is
used in a contemporary sense and not only
alludes to a place of leisure, but is to be
understood as a group of environmental situations in the broadest sense, whose essential
combination will go towards encouraging the

5633-Crysler-Ch35.indd 632

development of some or all the main social

activities as affairs . Contrary to current
opinion the porous character of the diffused
city presents a great opportunity for paving
the way for a correct development of
biodiversity and expansion of nature, in order
to construct landscape and an environment
that will interpret the values of contemporary
society (Vigan 2001, 17, 65). For Vigan,
the larger, existing landscape infrastructures
form the basis for later urbanization. The
project includes a series of scenarios for
the regions future development which
Figure 35.8 (Below) Phasing of urban
platforms, Cayenne, French Guyana.
(Agence Ter)
Figure 35.9 (Below right) Shenyang
Architectural University, northeast China.
(Turenscape)
Figure 35.10 (Opposite top) Cayenne,
French Guyana. (Agence Ter)

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LANDSCAPES

includes alternative energy and environment

policies, requalification of coastal areas and
new conceptions of tourism, expanded productive landscapes, increased infrastructure,
concentrations of future urbanization and

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633

collective services. The strategy uses few

fragments of existing nature and proposes
their expansion, defines the conditions in which
new elements of the natural countryside can
be created and mitigates the effects of
climate change by expanding wooded
areas. The development counters a radialcentric and concentric model with an
open ladder model whereby settlement,
production and recreation linked through a
wide-mesh network is utilized as a series of
narrative itineraries. Dispersed urbanism is
not denied, but reorganized to achieve higher
inhabitation standards and a more articulated
distribution of facilities throughout the territory. In 2007, the project became the legal
frame for the Province of Lecce and a
number of policy implications are being
developed. It was the first urban plan in Italy
to have environmental and landscape
concerns at its core. The Salento project is
particularly relevant for contexts in which the
productive landscape is extensive and has led

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THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF ARCHITECTURAL THEORY

to dispersed infrastructure systems even if

they are under-developed.
As the developed world is embroiled in the
recovery of brownfields and re-qualification
of under-utilized greenfields a by-product
of its modernization legacy the developing
South is in the midst of up-grading and
creating new spatial patterns of colonization.
Although landscape is not often part of
the present-day dialogue in the South,
conditions are ripe for interventions which
simultaneously aim to enlarge the public
realm, delimit urban sprawl from fragile,
natural environments and mediate between
local communities and the pressures of global
tourism. Landscapes once revered for their
symbolic meaning and productive capacities
are being transformed into urban agglomerations at an unprecedented speed and scale.
At the same time, a number of Asian cities
have consciously been developing the
image of their landscapes in parallel with
urban development. In semi-sedentary

5633-Crysler-Ch35.indd 634

cultures of Africa the relationship of the built

to the natural environment continues to produce unique cultural landscapes, and throughout much of Latin America, the mythical
figure and influence of Roberto Burle-Marx
looms.
Rio de Janeiro (the adopted home of
Burle-Marx) a mega-city in which nature
and urbanity are powerfully confronted is
the site of one of the most acclaimed and
revolutionary urban up-grading projects in
recent years. The Favela Barrio Project in
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil convincingly employed
urban design as a tool for social reform
and transformed marginalized slums/urban
Figure 35.11 (Below) Shenyang
Architectural University, northeast China.
(Turenscape)
Figure 35.12 (Below right) Shenyang
Architectural University, northeast China.
(Turenscape)

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LANDSCAPES

ghettoes within vulnerable landscapes into

thriving, safe and well-provisioned communities. Part-and-parcel of the citys development process, Rios slums come in a variety
of morphologic patterns and inhabit diverse
yet always fragile (steep slopes, marshlands,
valley crevices) landscapes which are
exposed to the extremes of sun, rain and
wind. The Favela Barrio Project did what its
name implies turned favelas (slums) into
barrios (neighbourhoods). The innovative
project accepted slums as a new form of
urban morphology that should not be
destroyed but rather changed, improved
and converted into a modest, liveable neighbourhood. Such a policy is radical departure
from slum clearance and relocation programmes, and the notion of inclusion as
opposed to exclusion is pursued though
reurbanizing, regularizing, restoring, renovating and revitalizing favelas (informal settlements which house approximately twenty
percent of the citys population). Under the

5633-Crysler-Ch35.indd 635

635

programme, the municipal government and

the Inter-American Development Bank
(IDB) committed more than $600 million,
the bulk of which was spent on public
works in some 120 of the citys 600 social
pockmarks.
The relation of landscape to urbanization
was regularized by improving inner accessways and providing appropriate services
though the widening of roads, environmental
initiatives, provision of sanitation, and a
focusing on the pedestrian flow. The investments provided the favelas with basic urban
services (potable water, garbage removal,
lighting, sewers, telephones), social welfare
equipment (well-designed public areas,
schools, sports arenas, markets and daycare,
training/employment and health care centres), a proper access system (well paved
streets, buses and cable cars). New construction of community equipment was underpinned by technical or organizational support
for home refurbishing on an individual or

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THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF ARCHITECTURAL THEORY

self-help basis, with necessary legal provisions. As has been insightfully commented
the language of architecture used for the
favelas project is not especially sophisticated;
it works more like a series of bandages
that aid in survival, both functionally and
psychologically. Bright yellow handrails
along a hillside now signal the path leading
to the community elsewhere, a bridge
with a high-tech look spans an otherwise
impassable valley full of garbage (Mori
2003: 55). New landscape elements vegetation were also part of the strategy in order
to provide slope stabilization, to enhance
spatial experiences and to provide muchneeded shade. Through what Rodolfo
Machado has termed iconographic pragmatism (Machado 2003, 15), the Favela Barrio
Project has erased the opposition of the
formal and informal city through hygienic
betterment, engineering improvements and
site specific interventions. The project realized an interconnected landscape arising from
the provision of a new infrastructure of public
facilities, public health and safety (water and
waste management).
Finally, there are two projects that use
landscape as the main structuring element to
strategically guide new urbanization. In
French Guyana, the landscape firm Agence
Ter from Paris made a careful reading of the
site which confirmed not only the geographical wealth of the island, but also revealed that
traditional rural and urban habitats had ingenious ways of deals with topography and rainy
season floods. The significance of water in
the landscape was clearly evident ranging
from rivers and marshes (important in the
overall regulating system of absorption of
heavy rains and water excesses due to high
tides) to man-made devices (canals, gutters
and channels). Further research made evident
that the La Crique Fouille swamp that
bisects the island was a former inlet which
silted-up over time from erosion. The presentday inner-communal borderland was thus
discovered as the eighteenth century hydrologic origin of the island and provided the

5633-Crysler-Ch35.indd 636

impetus for future development and territorial unity. The area, exposed to enormous
hydrological fluctuations because of tides
and heavy tropical rainfall, is simultaneously
being turned into a protected ecological zone
and the site for new urban areas. A large
green, floodable plain contains new canals
for water discharge and links to a series of
water retention ponds, which in turn are controlled by a series of sluices. Between the
system of ponds, and at the foothills of the
surrounding mountain peaks, are new centres
for urbanization. Strong Cartesian geometries
structure the buildable areas, while the limits
of the natural reserve follow those of the
topography. The floodable area was viewed
as a green river and settlement was located
on the anchored piedmonts of the riverbank.
The growth and evolution of the landscape
and new tropical towns are simultaneously
guided; geo-morphological and urban
structures work as a total system, and larger
environmental concerns such as keeping
development away from the fragile
coastline are addressed. Agence Ter
has stressed that in this project, they sought
geographic urbanization.
Across the globe, the landscape design of
the 80 ha suburban campus of Shenyang
Architectural University in northeast China
connects students to parts of Chinese society
that they might otherwise shun. Rice fields
are the main organizing design element for
the campus plan but they are not merely
didactic and ornamental. The built 3 ha phase
of the project is structured by highly productive landscapes, building on Shenyangs
reputation as the source of high-quality
short-grain rice. Elements of the traditional
agricultural environment serve as tangible
symbols and reminders of the historical and
contemporary role of agriculture in China.
The site was indeed a former paddy field and
its irrigation system was still intact. The
geometric layout, reminiscent of the earlier
field parcellation, is interspersed with study
platforms, accessed by narrow concrete
pathways lined by no-maintenance native

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plants and shaded by popular trees. Other

native crops, such as buckwheat grow in rotation across the campus annually and sheep
are raised in the fields. A new vernacular
underlines the beauty (and affordability) of
rice and demonstrates how productive agricultural landscapes can become through
careful design and management modern,
usable space. The rice produced on the
campus is harvested and distributed as
Golden Rice, serving both as a keepsake for
visitors and as a source of identity for
the suburban campus. The project combines
tradition and modernity roughness and
elegance in a hybrid landscape designed to
raise awareness of land and farming amongst
college students who are leaving the land to
become city dwellers. Faculty and students
participate in the management, planting and
harvesting of the paddy fields hopefully
sensitizing future architects to the possibilities of reinterpreting tradition.
The re-thinking and re-defining, through
theory and projects, of the agency of landscape holds tremendous potentials for the
re-shaping of urbanizing territories.
Landscape urbanism is a paradigm shift as
it can be considered to inherently have the
capacity to bring together different experts
and stakeholders from urban, landscape,
engineering and even management sectors; it
is a coalition builder in innovative regional
development. A descriptive landscape urbanism is particularly relevant for contexts of
rapid urbanization and in places where the
effects of climate change predictions are the
most severe. Landscape urbanism projects
can evolve from the careful reading of
layered contested territories and designbased investigation of potentials. The existing logics of landscapes (including their
historical layers and ad-hoc daily appropriations) can be reorganized at different scales
and connected to new (infra)structures.
Specific logics from the junkyard of existing landscapes can be stressed and new interventions with structural capacities could
reformulate reality. Landscape urbanism

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637

strategies can become powerful tools for

negotiation between different actors and
within the contested territories of twentyfirst-century cities.

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