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Summary Landscape, Ecology and Urbanism
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Landscape, Ecology and UrbanismIntroduction
Learn about influences of ecology on the design sciences
Understand ecological design (not only about design, also
about ecological knowledge and sociopolitical goals)
Develop background knowledge to critically assess design
projects.
Examples:
Project 1: abandoned site, railway tracks
Berlin => during & after WW, no train stations
anymore
Herbert Zucko researched all plans of the
GleiB trei interested in urban wasteland
=> parck am Gleisdreieck, Berlin
wild land, tried to protect it, some places
opened up for social use.
Protesters made sure the land was protected
=> compensation landscape.
Project 2: Louis Le Roy against modern buildings
ecology is something people build, they work together.
black: ecological spaces we have to start designing
nature never stops growing
plants overgrow the structure => creates new typology
Herbert Zucko will find it good, some other ecologists will find it
bad.
Project 3: Infrastructure that depollutes the river
Charles Waldheim landscape urbanism: landscape much better to
design urbanism
Ground lab, deep ground Shenzen: landscape becomes
performative instead of aesthetical
Ecological concepts are used in different ways:
- Natural process as aesthetic category
- Natural process as critique of modern urbanism
- Natural process as urbanization strategy
1
,Landscape design operates as/in political context:
- Against privatization of urban areas
- As critique of modern urbanism and landscape design
- As ‘capitalist’ urbanization strategy
1. Science (ecology)
Also sort of political, even science provides an outlook on reality that is not always
‘neutral’
2. (Urban) Design
Also non-design as a design, often based on political choices, scientific knowledge,
design conventions and aesthetic categories.
3. Sociopolitics
Urban design as a political project, this sociopolitical agenda can also become obscured
by the focus on ecology and technology. Ecological design also communicates implicit
societal beliefs: neoliberal or not, anthropocentric or not…
Chapter 1: Basic principles of Ecology
1. Ecology and related notions
1.1. Definition of ecology
First used by Ernst Haeckel
Oekologie = the study of relations of organisms
to one another and to their physical environment
1.2. Hierarchy of spheres
Spheres influence eachother
We’re in the age of the Anthropocene
Rephotographed same places => in the
past people lived with nature
Also a lot of critique on the Anthropocene:
human influence
They say humans are not the problem but
the way how humans work/look with/to
nature. => We’re focusing on the wrong subject
1.3. Ecosystems: dependency of organisms
Survival of any species is dependent on: other living organisms, non-living
components (food, water, shelter, sunlight, oxygen)
Leads to Ecosystems= relations between living organisms and non-living
components at a particular place.
Definition ecosystems: ‘the complex of living organisms, their physical
environment, and all their interrelationships in a particular unit of space’
Example: ecosystem forest
Paul Duvigneaud: ecosystem is a place where
fluxes of energy move through space.
Energy flows and material flows
Ecosystem is not something that exists, it’s a point of analysis
2
, Notions related to ecosystems
- Community => only about the organisms
- Population => interacting organisms, of one kind or species
- Organism => one living animal or plant
Biosphere => ecosystem => community => population => organism
- Habitat => place where an organism lives
- Niche => role of a species within its environment
Generalists (pig) eat variety of food => fulfill a niche in a variety of habitats
and specialists (panda) eat little or no variety of food => survival/extinction
depends on presence of food => indicators of changes in ecological conditions
1.4. Dynamics of ecosystems
1.4.1. Population dynamics: ‘struggle for life’
A population grows larger than the
maximum => competition => death of
individual organisms => fluctuation.
Animals related to amount of food and
ecosystems
Species can only survive if ecosystem
conditions are situated in between certain
limits (‘tolerances’)
1.4.2. Ecosystems and tolerances
Ecosystem = ensemble of organisms with more or less similar tolerances
(bv forests)
These tolerances are never exactly the
same. Otherwise, the organisms would
exclude each other in time through
competition.
Survival of the fittest (Darwin) => who
fits best will survive
Every organism has its place in an
ecosystem => however: dynamic, not
static: competition
1.4.3. Competition through feeding relationships
3
, Producers vs consumers of food
Prey vs predator
Host vs parasite
Producer of food: all autotrophs (vb plants) that convert energy from the
sun into organic material = bottom of food chain
Consumer of food: all organisms that ‘eat’ organic material containing the
sun’s energy: herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, decomposers
1.4.4. Competition between species
Example: pray-predator
1.4.5. Human population dynamics
Humans are a threat for
other species
How to feed the planet?
Agriculture uses a lot of
resources and creates a lot of
pollution, especially the
production of meat.
2. Changing nature: dynamics
2.1. Natural succession and dynamics
4
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