The Waterfront, an Urban Ecotone

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the WATERFRONT an urban ECOTONE

the case of Porto

Theories of Contemporary Research in Architecture 2016/2017 Alfredo De Luca

. WATERFRONT, meanings and analysis

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“We know the water is one of the elements able to start the genesis of a city. On the other hand we are used to think the water as a landscape supply, instead than a constructive part of the city!

In the meanwhile the city waterfronts represent a manifesto of the relation between water and land. “ Inter Amna (Terni), print XVII century

Cidades da agua, mar urbano… impressões de viagens, Vitor Matias Ferreira

Water was always the starting point for the structuring and organizing of a city. Waterfronts represent through their history the several changes and transformations in the drawing and social environment of the city.

Apart from the leading role given to the water element as physical natural border and transportation path, city renewals consider water as a true extension of the city itself. This new approach was debated at the end of the XX century, when planners started worrying about the abandoned conditions of these parts of the city, which was finally clear they embodied the memory and history of a community and of the entire urban settlement.

Ribeira, Porto in XX century

The city of Porto presents two different waterfront urban landscapes: a first sea front, built through the centuries between two castles, outside the center; and a second river front, in strong relation with the urban growth of the city.

The waterfront here represents a very strong prerogative of the identity of the city, and all the urban elements transformed and were created in order to preserve it.

It seems that we could study the role of the water in the city from two point of views: the first is the human perception of the water element and the meanings and memories that human being and its community give to it. The second is a larger and more embracing perspective where we see the meaning of waterfronts in the whole, and in a large lapse of time, influenced by planning, economic, and social transformations.

It’s possible to take in consideration the works of 4 authors in order to synthesize these two different but complementary approaches. Kevin Lynch and Robert Krier create a strong relation between the city and the human scale, and try to create an experimental database of elements that influence the perception of the city and the exploring of the space by the human being. On the otherside Spiro Kostof and Manuel de Sola-Morales study the city as a succession of ‘urban episodes’ in a ‘map’ scale.

Sea Organ, Zadar, Nikola Bašić

We could compare these two different realities as two leading characters of Italian XVI century arquitecture: Donato Bramante and Raffaello. The first, in fact, designed to be seen from afar, from a privileged point of view, where it was possible to understand the whole, and its relation with the part, and understand proportions and harmony. The second designed to explore from the inside, the whole is not more important than the single part itself, and the human perception of a single space is the real goal of the project.

One approach doesn’t take to the contradiction of the other, but they are complementary. Raffaello, in fact, was a pupil of Bramante and always had a great admiration for him.

Tempietto S.Pietro, Donato Bramante, 1506

The two studying methods and interpretations of the waterfront and urban landscape in general are nothing less than the two sides of the same coin.

. a WATERFRONT is an EDGE

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Kevin Lynch, in the chapter called ‘The city image and its elements’ from his book ‘The Image of the City’, develops his theory of studying through categories, finding the ‘key-elements’ for the comprehension of the city environment, which is developed through different ‘layers’.

Lynch names 5 key-elements:

Chigi Chapel, Raffaello Sanzio, 1513

PATH: Spaces where circulation takes place. It’s the main element of the urban landscape and its shape is usually a net following different kind of defined or undefined rules.

EDGE: Linear elements that cannot be considered accessible or with a proper goal. They show themselves as border lines in the landscape that cross the city following a proper path and direction. This element will be in the further paragraphs a key-word for new conclusions.

DISTRICT: City blocks, as a group of massive landscape, offer a strong identity character to the city. They represent texture, space, form, detail, symbol, building type, use, activity, inhabitants, topography.

NODE: Strategic points, they are are where main intersection appear.

LANDMARK: Physical object that distinguish from the general urban frame, its scale and its shape allows the easy identification.

These elements, as Krier will confirm with his studies, don’t’ have to be taken in consideration independently but in the specific relations they build one with the other.

The 5 elements, Kevin Lynch

If we try to frame the ‘waterfront’ element in this ‘handbook’ of city components we face some little difficulties. This is, indeed, what happens when we try to generalize or synthesize reality in tiny rules, and moreover we will suppose later that Lynch’s definitions, even if important for our experimental discourse, don’t fit at best the case of study.

Anyway we could for sure identify the waterfront as a PATH, since it is a ‘space where circulation takes place’ somehow, and that is linked to the whole road system of the city. We could than continue stating that this path contains LANDMARKS too and possibly NODES, so we see how tricky could be synthesizing the real built environment.

Euclid

The most important, anyway, is to frame the waterfront in the definition of EDGE, as that part of the city, according to Lynch ‘linear’, which builds up a boundary in the city between two different landscapes. In our case, in fact, we observe the separation between the land and the water.

Lynch sees the edge, as a mere boundary. He gives a geometrical and theoretical value to it and focuses on the two separated systems without focusing on the separation itself.

. the EDGE, from 1D to 2D

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So far we’ve spoken of the waterfront as an edge, as clearly it is.

We’ve been taking mostly in consideration the definition of Kevin Lynch of ‘Border Line’, so a boundary with one dimension.

‘The Elements’, the first Geometry essay written in 300 b.C. by the greek mathematician and pihlosofer Euclid, contains the axioms of the three ‘primitive geometric elements’ of the Euclidean Geometry: the point, the line and the plane. The line is supposed to be the succession of infinite points. The line so indicates just a direction and a clear border, dividing in two the space. This definition, doesn’t give any further meaning or characteristic to the body of the line itself, because it doesn’t have a second dimension.

Although, this is only a simplification and an abstract way of synthesizing reality, in the same way Lynch synthesize a waterfront in a line.

We have now to add the second dimension to the ‘border line’. The edge will gain a width and a shape and represent finally the ‘transition ground’ we will deepen further.

Zooming a group of lines on the monitor

Imagine something I, as an architecture student, am very used to: a line drawn on a pc monitor by any drawing program. We will observe that at a proper zoom the line is the basic representation element

which synthesize the reality we are used to; but in true we could zoom until the point of seeing pixel by pixel the composition of the line. We would see a group of squares, with a proper area, put together in different combinations and building a distinctive geography and morphology.

Transition between two different patterns cannot be a-dimensional and immediate. There is always a transition ground where for a moment the two different patterns coexist and solve their contradiction. If there is a general law that rule all the life-being this could be an example, because we could say the same things about transition for many other fields after all: physics, chemistry, biology, life. Moreover, the border ground seems to host the biggest variety of elements and possibilities, as Rita Ochoa writes referring to the waterfront: ‘where the largest number of architecture possibilities are allowed’.

Aerial view – Adria, Bernhard Lang, 2013

Using the passion human mind has to find logical bound between different cultural inputs we could try to look in a true critical way the photos of the Austrian photographer Bernhard Lang. Lang collected a big number of aerial photos of populated beaches around Italian coast during summer. The photos show clearly two different patterns: the sea, full of people enjoying their holiday having a bath; and the beach, where the aligned beach umbrellas build up a regular pattern which could be compared to an urban frame. Between the two the shoreline, the transition ground, which has a proper geometry and shape, and not a one dimension line. We could also observe that the shoreline is the part of the picture containing the biggest variety of characters: men, children playing, boats, towels, umbrellas: elements taken from the two patterns but even new ones.

. the EDGE is a TERRITORY

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Swimming Pool, Franco Fontana, 1984

In her book ‘Cidade en frente da àgua: ligaçoes fisicas, visuais e simbolicas’, Rita Ochoa describes her theory about the typical structure of a waterfront, identifying common elements in cities facing the water.

The waterfront is written to be the most peripheral part of a city, and it embodies the main edge between the land and the water. In this new definition the waterfront becomes the boundary between the urbanized and entropized territory and the natural environment.

According to this new point of view the waterfront is not only a merely border line, with only one dimension, but instead a transition area, therefore bidimensional. A portion of undefined land that solves the contradiction between the two collapsing territories: the urbanized and the natural.

The author gives a ‘horizontal interpretation’, as she writes, about the waterfront. It is made, as Lynch already wrote referring to the city environment, as a succession of events, a path where urban episodes take places. Although, she gets more into specific, and states that the characteristics of these episodes change the more one landscape overlap the other. This portion of land, which is the intersection of two different environment (the urban and the natural) contains a blurring intersection of different episodes.

In the waterfront we can see a transition, more or less defined, from the anthropized to the unspoiled.

The waterfront, in fact, represent a city ground where multiple urban and architecture possibilities are allowed. For this reason we can find several different waterfront configurations, and even more if we try to synthesize the relation they build with the surrounding city. We see, foreshadowing the further considerations, that this ambiguous ground containing two different worlds gives much more chance of growing and diversity than the single environment took alone.

Brion Grave, Carlo Scarpa, Altivole, 1969

The tension between the two different environments shows off if we compare the two different edges definitions theorized by Frederick R.Steiner and Kent Butler in their book ‘Waterfront standards for urban planning’. According to the authors we can find a natural edge, which is the effective physical point in which the land finishes and is substituted by water. Subsequently we can find a productive edge, which is a built border of the city due to the water presence. If the first one is natural, uncertain and not planned in it design, the second is planned, more geometric and result of history, tradition and culture.

These two different edges (than in some rare case may also coincide) contain this portion of land full of tensions and diversity.

. the TERRITORY is BIOLOGICAL

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What we’ve done so far was studying, through different theories, the urban territory as planners, using terms such as border, landscape, urban frame, path. Every part of a city, as the waterfront, being a territory as we proved, is an ecosystem first of all, and a living organism in general. Many interesting goals can be reached by studying the city and architecture comparing it to biology.

The American scientific writer Janine Benyus has published several books about the idea of applying natural rules to design. The whole of these theories take the name of biomimicry.

A house, a block, a city, can be thought as a living organism and more easily as an ecosystem, which works and respond to the same rules of natural unspoiled ecosystem. In this new interesting view we see the city, a not only natural environment, but also social, economic, politic Erman Escher, Metamorphosis

and historic, peopled by human beings struggling for life in the same way as fishes in a lake.

Michael Pawlyn, with his architectural practice Observe, also worked in a smaller scale with biomimicry. In his architectures, in fact, he takes inspiration from the natural world and living organism.

The Smurfs, Mushroom Houses

This approach doesn’t have to be confused with the organic movement in the XX century architecture, that used natural shapes and developing principles of nature. In this case we have a big theoretical approach in which the laws of nature and ecosystems are applied to the cities and anthropized territories. Like Benyus stated, “There are three types of biomimicry - one is copying form and shape, another is copying a process, like photosynthesis in a leaf, and the third is mimicking at an ecosystem's level, like building a nature-inspired city”.

In 1993 the American physicist Geoffrey West came across to the work of the swiss biologist Max Kleiber, which had studied years before the metabolism of many animal species with different dimensions. West was wondering if cities responded to the same laws of metabolism variation of the animals, and if it was possible to create this relation between biology and cities. After analyzing the statistics, the answer was clear, ‘Cities are like elephants’ he said. Apart from the specific statistics of his research, this result is important to confirm the chance of describing the city territory not only as architectural and urban but also biological.

In ancient Greece Plato was already comparing the city to a living organism, with its life, inner rules, shape and composition, and the same can be done considering the single component of the city (citizens, commercial activities, events, attractions, …) as natural organism and the city where they live an ecosystem, responding to natural rules studied by biology.

Hawk shaped designed airplane

. a WATERFRONT is an ECOTONE

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We should try now to apply biology rules to the single element ‘waterfront’ studied so far. The previous theories observed from the works of Janine Benyus, Michael Pawlyn, Geoffrey West and biomimicry in general lead us to a scientific and biological approach towards the events occurring in the waterfront in order to understand its working and possibilities in the city. The waterfront up to now has been called a boundary territory representing in a blurring way the transition between two different landscapes: the water and the city.

We could now address to these two different worlds in terms of ecosystem. Observing biology world and its rules, in fact, it results to exist many interesting characteristics about the transition grounds

between two different ecosystems, such territories are called ecotones.

The Oxford Biology Dictionary define ecotone as “A narrow and fairly sharply defined transition zone between two or more different communities . Such edge communities are typically species-rich”.

Ecotones seem to contain in their behaviour the same logic of the edge – territory waterfront we studied so far: it is a transition ground, between two different ecosystems, where diversity is encouraged, and that seems to be as in nature as in the city.

Ecotone territory in Pennsylvania, US

The French landscaper Gilles Clement in his ‘Manifesto for a Third Landscape’ defines as ‘third landscape’ the unplanned residual territories left apart by the cursory spreading of the productive landscape. Even if the third landscape cannot be considered an edge in any case, it does form somehow a transition between different ecosystems. Gilles Clement writes that these territories represent a ‘refugee for diversity’, ‘the edge is a territory to think about the wealth generated by the intersection of two different natures’. The waterfront from this new viewport is not only a formal transition of the city through the city, where the built environment slowly transforms into water. It is also a fertile area with characteristic from both the two environments which encourages diversity, which speaking about a city can be diversity of function, people, culture, flexibility and resilience. In Ancient Egypt agriculture was possible, although the arid clime, thanks to the silt by the rivers, the fertile borders where life and diversity was possible and rising.

Ecotone diagram

This phenomenon was studied in biology and ecology and takes the name of edge effect, which the Oxford Biology Dictionary once again defines: “The edge effect is an ecological concept that describes how there is a greater diversity of life in the region where the edges two adjacent ecosystems overlap, such as land/water, or forest/grassland.

At the edge of two overlapping ecosystems, you can find species from both of these ecosystems, as well as unique species that aren’t found in either ecosystem but are specially adapted to the conditions of the transition zone between the two edges”.

The edge effect, thanks to we guarantee the diversity of life and episodes, takes place in the waterfront which is our ecotone in biological terms. No wonders if we discover the greek origin of ecotone as oikos (house, environment) + tonos (tension). The first contains the meaning of house, taken clearly from architecture field, and environment which has been one of our key word so far, as it was tension, referred to the hidden contradiction between the natural edge and productive edge theorized by Steiner and Butler in the previous paragraphs.

Pokemon, Nintendo, different patterns

Diversity of species in natural ecosystems and diversity of urban episodes in cities, which me managed to logically relate, are important because diversity in general make any system more flexible

and resilient, able to evolve and innovate itself, thanks to the infinite curious relations that can occur between the characters of diversity.

Moreover diversity is more interesting, fascinating, and close to what could be called ‘prosperity’.

. PORTO, from the LAND to the WATER

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The theoretical path we followed so far embraced many different fields of study and topics, which helped us in different ways to understand the role and the characteristics of such territory called ‘waterfront’, that can be found in many different forms in a large number of cities. The waterfront, as we stated, represents a transition between two different ecosystems where variety is encouraged, a very fertile and prosperous part of the city nestled between the anthropized and unspoiled environment where tensions and contraddictions take place.

All these characteristics seem to be very true in the waterfront of the city of Porto, Cais da Ribeira.

Cais da Ribeira, XX century

Cais da Ribeira ( mostly known simply as ‘Ribeira’ ) is the part facing the water of the oldest neighbourhood of the city, ‘ A Baixa ‘ ( the downtown) that less than 10 years ago has been renewed by the administration of the city with an economical project which encouraged the birth of pubs and nightlife in this area.

The waterfront of Porto historically represented the center of the economic life of the town, especially before the big urban development of the late XIX th century. The Ribeira is also the device that allows the strong relation the city has always had with the water element, not only functionally but also and especially emotionally and esthetically.

Cais da Ribeira, today

If we observe the morphology of this part of the city we can see how Ribeira represents at the best a ‘ territory of transition ‘. The limits of the waterfront are not clearly defined and don’t follow a proper shape, the typical Portuguese old houses facing the river stop 15-20 meters before diving into the water and they leave some space for people walking and some café have chairs outside where to have a break in sunny days. The buildings are bound to the waterfront ground not in such a traditional way, their ground level, in fact, is very often made of arches, vaults and artificial caves which one century ago would host fishermans’ stalls and that nowdays host the city nightlife and cafes. The transition from the built to the pedestrian path is slow and gradual, with an uncertain space between public and private; this is where the city ends and a new ‘ urban ecosystem ‘ appears.

Getting closer to the river the waterfront ground begins to dismantle in order to leave some space to floating and built ramps which dive into the water and are more or less covered from the river depending of the time of the day and the tide level, which changes 4 meters in the 24 hours. These ramps are not only a technical supply to allow the water access, but also a sort of barometer to notice the river movements and his changes during the day.

A careful walk down the waterfront, way better than this description, shows how the design of this territory constantly explains and evidence the presence of the river Douro.

Porto, the city that dives into the water

Ribeira waterfront contains all the typical characteristics of the city and with no doubt is the most representative part of Porto. Porto is a city which until nowdays has hardly managed to preserve his true essence which can be shortly described as this bizarre mixture on one side of a small scale, twisted and over-decorated urban pattern and on the other of an extensive environment made of river and ocean, this constant presence of the water element that comes down from the sky too due to the Atlantic weather.

These two realities face each other more than any other side of Porto in the waterfront where the two personalities of Porto embrace, fight and coexist.

As we saw in the previous paragraph, it is exactly this contradiction and collision of two different ecosystem to give the chance to ecotones to be formed and diversity to occur.

In the waterfront we find not only diversity in terms of morphology and design but also and especially in terms of functions. The transition and ambiguous territory, in fact, gives the chance to many different urban activities to take place. The lively atmosphere of Ribeira, in fact, is due to the diversity of functions that more or less spontaneously has occurred during the time: -

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Ribeira, XIX century

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Trading activities, especially concerning the Porto wine which is carried on the typical boats that sail up and down the river and are a big presence of the Ribeira waterfront.

The waterfront is linked to a web of infrastructures (bridge, pedestrian path, cable railway) which puts it in the center of the mobility plan of the city-center.

Ribeira is one of the main touristic attractions of Porto. A selfie on the waterfront with the huge iron bridge behind is something can’t be missed by the many tourists who visit the city.

Nightlife that in the latest years has increased in Ribeira thanks to the opening of many pubs inside the old fish stalls, and that today assures a 24h attendance of the waterfront.

Ribeira is for sure also the only place inside the city where to be in contact with natural environment, getting very close to the water element. At least twice per year, moreover, the Douro river tide uses to climb over the borders and floods all

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Ribeira into the water

the waterfront. This, which on one side may be a big trouble for the workers of the area, on the other side shows the strong relation of everyday life with water.

Ribeira is a place full of history. It embodies the history of urban development of Porto, it tells the history of Porto wine and its trading and it’s surrounded by the ruins of the ancient roman walls, explaining its path and role in the old town.

The diversity of functions and characters using the waterfront can be easily compared to the biodiversity of an ecotone. In fact, as we already stated in biological terms, we may find elements belonging to urban life, others belonging to the water and even new ones.

Walking down the waterfront repeating the careful walk already suggested before, it would be easy and exciting to notice the variety of happenings: tourists taking picture with some street artists behind, maybe just in front of a café with people sitting and a Portuguese old lady watching from her house’s window above while children in swimsuit jump into the river while a boat takes the Porto wine on the other side to be sold.

As the Canadian writer Jane Jacobs wrote in ‘Life and Death of the Big Cities’, this picturesque scene is what makes a part of a city lively, exciting, full of people at any hour of the day, and for these reasons more interesting and more safe too.

On the 24th of June, when the ‘Festa de São João’ takes place in Porto, the city fills up of celebrations, people dancing and cooking in the streets, enjoying the most important day of Porto folklore. It won’t come as a surprise to learn that on this day the main celebration with the huge fireworks show takes place in Ribeira, where all the citizens meet acting all the traditional performances.

This part of the city, even if not a representative square, neither a political or economic center, becomes the symbol of Porto and people feels like having Ribeira as the main spot to host the most important day for their community.

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. on the other side of the river, CONCLUSIONS

Very often nowdays we study and listen about urban renewal, urban development and rebirth of the city as goals to be reached with projects, designing, as if we, as architecs and urban planners, could really control the dynamics of a city.

The way more exciting truth very often seems to be that city is not controllable, the old urban planning school today seems to have failed because of their ( probably justified for that time ) presumption to put borders, name zones, place functions, all in terms of standards and numbers. Today, once exceeded these experiments, we notice that forecasts urban planners make are old in the time they are said. In this era of fast as never before transformation, the city makes just the same, in such a way that whatever we may think of its dynamics may change in the time we think the solution, making the solution ineffective or even worst dangerous.

The American architect and planner Alfredo Brillembourg has worked for years with his practice U-TT ( Urban Think Tank ) on urban development strategies more or less free of design and rigid rules.

What he called many times ‘urban acupuncture’ is a strategy of renewal which doesn’t involve huge projects where people have to displace, change habits, assist to drastic change of their habitats, but where the intervention is a small scale significant design, able to trigger positive trasformations.

Forgotten and undeveloped parts of our cities may lack in design and strategy, but very often have a big human capital which needs to be used. Urban planning, nowdays more than ever, must take in consideration this factor and give the tools and devices to trigger development instead of imposing new habits.