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Making Space. Landscape Architecture is playing an increasingly central role in the development and redevelopment of the built environment. This places the consideration of the landscape and landscape related ideas in a leading position. Projects from around the world demonstrate how making space for landscape happens in a diversity of settings and contexts. In all of the projects presented a thread of commonality runs through: the leadership of landscape architects in the creation of new spatial situations.

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Making Space

Adam Hofland, Arjen Meeuwsen t he ne t herl a nds needs l a ndsc a pe a rc hitec t s · kelsey campbell dollaghan infr a st ruc t ure remix in ne w york cit y · birgit kibelka r a ilroa d pa rk in birmingh a m a l a ba m a · Susanne Yacoub Tempelhof a irfield pa rk berlin · Thomas Armonat a munic h river redu x · leena cho leidsc he rijn · CHristophe Girot, Jörg rekittke ja k a rta waterways · matthew urbanski m v va in n yc · Xiaodi zheng we t l a nd pa rk in c hin a · kongjian yu securing be jing a nd be yond · Scott hawken pa ddington reservoir in sy dne y · Jorg sieweke Pa r a doxcit y · Antje stokman speci a l sec tion by the topos l a ndsc a pe awa rd winner 2011

Making Space ISBN 978-3-7667-1970-6

2011

2011

making

space

table

of

contents

Cover: Infrastructural Corridors; ParadoXcity studio exhibit D:Center, Baltimore, 2011 Jorg Sieweke with Daphne Lasky

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A skywalk passes through a birch grove at

A dam Ho fland, A rjen Meeuwsen

Ko ngjian Yu

14 Landscape Architects Needed More Than Ever

72 Qunli National Urban Wetland

Working on national scale in the Netherlands

A stormwater park for a water resilient city

K elsey C ampbell D o llaghan

Scott H awken

22 Branding the Park

78 Paddington Reservoir

logically sensitive projects of Turenscape from Bejing.

High Line and East River Waterfront Promenade, New York

A new public space for Sydney

Birgit Kibelka

Stormwater Park in Qunli, China – one of many eco-

B irgit K ibelka

Jo rg Sieweke

28 Railroad Park

84 Paradox City: Emerging From Swampy Ground

A new park on a railroad viaduct in Birmingham,

A concept for hybridity and change

Alabama, USA

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Railraod Park in Birmingham, Alabama, with

features such as an amphitheater, inspires hope for an

ongoing revitalisation of the city.

33 Tempelhofer Freiheit – Interim Use as a Vision

S usanne I sabel Yac o ub

Topos

award 2011

Development of the former Tempelhof Airfield in Berlin

Th o mas A rm o nat

87 Let Us Reevaluate the Landscape: Award Winner Antje Stokman

38 The Isar River in Munich Return of the wilderness

88 Reflect. Conceptualize. Participate.

Brett Boardman

A water basin in Paddington Reservoir Park by JMD and TZG referen-

ces its history as part of Sydney’s 19th century hydraulic infrastructure.

Chairs allow visitors a view over the East River

in New York. In 2013, the East River Waterfront

For a different kind of landscape architecture

Masterplan for a new town near Utrecht, the Netherlands

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L eena C h o

43 Leidsche Rijn Thomas Armonat

Turenscape

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A ntje Sto kman

From the center of Munich to its southern

Realisation of a green vision for the Italian city

Currents 6 News, Projects 106 Commentary, Interview, Report, Reviews

110 Authors

A ndreas K ipar , Valeria Pagliaro

50 Green Rays in Milan

C hristo phe Girot, J ö rg R ekittke

boundary, the Isar river was revitalized. Stone stairs at

55 Daring Down the Plastic River in Jakarta

the water’s edge are especially popular.

Research on revitalising the Ciliwung River with methods

111 Credits/Imprint

from landscape architecture

Esplanade by Ken Smith and SHoP will extend three kilometers along Manhattan’s southeast edge.

M atthew U rbanski

60 Making Space in New York Landscape architecture as an engine for transformation

X iao di Zheng

66 Think Big, Birds First

4

Antje Stokman

Kelsey Campbell Dollaghan

Lotus Lake National Wetland Park, Tieling New Town, China

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Antje Stokman, professor at the University of

Stuttgart, received the Topos Landscape Award 2011, honoring her cooperative, team-driven working style.

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currents

projects

projects

currents

9/11 National Memorial and Museum Opened in New York City projects

Gleisdreieck Park, Berlin appropriate. Building on Berlin’s longstanding role as an important site for urban ecology, the park features a number of habitats for rare insects found living on the formerly wild site.

These take the form of striking fields of dark slate-like rocks, appealing to both the eye as dramatic graphic elements and to children as enticing areas of mystery.

The second section of the park will be completed in 2013, and it features the careful integration of a functioning elevated rail track for the Berlin UBahn train network.

Future plans for cafes and a close collaboration with the nearby Deutsches Technik Museum enhance the programmatic offerings at the park. Gleisdreieck is a wonderful new central park for Berlin, and an inspiring example of a landscape where the beauty is in the details.

Jessica Bridger

The basins of the 9/11 National Memorial and Museum site stand as poetic evidence of the absence of the World Trade Center towers.

The plan for first half of the Gleisdreieck project by Atelier Loidl, opened in late 2011, makes the interrelation of the primary elements of plane and path clear. Custom-made benches add beauty.

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With the opening of the first portion of the 9/11 National Memorial and Museum, architect Michael Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker and Partners bring solemn remembrances and calm to an enormously contentious and complex site in Lower Manhattan.

A grand, minimalist plaza at sidewalk level is punched with two voids, 30 feet in depth, where the towers previously stood. Water cascades at a monumental scale from the voids or “grief basins” as historian Simon Schama characterizes them and flows continuously away to an unseen depth. An oak grove, alternately regimented and relaxed from different angles, envelopes the water features and begins to unite the eight acre space between buildings that are in various stages of completion. Yet to open is the 9/11 Memorial Museum by Davis Brody Bond with an entry pavilion by Snøhetta as well as several surrounding towers and a transit hub.

Construction and material details further the poetic themes of the memorial. A suspended paving system allows visitors to read the plaza as a flat plane and lends a seamless, meditative quality to the space; technical needs, such a drainage and horticultural soils, are accommodated below. At the void edge, water spills across a custom, rounded weir and generates an aural wash over the din of construction and city. Swamp white oaks (Quercus bicolor) compose the plaza canopy. Their retention of fall’s brown leaves provides a somber and rustling effect that endures into the winter months.

Changing proposals for the display of victim names illustrate the emotional, financial and political interests both propelling and entangling the project. Arad and Walker’s competition entry called for subterranean galleries to surround the falls; there the lost would be listed. After years of stakeholder negotiations, the nearly 3,000 names are instead inscribed into bronze panels that cap the waterfall parapet and are readily accessible to plaza-level visitors. Names are arranged by affiliation, such as flight passengers and first responders. Finer groupings within those categories honor colleagues, friends and family who fell together.

Adrienne Heflich

On the Pogrom Night during the night of 9 November 1938, the national socialists destroyed the Turnertemple, the third largest synagogue in Vienna. The symbol of independence of the Jewish community in the 15th Viennese district was burned down to the ground. 73 years later, on 10 November, a memorial was opened on the site of the former prayer house.

The Viennese landscape architects Auböck + Kárász, in cooperation with the artists Andraschek & Lobnik from Vienna and Lower Austria, won the competition for the place of remembrance in 2010. Black concrete bars are reminiscent of the synagogue’s collapsed roof beams.

The dark structures create a pattern that makes up the paths in the square and rises out of its surface as seats.

Concrete steps lead up from the street to the raised memo-

rial. Colourful mosaics depict southern fruits that are mentioned in the Torah and play a part in the Jewish calendar.

They make reference to Jewish history while aiming to encourage people from different backgrounds and religions to come together.

The new scheme has not only created a dignified memorial but provides the best conditions for a vibrant meeting place in the densely populated late 19th century district.

Peter Zöch

Stephan Wyckoff (2)

bodied elegance. Where the site was brought to an even grade, most preexisting trees were retained, with small mounds negotiating between the existing and new grade, forming perfect seating hills in the semi-shade.

These groves of volunteer trees like maples and birch are augmented by additional plantings to form neat blocks of trees.

Paths through the groves are quite wide with the vegetation cut back, and it is hoped that the two will become better unified over future growing seasons as the groves fill in and plantings are enhanced.

One of the most notable elements in the project are two playgrounds, reminiscent of wild swamps, where “dead tree trunks,” in this case upright sculptural posts, stand punctuated by acrobatic and passive play elements. During a recent site visit, children and parents were playing there even in light rain. Somehow, it seemed quite

Joe Woolhead

ful small elements make the park a fantastic addition to Berlin’s already rich network of open spaces. Architect and theorist Oswald Matias Ungers’ understanding of Berlin as a “green archipelago,” a city of many centers amid a wash of green open space is central to an understanding of the spatial conditions and character of the city. The park at Gleisdreieck is one of the revitalized green spaces that closely embrace the physical and cultural “central” center of the city.

Working with a limited budget, Atelier Loidl was able to accomplish a series of complex design moves. Concrete paths, looping around to circumnavigate the edges and traverse through the middle of the site, frame a series of spaces. Custom elements dominate the site, most notably with hardwood benches and lighting fixtures, both of which have a strong presence with an em-

Atelier Loidl, Julien Lanoo

Sometimes large projects can be partially eclipsed by gigantic ones. Sometimes beautiful projects can be obscured by popular ones. In the case of the park at Gleisdreieck by Atelier Loidl in Berlin, both are true. The Tempelhof project, located on an enormous idle airfield in Berlin has garnered much international interest, but it is surely not the only notable project happening in that city. Gleisdreieck is a large open space of more than 30 hectares, directly in the center of Berlin. Located southwest of Potsdamer Platz, it is one of the last large open spaces available in the Berlin’s center for the construction of a park after German reunification. The first portion of the park was opened to the public in September 2011, the outcome of a design competition first won by Atelier Loidl in 2006.

Beautiful detailing, especially in precise work with concrete paths and borders, and thought-

New Memorial in Vienna

Landscape architects Auböck + Kárász and artists Andraschek & Lobnik collaborated on a new memorial at the former site of the Turnertemple in Vienna.

Black granite bars reference the fallen roof beams of the Turnertemple, destroyed by fire on Pogrom Night in 1938.

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GROSS. MAX landcape architects with Sutherland Hussey architects from Edinburgh won the design competition for the former Tempelhof Airport in Berlin. They were selected from six proposals which were discussed with the citizens of Berlin. The perspectives show the airfield before the International Garden Exhibition 2017, during the Exhibition and afterwards (from top to bottom).

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hile searching for the park of the future, Berlin decided to try new methods of participation at the former Tempelhof Airfield. Another novelty: Six of the designs developed during an international competition were further developed by the various landscape architects using regular feedback from jury members that was based on the results of citizen participation. Unusual sites call for unusual measures! There are few parks in Europe that can be described in a similar fashion: As large as 400 football pitches, as vast as a steppe, barely any trees, located in the centre of a metropolis. As if it had fallen from the sky, the park lies between densely populated neighbour-

hoods with large immigrant populations, industrial estates, and a middle-class garden city.

This is not just any superfluous inner-city airport, but a legend steeped in history: it was the site of the first pioneers of flight; under the National Socialists it was expanded into the world’s biggest airport and provided with a monumental terminal; shortly after the end of World War II it was the setting of the Berlin Airlift to supply the surrounded city with food; for decades it was an Allied base; then a short-haul airport until it was shut down in 2008. Even when active, the airport’s extensive meadows became Europe’s largest nesting area for skylarks, and are thus important areas for nature conservancy. Berlin – since the fall of the wall famous for its transitional stages of urban occupation – opted for an unprecedented interim use in an XXL format. During the next few years, as a completely new type of urban park is created under the appealing title Tempelhofer Freiheit (Tempelhof Freedom), the use of the area will continue uninterrupted.

Since May 2010, approximately 50,000 people have used the former airfield every weekend, enjoying the unique aura that is shaped by urban nature and technological relics.

The park is discreetly run according to a flexible park management system that encourages visitors to spontaneously show consideration for others, provides friendly park attendants, and quickly disposes of rubbish – none of which are a matter of course in Berlin. This form of interim use was made possible by the Berlin Senate Building Director Regula Lüscher, who thinks of the “… interim use as a part of the planning strategy.” Her consistent stance that planning is a dialogue has been a benefit to urban planning in the city for the past five years.

“Open space creates urban space” postulates Lüscher, who sees the Tempelhof park landscape as a milestone in landscape architecture that will serve as a catalyst for process-oriented urban development. The new park has real

potential, whereas before the inaccessibility of the airfield pushed entire adjacent neighbourhoods into becoming isolated locations.

The current open space area will be reduced to 285 hectares. Now under consideration on the edges of the airfield is the development of housing for a high-income clientele, combined with subsidised housing. A services quarter for technological and communications innovation – and Berlin’s creative economy – will breathe life into the airport’s monumental terminal.

Further engines for urban development have been sought, and as a result the International Horticultural Exposition 2017 (IGA) will take place on a 95-acre section of the park. Whether

a proposed International Building Exhibition (IBA) will follow in 2020 has yet to be decided upon by Berlin’s parliament.

But how does all this fit in with the dreamy expanse of this site? “How do you use vastness and freedom to create a programme for a park?” asks architecture critic Thies Schröder, who oversees the citizen participation efforts in Tempelhof. These efforts are not merely a token event, but a serious discussion and debate about public opinion. It was intended that Berlin’s residents be brought on board and become part of the process, as the park of the future must be inexpensive: it will built for only 25 euros per square metre. Therefore Tempelhof needs people who will

Top: In front of the old airport building, GROSS.MAX created an area which provides space for intensive use.

Bottom: The design preserves the wide meadows which had become characteristic of Tempelhof. The landscape architects recognized how important this huge open space and the feeling of freedom is for Berlin during the public involvement stage, changing their initial design in response.

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Andreas Kipar Valeria Pagliaro

Eight green rays will make the dense city of Milan permeable. The green rays extend to a green belt, a buffer between the historical city and surrounding municipalities. This green circuit will connect all the parks in Milan with a pedestrian and cycle path.

Green Rays in Milan Since 2005, landscape architects have been working on a green vision for the Italian city of Milan. The first section, near the cathedral in the city center, has now become a reality.

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In 2005, our team, LAND Milano, a German-Italian landscape architecture firm, began the contribution to the large project for the redevelopment of the former Garibaldi-Repubblica goods yard and train tracks area, the story of which dates back to the closedown of the station in 1873.

The area in the centre of Milan – only partially transformed with the opening of the modern Garibaldi train station by architects Eugenio Gentili Tedeschi, Giulio Minoletti, and Mario Tevarotto in 1963 – has been abandoned over the last decades. Though many investors were in contention for involvement, and it was a project site for many architectural competitions, as well as the object of numerous dreams of citizens and public administrations, hopes for it have never materialized because of disagreement between different owners.

The value and potential of this area is apparent, considering that Milan is a compact city, developed on an industrial matrix: an introverted city, with few public squares, few open spaces, few areas to congregate – a lack of places to gather and spend spare time. Its gardens and parks are mainly from past centuries. This means that every new chance for urban development is also a chance to gain new green spaces and to enhance the quality of life for the people of the area.

A major American developer ended up being the changing force needed to take up this challenge. Since early 2001, Hines believed in the central importance of this project, and worked to strengthen it with two other nearby areas of comparable importance. The Garibaldi former station area was united with the former Varesine area – which was the site of a train station until 1961 and then a Luna Park until the late 1980s – along with part of the Isola neighborhood, whose name means “island,” as it is effectively isolated from the city for lack of connections to the urban centre.

From a single masterplan, a private investor now conceived the development of three different areas around a public park of almost 10 hectares called the “library of trees,” designed by InsideOutside/Petra Blaisse, who won the competition organized by the municipality of Milan in 2004.

While the design of the Garibaldi masterplan is headed by Cesar Pelli (CPC, New Haven, USA), the masterplan on the former Luna Park area is designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF, London) and the masterplan of Isola, the most delicate area – inhabited by craftsmen, by Milanese families residing there for generations, by young and creative people – is commissioned to the office of the Milan-based architect Stefano Boeri (Boeri Studio, Milan), great connoisseur of social dynamics in Milan.

Development undertaken by Hines follows a high-quality standard procedure: Gehl Architects (Copenhagen) have been involved in inquiry and research on public spaces to ensure an active public life, while the international office EDAW was called in to design the landscaping.

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A frame of densely planted vegetation serves as buffer between the Stormwater Park and the city. Turenscape integrated large-scale urban stormwater management and ecology as well as design and aesthetic measures.

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Kongjian Yu

Stormwater Park For a Water Resilient City

Qunli National Urban Wetland The landscape architecture firm Turenscape developed national Ecological Security Patterns for all of China. Out of this research they designed many stormwater parks for cities all over the country.

An example is the Stormwater Park in Haerbin City.

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rban floods from stormwater are becom­ ing an urgent global issue. Along with the expansion of urbanization and un­ predictable precipitation due to climate change, these floods fundamentally threaten the stabili­ ty of cities and regions.

This is particularly the case in China, where most cities are under the climatic influence of monsoons. 70 to 80 percent of annual precipi­ tation falls during the summer monsoon sea­ son, and in some extreme cases, 20 percent of the annual rainfall can occur in a single day. In Beijing, for example, the average annual pre­ cipitation is only about 500 millimeters, but on June 23 this year, the rainfall reached 50 to 120 millimeters in one day. People drowned in the urban flooding caused by torrential rains.

But serious urban floods have overrun major cities in China even following normal rainfall, mainly because of the expansion of imper­ meable surfaces following the spread of urban development.

After many years of practice in landscape architecture, urban stormwater is one of the most important issues that my firm and my aca­ demic discipline have dealt with. The security of city dwellers is maintained in part through hu­ man means and assurances, but it is strengthened by built elements. Since climate conditions affect

a scale much larger than a single building or sys­ tem, landscape architecture is well-suited to ad­ dress these floods. An interdisciplinary and holis­ tic solution is required to handle the complexity of the climate as it acts upon a city. Landscape architects can provide leadership in this context.

Contemporary cities are simply not waterresilient. Landscape architecture can therefore play a key role in transforming them into waterresilient habitats for humans. Stormwater parks, which can be connected and integrated into an ecological infrastructure across multiple scales, are the key, ecological sponges that cleanse and store urban stormwater. In addition, storm­ water parks provide many other ecosystem ser­ vices, as well as life-enhancing amenities and cultural and aesthetic experiences.

Following the prevailing convention, people commonly trust engineering solutions to solve the urban flooding problems caused by storm­ water: by installing larger drainage pipes, more powerful pumps, or stronger dykes. The singleminded engineering approach for stormwater drainage is especially problematic because of multiple issues that must be taken into consid­ eration. Constructing an underground pipe system with large enough capacity to handle ex­ treme torrential rains, which occur quite often in the monsoon climate, is a huge investment,

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