Topos 85

i n t e r n a t i o n a l

85

2013

t h e

r e v i e w

o f

l a n d s c a p e

a r c h i t e c t u r e

a n d

u r b a n

d e s i g n

Open Space

Berlin Gleisdreiec k Pa rk · Melbourne Rene wa l of Lonsda le St ree t · Nord-Pas de Calais Lou vre-Lens Museum Pa rk · Nice Pa illon Promen a de · Istanbul The Ge zi Pa rk Re volu tion · Paris L a Défense Business drist ric t · Athens Re vita lising the Cit y Cent re · Dallas Ne w Urba n Spaces · Christchurch Open Space a nd Disa ster Recovery · Auckland Ba rry Curtis Pa rk · Helsinki Ba a n a Pedest ri a n a nd Bic yc le Path · Utrecht K romhou t Ba rr ac k s · Essays Democ r atisation of urba n space · Pl aces for e very day in E a st A si a

open

space

table

of

contents

Cover: Louvre-Lens Museum Park Design: Mosbach Paysagistes Photo: Catherine Mosbach

Ni c o le U h r i g

H ugh N i ch o lso n

14 Reset at Gleisdreieck in Berlin

76 Open Space and Disaster Recovery

From an inner-city wilderness to a metropolitan park

After the earthquakes: new approaches to open space in Christchurch, New Zealand

14

Wood and steel are repeatedly used as charac-

J uli an B ull

22 Stripes Breaking Barriers

Ralph Jo hns

a former railway area near Potsdamer Platz.

Renewal of Lonsdale Street in Dandenong, Melbourne

84 Barry Curtis Park

Catherine Mosbach

teristic materials of the Gleisdreieck Park in Berlin on

Crafting a new cultural landscape in Auckland, New Zealand

28 The Invisible Made Present

Ter esa Rö nk ä , Kr i sta Muur i nen

92 A New Link in Helsinki

Th i e r ry K andjee, S a r ah H unt

Louvre-Lens Museum Park in the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining

Basin, France

28

Exposed earth strata enclose the Louvre-Lens

The Baana Pedestrian and Bicycle Path on a former railway line

Museum Park in the mining landscape along a 120-

kilometre-long coal seam in the far North of France.

36 A Central Park for Nice?

The Paillon Promenade in Nice, France

96 Peering over the Fence of Kromhout Barracks

S o phi a M eer es Mar i eke Ber ke r s

The campus for the Dutch Royal Army in Utrecht,

Ne i l B r enne r

The Netherlands

42 Open City or the Right to the City?

Demand for a democratisation of urban space

E dda Oste rtag , Yi ng Zho u, So nja Berth o ld

Ya s¸ a r A dnan A danalı

Open space as indicator of rapid urban change in East

46 #OccupyGezi: The Park Revolution

Asian societies

Reclaiming, rethinking, re-producing space and democracy in Istanbul

22

Sophia Meeres

Julien Lanoo

John Gollings

102 Places for Everyday

Stripes and wooden platforms mark the areas for pedestrians at the

renewed Lonsdale Street, the main axis of Melbourne’s suburb Dandenong.

Rafa ë l M ag ro u

52 Learning from La Défense

Currents 6 Competitions, Projects, Obituary 108 Report

Restructuring the 1960 business district of La Défense, Paris

36 84

A volcanic basaltic magma creates the unique

landscape of the Auckland isthmus, where the Barry

110 Authors

Water is an important element of the Paillon

Promenade in Nice, and has a very engaging effect in

the Mediterranean climate of Southern France.

60 One Step Beyond

M a rt i n K nui jt

111 Bibliography/Credits/Imprint

Revitalising the city centre of Athens

Curtis Park forms a new cultural landscape.

K e v i n S l oan

68 Urban Lands on the Prairie

Shutterstock

AWP-HHF

Dallas striking new paths creating inner-city urban spaces

4

52

The La Défense business district is also a major

mobility hub of Paris. A pedestrian walkway is part of the reassessment of its public space.

5

currents

competitions

competitions

currents

competitions

Rockaway Peninsula, New York

The team led by Hyland Edgar Driver Landscape Architects has won the Canterbury Cathedral Landscape Design Competition.

Their proposal approaches the historic site with a master-planning strategy. It concentrates on the welcome for visitors and narrates Canterbury’s historic, cultural and architectural stories through contemporary artworks in glass and stone. The team derived inspiration from the cathedral’s archives and glass art. They suggested developing a pavement of etched “ledgers” (large flagstones) to form a new piazza, as well as a pilgrims’ bench with drinking fountains and basins, and seasonal planting at the cathedral’s west front.

The Canterbury site, which provides the setting for the Grade I listed cathedral and is part of a Unesco World Heritage site, was last updated following the Second World War. The HED team collaborated with Andrew Moor Associates, Thorn Lighting Limited and KLH Sustainability. Five practices were shortlisted to develop concept designs at the design competition’s second stage. The ­others were teams led by Kossmann.dejong, Michael Lee Architects, Purcell, and Todd Longstaffe-Gowan Ltd Landscape Design.

The proposal “Small Means and Great Ends” by White Arkitekter of Stockholm together with Arup and Gensler was selected as the winning design solution for the FAR ROC [For a Resilient Rockaway] design competition.

The two-phase competition explored innovative strategies for the planning, design and construction of resilient and sustainable development at Arverne East, an 80+ acre site on the Rockaway Peninsula, New York – in an area that was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The extensive

Diller Scofidio + Renfro (3)

Canterbury Cathedral, England

damage to low-lying waterfront zones reinforced the need for resilient infrastructure and redevelopment strategies for existing coastal communities throughout the greater New York area.

“Small Means and Great Ends” incorporates a series of small, affordable, and smart interventions that center on three strategies: reduce and control damage, provide access in the event of a storm, and ensure quick recovery. The design aims not only to better weather future natural disasters, but also to create a stronger socio-

economic ­environment – moving beyond resilience and becoming “antifragile”, where both the design and community benefit and improve after enduring stress.

New York-based firm Ennead Architects’ proposal F.R.E.D. was recognised for Leading Innovation in Resilient Water­front Design. The FAR ROC Design Competition ­resulted in 117 design proposals from over 20 countries around the globe. From those entries, four finalists and six honourable mentions were selected.

The team of Diller Scofidio + Renfro uses typical Russian landscape zones for their winning design for Zaryadye Park, Moscow. Tundra, steppe, forest and marsh enclose the main objects of the park.

The winning proposal by the team of Hyland Edgar Driver Landscape Architects focuses on the welcome for visitors to the Canterbury Cathedral site.

6

opment potential. It is both an area of attraction and a forgotten zone of exclusion with one of the best panoramic views of Moscow and a huge fence, enclosing 13 acres of empty land.

According to Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the winning proposal is based on the principles of “wild urbanism”, where people and plants coexist in the same area. “Wild urbanism” creates a clear system of inter­ action between nature and the city. The scheme uses four typical Russian landscape zones for the park: tundra, steppe, forest and marsh.

The zones are organised in terraces that descend from the upper to a lower level of the park from northeast to southwest. They cross each other, layering on top of each other and enclose the main objects of the park.

During the qualification stage expressions of interest from participants from 27 countries were considered; there were 420 companies forming 90 consortia in total. Six teams were chosen for the second stage. The Moscowbased Strelka Institute was the official consultant for the competition.

MIR

The team of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, New York, won the ­international competition for the design of Zaryadye Park in Moscow. The second prize went to the consortium of TPO Reserve, Moscow, Latz + Partner, Germany, and MAXWAN, Netherlands. The team headed by MVRDV, Netherlands, came in third.

The Zaryadye city district is just a minute’s walk from the Kremlin and Red Square.

Sitting on the most expensive land in the Russian capital, the site today is the largest wasteland in the heart of Moscow, and has huge devel-

White

HED team (2)

Zaryadye Park, Moscow

“Small Means and Great Ends” by White Arkitekter with Arup and Gensler is the winner of the the FAR ROC design competition. A series of small, affordable, and smart interventions aims to better weather future natural disasters.

7

Nicole Uhrig

REset at Gleisdreieck in Berlin Meadows stretch in front of the urban silhouette that frames the Gleisdreieck Park in 足Berlin. Places like a beach volleyball area with stairs where viewers can sit are meeting places in the park.

14

From an Inner-city Wilderness to a Metropolitan Park 15

Thierry Kandjee, Sarah Hunt

The Louvre-Lens Museum in Northern France should work as a catalyst to the development of a former mining region. Not

­only will the region be transformed economically, but the project will also instigate a dynamic ecological transformation.

The Invisible Made Present

French landscape architect Catherine Mosbach reconfigures the “thick crust of the ground” to patiently and obstinately constructs, unprecedented landscapes. The Louvre-Lens Museum Park in the north of France is a significant manifestation of her unique approach. The ­a mbition of the project is to create a new cultural dynamic that will contribute to the development of the economy of the troubled region, the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, which has recently been classified as a Unesco World Heritage site. The park itself is a pioneering act of reclaiming an industrial territory through a combination of architecture, landscape and art that owes more to the regeneration of the Ruhr than to that of Bilbao. The project, awarded to Sanaa and to Mosbach Paysagistes in 2005, underwent a complex process of mutation before its construction in 2013.

Etching into the thickness of the landscape. Mosbach’s proposal identifies three issues: the subject of memory as productive territory; the specific role of the site’s ecology in inventing a new spatiality; and the production of new landscapes and cultural dynamics as possible catalysts for future transformation. In the demanding work of Mosbach, drawing takes a prominent role. It guides and informs the evolution of the project and its ultimate inscription on the landscape. The act of drawing a landscape is primarily a tension between a site and its future; its positioning within the territory. Our intention is to trace the transversal and specific logic within the design process in three approaches: substitution, transcription and exposure.

The Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, where the LouvreLens Museum is located, has been classified as a Unesco World Heritage site. The project should initiate new cultural ­dynamic in the troubled region. The park, where earth swellings determine usage, refers to the mining landscape.

28

29

An active volcanic basaltic magma field of over 50 dormant cones, explosion craters, tuff rings, scoria cones and lava

Ralph Johns

flows create the unique landscape of the Auckland isthmus. The photo shows the City of Auckland viewed from the volcanic cone of Mount Eden (Maungawhau).

Crafting a New Cultural Landscape

Barry Curtis Park Barry Curtis Park in Auckland represents a contemporary New Zealand design aesthetic. Abstraction and recomposition of the distinctive regional landscape have resulted in a park in the tradition of early colonial Auckland, but one taking inspiration from the local landscape and culture rather than recreating scenes from the other side of the world.

Auckland, New Zealand is the largest city in the South Pacific and is home to a rapidly growing, ethnically diverse population drawn from the ­Pacific region, Europe, and increasingly, many other parts of the globe. The city sits on a narrow isthmus between the Manukau and Waitemata harbours in the upper north island and enjoys a benevolent climate with equal measure of sun and rain, fertile soils and a unique volcanic topography. World Heritage Status is currently being sought for the active volcanic basaltic magma field of over 50 dormant cones, explosion craters, tuff rings, scoria cones and lava flows that create the unique landscape of the Auckland isthmus.

Auckland has always been a desirable place to settle; its Ma-ori name Ta-maki Makaurau can be translated as “Ta-maki of a thousand lovers”, in reference to the battles fought by iwi (tribes) over many generations for possession of the ­fertile volcanic land positioned between two seafood-filled harbours. Many of the volcanic cones were fortified by Ma-ori with distinctive defensive palisades and ditches carved into their sides, which protected a settlement within.

­ ater and food-storage pits within the fortificaW tions further sculpted the landform.

The area was settled by Europeans soon after 1840 and has been rapidly expanding ever since.

The new colonials valued Auckland for its deepwater port, which was a vital connection for world trade and a port of entry for the new ­migrants.

Initially a compact settlement structured around the harbour edge, the city started to spread over the wider volcanic field in the first half of the 20th century, following new tram lines that radiated out into new suburbs. From the 1960s, a comprehensive motorway network facilitated the rapid spread of low-density development and made the suburban dream of a detached house on a generous lot accessible for all.

Over one-third of the population of New ­Zealand lives in Auckland today. With the population expected to boom in the next 20 years – the two million mark is predicted by 2031 – the city is preoccupied with planning for urban growth and making strides to rectify the car-centric transportation network and to increase residential density to become “the world’s most livable city”. To

85