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The Narrative of Landscape

Marieke Timmermans t e x el: Re a ding a L a ndsc a pe · Daniel Czechowski The L ay er s of L a ndsc a pe · Richard Sennett N a rr ative­ a nd Agenc y · Martí Franch Discovering the liquid l a ndsc a pe of L a Ta nc a da l agoon, spa in · Luigi Latini Cultivation in L a ndsc a pes of Wa r, Bosni a · Alexa Weik von Mossner Cinem atic L a ndsc a pes · Saskia Sassen L a nd a s Infr a st ruc t ure for Living · Adriaan Geuze T he N a rr ative of Stolen Pa r a dise · J. M. Ledgard, Matthew Skjonsberg ON EA R TH – A conversation a bou t a fric a

Cover: Shanghai (46 Min) Photo: Katrin Korfmann

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A vision for the island of

Texel proposes, among other interventions, to bring new life into the old dune forests by creating

Marieke Timmermans

clearings for picnic areas.

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The photographer Abelardo Morell explores landscapes with its tent-camera. Image: View of Mount Moran

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At La Tancada Lagoon runways lead to a liquid landscape designed out of salt pans and

ponds. The project combines ecological and tourism infrastructures and communicates the history of the water landscape.

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Abelardo Morell, courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery

Sergi Romero

and the Snake River from Oxbow Bend, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, 2011

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M atthew Skjonsberg

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N annan DON G , A lex ander A bke

74 Rural Nostalgia

Soils as a basis for landscape architecture

New Rural Landscape Design in the Yangtze Delta Region

M arieke T immermans

16 The Narrative of Soils

Paola Vigan ò

80 Evolving Narratives

A vision for the future of Texel, The Netherlands

The city as renewable resource: La Courrouze, Rennes,

18 Reading a Landscape

France

Beasts of the Southern Wild, Seville International

narrative

Daniel C z echowski

26 A Map is Worth a Thousand Words

Analysing the layers of landscape

88 The Narrative of Stolen Paradise

Adriaan G eu z e

About second nature and metaphysical reality

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The story of the six-year-old Hushpuppy in

R ichard Sennett

the film “Beasts of the Southern Wild” refers to the

32 Narrative and Agency

degraded landscape of the Louisiana marshlands.

Landscape as a constant for society

97 Written on the Land

David R . M ontgomery

Soil as dynamic interface and livelihood

M art í F ranch

36 A Journey into a Liquid Landscape La Tancada Lagoon, Ebro River Delta, Spain

J. M . L edgard, M atthew S kjonsberg 102 On Earth

dynamics

Conversation about Africa, earth, water, and political L uigi L atini

44 Cultivation in Landscapes of War The story of the revitalisation of two Bosnian villages

Jeroen Musch

Tent camera images exploring landscapes

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Abelardo M orell (photos) / N adine G erdts (T e xt )

49 Magic in the Ordinary

M ariam Farhat

58 City and Sand

A pergola in Máximapark in Utrecht, The

Currents 6 News, Projects, Reviews, Personalities 108 News

110 Authors

Adaptive strategies for sand movement in Kuwait

Netherlands, by West 8 surrounds the green courtyard,

111 Credits/Imprint

evoking illusions of paradise.

Ale xa Weik von M ossner

64 Cinematic Landscapes Landscape in the film “Beasts of the Southern Wild”

Saskia Sassen

68 Land as Infrastructure for Living

Martin Wegmann

About the global attitude towards land

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Soil is crucial for living in Africa. The photo

shows a dirt road in Atakora Province, Benin, West Africa, close to the border of Togo.

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currents

news

The traces of visitors who have walked through the Riverbed reveal themselves as black traces in the vol-

Anders Sune Berg

canic geology.

Riverbed – Olafur Eliasson and the Tyranny of Place

Olafur Eliasson’s “Riverbed” exhibition will be on display until 15 January 2015 at the Danish modern art

© 2013 Olafur Eliasson

museum Louisiana.

The Danish modern art museum Louisiana is known as a place where architecture, art and landscape are united into one. The museum is constructed as a succession of ­gallery spaces that are partly closed off from the surrounding area and partly open to the meticulously kept sculpture garden with its stunning views

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of the Øresund Strait. The act of walking through the museum becomes the vehicle through which the exhibited art objects, the architecture, the garden and the sea enter into a symbiotic relationship and through which that very particular beauty, specific to this place, reveals itself.

Therefore, nothing seems a more obvious match than the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson and Louisiana. For more than two decades he has been preoccupied with investigating how we sense landscape through movement, and his work is characterised by a persistent interest in the particular beauty of Nordic landscapes. This is the famous artist’s first solo exhibition at Louisiana, and the museum presents it as being both “radi-

cal” and “site-specific”. But can “radical” and “site-specific” come together under the auspices of an established museum institution such as Louisiana? Or, in other words, we may ask if the happy marriage of Louisiana and Eliasson cancels out critical potential that they both hesitantly pursue.

The exhibition entitled Riverbed is divided into three parts: a film installation, a so-called model room that has a large table with hand-made scale models of art projects from Eliasson’s oeuvre, and the main installation covering ­approximately one-quarter of the entire museum: Riverbed in the south wing.

We enter the exhibition by a narrow corridor with whitepainted walls and roughly cutout wood flooring, ridding

ourselves of the locomotion and visual noise of the foyer and the museum shop. Yet, we also feel surprised by the cheap wood aesthetic that forms a contrast to the highend materials otherwise used at Louisiana. Turning a corner, a grey, stony volcanic landscape finally reveals itself. Louisiana’s south wing has been filled with volcanic pebble stones, changing the sequence of rooms into a curving landscape. A small stream trickles through it. The water is almost milky-white as if coloured by volcanic ash and, in some places, small puddles covered by a sticky, gross-looking, soap-bubbly foam residue are formed. The dry, crunching sound of stones being ground together beneath our feet is intense, sometimes mixing together with the softer sound of the trickling water. A bright ceiling light creates an extreme, uniform luminosity; light meets the darkness of the earth, but it also clearly makes this an artificial nature, a desert-like, even dystopian space.

Our movement is slowed down. We stroll through the scenery, heads bent down when we move through doorways separating the gallery spaces.

We exit the exhibition by walking into a glazed corner room and are directly presented with one of the stunning views of the water for which Louisiana is so famous. Here, we are suddenly “back to normal”, finding relief in the open

news

projects

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projects

Kleivodden Viewpoint, Norway

the surroundings and imports a different and rough beauty.

This foreign and completely non-organic landscape is grey and matte to the point where we feel that it absorbs even the sound of our voices. We are overcome by a feeling of uncanniness. This is emphasised by the fact that the water is not clear, and that the foam in the little puddles makes it look like the water is somehow polluted. We are bereft of windows, of a horizon and of fresh air. And in this lack of orientation in a seemingly endless grey desert, our bodily senses are certainly heightened and our mind is challenged.

But the view of the stony landscape is meticulously framed and despite the unfamiliar practice of being able to move freely through and around the art work, it certainly does feel very much like Louisiana. Riverbed may be seen as an alternative to the place and comfort zone which Louisiana has come to be and which is so ingrained in our expectations of what may meet us there. The work itself, however, seems to succumb to another kind of genius-loci that makes it specifically Elisassonesque. If we are transformed, we are guided back into the museum shop where we are urged to buy one of Eliasson’s newer art projects. The question about what was radical and how it really made us see things in new ways is still unanswered.

Svava Riesto, Henriette Steiner

Inge Dahlman (2)

horizon of this meticulously framed view, but, despite the clarity of the aesthetic expression of the artwork, uncertain whether this rite de passage has changed us, or has even changed Louisiana, for that matter.

For what is site-specific about the Riverbed? And what is radical? The founder of Louisiana Knud W. Jensen repeatedly used the term Genius Loci to describe an approach where the local landscape form was understood as the main quality of the place and the guiding principle for the museum’s architecture. Eliasson’s Riverbed certainly does form a contrast to this narrative. It is not the local landscape with which it is in dialogue. Instead, a rather alien, non-organic landscape of stone and water has been transported into this pleasant location north of Copenhagen.

The notion of “tyranny of place” is an idea introduced by professor of architecture and urbanism Mari Hvattum to describe how a special way of reading the “spirit of a place” can suppress other perceptions. And one wonders if ­Eliasson can help us see Louisiana in a different way, i.e. as a place where a certain narrative about space-specificity ­becomes stifled into a form of enjoyment of art that is consumed in picturesque and place-specific, feel-good environments. Instead of retelling the renowned narrative of Louisiana’s beautiful topography, Eliasson cuts us off from

Andøya is on the northernmost tip of Vesterålen, north of the ­Lofoten archipelago and is, at 69o, far north of the Arctic Circle.

Andøya is known for its mountain peaks, massive whales, the midnight sun, the northern lights, space research and its rocket launch site. Because of its unique qualities, Andøya has been designated as one of Norway’s National Tourist Routes.

Kleivodden lies at the foot of jagged mountains that plunge into the sea. From here there are views of the sea, sandy beaches, mountain peaks and the cultural landscape around the village of Bleik. It is a stopping place and viewpoint for both residents and visitors, and with its magnificent views of the sea and sky, it is a wonderful place to watch the dancing northern lights.

Inge Dahlman, Aaste Gulden Sakya and Andreas Nypan of the landscape architecture firm Landskapsfabrikken in Oslo designed a new viewpoint at Kleivodden on a site 4,000 square metres in size. The purpose of the project was to replace the old rocket launching pad with an attractive gathering point and to provide space for a car park. Flat surfaces and stairs in smooth concrete link the platform to the ground and provide space to enjoy the view and the scenery. The surfaces are broken only by geometrically shaped, polished matte blocks of local Lodingen granite that reflect the light and the sky and also serve as robust seating.

Landskapsfabrikken of Oslo designed a new viewpoint at Kleivodden on Vesterålen. Polished matte blocks of local Lodingen granite stand on a smooth concrete surface.

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Marieke Timmermans

Reading a landscape Knowing how to read a landscape is the key to a competent analysis in landscape architecture. The act of reading includes the people who live in the landscape. For Texel, an island off the Dutch coast, the attempt has been made to capture this living landscape in drawings that explain a vision for the future.

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Together with Faro Architects, La4sale office did the design research for Planet Texel, a collaboration between the 足Municipality of Texel and the International Architecture 足Biennale Rotterdam. Their aim has been to discover the non-physical and cultural characteristics of the island through the idea of reading the landscape as a basis for a new strategy for Texel.

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Daniel Czechowski

A Map is Worth a Thousand Words In order to understand a landscape it helps to analyse its layers.

By not only tracing information, but by also assessing and interpreting it, mapping helps in the formulation of ideas about how a landscape can be further developed.

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eople tell stories, landscapes do not. And yet it is possible to learn a great deal from landscapes, as well as about the people that live within them. There is a lot of talk about “landscape” these days.

How it is perceived, or should be perceived. How it should be protected and what services it should provide. Landscape – in its physical form – ­also serves as the basis for many types of development. Natural processes, as well as cultural activities, have always shaped the landscape. For the Swiss architectural theorist André Corboz, the landscape is the result of a very lengthy and slow process of stratification. He likes to use the word palimpsest to describe this. Every human action adds something to the landscape. And yet, while some layers are added, others are erased. Like a palimpsest that is continuously rewritten, however, closer inspection ­reveals vestiges of ancient texts that have been scraped away.

In order to capture these vestiges of the landscape, it is possible to create your own palimpsest. Using tracing paper, sketches are made of prominent recurring shapes found in aerial photographs and various historical, topographical and geological maps. This is repeated using a

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variety of different maps until a multilayered plan is created. By then superimposing and comparing these sketches, characteristic elements and structures will become more recognisable. This makes it possible to find out which elements are relevant to the design task, i.e. which ­elements should be selected in order to create a formal ordering of the landscape. The German landscape architect Peter Latz calls this process “searching for layers of information”. The individual layers of information and the elements embedded within them can thus be identified and shaped. This syntactic approach to design puts the individual elements on the layers of information into relation according to a certain logic, and it also links them to a new structure. In this way, layers of­ ­information can be considered and preserved, but also reinterpreted and further developed. What really matters here is continuing to speak or to express oneself using the language of landscape.

And yet, the pure tracing and sketching of the most prominent shapes is not enough. The maps created should not only show what a­ ctually ­exists, but by showing the structures that create opportunities also show

Maps can help to analyse and interpret landscape: the landscapes around 足Munich are represented through their formative structures (Studio Long-term Landscape Development Munich Region).

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Martí Franch

A JOURNEY INTO

A LIQUID LANDSCAPE La Tancada Lagoon project is a low-cost intervention that shapes an archipelago to fit a hybrid naturetourism program and celebrates the diverse landscape of the Ebro River Delta. It choreographs visits by sculpting the materiality and processes of the landscape.

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a Tancada Lagoon at the Ebro River Delta is one of the largest wetland areas in the western Mediterranean region. Its marshes, beaches, dunes, salt pans and estuaries provide diverse habitats for breeding birds species and are an essential stopover on the Western ­Europe migration route. In 1983, it became a Natural Park.

Flanked to the south by the Mediterranean Sea, to the north by a natural salty lagoon, to west by sweet water rice fields, and to the east by abandoned salt pans, the site is a liquid landscape. Flat, extremely exposed to sun and strong winds, the site is dry and harsh. Yet an extremely high groundwater level enables highly adapted forms of life. The salty seepage of seawater determines a specialized flora and fauna. La Tancada hosts, for example, the Spanish toothcarp (Aphanius iberis), a salt-tolerant small endemic fish that is amongst EU’s most endangered species. It encompasses Mediterranean salt steppe communities, and has three EU protected species of plumbago (limonium) on site.

Over the centuries, the site has undergone numerous transformations. Being a deltaic intertidal lagoon, salt was extracted as early as the

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12th century during the Arab period, and salt production was not abandoned until the 1950’s. Later, from 1989 to 1997, the shallow salt pans were excavated into deeper ponds for fish farming. When business ceased, the site became property of Catalunya Caixa Bank who gave it over to its own nature conservation foundation, Fundació Catalunya la Pedrera (FCP).

In 2009 the Delta Lagoon project was co-funded by the EU through the LIFE program, which supports environment and nature conservation projects, and the project partners: the FCP, IRTA, Ebro Delta Nature ­Reserve, Catalan Forestry, the Ministry of the Rural and Marine Environment and the Department of Sustainability of the Coast and Sea. At the same time, FCP funded an Eco Museum to interpret the salty landscape.

Five habitats were restored to host the specialized species of this saltyliquid landscape: • Coastal lagoons with permanent water and isolated nesting islands for terns and waders.

• Deep isolated ponds that create refuges for the Aphanius iberis populations.

New beach formation

D

C

B

Superficial pond

C

B

B

Deep pond

C

In order to increase the habitat conditions of La Tancada

A

Lagoon, the aim has been to diversify the land-water ­ecotone. Thus, by re-distributing the sand of the dikes, the project employs four distinct types of cross-sections with a diversity of lagoon depths, regimes of flooding and slopes (sections A to D).

Section A. Initial state.

Section C. Habitat code

The Delta Lagoon LIFE project has the aim of providing

Habitat code 1510. Medi-

1140. Mudflats and sand-

habitat for targeted protected fauna and flora species:

terranean salt steppes

flats not covered by sea

· Aphanius iberis, amongst EU’s most endangered spe-

water at low tide

cies, has a sanctuary on this artificially created habitat. · Mediterranean salt steppes, three EU-listed species of Limonium on site. · Feeding and nesting island for populations of waders

Section B. Habitat code

Section D. Habitat code

and terns.

1420. Mediterranean and

1150. Coastal lagoons

· Feeding habitat for flamingos.

thermo-Atlantic halophilous scrubs

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A

Saskia Sassen

Agricultural land destruction, climate change, and the mining industry lead to massive land degradation. These worldwide spaces of devastation are independent from political and economic organization of a country and are telling a story about the global attitude towards land.

Land as Infrastructure for Living The biosphere’s capacities to renew land, water, and air are remarkable. But they are predicated on specific temporalities and life cycles. And these have been outpaced by our technical, chemical, and organizational innovations over the last few decades. We now have vast stretches of land and water that are dead – land overwhelmed by the relentless use of chemicals, and water dead from lack of oxygen due to pollution of all sorts.

Here I examine extreme conditions about land. This is a partial view that rests on the assumption that extreme conditions make sharply visible what is more difficult to apprehend in milder versions. Thus, most of the land on our planet is still alive. But more and more is dying.

Losing land There are multiple causes of land degradation, just as there are many types of land. Erosion, desertification, and overuse through monocultures, as in plantations, are critical causes of ­agricultural land destruction. Climate change has brought heat waves of a kind rarely seen before, affecting agricultural areas across the world and increasingly including places that have been successful food producers for a very long time.

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These heat waves and their consequences are probably the key source of land degradation in agricultural regions. Mining and industrial waste degrade land in a very different way.

Scattered evidence in news media signals that the extent of the fragility of land on our planet may not be widely understood or recognized. For instance, polls suggest that few in the United States seem to know that more than a third of that country’s land, including much of the cherished, fertile Midwest, is actually stressed according to scientific measures. Nor is it widely known in much of the West that we have at least 400 clinically dead coastal ocean zones worldwide, which can add to the fragility of coastal land. We made this fragility and these deaths.

The eviction of fauna and flora in order to develop plantations and mines have repositioned vast stretches of land as nothing more than sites for extraction. The destruction of land is such that over 20 countries today have acquired extensive stretches of land in foreign countries to grow the food they need for their people. Some countries, notably Japan and Saudi Arabia, have been doing this for decades, but the last decade has seen a vast escalation in

Underground Survival Worlds – The thin surface that is land, and layers after layers into the depth of the planet ‌ Are there other ways of being on this planet? (Endless City, 2008)

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