Reinhabiting as Design Technique #12 Reinhabiting in LA Practice

#5

Intro What is post-human landscape?

What is post-human landscape?

What can really be achieved in landscape architecture when we are dealing with the post-human lanscape?

Before we jump in to this complex concept of post human world, I would like to start by discussing what could be the meaning of post-human landscape.

What we think about when we talk about post-human landscape? The most common understanding is that it is a place abandoned by human. Just like the towns near Chernobyl, people abandoned their houses and it turns into a no man's land.

On the other hand, it could also means the change in biological hierachy through natural succession. A form of bio-diversity emerges to the site and human no longer appears to be the dominant species.

As Cary Wolfe claims, the nature of post-human, is a transition of relationship between human and nature. Landscape architecture needs to advocate this transformation: more robust, more diverse, and more visually harmonious, with less maintenance.

Post-human landscape design, which I would define as an environmentally conscious landscape that addresses multiple species and deals with the constructed character of what we call “nature.”

Therefore, lanscape architects should design a way of equilibrium - counterbalancing the dominant role of human in nature.

"Posthumanism differs from classical humanism by relegating humanity back to one of many natural species, thereby rejecting any claims founded on anthropocentric dominance."

-Cary Wolfe

Post-Human

1 Due to force majeure or economical reasons causing an area where humans no longer inhabited.

A new hierarchy to the environment where humans are equal to all other species and no longer dominant.

Pripyat Amusement Park Anonymous Post-human environment

2

A bench in the wild Anonymous Post-human environment

Landscape

A portion of land or territory which the eye can comprehend in a single view, including all the objects it contains (Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913).

The Marshes at Rhode Island Martin Johnson Heade Oil painting

The word landscape finds its roots in the Old Dutch word “Landskip”, which designates a stretch of cultivated land. This means that landscape is a result of an action giving on the land.

The combination of post-human and landscape itself is interesting because one often shows no signs of human anymore but the other one requires human's action. I guess the real question here is, do we design it for the human or for the exact opposite.

#6

S Scale The Symbiosic Matorral

The transformed trait How it use landscape installation to achieve a post-human landscape?

The Symbiotic Matorral is a landscape installation implemented on a site of the Parque Ecológico Chipinque in the Sierra Madre Oriental of Mexico. The installation converts an abandoned trail for the maintenance of a high-voltage line, which violently crosses the area, in a 500-meter-long journey through the luxuriant ecosystem.

The installations let you hear like a rabbit, smell like a bear, see like a coyote, and fly like a green jay. The visitor is immersed in a multifocal exploration that merges the synesthetic spheres of the humans and animals inhabiting this highly diverse ecosystem. This light environmental infrastructure reconnects man with the delicate ecosystem to reformulate a novel, more sustainable, and ethic relation.

Bee habitats

The installations of "Becoming animal" (credit: Lgo)