Towards the De-artificialization of Vegetated Public Space - Case Study; Lima

Towards

the

De-artificialization

of

Public

Space;

The

Possibilities of the Creative Adjacency Between Public Space and Landscape. Case study: Lima Abstract In different degrees, the contemporary city has practically erased the tracks of the territories that preceded them, hiding important clues and logics on how to inhabit these spaces coherently.

With almost ten million people, the city I live in; Lima, is the second most populated one in a desert after El Cairo. Today, for someone who doesn’t leave the city fabric (that in some cases extends for more than 100km) it is very hard to understand and recognize that we inhabit a desertic landscape. Public space in our city is intensely and artificially vegetated, and has poor or no relation with the water supply our arid landscape naturally provides.

It is necessary then, to debate on how public space could become a place where Lima citizens can be sensibilized and informed about their originary landscape, and how could this have an impact on the way in which, as a collective, we conform an opinion on how to best administer the territories we occupy.

The creative adjacency between public space and landscape is an opportunity to explore and analyze a teaching practice that can hopefully contribute to update and modernize the Architecture, Design and Urbanism (ADU) university curricula.

Introduction One of the key factors for updating the Architecture, Design and Urbanism (ADU) practices relies on the pedagogical experiments carried out in the different Architecture Schools. Conferences, debates and publications like the ones proposed by Creative Adjacencies setup a dynamic scenario where these experiments can be shared and explained, providing a formal space for

the healthy habit of periodically revising the university curricula and discussing its pertinence and utility.

When elaborating on how ADU disciplines should be taught and/or renewed, it is almost inevitable to zoom out, attempting to determine their contemporary interpretations. However, defining these concepts is a tough and elusive task given they are all broad, developing matters with senses that have changed, and will change, through time. Hence, this event offers an alternative take where friction is reduced by zooming in, instead of out.

Initiating the discussion from specific case studies on creative adjacencies allows focus on concrete examples that can later develop into indicators and guidelines for a renewed curriculum.

About Public Space and Landscape The creative adjacency Between Public Space and Landscape is the outcome of a course that took place for the first time during the past summer period (January - February 2014) in the Architecture Department of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (FAU). This is a short, intensive period in between each academic year; it lasts six weeks and offers a total of 48 class hours.

Public Space and Urban Landscape -the course’s original name- is an elective, multidisciplinary course that, along with two others, conforms a group of pedagogical experiments related to territorial and landscape studies which began in 2012. 1 The emphasis (see figure 1) of these the three courses is to investigate, through different topics, strategies that allow students to more effectively

1

More information on the courses here:

https://vimeo.com/46724596 http://issuu.com/paulineferrersologuren/docs http://www.icrperu.org/

establish a profound relation with the unique spirit of the different territories they will encounter as designers. Reading and understanding the territorial logics of urban, peri-urban and rural sites requires a wide range of skills, methods, techniques, and above all, a multidisciplinary approach.

Figure 1: Course Structure

These courses then, provide a space free of project pressure, with time to absorb, reflect upon, investigate, discuss, and transform what is found on site, collecting information for what will later become “project food”. Spending this time before initiating any design process usually leads to a holistic territorial understanding, setting the conditions for more rooted, pertinent project answers when design time comes.

Although project is not directly dealt with in any of these courses, the goal is that students assimilate and incorporate the multidisciplinary-territorialreading-strategies practiced and apply them in the design studio.

Course Structure and Methodology (see figure 1) The topic proposed with Public Space and Urban Landscape is the deartificialization of urban public space in the contemporary city, using Lima as a case study. This became the title for the current presentation and paper.

The course begins by building on the topic through driving questions.

These questions, established when creating the course syllabus, are meant to invoke thought about the topic before classes have started. They involve opinion and are presented and debated in class during the first sessions. The following were the driving questions proposed with the syllabus: • • • • •

Is there coherence between water availability and the treatment of vegetated public space in Lima?

Is our public space a common place where we recognize ourselves as inhabitants of the desert?

Is it important that public space incorporates tracks of the landscape that preceded the city?

Which logics does our current public space operate under?

What are the social, political and cultural repercussions of a human group that does not have access to its landscape?

During class debates on the driving questions, student questions

arise according to the group’s personal speculative interests. Each student is asked to choose one or more questions and develop them into the title and body of a personal research during the following weeks. The nature of these

questions is open; they may have a direct ADU take or not. Some of the student questions formulated were: •

Which is the nature of shadow in desertic landscapes?

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Should there be a policy for watering vegetated public spaces in Lima?

What should this policy be based on?

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Why is arid landscape poorly valued?

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Which kinds of ecosystems could be found in the territory now occupied by the urban fabric of Lima?

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Is there any kind of public space in Lima that should be intensively watered? Which? Why?

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Why have we historically tended to artificialize our public space?

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What is the real economic cost of maintaining artificially vegetated public space?

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Is our vegetated public space designed to be intensively used or is it meant to be contemplated only?

According to the kind of personal interest or question(s) each student

chooses to investigate, the class organizes itself into research units where common information and opinions are constantly exchanged. This favors collective learning and promotes intensive research practices.

Students are also encouraged to link their personal research to the three main concepts ingrained in the course; city, public space and landscape.

This constitutes a sort of theoretical branch, where each individual thread progressively acquires theoretical weight based on a particular view of the topic. This section of the course is handled through short talks, and/or videos at the beginning of each class session, and also through suggested reading material on landscape theory and/or other suitable references.

Another layer of the course’s structure is given by the visits and activities; these are out of class or fieldwork actions. Since the course was held during an intensive, short summer period, only one visit and one activity were scheduled.

We are made of landscape was the title of our visit to the Archaeological Sanctuary of Pachacamac. Located 40 km south of Lima, in the Lurín valley, Pachacamac is considered the most important pre Columbian ceremonial site of the Peruvian coastal desert.

The idea of this visit was to understand how landscape shapes absolutely every aspect of the human being that inhabits it, and the transcendence of this fact. Landscape determines the materials we have available to build and dress, our language, what we eat, the music and sounds we can produce and how we understand the world and the cosmos. Pretty much, it directs the essence of our whole existence.

During the stay at the site, we examined how ancient Peruvians established territorial bonds through the architecture they produced, honoring the spirit of place. With the collaboration of a certified guide, we reviewed Pachacamac’s history and discussed various aspects of it’s design; project strategies, orientations, scale, material, constructive techniques, ritual uses, spatial layout, projections, etc.

For the second part of the visit, we chose a spot in front of the Temple of the Sun, one of the pyramids in Pachacamac that is facing west, towards the Pacific Ocean and the Cavillaca Island (see figure 2). The exercise carried out was meant to help the group re establish a connection with oneself and the surroundings, thinking from within the ADU disciplines, but with the support of other practices; this time, we used music.

Music is directly in tune with life, landscape and creation. Through a guided meditation with ancient sounds, we entered the audible universe of the pre-Columbian Peruvians of the desertic coast.

All the instruments chosen for the session were made out of materials found in the Peruvian coast; instruments made of landscape. Antaras built with pelican feathers, clay whistling vessels, river cane flutes, bamboo rain sticks, leather drums, bone rattles, as well as more contemporary wooden charangos, were played by everyone during this celebration. Through sound, we absorbed

and imagined the logics of place and project upon which Pachacamac was conceived.2

Figure 2

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More information here about this activity here:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.452121818249466.1073741830.228193657308951&type=3 http://pachapaqariy.wix.com/english

A few weeks after our visit, the activity programmed was to attend a conference held at the National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology and Peruvian History. The conference was about the preliminary results of the archaeological reconnaissance of the coastal lomas in the valley of Asia, 90km south of Lima.

The western coast of South America, including Peru, [5–30°S lat] is dominated by desert conditions that form a continuous, hyper-arid belt, broken only by occasional river valleys. Every year, between July and November, portions of the coastal desert turns green thanks to the moisture captured from fog. The fogs supply moisture for the development of plant communities termed lomas. This used to be one of the most abundant ecosystems in the Peruvian coast, but centuries of unmanaged livestock grazing and chopping of trees for firewood have left the lomas almost depleted. 3 Attending this event was an opportunity to realize the logics under which the pre-Columbian Peruvians inhabited the lomas territories, establishing in ways that where compatible with the preservation the natural patrimony; articulating human activity and landscape conservancy.4 To comply with the multidisciplinary approach of the course, a team of different professionals (visitors) was invited during different class sessions to give talks, clear doubts and exchange opinions with students, as well as giving their viewpoints on the elaboration of their personal research.

For motivation purposes, and in an effort to overcome the shortage of class hours, a virtual classroom was setup. We used a private Facebook group where debate was promoted with the exchange of information and opinions outside class hours. Consultants of different fields were invited to participate of the virtual discussions and assess student work.

3 The Solanaceae of the Lomas Formations of Coastal Peru and Chile Michael O. Dillon 4 More information: http://cultura.gob.pe/es/evento/resultados-preliminares-del-reconocimiento-arqueologico-en-las-lomas-de-asia http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x27lUdG2X6M

As a product of this course, a virtual publication compiling all the personal research carried is being setup. This becomes a handbook containing different takes on how to deal with the territorial logics of Lima’s hyper arid landscape, using public space as a potential void of action where these logics could be set to practice. Some of the most suggestive titles are: •

Landscape perception in pre-Columbian cosmovision – by María Adriana Gonzales Cervantes

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Coastal marshlands facing urbanization processes – by María del Carmen Narvarte Castillo

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Intangibility versus Profitable Conservation, case study: Lomas de Villa María – by Katherine Chávarry pajuelo

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Peeling off urban tissue to re discover landscape and propose logics for vegetated public space – by Diana Marroquín

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The revaluation of what is cyclical and invisible in the coastal lomas – by Valeria Parado

Changes in ADU disciplines; challenges in the framework of new professional fields With the revision of the case study on the de-artificialization of public space in the contemporary city, it becomes more evident that the questions that ADU professionals will be required to solve will increasingly come from outside the ADU realm.

To face this complex scenario, ADU professionals will need to expand their work comfort zone to fit new demands. It is very likely that in a same project, a combination of familiar and unfamiliar layers of information or situations will be encountered.

The topic of this case study deals with familiar layers like public space, territory, landscape, heritage and identity, as well as with more distant layers for ADU professionals, such as public administration, water scarcity, alimentary security and climate change. The ADU disciplines change, recognizing they are not self-sufficient in order to address more complex and challenging issues that

require professionals with different competences and the collaboration of various fields.

The curriculum that forms these professionals would have to include cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural experiences to form individuals with proficiency working in research based design and multidisciplinary research teams.

In the framework of new professional fields, one can imagine ADU professionals working as leaders or consultants in multidisciplinary teams set out to solve complex, multi-layered issues that blur the boundaries between science, art, and the ADU disciplines.

Another twist in the professional field is that there is progressively more space for informal, emergent projects that are less dependent on traditional scenarios. The conventional scenario for an architect to get hired in PerĂş is by winning a public or private contest, or through a private commission. Hence, the chances of actually getting a job are directly related to the density of the population in which one works; more people means more chances of getting hired. This turns cities into attractive places for ADU professionals to operate, leaving the rural areas absent of their presence and expertise.

A way of both, raising employability and increasing ADU participation in rural areas, is through non-requested architecture. With it, the client stops being the only chance of receiving commissions, and ADU professionals get the opportunity of embarking on projects of deep personal interest and high social impact.

This challenges ADU education to provide the tools and experience necessary for students to direct a non-requested situations in rural or urban areas, with all the implications this has; learning how to lead participative rural projects, applying for public budgets, using funds from private and public entities, etc.

Interdisciplinarity, design thinking and research based design on ADU education One of the bigger impacts of interdisciplinarity, design thinking and research based design on ADU and ADU education, is the reach of an innovative vision with a new approach to aesthetics, where beautiful is synonym of pertinence.

In this sense, research is key to find the “project food� that will later direct pertinent, rooted design decisions. The handbook obtained as a product of Public Space and Urban Landscape, contains several visions that are ready to be applied in design. Vittorio Zolezzi, a FAU student, was interested in investigating about the adaptation technologies of desertic plants. He found that, due to its shape, the giant cactus (neoraimondia arequipensis) manages to have 50% of its surface in shade, no matter the time of the day. (See figures 3 and 4)

Figure 3

Figure 4 Utilized as design criteria, this becomes a very powerful way of passively acclimatizing any project thought for these territories, as well as a rich possibility for design explorations. Like Vittorio, all the other students turned a personal exploration into processed information that can be applied as design criteria.

From the case study experience, an ADU assignment conceived from it’s particular landscape means that the architects, designers or urbanists, have paused to decipher the place and have understood that design is a ritual that seeks to honor it; not an imposition, but an answer.

In a course without the pressure of a project, research claims its place and design becomes a result, giving the proposals not only form and function, but also, and equally important; meaning.

The advantage of research-based design is the limitless field growth it promotes. ADU professionals then, need to pair this growth by being capable of reading and answering to different aspects of life and culture.

Common and local competences Three main, both common and local, competences that will help ensure success in the different tracks, would be: To have relevance as the most important design asset.

To be skillful in making the right questions that triggers the investigation which leads to “project food�; the main nutrient for design.

To understand that our evolution as a society is directly proportional to our capacity to imagine and envision different realities and scenarios.

In general, the skills and competences required to meet current and future challenges are synthesized in knowing how to read the dynamics of place. It is possible that living in cities may have gotten us believe that modernity had freed us from the task of establishing deep bonds with the territories we inhabit, when in the past, survival depended directly on this relationship and on the ability to recognize and respect the spirit of each place.

The spirit of place underlies in the singular dynamics of its landscape.

Identifying and understanding these dynamics correctly is crucial. Territory is our great ancestor; it is the physical space where everything that precedes us as a species originated.

Landscape, is the result of the fusion of territory and culture. It is then vital how we understand culture; there is a great difference between culture accepted as the utilization of territory and its resources, and culture seen as a utilization that also gives profound meaning to the territories where it settles.

Figures 5 and 6, both show a similar operation on territory; open cast, laddered, concentric platforms conforming a man-made topography. They also illustrate two visions of culture over territory. Figure 5 shows the agricultural terraces (andenes) of Moray in Cuzco; although agriculture is the primary function here, these terraces are part of a landscape project that is meant to be seen from the skies. The operation is offered to the gods that rule the cosmos uniting agriculture and rite; giving territory use and meaning.

Figure 5 Figure 6 shows the Cerro de Pasco Mining Operation; located in the central Andes of PerĂş, this is one of the most contaminated cities in South America. Here, territory is just being used, exploited, and no meaning is given.

Figure 6

New Educational Strategies for a changing professional world New educational strategies in function of the changes in the professional world should include activities and courses that promote proficiency in research techniques, as well as being able to think in different physical and time scales.

ADU schools should examine the conditions in which learning takes place through discoveries that result from investigations made by students. A mixture of curricular structure and available infrastructure strongly influences these conditions. In the case of Latin America, better research environments and infrastructure for experimental labs and studios are key to maximize the performance of research based ADU schools.

Today, environmental chaos and the loss of life quality in cities suggest that we reconsider with evident urge the kind of relationships that we establish with the territories we occupy. It is important that ADU education recognizes this situation and decides to expose students to scenarios where they can speculate on these topics. How to reconnect urban dwellers with the natural patrimony that allows their survival and city-planning directives that include landscape logics are rich topics that can be inserted into studio and research practices.

The revision of this case study hopefully offers a widening of perspectives in order to demarcate the possibilities and limitations of, not only how to affront ADU education, but of a particular manner of exploring the world.

Acknowledgements Special thanks to the visitor team conformed by: Sonja Bleeker; Engineer specialized in the social aspect of water management.

She has been involved in integrated water management processes and the setting up of training programs for urban and rural water users, working with local and international development agencies. As a university teacher and researcher, she is involved in projects regarding the urban water cycle and inequities in access and control over water in urbanized watersheds.

Yolanda Andía; Production Manager for Sedapal, the Peruvian entity responsible for the provision and sanitation of water and sanitary sewer.

Eva Nemcova, Landscape architect specialized in Water Sensitive Urban Design, is also a researcher at the Institute of Landscape Planning and Ecology of the University of Stuttgart. She has participated in projects in Lima involving sustainable water and wastewater management in urban centers.

Special thanks to the team of consultants conformed by: Juan Luis Zegarra, environmental artist Fred Clarke, musician and sound healer Fernando Angulo, biologist Sonja Bleeker, water engineer FAU PUCP students participating in Public Space and urban Landscape: Cynthia Aguirre, Alejandro Alarcón, Hilda Arista, Shirley Bautista, Ximena Campos, Pamela Chahua, Donald Chang, Katherine Chávarry, Vanessa Gáloc, María Adriana Gonzales, Diana Marroquín, María del Carmen Narvarte, Valeria Parado, Vladimir Parra, Gianina Rocca, Paul Tejeda, Alejandra Vilcahuamán.