Seminar in the series „to modernize or to ecologize?“ at Accademia di architettura Mendrisio, SS 2019.
In cities nature and technology are increasingly intertwined; historian Thomas Hughes speaks of the “overlapping natural and human-built systems found in cities”. In this seminar, we investigated strategies of integrating natural forces in the city by conceiving of the city as “energy landscape”. The notion of energy landscape emerged in the 1970s as an attempt of making the goals of urbanism and ecology more compatible. According to landscape architect Michael Hough the concept of energy landscape promotes “an ecological view that encompasses the total urban landscape.” Energy was addressed not only as a problem of infrastructure and supply, but, moreover, as a question of permanent exchange within the existing built fabric. In this seminar different climatic forces were addressed in close connection to the urban fabric and the question of how these forces shape the environmental conditions of a city. We were discussing theoretical approaches addressing nature in the city as highlighted for instance by Anne Whiston Spirn, Peter Reyner Banham and others. In order to make these theoretical debates more palpable, we referred to the greater region of Geneva as a contemporary testing ground.
- Part I. Theory: The Archaeology of “Energy Landscape” (as notion)
- Part II. Methods: The Architecture of “Energy Landscapes”
- Part III. Case Studies: Greater Geneva’s “Energy Landscapes”