Landscape Infrastructure

l progetto persegue la costituzione di un sistema di collegamenti tra centro storico e fascia costiera, mirando all’integrazione dei diversi comparti che rappresentano la molteplice e mutevole realtà della città e del suo intorno. Centro storico, periferia, strutture portuali, insediamenti per il turismo, aree di interesse naturalistico: l’infrastruttura fornisce l’occasione per riappropriarsi del valore dei luoghi ed offrirlo a cittadini e a visitatori esterni.

In De Natura Deorum (The Nature of the Gods, ca. 45 BC, which Voltaire called “perhaps the best book of all antiquity”) Cicero wrote:

…we sow cereals and plant trees; we irrigate our lands to fertilize them. We fortify river-banks, and straighten or divert the courses of rivers. In short, by the work of our hands we strive to create a sort of second nature within the world of nature.¹

Cicero’s idea of “second nature” clearly encompasses infrastructure, agriculture, and the landscapes incidental to their creation. “First nature” – wilderness – is seen by Cicero to be the realm of the gods, but it is also the raw material and context for second nature.

Jacopo Bonfadio wrote to a fellow humanist in 1541 that gardens make a “third nature, which I would not know how to name.”² John Dixon Hunt asserts that Cicero’s formulation would have been in the mind of Bonfadio, and identifies second nature as even more broadly encompassing the cultural landscape (agriculture, urban development, roads, etc.)³ – that is, inclusively, the nature we shape, intentionally or otherwise, through the activity of civilization. Seen in this light, it can be said that Cicero’s idea of second nature constitutes everything outside of wilderness.

The connotations of behavioral second nature – our individualized, learned, socialized human nature – are equally important. With our built environment, we are normalizing our behavioral second nature. One might say, for instance, that in a society that actively recycles the act of recycling becomes second nature. But without the infrastructure to support recycling, that learned behavior is quickly unlearned.

Our redefinition of the term “second nature” takes both Cicero’s definition and behavioral connotations into account, but differs in that for us “second nature” specifically describes a designed nature created in adjacency to existing urbanization, capable of absorbing future city growth into itself while maintaining ecological systemic continuity.

As in an historic process of colonization, the urbanization front will once again be rolled out across this second nature. The special landscape features and ecological characteristics will be absorbed directly into the city. This principle of second nature is not based, as in Olmsted’s time, on a hermetic green structure, but rather on a nature having outgrown human hands, being full of character, and forming a magnetic field for an as yet unknown colonization. Unlike the historic pioneers and clear-cutters who could indulge the habit of expropriating or erasing the nature they encountered, a different opportunism will prevail. Topography, water, and vegetation will be utilized in all kinds of ways, generating an urban ambience with an array of integral spatial qualities, microclimates, stormwater management, leisure, and the innumerable incidental benefits engendered by ecological and social vitality available to all.

1. Marcus Tullius Cicero. The Nature of the Gods. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. p.102

2. Jacopo Bonfadio. Lettere del Cinquecento. Turin: Utet, 1967. p.501

3. John Dixon Hunt. Greater Perfection: The Practice of Garden Theory. London: Thames & Hudson, 2000. p.33

Відповідно до останніх досліджень і аналізу проектної практики було встановлено, що в містобудуванні та архітектурі існують актуальні тенденції, що характеризують сталий розвиток на даному етапі, а саме: помірність – концепція достатнього замість більшого; resilience – стійкість міст до стресів і здатність відновлюватись після шкідливих впливів; відновлення – реновація існуючої забудови і відновлення природних об’єктів та екосистем.

Edited by Gareth Doherty and Charles Waldheim, Is Landscape . . . ? surveys multiple and myriad identities of landscape. Rather than seeking a singular or essential understanding of the term, the collection postulates that landscape might be better read in relation to its cognate terms across expanded disciplinary and professional fields. The publication pursues the potential of multiple provisional working definitions of landscape to both disturb and develop received understandings of landscape architecture. These definitions distinguish between landscape as representational medium, academic discipline, and professional identity. Beginning with an inquiry into the origins of the term itself, Is Landscape . . . .? features essays by more than a dozen leading voices shaping the contemporary reading of landscape as architecture and beyond.

Contents: Foreword Mohsen Mostafavi; Introduction Doherty and Waldheim; Is Landscape Literature? Gareth Doherty; Is Landscape Painting? Vittoria Di Palma; Is Landscape Photography? Robin Kelsey; Is Landscape Ecology? Nina-Marie Lister; Is Landscape Gardening? Udo Weilacher; Is Landscape Planning? Frederick Steiner; Is Landscape Urbanism? Charles Waldheim; Is Landscape Infrastructure? Pierre Bélanger; Is Landscape Technology? Niall Kirkwood; Is Landscape History? John Dixon Hunt; Is Landscape Theory? Rachael Z. DeLue; Is Landscape Philosophy? Kathryn Moore; Is Landscape Life? Catharine Ward Thompson; Is Landscape Architecture? David Leatherbarrow.

Authors: Nijhuis, Steffen. · Jauslin, Daniel. · De Vries, Christopher.
Flowscapes explores infrastructure as a type of landscape and landscape as a type of infrastructure, and is focused on landscape architectonic design of transportation-, green- and water infrastructures. These landscape infrastructures are considered armatures for urban and rural development. With movement and flows at the core, these landscape infrastructures facilitate aesthetic, functional, social and ecological relationships between natural and human systems. Through transdisciplinary design-based case studies at different scale levels Flowscapes seeks for a better understanding of the dynamic between landscape processes and typo-morphological aspects; here interpreted as flowscapes.

The newly established Flowscapes studio addresses relevant sociocultural, ecological and technological issues from the perspective of spatial planning and design. Urbanization, ecological crisis and climate change are complex problems that only can be addressed transdisciplinary and from an international perspective – in particular regarding environmental issues and sustainability. While the technical challenges are considerable, the spatial and cultural challenges are by far the largest. Therefore, a new understanding of space-time condition of landscape – and its potential for change – offers promising opportunities to find new solutions to these problems. In order to redeem control over the processes that shape the built environment and its contemporary landscapes a fundamental review of the agency of landscape architecture design is required (Steenbergen et al., 2009).

Creating spaces that have many concurrent purposes -- social, ecological, and infrastructural-- is a challenge in the urban realm where large infrastructural systems have been inherited and typically serve a single purpose. This study investigates how the spaces surrounding single-purpose infrastructure can make the best use of resources and preserve necessary performance while allowing other, multiple uses to take place. In the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, an infrastructural corridor known as the Whitnall Utility Corridor contains high-tension power lines which deliver energy to the Los Angeles Region, but it is otherwise single-purpose, both socially and ecologically inert. In this study, the corridor is seen as an opportunity to reimagine how design can maintain necessary functions while allowing infrastructural spaces to participate in the larger life of the urban area both socially and ecologically. Such an approach would allow these large swaths of land to be better integrated into a city’s metabolism, transmitting energy but also offering local benefits.

By approaching the Whitnall Corridor through the lens of landscape architecture, this study focuses on reducing energy and resource use in urban ares while increasing the capacity for the corridor to support human and ecological well-being.  The corridor will be envisioned as a strategic site for urban food production, which can increase the sustainability of the city by reducing the number of miles food travels from farm to table.  Such a strategy has implications not only for carbon emissions and air quality, but for urban energy consumption and water use. This corridor can also model sustainable use and treatment of water by incorporating strategic designs to improve water quality and recharge groundwater. These strategies can be used to educate and inspire the public about Los Angeles’ arid climate and the city’s use of this valuable resource.  In addition to modeling sustainable resource use, this study seeks to transform the relationship of the surrounding communities to this neglected corridor by increasing interaction between the corridor and surrounding communities, integrating it into the daily life of residents, and allowing neighborhoods to view the utility corridor as a critical local amenity rather than a liability.

Although the corridor is over seven miles long, it passes through multiple neighborhoods and various contexts, so the specific design solutions that are most appropriate change along its length. Key infrastructural intersections occur along the corridor at several places and this proposal suggests how they can be better incorporated into the function and character of the corridor. Such intersections occur at the Tujunga spreading grounds, the channelized Tujunga wash, as well as the Chandler Bikeway. These areas are catalytic sites for specific interventions to promote recreation, education, and ecological diversity along the Whitnall corridor.

For residential areas, design solutions integrate the corridor into daily life and functions, therefore strategies specifically address the interaction of the corridor with front and back yards, streetscapes, and plan for multiple uses such as food production, recreation and social activities. Design interventions proposed for the Whitnall corridor ultimately have the potential to integrate ecological, economic, and social processes. These values, as expressed through a transformed, multi-functional urban utility corridor, can enhance the well-being of the urban area and its residents and allow the city to grow, adapt, and sustain itself into the future."

‘Landscape boom’, evident during the last decade in many disciplines, defined the prospects for landscape architecture bringing landscape as a concept and a useful instrument for urban planning. One of the persistent trends in landscape architecture today is landscape infrastructure practice which can be considered both ‘landscape as infrastructure’ and ‘infrastructure as landscape’. Through the lens of this emerging practice and its duplicate meaning the shift in landscape meaning can be traced: from a “pastoral scenery” and ‘natural’ geographic surface, to idea of landscape as an integrated, a continuous whole of man and nature; evolving, constantly ‘under construction’, and productive space, that creates multiple benefits for the good of people and environment.

Key words: landscape, infrastructure, productivity, urban planning

This thesis elaborates on a theoretical, epistemological and design research framework for the possibility of an operative synthesis of, on the one hand, climate-related risk management (primarily, flood exposure from multiple sources, i.e. sea level rise and coastal/tidal flooding, fluvial flooding and pluvial flooding) and, on the other, the planning and design of operational landscapes of material production, as a means for sustainable ecological development.
Contemporary practices of managing ecological, environmental and climatic risk rely heavily on a ‘mitigation’ approach, where the imperative is the restoration of a previous ‘natural’ order or the spatial planning of the next waves of development and urbanization according to the evaluation of the internal logics of natural processes. However, this line of thinking severely hinders the possibility of a creative and proactive reorganization of human processes of material production precisely because it presupposes a “nature-society rift” (Moore, 2014). Similarly, the negative externalities associated with the extensive and intensive operationalization of vast terrestrial terrains are viewed as singular phenomena to be addressed in situ and not as opportunities to fundamentally re-conceptualize contemporary planetary urbanization (Brenner, 2016).
The basis upon which this work is built, is that to properly address climate-related risk one has to, also, address unsustainable patterns of material production and the physical and functional organization of urbanization. Following the development of the concepts of “concentrated” and “extended urbanization” through the construction of gradients of “agglomeration” and “operational landscapes” (Brenner, 2014a, 2016; Katsikis, 2018; Moore, 2014) and in contrast to the predominant approach of placing the emphasis on the agglomeration side of these gradients, this thesis attempts the opposite: shifting the analytical centrality from agglomerations to the operational landscapes that sustain them, we are able to formulate an urbanization hypothesis that addresses the requirements of the latter not as externalities of the former (thus hindering the capacity of the framework to be adequately socio-ecologically sustainable) but as the fundamental elements of the planning and design of the urban fabric. It is, thus, suggested that an incorporation of biophysical processes and ecosystem functions, which are central to the performance of operational landscapes, within the urbanized landscape would, at the same time, offer climate-related performance.
Assuming, therefore, that this act is an act of construction of the urban landscape and, even further, it partakes in its economic activities, this work reformulates Lefebvre’s (2003) opening statement in “The Urban Revolution” as following: ‘the urban has been completely operationalized’, and attempts to elaborate on the coming-into-being of this reality: ‘the project of the cultivation of the urban’.
As such, the objective of this thesis is to develop a framework for a design exercise that could inform a potential urban and territorial project. The design research proposal elaborated here is one that seeks to discuss the possibility that “agglomeration landscapes” become hybridized with “operational landscapes” (Katsikis, 2018). By that I mean that contemporary cities and urban regions renounce their sole correspondence with the secondary and tertiary sectors of economy and, in turn, take on the role of encompassing primary (i.e. material) production as well. In other words, this work assumes that there is a possibility that the various productive hinterlands of the planet be diffused within and throughout the urbanized landscapes that they sustain. By concurring with Moore (2014) that operational landscapes represent, essentially, the way that humanity interacts with nature, I evoke Foster (2000) to propose the possibility of retrofitting material production within the economies of agglomerations and, thus, operationalizing the urban.

Focused on the relationship between architecture and the broader forces that contextualise it, Re¬sidual Operations has introduced students to the idea of context in an etymological sense: that is, the weaving together of different conditions, fac¬tors or elements that may have social, economic or political influence. If we think of the city as a context, it is the interweaving of these non-phys¬ical factors that shapes the city as a physical condition. In an Albertian sense, if the city can be read as architecture and architecture as the city, then these conditions must also directly influence the building of architecture as a physical form.
Operating on a super system of interlinked network infrastructures, cities are now shaped more by the flow of goods, services, information and resources - together with the containment capital - than by any idealised notion of architec¬tural design. Largely determined by the econo¬mist, logistician, planner and civil engineer, such systems have developed either in separation to, and often in conflict with, the historical forms of the city, or have seen the city’s replacement as a historical form entirely. Either way, the city and its surrounds have become a landscape without bounds or limits: infinitely complex and ever-more sprawling from its centre.
It is within this context that we, as architects, are increasingly faced with only two modes of operation: to simply see architecture as the indif¬ferent byproduct of these influences or instead as a practice that can respond to, critique and subvert the contextual conditions from which the profession stems.

As such, the studio centered on the initial staging of a hypothetical cross-river expansion of the University of Queensland’s St Lucia Campus into neighboring southern suburbs, comprising of a recreational gymnasium, waste water recycling facility and chilled water thermal energy storage plant. The work investigated how such infrastructures could both allow for future densification and also subvert it by preserving existing public space and parkland.

This included:

The Territorial:
Terrain Vague - The design of residual territories operating outside of the productive structures of the network city.

The Formal:
Interstructural Artifact - The transformation of infrastructural systems into autonomous and civic architectural forms.

The Functional:
Programmatic Composition - Conditioning spatial tension via the co-location of distinct and diverse programmatic typologies.

Twenty-six projects have emerged testing how architecture can be used as a formal tool to reestablish a dialogue between infrastructure, program, landscape, and the city and its context. More importantly, the projects also acknowledge the broadened scope that architecture must engage with to ensure its relevance as a critical practice.

Infrastructures are considered both by the general public and the technical experts a not-to-be-challenged issue. Distancing themselves from the idea of the ‘public work’, their scope and design are obvious results of the dominant techno-managerial thought, favouring the tried-and-true paradigm of efficiency and growth.The dogma of a frictionless running system, outlines two distinct possibilities for the infrastructural spatial products: On the one hand, efficiency is understood in a literal way, resulting in rationalised constructs where function is an end in itself. On the other hand, efficiency is used merely as a justifying motive, producing much more of a theatrical setting. We analyse these two distinguishable categories as infrastructures of 'superfunction' and 'superform' respectively.

This project explores the landscape potential of Taiwanese river valley in terms of integrating water and river management with urbanism within the context of a dense environment diversity as well as a highly sensitive and dynamic landscape. Taking one of the most illustrative river basin, Dajia River, the steepest river with the most water resource, as the study case, the project intends to test the hypothesis of perceiving mountainous river as opportunities for transforming the river valley as water-sensitive landscape infrastructures.

Based on the theories of landscape urbanism, especially the discourses of landscape infrastructure, the project argues that by enhancing water sensitivity in living environment within river scape, the characteristic of landscape can help building a stronger identity for the territory and its inhabitants. Contextualising the learnings from theories and practices with context analysis, the research integrates principles, strategic tools and spatial potentials at the regional scale, proposing landscape operative structures as the spatial framework for the future development of the river valley. Based on this spatial framework, strategies for transformation are introduced for upstream, midstream and downstream areas according to their respective situations. Then two zoom-in sites, one at the upstream and the other at the downstream areas, are selected to demonstrate possibilities and potentials through design intervention for integrating water infrastructure with spaces of local habitation and activities. To support the proposals with better feasibility, the project phasing and institutional framework will also be proposed, identifying the priority and potential actors in the process.

With reflections on the contribution to the fields, suggestion to the current planning system, and evaluation of mutual influences between different sites within the river catchment, the thesis expects to provide a showcase with methodology, strategic tools, and spatial possibilities integrating different cases of interaction between human activities and river environment. More importantly, the project exhibits the spatial potential of a mountainous river landscape as an active role in engaging socioeconomic with nature, as well as guiding the spatial transformation of the territory for the future.

During the urban development of the City of São Paulo, it has been assigned a dominant role to the car as a priority in modal urban mobility system, a fact that caused damages to the environment,  disqualification of public spaces and marginalization of the pedestrian in the urban environment. Until not long ago, the city of São Paulo had never experienced such a high increase in the representation of bicycles as a transportation mean. According to the Research of Origin and Destination, carried by the Companhia do Metropolitano de São Paulo - Metro between 1997 and 2007, the utility bicycle trips inside the city increased by 200%. In this context, the present work evaluates the alternative of integrating the use of bicycles to the urban mobility system of São Paulo as one of the possible solutions to the problems previously discussed and explore the feasibility of these programs as a way of dealing with the problems of the urban landscape, by using the Green Infrastructure as a guiding concept.

As an urban theory built on the criticism of city/non-city duality, Planetary Urbanization advocates for the study of non-city territories and proposes operational landscape in a global scale, demonstrating its close relationship with the discipline of landscape architecture. New theoretical trends stem from Planetary Urbanization, including planetary ecology, planetary architecture and planetary infrastructure, provide new manifestation and manipulation methods for the education and practice of landscape architecture, as well as motivate collaboration and integration between multiple disciplines. With its strong characteristic of synthesis and inclusiveness, landscape architecture is taking a critical responsibility in the building of global environment under a planetary perspective.

This project explores the landscape potential of Taiwanese river valley in terms of integrating water and river management with urbanism within the context of a dense environment diversity as well as a highly sensitive and dynamic landscape. Taking one of the most illustrative river basin, Dajia River, the steepest river with the most water resource, as the study case, the project intends to test the hypothesis of perceiving mountainous river as opportunities for transforming the river valley as water-sensitive landscape infrastructures.

Based on the theories of landscape urbanism, especially the discourses of landscape infrastructure, the project argues that by enhancing water sensitivity in living environment within river scape, the characteristic of landscape can help building a stronger identity for the territory and its inhabitants. Contextualizing the learnings from theories and practices with context analysis, the research integrates principles, strategic tools and spatial potentials at the regional scale, proposing landscape operative structures as the spatial framework for the future development of the river valley. Based on this spatial framework, strategies for transformation are introduced for upstream, midstream and downstream areas according to their respective situations. Then two zoom-in sites, one at the upstream and the other at the downstream areas, are selected to demonstrate possibilities and potentials through design intervention for integrating water infrastructure with spaces of local habitation and activities. To support the proposals with better feasibility, the project phasing and institutional framework will also be proposed, identifying the priority and potential actors in the process.

With reflections on the contribution to the fields, suggestion to the current planning system, and evaluation of mutual influences between different sites within the river catchment, the thesis expects to provide a showcase with methodology, strategic tools, and spatial possibilities integrating different cases of interaction between human activities and river environment. More importantly, the project exhibits the spatial potential of a mountainous river landscape as an active role in engaging socioeconomic with nature, as well as guiding the spatial transformation of the territory for the future.

An understanding of human and non-human agency is essential to fully capture the nature
and configurations of resource circulations and “metabolic” dynamics in cities. Since their inception, urban political ecology and more-than-human ontologies have raised fundamental questions about these entangled agencies, which resonated widely in urban studies and, to some degree, in urban metabolism research. This essay argues that landscape theory provides a rich, yet less explored, reservoir of concepts and methods to investigate the role of agentic capacities in metabolic dynamics and the society-nature relations they reflect. Two landscape approaches describing the landscape as a locus of distributed agency are discussed to illustrate novel modes of agentic inquiry in metabolic studies. Finally, using water ecologies as examples, I ask to what extent a sociology of distribution of resources and agencies can become a new “matter of concern” for urban metabolism research and foster dialectical conceptions of the metabolic paradigm.

The proposition of this paper is to examine the agency of landscape in subverting, energizing and reinvigorating a specific kind of deserted space in cities-Urban Under Space. The term Urban Under Space refers to residual infrastructural spaces, such as under-bridge space, abandoned subway stations, air raid shelters, etc. The wide availability and continued generation of Urban Under Space in cities that were investigated in North America and Asia reflect a problem in modern planning. But it also provides an opportunity of positioning these pieces as a network of new urban landscapes that can offer a unique and attractive public space experience. The paper provides an elaboration of the invented term, a case analysis of the creative re-use of Air Raid Shelters in Chongqing, and a systematic research to prototype the issues and opportunities as related to such spaces. The paper also discusses its potential as a ground for unique urban public experiences.

The project unveils how the rail infrastructure network of North Peloponnese, redundant for more than a decade, can act as a
synergetic field for multi-sectoral development with the mobilization of landscape infrastructures through the appropriation
of existing spatio-geographical characteristics. This demand is a crucial one, since European Policies demand the technological
upgrade of the railway in order to meet the standards of the TEN-T corridor. In parallel, this condition raises a wider challenge
for urbanization. The proposal does not rely upon the optimization of a single infrastructural element or territorial scale,
but rather on the creation of a synthetic landscape of networked infrastructures contributing to varying service ecologies operating
across scales.

This essay in the recent book "Toward an Urban Ecology" by Scape and Kate Orff argues that publics are not timeless, homogeneous blocks but are always coming into existence and passing away, and that landscape is the primary contemporary medium with which to engage and create publics. Taking the Living Breakwaters proposal by Scape for the Rebuild by Design competition post-Sandy, the essay proposes that sediment is the stuff of landscape in coastal and fluvial situations, and that landscape projects that go below the surface of the water offer an important new means for restoring ecosystems and civic life in large coastal cities.

L’actuelle multiplication des propositions architecturales et urbaines en faveur de l’autonomie énergétique remet en cause le modèle historique des grands réseaux pensé pour la consommation de masse
et la croissance. Les réseaux de services et d’énergie agitent pourtant le projet architectural et urbain depuis un bon siècle, interrogeant la hiérarchie du degré de connectivité et la question de l’échelle, de la petite maison au territoire autosuffisant. Connexion
vs déconnexion, macro vs micro, l’histoire des services s’envisage comme une bataille : de courant, d’échelle, de modèle technique, économique et de gouvernance, auxquels les ingénieurs et les architectes n’ont cessé de prendre part. Cet article propose d’interroger l’histoire de l’architecture et de l’urbanisme pour saisir la façon dont la distribution énergétique s’est constituée comme support de projets, dans la réalité comme dans la fiction.

The various cities in the table-land
of Iran, considering their context and the natural
and geographical conditions, benefited from
the water resources in various ways. Among all
these cities, Bukhara has owned one of the most
advanced water systems which the physical
remnant of its elements still role as one of the
most important basis of urban landscape in the
Bukhara old city.
The underlying objective of this essay is to independently
recognize the various facets of the
physical connection between the water system
and the Bukhara city structure by deconstructing
the structure of the city and its water system.
Although, in the earlier times, the Bukhara water
network adopted as the water system for irrigating
the rabaz, but by expanding the city out of the
sharestan it showed the complete interaction with
the structure of the city. The main point that made
the Bukhara water network different from the other
cities in the table-land of Iran and maintained it as
one of the most considerable elements of Bukhara
urban landscape, is referred to the frame work
that governed the existence of the water system
in the city of Bukhara for over ten centuries. This
framework considered in two domains; in visual
and physical- spatial aesthetics rules in the components
of the system and in their locating among
the city, which caused the multilayered connection
between the water system and the spatial, functional
and activity structure of the Bukhara. This
multilayered alliance between the water network
and the spatial and functional structure of the city
caused the implicit and unconscious rehabilitation
of the water system during the restoration program
of Bukhara old city, notably in the decades of 1990,
considering its aesthetical common language in
obtain the main role in the urban landscape of
the city and common memories and perceptions
of the citizens and the tourists, even though in
the time only 8 hauze (among more than 100) remained
and the restoration program only focused
on the restoration of the monuments and important
buildings.

During the urban development of the City of São Paulo, it has been assigned a dominant role to the car as a priority in modal urban mobility system, a fact that caused damages to the environment, disqualification of public spaces and marginalization of the pedestrian in the urban environment. Until not long ago, the city of São Paulo had never experienced such a high increase in the representation of bicycles as a transportation mean. According to the Research of Origin and Destination, carried by the Companhia do Metropolitano de São Paulo - Metro between 1997 and 2007, the utility bicycle trips inside the city increased by 200%. In this context, the present work evaluates the alternative of integrating the use of bicycles to the urban mobility system of São Paulo as one of the possible solutions to the problems previously discussed and explore the feasibility of these programs as a way of dealing with the problems of the urban landscape, by using the Green Infrastructure as a guid...

Throughout the centuries, cities of the Iranian plateau shaped, developed and sustained with deep and mutual
connection with the water resources and networks. today, readout the multifaceted and multi functional connection of
these infrastructures with the pre industrial cities and extract theirdominants principals help us in redefining the mono
faceted relation between the water supplies networks, as one of the modern urban infrastructures, and our industrial
cities.
One of the most advanced examples of the comprehensive relation between city and water system, was formed in
the north east of Iran- today Uzbekistan- in the city of Boukahra. A developed water system based on surface water
which, still in our time, it’s remaining- in spite of the 90% demolition- demonstrate the considerable role in the
urban landscape of Bukhara. “how this water network transform as the landscaping infrastructure for the city and
had a multifaceted role in Bukhara and its citizens life?”, “how this semi- natural network sustained in the city and
developed systematically with the development of the city?” these are the questions that this article aime to reply by
research in the historical and modern documents on Bukhara. this research attempt to refine the dominant principles of
the formation and development of the water networks in the Bukhara considering the various facets of its connection
with the the spatial- physical structure of the city and the subjective structure of the citizens.
the results of this inquiry revealed tow important and related points : firstly, the water network of Boukhara formed a
deep relation in the various layers with spatial and social structure of the city ( subjective and objective life of city and
citizens) by which this network played a considerable role in the urban landscape of Boukhara and upgraded fromthe
functional system with the mere Subsistence and servicerole to the landscaping network with the multi functional
and symbolic role for the city. Secondly, the functional requirements to this network, was the prerequisite for the
formation of the system but not the sufficient condition for this kind of development of the system. In the other word,
subjective integration between the water network and its components with the citizens and their life guaranteed the
condition and the quality of its sustainable existence among the city of Boukhara.

The layout of river systems, as we observe them nowadays, is only a phase of an unstable process where modifcations happen according to different spatial and time scales due to climate and geological changes, human landscape alterations and the respective ecological adaptations. Representation methods have long struggled with seizing such features since morphodynamic imagery has radically changed our awareness of rivers' evolution as the result of overlapping forces acting at several levels. Even though trade-offs between the impacts on ecosystems, sustainable allocation of water resources, and economic interests are often at the centre of regional management policies, the recurring operative approach to the topic seems to ground on a paradox. In fact, it deals with the misleading expectations to freeze or restore the “natural” functioning of the river ecosystems, while indeed they are inherently on-the-move. It seems that forces operating in this sense should be someway balanced by the idea of an “authentic landscape” which is as reassuring as unhistorical. The concrete result of such a mindset is an increasing disjunction between technical developments and landscape outlooks: the frst looking ahead, the second backwards. Unless we want to perpetuate such approach, we should attempt to conceive the landscape as a stratifcation of always new arrangements, layouts and usages. In this perspective, our research contribution focuses on the “waterscape” topic working through an integrated design approach based on the early combination of diverse expertises. This has produced a vast range of proposals aimed at matching infrastructural works with new landscaping procedures. In both the applicative key studies presented in this article, environmental risk management (pollution and food control) and tourism development act as strategic drivers motivating landscape transformations. Such method may fnd further and interesting applications in those territories, such as the Balkan Peninsula, which are now experiencing huge hydromorphological developments, due to the increasing demand of water or energy supply as well as the necessity of foods control. The speed at which this is happening threatens to reiterate a mere technical- oriented approach leaving out more systemic opportunities. In this framework, blurring the boundaries between disciplines is a paramount concern to shift the viewpoint having a more holistic approach to the subject. Furthermore, even though a spatial planning approach needs to be implemented in order to evaluate environmental cost-benefts of infrastructural works, the forthcoming landscape will be also the result of a cultural attitude towards the concepts of instability and change which mark the inner essence of river systems.

Un progetto di ricerca svolto da Sealine (UniFe) in collaborazione con lo studio Metropolis e la POLIS University di Tirana in Albania, ulteriormente approfondito tramite lo sviluppo di una serie di tesi di laurea nell’ambito del Laboratorio di Sintesi Finale E del Dipartimento di Architettura Unife. Il lavoro si concentra sugli aspetti di pianificazione strategica degli interventi a livello infrastrutturale e paesaggistico in grado di supportare e controllare il processo di transizione turistica in corso nella costa sud dell’Albania, la cosiddetta “Riviera”. L’analisi delle criticità e delle ambizioni di questo territorio, in relazione ad esperienze turistiche più mature già indagate da Sealine nel contesto italiano, ha portato a concentrarsi in particolare su due temi: l’accessibilità e i servizi legati al turismo. La ricerca vuole dimostrare come la comparazione tra esperienze progettuali in contesti turistici consolidati ed emergenti possa contribuire all’individuazione di strategie più efficaci di gestione delle ricadute fisiche del fenomeno turistico. Gli studi e le esperienze progettuali sulla Riviera Romagnola sono stati la premessa dei ragionamenti applicati al caso albanese pur nella diversità delle condizioni geografiche ed economiche al contorno. Elaborando un modello che descriva le diverse componenti (primarie e secondarie) che influiscono sul successo turistico di una località o un territorio, è stato possibile definire delle linee di azione prioritarie sulla costa albanese, imparando tanto dagli errori quanto dai successi, di un contesto più maturo.

Infrastructures must be designed to favour rapid movements of resources and people, to redistribute services, to order urbanscapes and suburban and rural areas. Roads must be devised to design a landscape, to protect unique features and to reinforce life enclosed in a place. A road conceived as a bundle of routes prefigures a linear urban device apt to sustain a vast range of practices present in traversed sites. Edges are spaces of a diverse notion of road: edges can become an interface amid roads and sites, and a mosaic of spaces open to a vast set of uses and to a constant variation of demand. As a result, edges are a precious resource in order to conceive a road as a landscape event, icon of a proactive social fabric, medium for inclusion, motor of development.