A GEOLOGICAL TIMESCALE OF EARTH
3.2.5 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AND CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE
ANTHROPOCENE
“But, as we have seen, man has reacted upon organised and inorganic nature, and thereby modified, if not determined, the material structure of his earthly home.” George Perkins Marsh, 1864 (Marsh, 1974, p. 13) In the early 19th century, Alexander von Humboldt became the first scientist to talk about harmful human-induced climate change, based on observations on how the forest enriched the atmosphere with moisture, had a cooling effect and a retention function by protecting against soil erosion. All of these capabilities were altered by human actions and Humboldt notes that this has unpredictable impacts on future genera-tions (Wulf, 2015, p. 5). During the 19th century, a growing awareness of the consequences of human actions arose. Among others American conservationists, George Perkins Marsh articulated the consequences of human impacts, while arguing that nature could be used to mitigate harmful human actions (McHarg and Steiner, 2006, p. 13).
Changing landscape practices in the Anthropocene
“[…] the fact that we live in the Anthropocene will result in new and assertive prospects for action in the field of design, planning and govern-ance […]. What opportunities do these hybrid forms present for organ-izing the urban landscape in an appealing and livable way? What new terminology can we use to discuss the city in the Anthropocene?” quote Sijmons 2014 (Sijmons, 2014, p. 18)
The Netherlands presents landscapes with century-long practices of extreme water management, such as reclaiming dry land from wetlands using dykes, dams and mills. For centuries, the Netherlands has
succeeded in providing considerable land reclamations through exten-sive, anthropogenic waterworks. Today, however the Netherlands is challenged by changing waterscapes: the country is coastal based and is low-lying at the mouth of main European rivers; it is increasingly vulner-able to sea level rise and alarming volumes of surface water from the hinterlands of Europe. At present, the country experiences a pressing need for adapting to more water, partly as an adaptation of its anthro-pogenic measures of water control. In recent times, the Dutch govern-ment even changed its approach and policy, going from ´taking care of flood prevention´ to that of a risk-assessment on safety (Broekhans and Correljé, 2008). The Anthropocene has also been addressed in landscape architecture and the arts, as in the quote above by landscape architect Dirk Sijmons from the International Arkitekturbiennale in Rotterdam (IABR 2014) ´Urban by Nature´ (Brugmans et al., 2014) discussing design, planning and landscapes in the era of global urbanisation in the Anthro-pocene.
Urban and nature as obsolete dichotomies in the Anthropocene
With or without the Anthropocene term; integrated worldviews that regard human and natural processes as intertwined, including that of interlacing the past with the present and a speculative future is not a novelty to landscape architecture (Spirn, 1997). In the Granite Garden of 1984 (Spirn, 1984), thus more than a decade before the Anthropo-cene became popularised, Spirn provides meticulous insights into the then prevailing notions of dividing nature and urban, addressed through the themes of City and Nature, Air, Earth, Water, Life and The Urban Ecosystem. Spirn argued how the dichotomy between human and nature, urban and rural are obsolete. The Granite Garden offers explanations and together with landscape-based design and planning recommendations is framed as ´a plan for every city´, thus not only calling off the dualism but also offering guidelines to action and changing of landscape practices (Spirn, 1984, pp. 85, 124, 166, 225, 260).
Since then, Stokman and Jørg point out how the contradiction between human and natural must be resolved (Stokman and Jørg, 2013, p. 8), while Sijmons addresses the importance of seeing human interven-tions as part of natural forces, with effects at a global scale. Sijmons argues that the Anthropocene calls off the ´pseudo-opposition´ between
´nature´ and human society´(Brugmans et al., 2014, p. 14). With depar-ture in the Anthropocene, Prominski points to the persistence of the dualism/dichotomy between nature and human, concluding that the profession of landscape architecture is already capable of integrating designing ´in unitary modes, going beyond the dichotomies of nature and culture´ (Prominski, 2014a, p. 18). This discussion is still of contemporary relevance to practice. For example, the Danish planning system and the current urban development in Aarhus, support dichotomies between human ><nature and urban><rural (nature) through the administrative zoning which divides rural and urban areas, and through administrative, land-use boundaries. This dichotomy is also evidenced in Chapter 3.5 on the Danish Planning System, and the case studies in this thesis (see Part 5 Chapter 1-3), show how human expectations to the performance of our built environment seem disconnected from natural forces and the interplay between human actions.
Landscape architectural thinking and making
The notion of ´landscape as being shaped by human and natural processes´ (see Part 1, Chapter 1.2) is likely the key why the concept of the Anthropocene seems so familiar and productive to landscape architecture. The embedded notion of the Anthropocene in landscape architecture is visualised in the book ´Taking Measures across the Amer-ican Landscape´. Here, James Corner and aerial photographer Alex S.
MacLean provide a visual narrative of the landscape and the intertwine-ment between natural and human processes as the landscape-shaping forces. The photographs frame the interplay between natural forces and human constructions as landscape practices form the contemporary landscape of America (Corner and MacLean, 1996). Additionally, Mathur and Da Cunha use well-known approaches, visualising the interplay
between urbanisation, landscape properties and the dynamics of water, framed as ´making peace with water´ in their books Missisissippi Floods, Soak, and Deccan Traverses (Mathur and Cunha, 2009, 2006, 2001).
In Chapter 3.4, a selection of contemporary, influential best practice examples are presented, which exemplify an integrated understanding of human-natural processes bound with aesthetic considerations. These examples are celebrated for their conversion of post-industrial works or sites into public areas, allowing vegetation and activities to grow over time, thus changing abandoned, often polluted sites into prospects for the present and the future. What these projects have in common is their transformation of yesterday´s functions into a public good and their display of hybrid-processual aesthetics in urban landscapes. Or, as framed by Alan Berger, coining the term Drosscape:
” Both dross and scape are created and destroyed by processes and values derived from, or because of cultural tastes and actions. Drosscape is the creation of a new condition in which vast, wasted, or wasteful land surfaces […] are modelled in accordance with new programs or new sets of values that remove or replace real or perceived wasteful aspects of geographical space […]” (Berger, 2008, 2006, pp. 236–237).
In a Danish context in the field of landscape architecture and designing in the Anthropocene, Thomas Juel Clemmensen has experimented with approaches to designing in the Anthropocene in the context of a nature-restoration project in Skjern river valley. Clemmensen provides insights into how the designing of nature-restoration-projects can be a point of departure in integrating anthropogenic measures from the former draining project into the restoration design itself as spatial and aesthetic traces of intertwined human-nature processes, thus providing a narrative of the local history of landscape practices.
HAVE 1: FLODEN OG KANALEN
HAVE 2: VANDKRYDSET HA
Figur 3.2.30: Sketching strategies for a designing of the Anthro-pocene, titled ´The Garden 1:
The River and the Canal´ in Skjern river valley, from the book
´Kulturnatur´ by Thomas Clem-mensen. Source and copyright:
T. J. Clemmensen.
Environmental movements and mainstream media
Preceding the term Anthropocene, the environmental movements of the 1960s became a reaction to the dichotomy between human and nature embracing an ecological approach (see Chapter 3.3). In landscape archi-tecture and planning, one of the responses was the 1969 film “Multiply and Subdue the Earth” where Ian McHarg advocated a need for changing the perception of human dominion over nature (Hoyt et al., 1969). The film raises some of the same questions, and statements on how we as humans need to change our thinking and behaviour as we are part of nature. The same goes for the later 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi (Reggio, 1982), which visualises a relationship between human and nature that is out of balance. The reason for mentioning both early philosophers, scientists, landscape architects, exhibitions and films is to underline that the discussion on the dualism between human and nature has been ongoing for an extended period in diverse fields. In recent times, this human><nature tension was taken into the context of the visual and mainstream media.
As such, the framing of the Anthropocene relates to both value theory and ecological thinking. The concept of the Anthropocene provides an opportunity to change the perception of the long-term dualism, offering a conceptual foundation upon which we can discuss the intertwined human relationship with nature together with what is of value. Chapter 4.1, 4.2, offers a brief introduction to value theory, including that of dual-isms. In summary, the Anthropocene offers a conceptualisation of the dualism human><nature in the context of landscape architecture that can be further advanced, explicating existing methods and approaches in our dialogue with non-landscape architects (see Chapter 5.3, Case 3 and Part 6.2 Reflection).