Design Thinking for a Post-industrial Century

beauty
Beauty Redeemed / Birkhauser

Gas Works Park in Seattle. Landscape Park Duisburg-Nord in Germany. Ariel Sharon (Mount Hariya) Park in Tel Aviv. Freshkills Park in Staten Island, NY. And The High Line, in Manhattan. These landmark places transform the remnants of industrial landscapes into new parks.

Is this “transformation of formerly industrial areas for new purposes, a widespread phenomenon happening before our eyes,” simply a trend? Or are these transformations, which address our post-industrial needs, here to stay? In Beauty Redeemed: Recycling Post-Industrial Landscapes, Ellen Braae, a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Copenhagen, argues the latter, writing that the emergence of post-industrial landscapes is a new kind of design that is engaged in an ongoing dialogue with the landscapes of past, present, and future.

There have been plenty of books, articles, and blog posts written on post-industrial landscapes, including quite a few on The Dirt. So why write another? Braae answers this question herself, breaking her argument into three pieces:

First, the re-use of “ruinous” post-industrial areas contributes to the practice of sustainability; this approach encourages us to reinterpret existing resources.

When most of the design proposals for Landscape Park Duisburg-Nord, which was built on a former industrial site in Germany, were presented in the early 1990s, most firms opened their project by clearing away all the old infrastructure and starting anew. Landscape architect Peter Latz, Latz + Partner, went a different route, choosing “to accept the area with all its traces and structures.” As Braae explains, “the innovation in Latz’s proposal lay in the decoding of features and qualities and the way they were highlighted and reworked.” The theme of the park became the interplay between the relics of industrialism and the processes of nature already underway in the years since the area’s industrial use.

Pedestrian bridge across old ore bunkers at Landscape Park Duisberg-Nord / Latz + Partner
Pedestrian bridge across old ore bunkers at Landscape Park Duisberg-Nord / Latz + Partner

 

Aesthetics combined with remediation for contaminated soils at Duisburg-Nord / Latz + Partner
Aesthetics combined with remediation for contaminated soils at Duisburg-Nord / Latz + Partner

Second, industrial landscapes can become new cultural heritage, as they can represent the convergence of preservation, re-use, and transformation.

The 19th and 20th century landscape has been shaped by industry — both the processes and infrastructure of industry itself, and the impact of the industrial products on urban planning and design. For example, the industrial-scale production of automobiles shaped Detroit, which Braae refers to as “a monument to the principles of Fordism, transcending our physical-spatial structures as the capital of the 20th century.”

Former Packard plant, Detroit, 2006 / Camilo Jose Vergara

As we move further into the 21st century, Braae asks what the “physical expression of the capital city of the 21st century” will be. Looking to Paris, France, and Ruhr, Germany, the emphasis on building upon “the ruins of industrialism” suggests a shift towards a relationship with history and cultural heritage that is generally reflected by post-Modernism.

Rather than History with a capital H, history and cultural heritage today are “embedded in our everyday culture and thus in our culture of remembrance. They are associated with the working lives of a large proportion of the population of the Western world. Seen in that light, the originally worthless relics of a vanished production process become suitable objects of study for a new form of cultural heritage. Preservation, re-use and transformation of what is in principle worthless become linked. These are the new interpretations of cultural heritage.”

Lastly, transforming industrial landscapes is not only an interesting creative exercise, but has created an “epistemological breakthrough in design” that emphasizes the temporary nature of things and the process of constant change.

According to Braae, we are undergoing a radical transformation in the practice of design. Whereas much of design in the 20th century may have been modeled on novelty, with its main focus on space, structure, and expression, design in the 21st century is focused on change. In doing so, the focus becomes less entirely on form and more on process.

Braae says this new thinking will fundamentally shape the way we build and create in the 21st century:”What does it imply when we no longer invent things from the beginning but create them through interaction with what already exists? It is a central question: In what ways can we decode the materials available to us?”

Sculptural reuse of demolition material at Terra Nova, Germany / Herman Prigann, Courtesy of Herman Prigann Estate
Sculptural reuse of demolition material at Terra Nova, Germany / Herman Prigann, Courtesy of Herman Prigann Estate

Beauty Redeemed is dense, with Braae’s arguments thoroughly detailed. Academics and landscape architects are the ones who will spend any significant time with the book. But the public will be also affected by the ideas found here.

Urban landscapes, which more and more people rely on for recreation and escape, tend to be “a cacophany of different forms of use, appearances, and topography, often without any mutual connection or visual significance.” The disordered nature of these urban landscapes can result in a lack of identity and aesthetic quality. But Braae’s hope is that the shift in design thinking, as demonstrated by these landmark post-industrial landscapes, will help move us towards a new 21st century post-industrial model. In this sense, Beauty Redeemed is a worthwhile read for, as Braae says, “everyone interested in visual and spatial culture, with a liking for ruinous industrial areas.”

Yoshi Silverstein is founder of Mitsui Design and director of the Jewish outdoor, food, and environmental (JOFEE) fellowship at Hazon, the country’s largest Jewish environmental organization.

A Vision for Public Food Production

Public Produce: Cultivating Our Parks, Plazas, and Streets for Healthier Cities / Island Press
Public Produce: Cultivating Our Parks, Plazas, and Streets for Healthier Cities / Island Press

We are increasingly concerned about the provenance of our food. Movements supporting local food production, urban agriculture, and more socially-equitable food systems have gained increasing traction over the last decade. Meanwhile, our industrial food systems are increasingly vulnerable due to over-centralized facilities and ownership, reliance on fossil fuels for production and transportation, and crop monocultures, which are made only more vulnerable by climate change.

Urban agriculture is frequently cited as a response to these challenges. Cities, though, still face question of where to grow food, how to maintain farms, create access, and educate citizens about agricultural production. In Public Produce: Cultivating Parks, Plazas, and Streets for Healthier Cities, urban designer and author Darrin Nordahl proposes local governments bolster local ecosystems of public food production.

Alice Waters praised the original 2009 edition as showing “how growing food on public land can transform our civic landscape.” Marion Nestle said the book gave “all the reasons why growing food in cities would be good for alleviating poverty, for building communities, and for public policy.”

A newly revised and expanded edition does these things and fills in key details by offering numerous examples of people, organizations, communities, and governments implementing all sorts of models of food production on public lands as well as partnerships between local governments and community organizations.

The first few chapters will be highly useful for those looking for a succinct and easily-readable introduction to the arguments behind local and urban food production: food (in)security, over-reliance on fossil fuels, social equity, and resilience to climate change, to name a few. But those already well versed in the works of Michael Pollan and other sustainable agriculture advocates can skim through.

Nordahl hits his stride in the third chapter as he goes beyond the general tenets of urban agriculture and makes his case for a triad between public space, public officials, and public policy. Growing vegetables in public spaces sends a powerful message. Nordahl defines public spaces as places freely accessible to the public, “whether they are truly public or merely perceived to be . . . In essence, any space where the public can enter throughout the day without being charged and admission fee . . . and is suitable for growing food, is worthy of inclusion in a network of public produce.”

Social justice advocates will appreciate the chapter on gleaning as a public produce model, and Nordahl gives many examples of places that have developed strong access networks. Fallen Fruit in Los Angeles, for example, develops freely accessible maps showing where fruit can be publicly gleaned. He also offers an interesting take on gleaning as economic opportunity – foraging for fruit rather than, say, recyclables, and trading in one’s daily harvest for money or other essentials.

Publically accessible fruit trees in Sherman Oaks neighborhood, Los Angeles / Fallen Fruit
Publically accessible fruit trees in Sherman Oaks neighborhood, Los Angeles / Fallen Fruit

Nordahl’s strongest arguments come in chapter five, in which he addresses the perennial maintenance question: “who is going to take care of it?” Indeed, this was one of my first questions – and many others may well wonder how well-received the idea will be of rotting fruit all over public spaces, which are expensive to clean up and unappealing to the aesthetic eye. But Nordahl reminds the reader that “the fantastic aesthetics of our most prized landscape plants makes it easy for us to forget that they produce an abundance of leaf litter, drip with sticky nectar, and drop unpalatable fruit by the bunches.” Planting edibles prioritizes the value of food production, while often offering an aesthetic value as well.

“There is no doubt that food-producing plants can be messy and need some upkeep,” Nordahl admits. “But the pervasive assumption that edibles require considerably more management than ornamental plants, or are not as pretty, is bogus. . . [that said], sound design principles are not thrown out the window simply because the plant palette uses fruit-bearing trees instead of sterile cultivars. As in any landscape design, the architect needs to take into account how many people will use or pass by the space; what types of activities will take place in the space; the microclimate, solar access, and water availability of the space; and a host of other variables.”

Again, Nordahl gives several examples where communities developed multi-beneficial models for maintenance, harvesting, and clean-up of edible plants. Communities who balance an appropriate “carrying capacity,” where the availability of edibles does not exceed the demand for them, help ensure that fruit is harvested and eaten, rather than left to drop and rot on the ground.

Landscape architects and designers will appreciate the examples where aesthetic and place-making qualities were woven into designs for food production. The Curtis “50-Cent” Jackson Community Garden in Queens, NY, designed by Walter Hood, ASLA, for example, integrates huge, eye-catching rainwater-collection sculptures amid the edibles planted in French-style parterres. And designers for Disneyland’s “Tomorrowland” area planted edible fruit trees, herbs, and leafy greens in lieu of solely ornamental plantings, perhaps to suggest what urban design of the future will look like.

Sculptural rainwater collection towers amidst planting beds at the Curtis "50-Cent" Jackson Community Gardens in Queens, NY / New York Restoration Project
Sculptural rainwater collection towers amidst planting beds at the Curtis “50-Cent” Jackson Community Gardens in Queens, NY / New York Restoration Project
Citrus trees in "Tomorrowland," Disneyland / FlashBulb
Citrus trees in “Tomorrowland,” Disneyland / FlashBulb

But this book is not a design manual or a how-to guide for would-be urban farmers. A good number of photos intersperse with the text, but readers will not find design schematics, planting calendars, or detailed plant lists for every climate. Examples are woven into the narrative, not broken out as researched case studies. Nordahl lays out an alluring vision, however, and his arguments are persuasive. Peas at City Hall, persimmons along public avenues, and pawpaws in city parks? Maybe not such a crazy idea after all.

Read the book.

Yoshi Silverstein, Associate ASLA, is founder and lead designer-educator at Mitsui Design, focusing on landscape experience and connection to place. He was the ASLA summer 2014 communications intern.