Entangling the City: Reimagining the Urban Through Landscape Ecology in the Design Studio and Beyond

The question of how cities harbor social and ecological values has become critical for life on land and sea. This urgency has spurred strategies that propose generic solutions. However, these ‘campaigns’ do not reimagine or fundamentally restructure the way cities are designed. Recognizing the need to transform urban settlements toward urban ecologies, the paper reflects on how reconfiguring the urban fabric through the lens of urban landscape ecology can open up speculative and site-specific proposals that entangle all life forms and can help make cities more resilient. Focusing on urban edges as urban ecotones, the paper unpacks why and how to integrate social and ecological values, and the effect this can entail for the future of cities and practices of urban design and planning. A studio assignment at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences is used to support the study’s aim. The approach bridges the application of knowledge derived from natural science with ‘designerly’ capacities. The findings showcase ways to approach a layered urban landscape, encouraging creative, reality-based explorations that motivate a certain friction, spawning novel outlooks on design practice.

Iñaki Abalos

Professor in Residence, Department of Architecture, GSD, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA

Orazio Carpenzano

Dean, Facoltà di Architettura, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome

Yung Ho Chang

Professor of Architecture, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai, China

Winka Dubbeldam

Miller Professor and Chair of Architecture at Stuart Weitzman School of Design

Brian Ford

Professor Emeritus, Department of Architecture & Built Environment, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

Hsinming Fung

Professor, SCI-Arc, Los Angeles CA, USA

Carlo Gasparrini

Professor of Urbanism, Dipartimento di Architettura, Universita' degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Naples, Italy

Marco Imperadori

Professor of Design and Technological Innovation and Chancellor’s Delegate for the Far East, Politecnico di M

Rahul Mehrotra

Professor of Urban Design and Planning, GSD, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA

Antoine Picon

Professor of the History of Architecture and Technology, GSD, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA

Mónica Ponce de León

Dean, School of Architecture, Princeton University, Princeton NJ, USA

Jane Rendell

Professor, The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, London, UK

Peter Rich

Professor of Architecture, Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg, South Africa

Michael Speaks

Dean, School of Architecture, Syracuse University, Syracuse NY, USA

Martha Thorne

Hon FRIBA, Hon COAM, Director of Strategic and Institutional Relations, the Gallery Institute, Portugal

C David Tseng

Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Chiao-Tung University, Taipei, Taiwan

Li Xiangning

Deputy Dean, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai, China

Entangling the City: Reimagining the Urban Through Landscape Ecology in the Design Studio and Beyond

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