A presentation on Landscape Urbanism for Architectural theory Semester 10 | Pillai College of Architecture

1. Landscape
Urbanism
Ahmed Sahil - 01
Bhat Ishwar - 04
Chaudhury Utsav - 09
Doshi Prerak - 15
Gada Dolly - 17
Joshi Jahnavi - 22

2. Landscape Urbanism?

3. Urbanism describes a disciplinary realignment currently underway in which
landscape replaces architecture as the basic building block of
contemporary urbanism.
For many,across a range of disciplines,landscape has become both the
lens through which the contemporary city is represented and
the medium through which it is constructed.
Charles Waldheim

4. The understanding of landscape is central to a project,both
for the degree of spatial control it offers to large-scale
urbanism and
for the way in which it allows the integration of natural
processes and urban development into a sustainable
artificial ecology.
The landscape offers the double opportunity to reframe urban
problems and re-contextualize the practice in general’.
Architectural Association -2015

5. In his book,Design with Nature (1969)
Pointed out that we build where we should farm,cut forests where we
should grow them,and design forms where we should follow nature's
morphologies,
McHarg made clear and comprehensible recommendations
for reversing the destructive process of development.
Ian L McHarg

6. Landscape urbanism is the approach to the design and planning of
open space where landscape is the structuring medium.
Landscape urbanism considers the horizontal field over the
vertical figure-ground and secondly,it describes a move from the
pictorial to the operational; in other words process (both in analysis
and design synthesis) is favoured over a static end form.
Christopher Grey

7. The notion of site propelling landscape design work interfaces
with the emerging amalgam of practices known as landscape urbanism,
a phrase taken here to be the conceptualization of and design
and planning for urban landscapes that draw from an
understanding of
● landscape’disciplinarity (history of ideas),
● functions (ecologies and economies),
● formal and spatial attributes (both natural and cultural
organizations,systems,and formations),and
● processes (temporal qualities) impacting many scales of work.
Julia Czerniak

8. [Landscape Urbanism is an] ‘inside-out reversal of the
city/landscape relationship… placing open space concerns at the
core of planning and design of urban areas’.
Ignacio Bunster-Ossa

9. ● Include within the purview of design all that is in the landscape—infrastructure and buildings, etc., and
shuffle across scales so as to bridge the divides between landscape design, landscape ecology, and
landscape planning.
● Bring greater creativity to planning operations and greater rationality to design operations.
● Conceptualize and then directly engage the city and its landscape as a hybridised, natural, chaotic ecology.
● Emphasize the creative and temporal agency of ecology in the formation of urban life as opposed to
envisaging an ideal equilibrium between two entities formerly known as culture and nature.
● Understand and manipulate the forces at work behind things and less with the resultant aesthetic
qualities of things.
● Interpret and then represent landscape systems so that these systems can in turn influence urban forms,
processes, and patterns.
● Prefer open- ended (indeterminate and catalytic) design strategies as opposed to formal compositions and
master plans.
Claims

10. Manifestation of Theories

11. Sri Lanka’s Reservoir & Tank System
● Sri Lanka’s ingenious tank system - comprehensive river basin
development, Sri Lanka’s physical geography, topography and
climate combined to produce a historic need for large scale
irrigation networks.
● Small dams built in narrow valleys along tributaries of main
rivers and streams and sequence of reservoirs linked by
drainage from fields upstreams.
● Large reservoirs built downstream to withstand the force of
flooding and irrigate the plains.
Shannon, Kelly; Manawadu, Samitha. (2007). Indigenous
Landscape Urbanism: Sri Lanka’s Reservoir and Tank System.
Fig. Topography of Sri Lanka forms wet and dry zones
Anaradhapura

12. Sri Lanka’s Reservoir & Tank System
● Sri Lanka’s ingenious tank system - comprehensive river basin
development, Sri Lanka’s physical geography, topography and
climate combined to produce a historic need for large scale
irrigation networks.
● Small dams built in narrow valleys along tributaries of main
rivers and streams and sequence of reservoirs linked by
drainage from fields upstreams.
● Large reservoirs built downstream to withstand the force of
flooding and irrigate the plains.
Shannon, Kelly; Manawadu, Samitha. (2007). Indigenous
Landscape Urbanism: Sri Lanka’s Reservoir and Tank System.
Anaradhapura
Fig. Upper Walawe Basin (Anaradhapura)

13. ● Aim to link 14 rivers that drain from
Himalayas
● Build dams and connect link these rivers by
Canals, Aqueduct, Tunnels, 300 reservoirs
● 40% of GDP
● Garland of canals
● Drought in 2002
River Interlinking Project
Source: When the rivers run dry / Fred Pearce 2006

14. ● "Technological hubris. India already has
half-completed water projects that have cost
billions of dollars, which should be finished first.
He says that across arid India, three quarters of
the monsoon rains still evade dams and wash
into the sea, Better to try to collect that rain as it
falls onto fields than to try to carry water across
the country."
Source: When the rivers run dry / Fred
Pearce 2006
● The rampant pollution in most northern
rivers will result in interchange down the
canals
River Interlinking Project
● Bangladesh may fear the rivers
Farakka Barrage Dam

15. Bridges, Overpasses and Underpasses for Crabs
● Between 40 and 50
million red crabs live on
Christmas Island
● Every year the crabs
migrate from the forest
to the ocean to breed
● The crabs congest the
island's roads, forcing
many to close due to the
mass movement
"A lot of the roads just get so densely covered in this living red carpet, so national parks close them up for a couple
of months to let the crabs do their thing,"
Source: Kirsty Faulkner/Mercury Press

16. Christmas Island Australia has bridges and underpasses for crabs to prevent them from being crushed under the
wheels of vehicles or any casualty to occur during mass migration.
Watching the Red Crab Migration
Fig. Crabs migrating through Underpass Fig. Crabs migrating through Bridge
Source: Wondrous World Images

17. Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative
● A series of animal
bridges are build to
help wildlife to
navigate their way to
the forest.
● Reindeer viaducts in
Sweden will keep herds
safe from traffic as they
roam in search of
grazing.
Source: Ross MacDonald/Banff National Park
Fig. A wildlife overpass in Banff national park, in the Canadian Rockies

18. Driving underwater: the Veluwemeer Aqueduct
● The Veluwemeer Aqueduct
is located in Harderwijk,
Eastern Netherlands built in
2002.
● 25 meters long by 19 meters
wide and is a shallow
3-meter deep water bridge
that allows for small boats
and other water vehicles to
pass with ease.
Source: Atlas Obscura
Fig. Driving underwater: the Veluwemeer Aqueduct

19. ● During the design of this unique passage,
engineers chose to construct the waterway
over the N302 road, where 28,000 vehicles
pass each day.
● Its purpose is to connect the continental
Netherlands with Flevoland by maintaining
the identity of the island and to to save
money in relation to other waterway passage
techniques. the , the largest artificial island
in the world.
Source: Atlas Obscura

20. ● Sarkhej Roza is a royal complex of mosques,
tombs, and palaces located in Sarkhej
built-in 1451, a suburb of Ahmedabad
approximately six miles southwest of the old
city.
● The complex consists of a large man-made
water tank with several tombs and a
congregational mosque clustered on its
northeastern corner, and two palaces on the
south and western sides.
Sarkhej Roza: Ahmedabad
Source: Sangath, Ahmedabad

21. ● Originally, A number of small pavilions along with a
mosque, a supply sluice gate, and king’s and queen’s
palaces to build around a water tank, the Sarkhej lake
was excavated to serve the religious purpose of ablution
and, recreation and climate conditioning that were
quite functional until the late twentieth century before
rapid urbanization in the catchment of its adjacent
interconnected feeder Makarba lake took place.
● Unfettered development in the past two decades has
encroached the common catchment of
Makarba–Sarkhej lake cascade by almost 50 percent.
● The then perennial sacred the Sarkhej complex which
was built around manmade tank is now a drying
sewage disposal site.
Source: Archnet

22. Vijayanagar - Hampi
Vijayanagara was ‘not a uni-centered capital city’. It was
intentionally developed as a multi-polar urban settlement,
where each settlement – or ‘pura’ (town) – had a
centrality of its own.
Each settlement was defined and dominated by a temple
complex dedicated to the presiding deity with a large
bazaar street axial to the temple.
Further excavations in the site reveals an intimate
relationship between the settlement pattern and the
watershed characteristic of the region.
https://rolfgross.dreamhosters.com/IndianArtArchitecture/Ha
mpi-Vijayanagar/Hampi-Vjayanagar.html

23. Interconnected
water tanks
https://rolfgross.dreamhosters.com/IndianArtArchitecture/Ha
mpi-Vijayanagar/Hampi-Vjayanagar.html

25. Bangalore
Landscape was an initiator of the settlement for the city
of Bangalore. Also called the “Land of Thousand lakes”
The tanks were man-made lakes that served as water
reservoirs during dry seasons.
The growth of the city of Bangalore based on such
principles of water management syntax points to a close
resemblance to the city of Vijayanagara.
It was a process of city development, which in time
turned into a traditional pattern of territorial
engagement.
The Water Conserving Syntax:A Rationale for Sustainable
Urban Performance Rahul Paul and Mohan Rao

26. “Contrary to the engineer’s view,there is no dominant watercourse in the
‘land of a thousand tanks’. Instead,there are many possible series reaching
back to the ‘thousandth tank’on the tableland via tenacious connections that
are more political than physical,dependent on managed sluices more than
natural sources.”
Mathur & Da Cunha

27. Landscape Urbanism- A New Concept or Indigenous Process?
“Two overarching themes bind landscape urbanism together.
Firstly,landscape urbanism is a synthetic and multi-scalar discipline leading a range
of other disciplines and interests.
Secondly,the recognition of landscape infrastructure as the primary ordering
device of the city.”
Gareth Doherty

28. Landscape Urbanism - Reformation of the traditional
“The combination of biology and technology to spawn biotech,or of
evolutionary science with business management to produce organizational
dynamics.”
James Corner (2003)

29. Misguided Environmentalism
Source: The Water Conserving Syntax:
A Rationale for Sustainable Urban Performance
Fig. Proposed green belt for the Bangalore Region.
● Advent of urbanisation
● The most striking of this failure of
the water management schemes in
cities has been the city of
Bangalore, India.
● Linkage between Natural system,
resource and Urbanisation is
evident in the Bangalore Revised
Master Plan 2015, which proclaims
that the “green belt plays a very
useful role in limiting urban
sprawl”

30. 262 lakes identified in the Bangalore region in 1960,only 81 exist today—of
these,only 34 are recognized as “live” lakes.
Misguided Environmentalism

31. Conclusion: Water Ethics – Towards a Sustainable Future
The city of Hampi,Vijayanagara serves as model of this engagement and addresses the
potentials and possibilities of integration of this water resource management from both the
domains of landscape and urbanism.
A holistic approach determined by the frameworks of landscape urbanism encourages an
ongoing discussion on the process of effectively structuring space and ordering land
based on perceived urban needs,visual characteristics,demands of the end user
and the territorial landscape.

32. Our Standpoint
The conscious inclusion of natural elements (water bodies,topography,
biodiversity etc.) considering their futuristic participation in the growth of an
efficient urban habitat.
An intervention to strike balance between already existing built and diminishing
landscape feature,such that it forms an integral part of pre-existing natural
system.

33. Thank you