A catalogue of strategies to discover, emphasize or build up the cultural value of sustainable productive landscapes.
Sustainable; a network of interdependence between activities, uses and contexts, all interacting through more or less complex combinations to ensure a positive long-term balance. Natural cycles are included in this network: Nature is not confined, it is inhabited.
Productive; energy, water, food, industry, infrastructure, resources, and recycling, in any kind of context, with special attention to the urban, suburban and rururban.
Landscape; the involvement of very different agents whose interests and aims overlap, developing a palimpsest on a page that was never blank.
The classic definition of landscape implies the presence of an observer: perception. This combination of ‘perception plus ‘production’ is important: Sustainability may well be a question of visualizing production cycles. And beauty. The beauty of productive landscapes.
Objectives
We want to disclose the potential of contemporary productive landscapes, in order to build a new culture of sustainability, and provide the necessary tools for the implementation of specific projects.
Our goal is to find the beauty of sustainable production, so that it can be identified as a landscape from the outset. We want to avoid the principle of obsolescence by which a human work is considered beautiful only when no longer useful.
This new culture requires:
Current state of affairs. Motivation.
In post-industrial Europe, a political and cultural debate over landscape had developed by the eighties, prompted by agents with interests as diverging as those of the environmental movement at one end, and the artists and theorists of Land Art at the other. The crisis that put an end to that decade changed the political agenda, leaving the debate unresolved; but the consciousness of an altered landscape had emerged, as well as the possibility to actively participate in its transformation as a cultural object. At present, an equally diverse set of factors urge us to adopt an innovative strategy to make sense of these altered landscapes, which in the last economic cycle have undergone one of the biggest transformations in its history.
On March the 1st 2008 the European Landscape Convention came into force in Spain. It establishes a framework for the protection, management and planning of European landscapes, combining culture, nature and economy in a sustainable development perspective. Also known as the Florence Convention, it had been signed in 2000 and had been adopted by some regions, but its endorsement as a National Law forces policy makers to consider the study of landscapes as living entities, looking at the forces that may transform them, contrasting the specific values assigned to them by the local population and other stakeholders.
Moreover, the current triple crisis forces us to rethink our relationship with production. The environmental crisis enforces the introduction of new elements into everyday landscape, energy producing devices using renewable sources, proximity production in order to reduce the ecological footprint of transport, renovation and integration of water processing protocols and waste water treatment. The looming oil crisis also affects the increasing presence of renewable energy in the landscape and the transformation of the criteria for transport. The financial crisis and the bursting of the real estate bubble results in a large number of broken processes of transformation of the territory, which is perhaps even more serious, if possible, than the situation of most of the processes that did manage to succeed in last decade, which were guided by short-term commercial agendas.
All these factors define a significant change in environmental, political and economic agendas, but it is important to add that we detected equally important changes in the sociocultural agenda, intimately related to the former. In Society in general, and also among the various branches of the creative professions, there is a growing commitment towards a culture of sustainability.
In this context we opened this line of research under the name Productive Landscapes, proposing a theory of landscape undoing the separation between "pragmatic and poetic" (see Whiston Spirn).
In the various projects we have carried out within this framework, we have developed strategies to discover, emphasize and build up the cultural value of sustainable production landscapes. These projects seek to build open desirable and beautiful spaces that may also produce a profit in energy, economic, social or environmental terms; or vice versa. Our goal is to find the potential of contemporary productive landscapes to build a new culture of sustainability, and provide the necessary tools for its implementation in specific projects.
We underwrite the stringent green agenda, urgently oriented towards control of emissions and ecological footprint, responsible consumption of resources, recycling and reuse, and respect for ecosystems. However, we go one step further and wish for the sustainable productive landscapes of our time to be beautiful. We want the windmills, solar farms, rubbish dumps (which can no longer outside the city limits, as there is no such boundary) to be beautiful. For this reason, we develop projects in which the choreography of the production can be admirable from the point of view of an observer, whose presence is required in the classic definition of landscape. We are striving for a desirable future, always from the dual perspective of the consumer and the environment.
This approach is distinctly contemporary and in order to understand some of its mechanisms it is necessary to understand its evolution in history.
The beauty of the agricultural landscape productive is stated in the Romantic era, a period in which the visual becomes the primary method of culture building. This change takes place during the Industrial Revolution, when the fields are no longer the main source of wealth allowing for the contemplation of the agricultural in idle mode and not as useful or productive chores. Obsolescence, the past and nostalgia, build up the romantic ideal. Later in this paper we address this issue in more depth.
We want to make sure that sustainable productive landscapes are beautiful, that they can be identified as a landscape from the outset and not governed by the principle of obsolescence, by which a human production becomes culturally beautiful when no longer useful.
Methodology: applied research
Since 2008 we have been developing a catalog of strategies to discover, underline or build up the cultural value of sustainable production landscapes.
Each of them explores one or more fields of production, as classified later in this work (see our text Productive Landscapes, and our article "Farming" in the book: Results Europan 10, pgs 188-191, Paris, April 2010, ISBN: 2-914296-18-5)
I. Productive Golf. Strategies to recover the interrupted landscapes left unfinished by bankrupt golf resort developments in Southeast Spain. We focus on ‘splurge’ as the main attractor of Golf (splurging water, land, time). Our target is to substitute this attractor with beautiful production; producing wealth, not wasting it. Client: Gov. of Murcia.
II. Passing trains. Intervention in an industrial estate along the high-speed train line approaching the historic city of Toledo. The commission was a fence to hide it. Instead, we turned it into a beautiful sight for the passengers. Client: Gov. of Castilla La Mancha.
III. Soundscapes. An educational strategy to encourage demand for sound quality in Madrid's commercial street-level floors; a specific proposal to improve soundscape. Client: Madrid City.
IV. OostCampus Park. A productive park, built with recycled materials. Park activities, cycle and pedestrian lanes coexist in harmony with yards for storage and the management of construction material. Client: City of Oostkamp.
V. Gran Vía Interface. A study of Urban Landscape in Madrid's Gran Via, as an Interface between citizens, companies, businesses and institutions. Client: Fundación Telefónica.
VI. Haname-ko. Turning a cherry tree and grapevine plantation into a municipal park and covered theatre. Client: Gov. of Extremadura.
VII. Gateway to Barcelona. Overlaying an energy farm on the roofs of an industrial estate, turning it into a piece of land art at the motorway entrance to Barcelona. Client: Barcelona City.
ConclusionsWe think it is important to start out analysing the prestige making elements of landscape, the reasons why society perceives it as beautiful. Our work implies a transfer of prestige making elements towards productive landscapes, inducing a shift from a NIMBY (not in my back yard) situation towards a PIMFY (please in my front yard) phenomenon.
Besides the positive ecological, economic and cultural consequences of this approach to productive landscapes, it can be a glocal instrument, a key tool for creating social and national identity, as pointed out by Mitchell in Landscape and Power.
Sustainable; a network of interdependence between activities, uses and contexts, all interacting through more or less complex combinations to ensure a positive long-term balance. Natural cycles are included in this network: Nature is not confined, it is inhabited.
Productive; energy, water, food, industry, infrastructure, resources, and recycling, in any kind of context, with special attention to the urban, suburban and rururban.
Landscape; the involvement of very different agents whose interests and aims overlap, developing a palimpsest on a page that was never blank.
The classic definition of landscape implies the presence of an observer: perception. This combination of ‘perception plus ‘production’ is important: Sustainability may well be a question of visualizing production cycles. And beauty. The beauty of productive landscapes.
Objectives
We want to disclose the potential of contemporary productive landscapes, in order to build a new culture of sustainability, and provide the necessary tools for the implementation of specific projects.
Our goal is to find the beauty of sustainable production, so that it can be identified as a landscape from the outset. We want to avoid the principle of obsolescence by which a human work is considered beautiful only when no longer useful.
This new culture requires:
- a language, articulating productive devices and fields into landscape
- a network of practices, to ensure the daily use of that language
- a communicable identity, that positions the viewer with respect to the created landscape
Current state of affairs. Motivation.
In post-industrial Europe, a political and cultural debate over landscape had developed by the eighties, prompted by agents with interests as diverging as those of the environmental movement at one end, and the artists and theorists of Land Art at the other. The crisis that put an end to that decade changed the political agenda, leaving the debate unresolved; but the consciousness of an altered landscape had emerged, as well as the possibility to actively participate in its transformation as a cultural object. At present, an equally diverse set of factors urge us to adopt an innovative strategy to make sense of these altered landscapes, which in the last economic cycle have undergone one of the biggest transformations in its history.
On March the 1st 2008 the European Landscape Convention came into force in Spain. It establishes a framework for the protection, management and planning of European landscapes, combining culture, nature and economy in a sustainable development perspective. Also known as the Florence Convention, it had been signed in 2000 and had been adopted by some regions, but its endorsement as a National Law forces policy makers to consider the study of landscapes as living entities, looking at the forces that may transform them, contrasting the specific values assigned to them by the local population and other stakeholders.
Moreover, the current triple crisis forces us to rethink our relationship with production. The environmental crisis enforces the introduction of new elements into everyday landscape, energy producing devices using renewable sources, proximity production in order to reduce the ecological footprint of transport, renovation and integration of water processing protocols and waste water treatment. The looming oil crisis also affects the increasing presence of renewable energy in the landscape and the transformation of the criteria for transport. The financial crisis and the bursting of the real estate bubble results in a large number of broken processes of transformation of the territory, which is perhaps even more serious, if possible, than the situation of most of the processes that did manage to succeed in last decade, which were guided by short-term commercial agendas.
All these factors define a significant change in environmental, political and economic agendas, but it is important to add that we detected equally important changes in the sociocultural agenda, intimately related to the former. In Society in general, and also among the various branches of the creative professions, there is a growing commitment towards a culture of sustainability.
In this context we opened this line of research under the name Productive Landscapes, proposing a theory of landscape undoing the separation between "pragmatic and poetic" (see Whiston Spirn).
In the various projects we have carried out within this framework, we have developed strategies to discover, emphasize and build up the cultural value of sustainable production landscapes. These projects seek to build open desirable and beautiful spaces that may also produce a profit in energy, economic, social or environmental terms; or vice versa. Our goal is to find the potential of contemporary productive landscapes to build a new culture of sustainability, and provide the necessary tools for its implementation in specific projects.
We underwrite the stringent green agenda, urgently oriented towards control of emissions and ecological footprint, responsible consumption of resources, recycling and reuse, and respect for ecosystems. However, we go one step further and wish for the sustainable productive landscapes of our time to be beautiful. We want the windmills, solar farms, rubbish dumps (which can no longer outside the city limits, as there is no such boundary) to be beautiful. For this reason, we develop projects in which the choreography of the production can be admirable from the point of view of an observer, whose presence is required in the classic definition of landscape. We are striving for a desirable future, always from the dual perspective of the consumer and the environment.
This approach is distinctly contemporary and in order to understand some of its mechanisms it is necessary to understand its evolution in history.
The beauty of the agricultural landscape productive is stated in the Romantic era, a period in which the visual becomes the primary method of culture building. This change takes place during the Industrial Revolution, when the fields are no longer the main source of wealth allowing for the contemplation of the agricultural in idle mode and not as useful or productive chores. Obsolescence, the past and nostalgia, build up the romantic ideal. Later in this paper we address this issue in more depth.
We want to make sure that sustainable productive landscapes are beautiful, that they can be identified as a landscape from the outset and not governed by the principle of obsolescence, by which a human production becomes culturally beautiful when no longer useful.
Methodology: applied research
Since 2008 we have been developing a catalog of strategies to discover, underline or build up the cultural value of sustainable production landscapes.
Each of them explores one or more fields of production, as classified later in this work (see our text Productive Landscapes, and our article "Farming" in the book: Results Europan 10, pgs 188-191, Paris, April 2010, ISBN: 2-914296-18-5)
I. Productive Golf. Strategies to recover the interrupted landscapes left unfinished by bankrupt golf resort developments in Southeast Spain. We focus on ‘splurge’ as the main attractor of Golf (splurging water, land, time). Our target is to substitute this attractor with beautiful production; producing wealth, not wasting it. Client: Gov. of Murcia.
II. Passing trains. Intervention in an industrial estate along the high-speed train line approaching the historic city of Toledo. The commission was a fence to hide it. Instead, we turned it into a beautiful sight for the passengers. Client: Gov. of Castilla La Mancha.
III. Soundscapes. An educational strategy to encourage demand for sound quality in Madrid's commercial street-level floors; a specific proposal to improve soundscape. Client: Madrid City.
IV. OostCampus Park. A productive park, built with recycled materials. Park activities, cycle and pedestrian lanes coexist in harmony with yards for storage and the management of construction material. Client: City of Oostkamp.
V. Gran Vía Interface. A study of Urban Landscape in Madrid's Gran Via, as an Interface between citizens, companies, businesses and institutions. Client: Fundación Telefónica.
VI. Haname-ko. Turning a cherry tree and grapevine plantation into a municipal park and covered theatre. Client: Gov. of Extremadura.
VII. Gateway to Barcelona. Overlaying an energy farm on the roofs of an industrial estate, turning it into a piece of land art at the motorway entrance to Barcelona. Client: Barcelona City.
ConclusionsWe think it is important to start out analysing the prestige making elements of landscape, the reasons why society perceives it as beautiful. Our work implies a transfer of prestige making elements towards productive landscapes, inducing a shift from a NIMBY (not in my back yard) situation towards a PIMFY (please in my front yard) phenomenon.
Besides the positive ecological, economic and cultural consequences of this approach to productive landscapes, it can be a glocal instrument, a key tool for creating social and national identity, as pointed out by Mitchell in Landscape and Power.
