SPOOL is a journal initiative in the field of architecture and the built environment
An interactive simulation of control and coordination strategies for swarms of autonomous construction robots
There is an established idea – found in science fiction, architectural studios, and scientific papers alike – of stainable buildings crafted from bio-based materials, colonized by plant and animal life, and blending seamlessly into the natural surroundings. Such buildings might one day be built, maintained and remodelled by swarms of autonomous robots, allowing them to evolve in response to the changing needs of their inhabitants. Inspired by that vision, this paper contributes to the field of swarm intelligence with a focus on robotic construction and human-swarm interaction. Along with a short literature review on robotic building, swarm intelligence and biocompatible building materials, the paper presents an open-source simulation of abstracted termite-like swarm construction. The focus is mainly on human-swarm interaction, specifically how to influence the emergent behaviour of an autonomous swarm in order to elicit a desired outcome while retaining the robustness and adaptability of a self-organized system. The simulator is used to demonstrate a set of four autonomous swarm behaviours that are representative of construction tasks.
Copyright (c) 2024 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Untangling Stakeholder Dynamics in Circularity of the Built Environment
Comics are a known method to visually link characters to context through time. This article explores the medium of comics to untangle stakeholder dynamics in the context of a complex theme such as circularity of the built environment. Circularity of the built environment tailors concepts of circular economy to the field of construction and urban development. Relying mostly on optimization strategies, context-specific characteristics such as stakeholder agency and spatial preconditions are often disregarded as resources in the design of circularity projects. This results in one-size-fits all circularity instruments formalized in generic toolboxes. Circularity instruments should additionally engage with stakeholders, recognizing complexity and surfacing the resourcefulness of the territory. This comics series follows the researcher from analysis to design hypothesis, clarifying complexity at hand from the researcher perspective, including stakeholder agendas, spatial conditions, barriers and opportunities. Part of an ongoing action-research project, the self-reflective comics show parts of a researcher’s journey untangling circularity in the built environment in its multiple stakeholder dimensions. It includes data sourced from mixed method research, such as ethnographic fieldwork, semi-structured interviews, and archival research on two Flemish industry parks, Kortrijk-Noord and Leuven-Haasrode. These comics function as a narrative assemblage method for critical analysis, bringing together different data sources, and rendering our research process on circularity contextual and visual. Additionally, the comic allows us to communicate, challenge, and begin to design with (hidden) stakeholder agency.
Copyright (c) 2023 Ellen Verbiest, Julie Marin, Bruno De Meulder, Andrew Vande Moere https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This paper presents a comparison of different workflows for mobile robotic fabrication using modular building blocks. Different localization, locomotion, and interlocking building systems strategies are tested and compared. The work is influenced by related research into ecosystems of building parts, design software, and builder robots to digitize the construction work. For localization, it compares LIDARs, reacTIVision, and ArUco markers. As a mobile platform, a MIR100 robot platform, a 3.3 m linear axis, and a manual trolly are used. Interlocking components such as wood slates, custom-made bricks, and interlocking wood building blocks are used. The research is in the field of collective robotic construction (CRC) using bespoke robots designed in tandem with specific discrete building blocks.
Industrial robotic arms commonly require specialist knowledge for machine functions. Specifically, training cobots for work sequences is time consuming and complex when task complexity increases, such as through differentiation in tool adaptations or work processes. This research explores robot versatility for a context of domestic environments (such as a kitchen/workshop), where work processes are approached as a hybrid scenario, with setup for integration of a tool variety whereby human-robot teams collaborate. The paper discusses a) novel workflows based on a palette of work tools adopted for robot tooling to translate manual human tasks to human-robot tasks; b) an initial script series for work processes that represents modelling, planning, simulation, and implementation; c) a framework for task division through action sets based on Therbligs that supports users; and d) an empirical evaluation of the approach through a series of user studies. In a post-carbon context, previously autonomous robots are required to become more versatile in terms of productivity, scalability, safety and skill criteria and environmental impact. This research extends beyond traditional kitchens to include workshop and fabrication scenarios characterised by the complexity and variability of task applications, guided by detailed action packages that explore robotic work for modular components or fluid and liquid materials; heat and assembly-based processing; and bridges from food preparation to fabrication and manufacturing tasks.
In-Situ vs. Prefab 3D Printing Considerations for CO2-free Pop-up Architecture
This paper revisits existing pop-up typologies in architecture to identify opportunities for new shelter models to address current housing demands and future habitation requirements on Mars. It presents advancements in design to production methodologies based on computational and robotic techniques to meet current requirements and affordances while integrating sustainable and adaptive functionalities. The main goal is to advance pop-up architecture by developing methods and technologies for rapidly deployable on- and off-Earth habitats while addressing challenges of carbon-free architecture by means of 3D printing. By reviewing state-of-the-art in-situ vs. prefab 3D printing approaches with a particular focus on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) supported Design-to-Robotic-Production-Assembly and -Operation (D2RPA&O) methods developed at TU Delft material, process, and energy efficiency using locally sourced materials is achieved.
Advancing Sustainable Approaches in Architecture by Means of Design-to-Robotic-Production
The construction sector accounts for about 40% of material-, energy- and process-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions , which can be reduced by introducing data-driven Circular Economy (CE) approaches . For instance, Design-to-Robotic-Production (D2RP) methods developed in the Robotic building lab, at Technical University (TU) Delft are embedding data-driven systems into building processes. Their potential to contribute to sustainability through increased material-, process-, and energy-efficiency has been explored in several case studies that are presented in this paper. The assumption is that by using these methods and reclaimed wood to minimize demand for new resources and reduce deforestation along the way, CO2 emissions can be considerably reduced.
circular- and AI-supported robotic approaches
Human-Robot Interaction for Carbon-free Architecture
The Spool CpA #6 issue on Human-Robot Interaction for Carbon-free Architecture reviews current tendencies in autonomous construction and human-robotic interaction in architecture. It aims at affirming and/or challenging research agendas in the domain of architectural robots and attempts to answer questions about (i) the fundamental framing of post-carbon autonomous construction, (ii) the interdependencies between machines, humans, and materials, and (iii) the different imple-mentation timeframes ranging from continuous transformation to leapfrogging.
Dialogues on Architecture, published in various issues of Spool CpA, is a series of dialogues between researchers and practitioners, who are embracing the intellectual model of high technology and are involved in its advancement and application in architecture. Dialog #6 presents discussions risen during an online symposium on challenges of the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry, which is facing a threefold challenge involving the (i) digital transformation of all design and planning processes, (ii) automation of construction processes, and (iii) reconsideration of energy, process, and material use. These challenges involve issues with respect to productivity, scalability, safety, labour skill shift, and environmental impact. Acknowledging that there is a particular urgency in transferring effective solutions from research to building practice to meet significant carbon reduction goals by 2040, the one-day symposium organized as an online event in 2022 , Human-Robot Interaction for Post-Carbon Architecture (HRI4PCA), was an opportunity to make an inventory of current tendencies in autonomous construction and human-robotic interaction in architecture. It aims at affirming and/or challenging research agendas in the domain of architectural robots.
This paper discusses the notion of ‘thought exhibition’ proposed by the late Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel at ZKM | Center for Art and Media (Karlsruhe, Germany) and some of its most central approaches to imagining new relationships to the world we inhabit. The analysis particularly considers the last of the exhibitions developed by Weibel and Latour under this curatorial concept, Critical Zones: Observatories for Earthly Politics (2020–22), the conceptual preparation of which the author took part in. Critical Zones utilized the spatio-aesthetic capacities of an exhibition to test, in the mode of an embodied thought experiment, a relational understanding of the world inhabited and shaped by interdependent lifeforms—a world that only artificially, through Western hegemonic thought and actions, can be separated into somewhat detached spheres of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, where inhabitants of the latter demote the former to resources to be extracted. This paper discusses the spatio-aesthetic experimentation enabled by the exhibition to challenge such dichotomous separations. It investigates the curatorial concept by focusing on two central works: CZO Space (2020) by Alexandra Arènes & Soheil Hajmirbaba and Flash Point (Timekeeper) (2018) by Sarah Sze. As ‘cosmograms’ (John Tresch, Bruno Latour), both works describe a relationship to a world that is not one of coherence and dominance but that respects its particularities and assemblages.
Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This visual essay explores the translation of complex environments through representations with attributes that are summarized as ‘interdimensional’. These attributes are not yet elaborated, but the term emphasizes that these representations integrate different dimensions of experiencing and understanding various spatial scales and temporal perspectives. The process of producing these representations requires the Landscape Architect to encounter, investigate, and communicate life, materiality, and processes in an approach that values attentiveness and creativity. The representations discussed were developed in the context of a design studio at the University of Edinburgh, which was elaborated and led by the author and situated within the Highland Boundary Fault Zone in Scotland. A studio collective, composed of Master’s students in landscape architecture over two years, was encouraged to traverse the fault zone, taking into account social, ecological, and geological fractures, as well as points of tension and upheaval. Operating from within the ‘critical zone’, the late Bruno Latour’s and his collaborators’ provocation has been adopted: that working from this perspective is necessary to recognize that we humans are ‘living among the living’ (Société d’Objets Cartographiques [SOC], 2018). The author’s, and the design studio’s approach encourages experimental drawing and making to develop ‘ecologically explicit’ landscape architecture—landscape interpretations and design propositions—that foreground and support more-than-human worlds.
This article explores the agency of representations to open up perspectives in more-than-human landscape design processes. It follows and investigates the approach of re-representations—multimodal assemblages that narrate landscapes as zones constituted by specific socio-material processes. Methods of research through and on design are combined: students’ experiments of designing with representations were set up in a landscape architecture design studio at the Technical University Berlin in the context of a deeply changing wetness regime in Lusatia, Germany. These design methods are investigated by synthesizing and comparing them with the aim of reflecting them in a post-humanist, new materialist discourse on the understanding of landscape and critical mapping. The findings concentrate on the most crucial agencies these re-representations have, to reorient design processes and reshape what is understood as landscape design in the shift to more-than-human worlds.
This essay explores integrating experimental graphic methods into the design process to engage with more-than-human worlds. It is based on the graduation project ‘RE-Peat: Different Futures for the Peat Polders, a Social-Ecological Landscape in the Netherlands,’ which aims to transform degraded peatlands. Through various representation techniques, such as hand-drawn perception drawings and Gaia-graphic representation, peat is positioned as an actor and a design tool. Such methods aim to foster environmental sensitivity and holistic design ideas, acknowledging the needs of both human and non-human actors.
In the urgent context of climate adaptation, enhancing representational and design tools within the landscape discipline is crucial for building a comprehensive understanding of the natural processes driving phenomena in hazardous landscapes. Moreover, the context of the more-than-human paradigm poses new challenges. If we view water, soil, and rocks as lively processes and nonhuman actants—agents with their own agencies and rights—how can mapping practices help us better understand, interpret, and recognize their processes, movements, and behaviors? Based on an interpretative cartographic technique using LiDAR imagery, this paper introduces a series of cartographic experiments that depict water and rock as dynamic, lively processes. The resulting maps aim to enrich our representations of the forces driving natural hazards and provide a new “language” that enhances our understanding of their multiple agencies.
This visual essay explores the translation of complex environments through representations with attributes that are summarized as ‘interdimensional’. These attributes are not elaborated yet, but the term emphasizes that these representations integrate different dimensions of experiencing and understanding various spatial scales and temporal perspectives. The process of producing these representations requires the landscape architect to encounter, investigate, and communicate life, materiality, and processes in an approach that appreciates attentiveness and creativity. The representations discussed were developed in the context of a design studio at the University of Edinburgh that was elaborated and led by the author and situated within the Highland Boundary Fault Zone in Scotland. A studio collective composed of Master’s students in Landscape Architecture over two years has been encouraged to traverse the fault zone, taking into account social, ecological, and geological fractures, as well as points of tension and upheaval. Operating from within the ‘critical zone’, the provocation of the late Bruno Latour and his collaborators has been adopted: that working from this perspective is necessary to recognize that we humans are ‘living among the living’ (Société d’Objets Cartographiques [SOC] 2018). The design studio’s approach encourages experimental drawing and making to develop ‘ecologically explicit’ landscape architecture—landscape interpretations and design propositions—that foreground and support more-than-human worlds.
This paper explores directions for a more-than-human conceptualization of urban space. We present five ‘multispecies collages’ for Marais Wiels (Wiels Marshes) in Brussels. This brownfield, inhabited by a wide range of animal species, has been the subject of various construction plans and debates over the past 20 years. In the article, we will first argue that the existing imaginaries for the site, as propelled by the designers and policymakers, fail to acknowledge its multispecies complexity. Such blindness can be linked to the analytical frameworks and representational methods used by urban design professionals. We will then explore an alternative methodology to read Marais Wiels as a space of (non)human cohabitation through a mapping and collage exercise. In doing so, we use alternative data sources and speculative drawing methods. We will show how these multispecies collages, built around five perspectives, reveal a more relational understanding of the site. We conclude by confronting existing spatial imaginaries with our re-reading of Marais Wiels and reflect on the collages as an attempt to bridge the gap between more-than-human theory and urban design practice.
In the thread Landscape Metropolis, SPOOL addresses the interrelation between urban, infrastructural, rural, and living formations as a dynamic, intertwined, and layered landscape structure. Triggered by the profound changes of the Anthropocene, the complexity of the metropolitan landscape asks for reorientation when addressing physical space as well as spatial investigation and theory, in terms of aesthetic appreciation, designerly concepts, guidelines for planning and governance, and design theoretical understandings. Spatial design responses to this growing complexity cover a broad spectrum of areas. They range from a focus on negotiation processes between human actors and demands—such as approaching the need for inclusivity, accessibility, and democracy in urban spaces (e.g., Landscape Metropolis #5 – Park Politics)—to a technical or ecological systems-oriented focus on managing landscapes, as in landscape ecology. Further dimensions open when taking a post-humanist view, understanding spaces as animated worlds consisting of a multitude of actors like waters, soils, animals, microbes, plants, and technology, in which humans live entangled, in dependencies with other cohabitants (see, for example, Barad, 2007; Haraway, 2016; Latour & Porter, 2017; Tsing, 2012). How can designers and design disciplines reposition their roles toward this more-than-human, and how does it change the alignment of spatial interventions—the processes of designing in landscapes? In this SPOOL issue, Representing the More-Than-Human, we inquire about the role of visual representations in this reorientation: How can drawings—and the act of drawing—mappings—and the act of mapping—exhibitions and the act of exhibiting help to practice this approximation toward what we are part of: the more-than-human? In doing so, we locate ourselves in a rapidly intensifying scientific and practical field. Spatial-oriented disciplines are increasingly in dialogue with approaches evolving in post-humanism and new materialism. Notions like multispecies ‘making-with’ (Haraway, 2016, p. 55)—highlighting that nothing exists in isolation and everything evolves in dependencies with other entities—or ‘vibrant matter’ (Bennett, 2010)—proclaiming material’s agency—are translated to spatial inquiry (see, for example, Katsikis and Muñoz Sanz, 2024). The attention to mappings and their agency in this context is growing. Research and experiments are increasing on what is often called countermappings—as they provide alternative narratives of spaces by countering the ignorance about processes and entities—in this case, the more-than-human. This issue aims to contribute to this current debate by opening a polyphony that addresses multiple landscape-related dimensions—bringing a new focus on the strands that connect to spatial design. For, as discussed in the previous SPOOL issue on representation, the potential of visual representations that are in dialogue with rethinking space is ‘to create awareness, understanding, (…), and, most of all, to move beyond documentation and to inform the process, the focus, and the intention of the spatial design itself’ (Bobbink et al., 2022, p. 1). The constant reorientation to the contested field of ‘landscape’ is a central concern in spatial theories and practice. In a way, more-than-human entities have been part of this process from the beginning. In spatial plans, entities such as water bodies, meadows, and forests have always been the subject of study and design. In reflecting on how landscapes are represented, however, it becomes clear that landscape-oriented disciplines are—as are all other disciplines—mainly influenced by anthropocentric mechanisms. The landscape is predominantly understood and designed as the background for human action. More-than-human actors remain objects in drawings, mappings, and plans. Here the transformative potential of more-than-human thinking sets in. For the landscape-related disciplines, this means focusing on the dimension of the more-than-human in the central matter—the landscape—and critically examining where it is to be uncovered and reinvited, as it has been overlooked, simplified, neglected, or suppressed. With all the potential of visual representations, it is crucial to be critical, as in any transformation process. This offers a spectrum of approaches for reflection, emphasizing that representations of the physical landscape imply making decisions, prioritizing, and directing the focus, constantly arising in power structures and from a way of thinking. Like all other humans, designers will never be ‘innocent’ (Haraway, 1988, p. 597) in the messy realities of our times. Decisions are also to be made regarding the complexity and accessibility of the representations. There are limitations to what a reader of a drawing can comprehend; should it be understood by experts or a broader audience? The tension between oversimplifying complexities and comprehensibility is also a point of discussion in this issue. The question of decision-making and accessibility is directly related to the political dimension of representing the more-than-human. It is a constant process of negotiating, interpreting, and narrating the interests of humans and more-than-humans and their dependencies. This must be considered to avoid misinterpretation as an apolitical or supposedly neutral approach. The dangers are easy to imagine: ‘The idea of entangled socio-ecological systems ruled by the laws of self-regulation and co-adaptation, with caring, protecting, and respecting as collective ethos, replaces contested interests and political struggle’ (De Block & Vicenzotti, 2018, p. 154). In this posture—bringing together excitement about the potential of representing the more-than-human and a critical attitude—this issue touches on a spectrum of areas where representations of more-than-human worlds affect spatial design processes, discussing their potentials and limits. The contributions reveal the agency of these representations in a range of areas, from conceptualizing space and landscapes anew to opening new perspectives for design interventions. All contributions can be read as approaches on how to, in this context, address the hyper-complex entanglements of actors, relationships, agencies, and dependencies through representations. The issue opens with a discussion on Latour’s concept of ‘critical zones’ (Latour & Weibel, 2020) and how this can be approached and developed through different ways of representation. The notion of critical zones, which is groundbreaking in spatializing more-than-human thinking, is discussed in many articles in this issue. It offers a new perspective on the ‘critical’ space that should be taken care of—the ‘porous and permeable layer’, a ‘skin, a varnish, a biofilm’, in which more-than-human actors are in correspondence, constituting it all the time (Arènes et al., 2018, p. 2). Irrgang, co-curator of the critical zone’s exhibition at ZKM Centre for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, investigates the potential of ‘thought exhibitions’ and some of its most central approaches to get a grasp on the notion of critical zones and to imagine new relationships to the world we inhabit. These approaches can be interpreted as rethinking landscape and space through representing entangled, more-than-human processes. Three more articles resonate with this theory and investigate how the concept of critical zones translates into representations related to spatial conception and design processes. Anna Rhodes’ visual essay reflects on various experiments evolving from a design studio, exploring an area in Scotland through understanding it as a specific critical zone, coined by geological forces of deep time. The essay emphasizes the impact of representations in the design processes, which are also brought together in an exhibition format that enables a multifaceted narration. Also in the context of a design studio, Neuhaus and Orduz reflect on a method of matter and process-oriented mapping—rerepresentation—and investigate how it enables design strategies and approaches as recursive and relational processes. Their investigation is located in critical zones focusing on wetness, opening up perspectives on what designing in more-than-human worlds can be. Bobbink and Soshnikova highlight, in correspondence with other mappings, the agency of ‘Gaia-graphies’ (Arènes et al., 2018)—not so much as a method of investigation or communication, but in the first place as a tool to inform innovative design processes. Here the act of drawing—‘drawing’ interdependent relationships as a verb—informs the process, content, and the design’s aims. Moreover, the authors give centre stage to material processes, in this case peat subsidence and growth, and thus engage the soil in the analyzing and designing process. The following articles engage in the debate from different perspectives that overlap with the previous articles in translating concepts of animated matter. Mussault understands water, soil, and rocks as lively processes. She investigates how mapping can help to recognize and interpret their dynamics and behaviours to enhance their agency to plan and strategize not against but with the forces (Clément, 2014). Likewise, Goldinger discusses the agency of material, here sea ice, by focusing on its melting and drifting character. She uses explorative scenario building and interdisciplinary, multimedia material experimentations to understand the ice as a formative design tool for marine spatial planning. The drawings map the ice on its path from the Siberian nurseries to the melt passage of the Fram Strait as an integral piece of landscape infrastructure. Bracke et al. combine different forms of representations into multispecies collages. With this approach they aim to mobilise various data sources to unravel the interdependent relationships on the site they investigate and include them in discussions about its future with multiple more-than-human actors. These collages aim to create awareness and approachability amongst various (human) stakeholders and, therefore, must be simple and easy to read. The issue shows a wide range of directions and approaches of representation (e.g., hand-drawn mappings, multidimensional diagrammatic representations, filmic approaches). It discusses how different focuses and methods can bring new ideas and aspects to be involved in more-than-human worlds. Various topics are still open to discussion, such as further investigations into design processes and the spatial implementation of these attempts, e.g., through guidelines or governance approaches. All articles introduce aspects that reflect and enrich design processes, ranging from orienting these processes by giving ideas on how to rethink space through representations (Irrgang) to reflecting on how standard methods of spatial representation are insufficient in meeting these dimensions (e.g., Bobbink). Further, the relationship between tools, and their strengths and limits, is shown. Their different abilities in enabling approachability, complex narrations, or the depth of rethinking epistemologies show a large diversity (compare, e.g., Neuhaus et al.). All contributions highlight that the authors of representations are and will be the medium through which materials and other actors like flora and fauna get a more dimensional voice and, hopefully, a louder one. The issue can be seen as a contribution at the beginning phase of an evolving discourse which integrates various disciplines and preludes a profound reorientation toward the more-than-human landscapes in spatial disciplines.
This paper expands on the term ‘urban forest’ through spatial historical research and via the concept of Forestscape. The city of Delft in the western part of the Netherlands is taken as a case study, with the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries as the sample period. Based on a methodology examining the spatial history of Delft from both a processes and a patterns perspective, we identify six tree planting practices or ‘afforestation events’. These plantings were integral to the early modern cityscape to the extent that the spaces in which they were planted were typologically incomplete without them. We identify tree plantings in group, line, and volume arrangements and posit these arrangements as a foundational scale in a multi-scalar understanding of the urban forest. The term ‘plantation’ formed the leitmotif for these plantings, interpreting natural features such as copses, groves, woods, and forests. The case study also demonstrates how, even in the early modern period, tree arrangements were established for a variety of benefits which ostensibly resonate with the contemporary notion of ‘ecosystem services’, but that were instead part of an alternative sensibility of what ‘city’ and ‘nature’ is. In this frame, the term Forestscape offers a way forward to retroactively interpret the historic urban forest and counter the current binary city-versus-nature discourse. We find that the collection of tree arrangements established in Delft in the period 1500–1800 presents a ‘wooded watermark’ of the city, which in many instances was reanimated with new tree plantings, demonstrating how parts of an urban forest can become a fixture in the morphology of the city and the lives of its citizens. At the regional scale, the extent of tree plantings around Delft with urban ‘roots’ extends far into the urban hinterland, while at the same time, trees and wooded areas with rural ‘roots’ extend well into the urban area. This condition opens a discussion on the inter-relationship between urban and rural realms and challenges the simplistic division between these two worlds apparent in contemporary spatial planning and design.
Urban Forest Living Lab - ‘Urban Symbiosis’
This essay reports on a ‘living lab’ approach to develop a new understanding of below- and above-ground ecological processes as the foundation for robust urban forest habitats. This experimental approach includes a series of design and implementation projects in the city of The Hague, the Netherlands. In contrast to mainstream greening projects led by local governments, these experiments enable urban trees to form more robust forest-like systems by creating a symbiosis between soil (organisms), trees, plant communities, and species. As implemented reference projects are limited, a learning-by-doing methodology was adopted. A transdisciplinary team, consisting of landscape architects/designers, arborists, botanists, municipal and private green space maintenance organizations, has initiated, implemented, and monitored a series of pilot projects. Analysis of ten natural reference locations in the surrounding countryside has helped to define natural and forest-like soil conditions and plant communities for the three living lab locations in the city. Local residents have been engaged in the design, implementation and maintenance process. Sharing insights so far contributes to the transition of reconnecting soil, nature, and people in cities.
Tree Stands Between Forest and Plantation
By contrasting three ongoing research projects along with complementary arguments, this paper explores mediating practices from environmental art and architecture perspectives in the context of industrial forestry and Sweden’s ‘green transition’. The general discourse on ‘green transitions’ significantly amplifies the cultural and economic values of forests within and beyond Sweden. This amplification turns forests into reflexive entities that compel broader value revisions, challenging the extractivist character of modern urbanism. An example is the recent public debate in Sweden about what distinguishes a ‘forest’ (skog) from a ‘plantation’ (plantage). The debate does not reinforce the binary divide between the terms. Instead, it is prompting renewed, if overdue, attention to suppressed Indigenous and rural ancestries, as well as to alternative narratives and techniques that rethink industrial forestry tropes. From that context, our arguments position our respective research works—regarding 1) tree nurseries and climate injustice, 2) the transnational timber industry, and 3) new resource economies for the built environment—in ways which form and encourage research intersections that recognize ancestral, physical, and temporal scales as a potential for enriching the model that is the Swedish ‘green transition’.
Planning, Planting, and Maintaining New Urban Forests in the Metropolitan Area of Milano
Urbanization presents profound challenges to environmental sustainability, characterized by the depletion of green spaces and the degradation of urban ecosystems. Acknowledging the pivotal role of urban forests in mitigating environmental degradation and enhancing urban life quality, cities are increasingly adopting participatory approaches to afforestation. This paper explores the relationship between research and the practical implementation of urban forests, emphasizing the significance of constructing a robust network of stakeholders. The case study selected is the research project called Forestami, which aims to plant three million new trees and shrubs within the metropolitan area of Milan by 2030. This initiative promotes green infrastructure, ecological connections, and related ecosystem services; improves the public health of citizens; increases urban and peri-urban permeable surfaces; and protects and expands territorial biodiversity. By examining the interplay between research insights and on-the-ground implementation, this paper underscores the critical importance of forging a diverse network of stakeholders to navigate the complexities of urban forestry initiatives. Through this collaborative framework, cities can cultivate resilient and vibrant urban ecosystems that enrich the lives of residents while safeguarding the environment for future generations.
Building Biodiverse Urban Forests in the Post-Soviet City
This visual essay outlines how Ruderal, a studio based in Tbilisi, Georgia, has developed new approaches to urban forestry applicable to the legacy of Soviet-era forests. The collapse of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic and the resulting rapid privatization led to the reduction and degradation of Tbilisi’s public spaces. Ruderal’s approach to urban forestry is presented in three projects: the Mtatsminda Pilot Project (including Narikala Ridge), the Betania House Forest Garden, and the Arsenal Oasis Project. The projects illustrate how a new practice of urban forestry has grown from the limitations and opportunities of Tbilisi’s urban context. Ruderal’s practice pursues interventions at multiple scales along the following forestry principles: 1) grafting into baseline conditions; 2) utilising and expanding the ‘fertile section’; 3) incorporating genetic diversity and species competition.
The Forest Figure as Strategic Tool for Urban Transition
If the ambition of the Flemish territory is to become more forested, then an approximation is needed between forest and urbanization processes. Forest expansion can only be realized by developing a new understanding between forest and urbanization. This article discusses urban design explorations that stimulate a spatial transformation grafted on the forest as a structuring element of the Western Witness Hills of Leuven, through the ‘forest figure’. The forest figure is explored as a concept able to incorporate and mould urban and forest ambitions into a workable spatial frame.
The paper explores the implementation of the afforestation programme in Flanders since 2019. Framed by the authors’ situated knowledge, it recounts the diverse strategies and tools of the programme, aimed at realising 4,000 hectares of new forests by 2024. With a focus on collective and systemic efforts, the paper outlines three operational domains to analyse the coalition-building process at regional and local levels: setting the institutional space, infrastructuring afforestation in spatial practice, and tailoring design tools for urban forestscapes. It explains how, beginning with the creation of the regional Forest Alliance coalition, a set of policies, soft power mechanisms, and designs have been promoted to accelerate the realisation of (sub)urban forest projects. In doing so, the article proposes a discussion on the forest metropolis as a contextualised cultural project, capable of aligning forest policies with urban forestry initiatives, as well as converging the urbanisms of territorial and domestic spheres, and positioning designers as crucial interfaces between these diverse realms.
Do You See the Forest for All the Trees?
Recent sustainability agendas come with the dual mission of responding to climate change and the loss of biodiversity. One strong trend is the increase in the number of trees in urban environments, initiatives often agglomerated under the label of urban forestry. The main focus of this article is to contribute to the development of this discourse by exploring the designerly aspects of urban forestry. This is done by unpacking the concept of ‘urban forestscapes’ as a dynamic and relational concept, derived from a landscape perspective that opens up to spatio-temporal, synthetic, and trans-scalar approaches, and further developed through a process of embedding the research both in relation to literature and in situ. Two wooded areas are studied at the Alnarp campus of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), in the Malmö- Copenhagen conurbation. The campus holds the first landscape laboratory in Scandinavia, a real-world experimentation site dedicated to the study of urban forestry and woods. The article suggests a recognition of the interpretative openness of the concept in addition to its hybrid qualities with the synthesizing power of overcoming divisions like that of nature/culture or forest/city. The results include insights into experiential characteristics of urban forestscapes as well as methodological considerations.
Wildwood Plaza (Robin Winogrond, 2013) reclaims a tiny, residual forest fragment on the city’s edge, transforming it into a recreational space with the power to act as catalyst of the forest imagination. Due to the unique characteristics of forests our imagination has the ability to transform even the most mundane woods into a moving experience. Wildwood Plaza searches to reinterpret these characteristics to become not only rational recreational spaces, but ones in which the immersive, poetic character dominates the experience. The innovation of the project lies in the new interpretation of functional woodland clearings. The design language is one of reduction and simplicity. Not the forest has been designed but its void, the silence of the space has been given character, thus opening up the landscape qualities of the seemingly valueless forest fragment to the urban perception.
This issue of SPOOL elaborates a designerly perspective on urban forestry. Evidence has increased rapidly in the recent years to confirm the agency of trees and urban forests to cure a number of ills besetting urban societies. An expanding range of disciplines, in varying and novel combinations, are turning to an urban version of forestry to re-configure green (and grey) infrastructures, re-write neighbourhoods, re-purpose derelict territories and re-vitalize disparate peripheries. As such, in the face of the growing number of challenges facing cities globally, we see that urban trees and forests are becoming increasingly central to spatial planning and design practise. And yet, with all this work done on the environmental, ecological, technical and recently also urbanism-related aspects of urban forestry (cf. Journal of Landscape Architecture 1/2023), its site-specific, spatial, aesthetical, and cultural dimensions have received less attention in research. For us as SPOOL editors, this is an invitation to focus on trees and forests from the vantage point of landscape architecture and the related thread of SPOOL, called ‘landscape metropolis’. This thematic thread addresses the dynamic, composite, and layered urban landscape with all its biotic and abiotic elements from a design perspective, with the intent to transcend the conventional city-countryside dichotomy, and to understand landscape as a permanent underlying subtext of the urban condition, with repercussions into the remotest corners of the globe. From a landscape metropolis perspective, cities are understood as complex territorial mosaics where the conventional categories of urban and non-urban give way to a mix of material environments in various stages of ‘naturalness’, or to put it another way: natures in various stages of becoming ‘cultured’. Building on the potentials of an alternative reading of the urban territory then, in this issue we feature a number of select authors who elaborate on this condition, expanding on a designerly frame of knowing and doing in urban forestry. Publication formats also help: besides regular papers, visual essays are featured as a lesser-known yet highly appropriate category of exploration for design research.
In this paper, we piece together threads of communicative processes between residents, architects, and other parties, as found in the lists and letters of the archive of the Byker Redevelopment in Newcastle Upon Tyne (1968-83). Documents that are usually discarded or neglected by architectural researchers - from a stack of various papers documenting residents’ lists of complaints, evaluative papers such as an audit report, and architects’ memos, to a resident’s letter of complaint - enable us to reconstruct, first, how a mainstream practice collected and filed residents’ experiences and understanding of their homes, and second, how, through the circulation of those papers in action as files, residents’ notes were also embedded in the design process.
Copyright (c) 2023 Heidi Svenningsen Kajita, Katie Lloyd Thomas https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The laboratory ALICE (Atelier de la Conception de l’Espace) at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) advances a comprehensive approach to data-based drawing oriented towards architectural and urban co-design processes. This drawing methodology has been key in the contributive design process they have applied over the last seven years, covering a range of scales and contexts, both within the public and private spheres. Contribution has become a relational strategy that unites a diverse range of participants, each hailing from various backgrounds and carrying unique needs, which come together around the drawing. For this reason, the cultivation of a robust drawing culture, from their teaching to their research and design activities, has become a cornerstone of ALICE’s philosophy, where drawing is embraced not merely as a representational tool but as a constructive means for design work. Their methodology has now evolved to include data-based drawing techniques, skillfully merging precise surveying with qualitative data analysis, thereby bridging the gap between quantitative and qualitative facets of design. This article explains this data-based approach to drawing through a series of projects developed in the Greater Geneva region. Throughout them, they explain how ALICE’s situated data-based drawings facilitate intricate coordination among students, leading to real-scale interventions; explore the potential of transforming main roads into landscape infrastructures that promote sustainable mobility and urban development; or offer an innovative lens to comprehend the affective connections between citizens and their urban surroundings, transcending traditional cartographic representations. Finally, these efforts are summarised through the analysis of a single drawing showcased at the 2021 Venice Biennale, illustrating the potential of this methodology to harmonize the collective efforts of various stakeholders.
Copyright (c) 2023 Ruben Valdez, Lucia Jalon Oyarzun, Dieter Dietz, Malcolm Onifade, Aurele Pulfer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This article focuses on two methods employed in the selection, interpretation, and representation of diverse source materials for developing alternative biographies for my ancestral landscape - Nanhai district in the Pearl River Delta in southern China. These biographies aim to approach Nanhai from a long view of continual transformation, as opposed to prevalent readings of the region that focus on the striking spatial contrasts and large-scale developments that have only come about in recent decades. The chronological reading explores a critical shift in the cosmological understanding of the landscape situated in the 19th century through a selection of historical gazetteer maps, while in the excavational reading the diffuse continuity of the lineage in the present-day landscape of Nanhai is traced. In both methods, the drawing functions as a crucial (research) tool to engage the range of source materials.
Copyright (c) 2023 Hong Wan Chan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Design of Co-creation in Rotterdam Central Station (1996-2007)
This article explores the pivotal role of design as a decision-making tool within multi-stakeholder collaborations, focusing on the early phases of the Rotterdam Central Railway Station and its surroundings project. Spanning from 1996, when it gained National Key Project status, to 2007, when construction commenced, this period precedes the preliminary design, during which the design process becomes the primary method of collaboration among multiple stakeholders, including designers and clients involved in the station area’s development. After introducing the post-war reconstruction of the station area and the ‘Platform Zero’ experiment, this article defines three key stages of design in the initial phase, each of which left a distinct mark on the station project. These stages are: - From 1996 to 2001: Design for political communication. - From 2002 to 2004: Parallel design. - From 2004 to 2007: Design co-creation and integration. To provide a comprehensive view of the design’s development, this article includes insights from conversations with architects and planners engaged in the process. In a dynamic exchange between various stakeholders and designers, the evolution of Rotterdam Central Station’s design reveals how political decisions have been informed by thorough design studies, offering a platform for robust discourse on critical issues.
Copyright (c) 2023 Manuela Triggianese https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0