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Computing environmental design
Published in Theodora Vardouli, Olga Touloumi, Computer Architectures, 2019
In summary, computers were first introduced into the fields of architecture and design in order to reduce the complexity of environmental problems to a manageable mathematical language. They were imagined as useful tools to coordinate the use of architecture, landscape design, and urban planning in comprehensive environmental design. This was a top-down approach to both nature and society, reflecting the liberal elitist culture of modernists. The optimism with respect to what computers and rationalism could do was shared among modernist designers, and it reflected the Bauhaus legacy of trying to unite science and the arts through technology. The computer became a unifying tool, bringing together a diversity of fields in an effort to protect the natural environment and thereby also our humanity. Computers could order both the human and natural environment by using the same mathematical language, thus bringing ecological sciences, landscape, and architectural design together.
Water and sustainable cities
Published in Sarah Bell, Urban Water Sustainability, 2017
The concept of the ‘water sensitive city’ bridges developments in water and urban sustainability. According to Wong and Brown (2009), the three pillars of the water sensitive city are: Cities as water supply catchmentsCities providing ecosystem servicesCities comprising water sensitive communitiesConventional urban water infrastructure has separated people from natural systems and hidden the flows of water through the city and buildings. Water sensitive cities aim to reconnect the urban and natural environments through local hydrology and communities. This approach is consistent with the principles for landscape design developed by Ian McHarg (1995) in the 1960s in Design with Nature. McHarg’s approach to urban design involved building up layers of spatial information, beginning with the local geology and soil types, followed by local hydrology, ecology and other elements to design places that were consistent with and enhanced the local environment. Water is a fundamental element of natural environments and in water sensitive cities it becomes a unifying element of urban environments.
Beyond clean-up of manufactured sites: remediation, restoration and renewal of habitat
Published in Niall Kirkwood, Manufactured Sites, 2003
These two case studies illustrate the complexities and benefits of integrating landscape design at manufactured sites. At these sites, we are often dealing with contaminants. There is a need for complete human health and ecological risk assessments at industrial sites before landscape design can be considered. Additionally, with the use of net environmental benefit analysis, landscape design at an industrial site may involve restoration with native species toward the goal of wildlife habitat development. A landscape architect at an industrial site must also then be aware of creating an “attractive nuisance”—an ecosystem that may have some contamination posing a risk to wildlife attracted to the restored site.
Public response to the appearance of ecological urban park design: the battle between the ‘picturesque’ and the ‘messiness’
Published in Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure, 2023
The term ecological design emerged in the fields of architectural and landscape design and planning in the late 1960s (Kallipoliti, 2018). Since ecological design is described broadly as ‘any form of design that minimizes environmentally destructive impacts by integrating itself with living processes’ (Van der Ryn & Cowan, 2007, p. 33), the term embraces a variety of design activities – including regional planning, landscape planning, architectural design and product design, just to name a few. For ecological landscape design, specifically, it refers to the incorporation of ecology into design in order to create a landscape that fits well with the natural systems of its site and surrounding, forming an ecologically sound and sustainable landscape. The ecological landscapes, with the use of native species, permeable pavements, local materials and so on, value and make use of the services nature freely provide. Hence, they require less maintenance than conventional landscapes which contain a number of hardscapes, lawns and exotic plants (Danler & Langellotto-Rhodaback, 2015). In addition, these ecological landscapes themselves can also function as green infrastructure which supply ecological services, such as cleaning air, infiltrating and treating stormwater, reducing flood risks, recharging groundwater and providing wildlife habitat, for cities in which they locate.