Thames River Basin, Sensitive Systems
Landscape Urbanism
Architectural Association, Landscape Urbanism
London, United Kingdom
1999-2000
Professor and Director: Ciro Najle
Lecturers and Collaborators: Mohsen Mostafavi, Sandra Morris, Jesse Reiser, Michel Desvigne, Chris Fannin
Students: Yacira Blanco, David Mah, Roxana Scorcelli, Touchapon Suntrajarn
For too long landscape architecture and urbanism have been kept apart. Landscape architects have in the past focused their energies on the design of gardens, whilst urban designers and planners have emphasized the importance of the Master Plan and the efficacy of various forms of parcellation and zoning.
Landscape Urbanism aims to provide theoretical and technical frameworks for exploring new operative methods that cross the divide between architecture, landscape, and urbanism. Sensitive Systems 01 focuses on a stretch of the Thames River defined by complex economic, political, and material conditions. Within a linear site, a series of systems of divergent behaviours coexist, exchange information, and negotiate at different scales for the location of new physical needs. The environment is conditioned by multiple temporal logics (biologics, technologics, geologics, production and consumption logics) that exert dynamic pressures on these locations.
