Inside

Buenas tardes!

Here we head to new ground in Korea, Spain, New Delhi and in between the pavers, park benches and streets of cities near you. Pack your shoulder bag… Vamos!

City

D is for Delhi

New Delhi is the world’s second largest city at close to 34m people and, unlike Tokyo, is still growing at over 2% per year. It conjurs images of streets, dense buildings, wonderful life and colour, impossible traffic - but rarely nature as we hope to see it. But that is deceptive. While the built environment dominates, parks, forests and blue-green infrastructure exist and locals are hoping to better connect natural phenomena with the city proper.

Blue and green spaces that support biodiversity, cool the city and encourage a range of uses by many species are spreading out from architecture projects, popping up on new sites like the Sunder Nursery city park and pressing in from the fringes of the mega-city. Hundreds of acres of city forest have been created or protected in the last ten years.

The emerging view that the city can be inspired by cities like Singapore, London and New York to create a ‘city in a park’ is a balm to the local ecosystem. Natural habitat and the associated benefits for all living things has been in short supply. The map below shows the presence of flora in the city, typically represented by trees and larger green spaces. Even without an understanding of NDVI the challenges for urban dwellers are clear.

One of my favorite projects, begun in 2018, is the urban butterfly corridor initiative. It aims to connect parks, residential gardens and biodiversity parks for 100 butterfly corridors throughout the city. Species can survive in cities only when they have easy access (at least every 250m) to other populations. Thoroughfares, and even simple stepping stones like your garden or balcony, can help to maintain a local population of butterflies and other critters.

Other more imposing forms of nature are also welcomed by a new mood on urban nature. Local leopards are venturing into the city at night which is both encouraging… and concerning for the safety of residents. The command and conquer approach of years gone by (culling etc) is no longer serving us. Education, understanding and safety measures are the way forward, as in any part of the world where healthy nature challenges our view of what a city can be.

There are hundreds of walks, hidden parks and gardens and larger scale precincts today that challenge what a mega-city can mean for urban nature. Here are just a few. I think solving the challenge of mixed use by buildings, infrastructure and sites for natural ends is key to the future of this impressive corner of the world.

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Concept

Land Narrators

What to the Western gaze appeared as messy nature, an environment defined by the absence of human interference, intent and rationality, the Ka’apor interpreted as living ruins of villages built by their ancestors, a sort of architectural archaelogy saturated with a deep human past whose memory was manifested in the very botanic structure of the forest.

- Lydia Kallipoliti, Histories of Ecological Design: An Unfinished Cyclopedia

Different views of what the world around us means, such as those above described by an indigenous Amazonian tribe, are central to the concept of Land Narration. The extraction of the modern economy is negated and ‘presented as violence’ as new forms of our relationship with the land and nature take bud. Our relationship to land becomes the prime interest.

Architects like Aris Konstantinidis and Frank Lloyd Wright described Nature with a capital N and suggested (and built) an organic architecture with land as the original reference point.

There’s some very fun and serious play with the idea at places like the Venice Biennale (here in 2023) for ACE/AAP by Olaleken Jeyifous. As Olaleken explains, “the rapid removal of exploitative and extractive colonial powers from the continent paves the way for a sustainable technological era, powered by algae and focused on extensive global hyper-mobility across the African Diaspora.”

Imagining the African Age is a possible narrative for the second oldest continent and suggests: what story can we tell for the land we stand on today?

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Plan

Bugye Arboretum ‘Sayuwon’ Birds’ Monastery

I’m crazy about birds and monastaries so, what’s not to love here?

This beautiful piece of degrading architecture and nature is from the Seoul architecture studio 이로재 | Iroje.

The six-storied bamboo spike is remarkable in itself but I appreciate it most for it’s gentle placement in the forest of the Korean DMZ. Perhaps the best propoganda it has seen so far (for our planet)?

The ‘plan’ (and sections specifically here) are wonderful for their commitment to the internal floorplan and ficticious use of space by birds. A disregard for the facade of a building is something I’m beginning to appreciate as I learn more. Look at those little juliet balconies! Just feeders in reality, I suppose.

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Idea

Cars made of mushrooms

We’ll still be driving decades from now but not with our hands on the wheel and likely with a shared fleet. I hope they look like this mushroom car I made, perfect for whatever you want, away from wherever you are most. Mycelium is being fashioned into all kinds of materials so, hopefully a replacement for steel and related materials is used here.

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Photo

A beach on Mallorca

This is Cala Banyalbafur on Mallorca. The town above was terraced by North African peoples around 1000 A.D. to grow white grapes now forgotten but once celebrated as wine. At one point the terraces threatened to consume the beach so pillars were built to protect it. I put my feet in the water here on Saturday after I took this photo. I was the only one there just before sunset.

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