REGENERATIVE NATURE-BASED
bamboo shading
earth tube cools air
Figure 8
Solar chimney drove natural ventilation – Fresh air is cooled down through earth ducts before it enters the habitable spaces and is exhausted through a dedicated ventilation shaft connected to the solar chimney. Copyright Transsolar
Figure 9
Avasara Academy – Entry courtyard. Transsolar, Case Design, and landscape architect Hemali Samant implemented integrated clima-design and nature-based solutions for the Avasary Academy, thus creating a year-round comfortable learning and living environment. Copyright Ariel Huber, Courtesy of Case Design
Concrete and locally sourced stone provide necessary thermal mass in functional spaces, resulting in a moderate and more consistent radiant temperature inside the buildings. Solar water heaters provide hot water and PV panels supply electricity, making the Academy also a Net-zero Energy Building.
RESISTANCES TO DIGITALLY MAPPING LANDSCAPES PERFORMANCES
The beauty and intrinsic value of nature are inspirational for most, but it seems that talking more about its functional qualities may, for now, prove to be the most persuasive way to bring the benefits of green infrastructure into sharper focus. Recent feedback [6] suggests that different digital tools (ENVI-met, CitySym, Ladybug Tools) have great potential to describe the microclimatic conditions of the built environment, the interactions with its natural capital, and the related impacts on human comfort.
Despite successful histories of early adoption in automated mapping technology, spatial analysis and Geographical Information Systems, landscape architecture demonstrates a widespread resistance to computational techniques, which has until recently limited practitioners’ ability to explore ‘landscape performance’ as part of design processes. Digital techniques can help designers to explore the ideas and concerns core to landscape architecture in the Anthropocene, such as designing with social-ecological systems, working with landscapes in flux, or adapting to the extreme weather events caused by climate change. Processes of feedback, sensing the environment, managing the identified data, and visualizing climate adaptive responses represent the core design focus in the development of inclusive urban landscapes and resilient communities.
Some of the aspects contributing to difficulties in theoretically and culturally conceptualising a role for digital technologies within landscape design processes include: the belief that technology negatively influences creativity, with landscape design conceived as requiring just individual creativity and human spontaneity;
the limited understanding of the potential of digital technology, reducing its value to that of a ‘virtual drawing board’ to replicate analogue models of representations; the manner in which design projects are discussed, with emphasis on the representational quality of the image and not on the role of digital technologies in the generative design process - i.e. disciplinary tendencies to over-emphasise the conceptual and representational aspects of design over design processes and construction details [1].
Figure 10
Avasara Academy – Bamboo façade detail.
Copyright Ariel Huber, Courtesy of Case Design.
FOCUS ON MICROCLIMATES
As cities expand and urban populations soar, competition for space from various land uses has become more intense, resulting in green space and nature being squeezed out of many cities and marginalised from urban decision-making processes. High urban land prices have made it harder to justify urban greening, which has become undervalued and long regarded as an aesthetic nicety, rather than a fundamental component of the urban fabric.
This situation is hugely detrimental for many city inhabitants, and their environments, as well as the economic well-being and robustness of urban areas to the effects of climate change [2].
Due to its impact on the quality of life of urbanites, a particularly critical factor affecting urban ecosystem resilience is microclimate. Dense urban geometries and lack of permeability of the site’s surfaces generally determine thermal discomfort and the presence of Urban Heat Island effects, with various degrees of intensity depending on the time of day and the seasons.
Studies on microclimates of cities have already proved that human comfort, health and well-being are strongly influenced not only by the geometry and the level of soil sealing but also, and predominantly, by the presence of natural elements and systems and their integration within the built environment [3]. The lack of green open space impacts, in particular during the summer, the radiative properties of the environment and has negative effects on the urban microclimate, and potentially very harmful consequences for the population and the entire ecosystem. The need to assess vulnerability and adapt to critical environmental phenomena consequently calls for new ways to understand, interpret, experience, and interact with - from the early stages of the design process - all the components of the urban ecosystem.
LANDSCAPE PERFORMANCE
Landscape performance can be defined as a measure of the effectiveness with which nature-based solutions fulfil their intended purpose and contribute at different scales to sustainability and resilience through the provision of ecosystem services such as local climate control, air quality regulation, water purification, soil and water retention, recreation and aesthetic values, cost savings and other economic benefits. The meanings of performance in landscape architecture are indeed multiple and intertwined and are irreducible to simple, succinct definitions [4].
The growing body of global research now available on nature and green spaces tells visionary stories. It ably demonstrates the critical importance of green infrastructure within urban environments and the intrinsic relationship that humans as a species have with it. It demonstrates the multifunctional benefits it delivers at all scales, which are crucial to enable humans to flourish in urban environments, and the role it can play in supporting the economic, social and environmental health of city environments.
Figure 11
Avasara Academy – Outdoor activities Copyright Ariel Huber, Courtesy of Case Design.
More and more advocates of a digital landscape design practice – Arup, Transsolar, Case Design, Turenscape, Ramboll, and West 8, to cite just a few – are disseminating methods and tools for quantitative performance-based projects, with key performance indicators offering a comprehensive and innovative approach to the design of the urban built environment, and progressing the implementation of digital tools in landscape architecture.
Combining this shift with the increased attention to nature-based technologies and increased accessibility to digital tools supports a new approach for challenging static design solutions [5].
Developments like the Olympic Park (Arup, London), the Avasara Academy (Transsolar, Case Design and Hemali Samant landscape architect, Lavale, India), Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park (Ramboll, Singapore), Madrid Rio (West 8, Madrid, Spain), and Quzhou Luming Park (Turenscape, Quzhou City, China) represent successful attempts to rationalize interactive architecture and responsive technologies through the lens of contemporary landscape architecture. These examples shows that in the near future, landscape performance will increasingly underlie debates about restorative architecture, green infrastructure and nature-based solutions, thereby allowing it to play an important communicative and collaborative role in climate change policy and in practice, which will lead to improving people’s quality of life - making them healthier, happier and more productive.
REFERENCES
[1] J. Wallis and H Rahmann, Landscape Architecture and Digital Technologies. London, UK:
Routledge, 2016.
[2] T. Armour, ‘Mainstreaming Green Infrastructure’, in Green Infrastructure Design, M.B.
Andreucci, Milan, IT: Wolters Kluwer Italia, 2017, pp. 324-327.
[3] G.W. Evans, Environmental stress. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
[4] M.B. Andreucci, ‘Reflection for a Landscape Economy’, Position Paper AIAPP Italian Association of Landscape Architects, International Conference ‘Landscape Project: engine of economic development’, Rome, Italy, December 13th, 2013.
[5] B. Cantrell and J. Holzman, Responsive Landscapes. London, UK: Routledge, 2016.
[6] M.B. Andreucci, M. Delli Paoli and S. Coccolo, ‘Restorative design of urban brownfields, an interdisciplinary approach interconnecting nature-based solutions, heritage requalification and human wellbeing. A case study in Rome’, in IBPSA Italia 2019: Proceedings of the 16th IBPSA International Conference & Exhibition Building Simulation 2019, Rome, Italy, September 2-4, 2019. In press.
Caused by natural and human activities, climate change amplifies social conflicts resulting in a precarious welfare state, lack of access to public services and an ever-growing economic inequality among people. From this point of view, the city of Rome appears as a city of conflicts of different nature. Despite the high percentage of green areas within the city boundaries (71% of the municipal area is covered by the Ager Romanus), the ecosystem services are threatened continuously by uncontrolled urban sprawl phenomena. Extreme events - mainly related to climate change, human activities and soil sealing - impact on thousands of vulnerable people and affect their quality of life.
A recent study, based on the indexes of social distress and disadvantage, shows that the districts with the highest social and environmental distress are located in the areas around the urban ring-road where the public transport is inefficient and isolation still produces significative negative impacts in terms of environmental costs and quality of life. Districts like Vigne Nuove, which is the focus of the study, represent in Rome the international Modernist movement logic of the self-sufficient neighbourhood, built by
‘Existenz minimum’ principles [1] and with low-cost construction technologies.
Vigne Nuove district was drawn up in 1973 by a group of designers coordinated by Lucio Passarelli. This housing complex, despite the environmental and social degradation, retains the qualities of a theoretical-experimental architecture [1]. The outdoor space, located on the ground level, is characterised by the massive presence of concrete and asphalt, which considerably increase air temperature and affect human thermal comfort, air quality and energy use of buildings. This study explores the potential of a green-blue infrastructure approach to mitigate the impact of heat waves on the outdoor spaces and to increase social connectivity and equity among the residents. In the context of an urbanised environment, green and blue infrastructure is to be understood as all natural and semi-natural landscape elements that (could) form a green-blue network. It can refer to landscape elements on various spatial scale levels: from individual rows of trees to complete valley systems.