Literature and Resources Cultural Landscapes 2010

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Thematic fields according to the 2010 ECLAS conference "Cultural Landscapes"

Thematic map "Cultural Landscapes"


Cultural Landscapes: Education, research methods and approaches

such as profession based education, multi-disciplinary education, interdisciplinary education etc.


Responses of cultural landscapes to changing natural processes

such as climate change, re-colonization of abandoned lands, impact of emerging need for sustainability etc.


Landscapes as a reflection of changing cultural processes

such as globalization, multiculturalism, emerging awareness to sustainability, etc.


Technology as a driver of cultural landscape change

such as international styles, disappearing vernacular styles as a result of increased visual images through internet as well as advanced technology to enable new construction methods and techniques and capability to use new materials or recycled materials, etc.


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Articles for reading exercise

Note: Please do only subscribe to an article that has already been linked!!!

Topos 26/1999 IBA - a renewal concept for a region still to be linked

The focus of Topos 26 is on one region in one country: the Emscher region in North Rhine-Westphalia, a part of the Ruhr district. Once the industrial heart of Europe, the site of ruthless industrialization, it had overslept structural change. Now it is the home of the IBA (International Building Exhibition) Emscher Park.


  • Kohler, Dorothée: The IBA Emscher Park – a typically German project? In France the achievements of the IBA are considered outstanding. For such a megaproject, however, the organisation is not French at all.
  • Dettmar, Jörg: Wilderness or park? The Leftover Land Project taking place as part of the Emscher Park IBA introduces the concept of "industrial nature".
  • Poblotzki, Ursula: Transformation of a landscape The Ruhr is witnessing the application of urban green planning principles to a whole region as a motor of structural change.
  • Schwarze-Rodrian, Michael: Intercommunal co-operation in the Emscher Landscape Park The new regional park in the Ruhr area could only have been planned and built by going across all borders. A concept and its strategies.
  • Weilacher, Udo: Rusty-brown and Phacelia blue – landmark art by the IBA Mountains, rivers, churches or castles often lend character to landscapes. In the Ruhr, artistic landmarks help perform this role.
  • Diedrich, Lisa: No politics, no park: the Duisburg-Nord model The Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park exemplifies the close co-operation between IBA managers and designers.
  • Kunzmann, Klaus R.: White work elephants in the Ruhr district's park of the future Sixteen new commercial and technology parks in the Ruhr area are the signs of new times – but their success is not assured.
  • Oldengott, Martin: The Castrop-Rauxel ecological network The spirit of the IBA has inspired municipal planning offices: they now boast intercommunal projects of their own.
  • Wachten, Kunibert: Housing developments in integrated sites The revived culture of the Ruhr area housing estates features new construction with moderate densities and makes use of historic capital.
  • Schäfer, Robert: Emscher Park Building Exhibition: a motor of structural change In 1999, the IBA presents the outcome of projects and plans concerned with the regeneration of an old industrial region.
  • Pehnt, Wolfgang: Changes have to take place in people's heads first The IBA Emscher Park has provided the Ruhr with a new identity and opened up new paths, both in the outside world and in people's minds.

Topos 44/2003 Conversion still to be linked

Perforations, shrinkage, intermediate city – we know the terms for these processes but are not so sure about solutions for the problems caused by this landscape change. In any case, landscape is always involved.


  • Christiaanse, Kees: New urbanism in former harbours Colourful archipelago districts are appearing in harbour areas. Radically mixed uses provide an example for the whole city.
  • Sebastyanski, Roman: Young City, Gdansk Strikes and the Solidarity movement made the Gdansk harbour known all over the world. Now it is the site of a new city district.
  • Boeri, Stefano: Thessaloniki: Gateway to the Balkans The infrastructure planned in the framework of the EU's eastward expansion is to make Thessaloniki the "new gateway to the Balkans".
  • Alday Sanz, Inaki and Jover Biboum, Margarita: The Gallego river waterfront, Zuera, Spain Town planning improvements, a bull ring and a flood plain that doubles as a park are the results of a river engineering project. In the spanish town Zuera the conversion of the southern bank of the river Gallego and the revival of a town district were determined by three objectives.
  • Leppert, Stefan: Westpark Bochum, Germany Mainly involving provision of access to existing elements, the concept for the park at a former steelworks is a simple one.
  • Meyer, Sandra and de Visser, Rik: Master plan for Reden Mine A new landscape offering gardens and modern architecture is coming about amongst the ruderal vegetation of an old pithead.
  • Weilacher, Udo and Dettmar, Jörg: Landscape as a process The city is wherever an urban lifestyle is. That means it is almost everywhere. What role does that give landscape?
  • Firth, Kathryn: Greenwich Peninsula Regeneration Dense urban areas are developing around a central park on the former industrial areas on the Greenwich Peninsula in London.

Topos 47/2004 Landscape concepts still to be linked

Behind every change in the landscape picture are social and economic mechanisms for which we are all to blame, some of us more than others, depending on what we put in our shopping basket or where we go for the weekend. This is also where an important task for landscape architects lies. Its a great challenge to participate in creating the social, economic and legal framework conditions that shape the landscape from the outset. Another is also to find an up-date aesthetic expression.


  • Kucan, Ana: The future for Slovenian cultural landscapes Economic change calls for a new spatial planning policy. However, often conservative thought stands in the way.
  • Christiaanse, Kees: Situations in the settled landscape The urbanisation and fragmentation of the landscape call for creative strategies rather than preoccupation with tradition.
  • Isman, Fabio: Less Tuscany, more Berlusconi A new law on monuments and landscape preservation in Italy now makes the demolition and sale of cultural property possible.
  • Kuhn, Rolf: Changing the landscape of Lusatia Open-cut mining has devastated the landscape of Lusatia. The restoration effort takes two conflicting scenarios into consideration.
  • Krebs, Stefanie and Franzen, Brigitte: Cultures of landscape Landscape is no longer a term tied to place or nation but an iconographic and creative practice of complex cultures.
  • Cauquelin, Anne: Timescapes Non-stop nature: always available and ever expressing the esteem it enjoys in the society concerned. Today's perspective is global.
  • Sieferle, Rolf Peter: Total Landscape Constructing new landscapes or protecting old structures - both presuppose having been legitimised by society.

Topos 53/2005 Traffic still to be linked

Bridges, roads, airports, boulevards, bicycle paths or railway tracks ? the range of traffic structures that should not only be well planned but also attractively designed in the context of their urban or rural surroundings is very broad.


  • Detzlhofer, Anna: Landscape Becomes Established Large-scale modelling of the terrain integrates a new motorway on the south periphery of Vienna with the landscape. Geometrically shaped landmarks facilitate orientation for drivers and local residents.
  • Becker, Carlo W.: Across the Periphery – Leipzig North In response to the strong transformation processes of past decades, the City of Leipzig commissioned a spatial concept for its periphery. bgmr Landscape Architects developed an urban cultural landscape.
  • Lasserre, Olivier: Planting Patterns seen from the Air The Swiss landscape architect Olivier Lasserre photographs cultural landscapes from a slowly flying helicopter. With his pictures from above he hopes to draw our attention to the beauty and the landscape qualities of modern agriculture.
  • Bowtell, Peter: Webb Bridge, Melbourne The artfully entwined structure of Webb Bridge inspires many possible associations: from snake to sea shells or fishing net to boomerang. The new landmark at Melbourne Docklands works as a link across the Yarra River as well as a meeting point and a pleasant place to be.
  • Pachnicke, Peter: The Bridge Landscape of Emscher Park Rehabilitating the River Emscher, misused as a wastewater canal, forms the foundation for redesigning the industrial landscape in the Ruhr district. The artistic bridges in the network of hiking and cycling trails are symbols of the new landscape.
  • Suwanarit, Asan: The Skytrain in Bangkok The enormous elevated structure of the Bangkok Transit System, commonly known as the Skytrain, has radically changed the means of experiencing passing through the heart of Bangkok's downtown. Today, this structure is continuing its transformation as a complex dynamic across this metropolitan landscape.
  • Fiol Costa, Carmen: The Gran Via in Barcelona After many years of discussion and participative processes the remodelling of the transport artery, the Gran Via is now underway. The partial covering of the road reduces the dominance of vehicular traffic and creates new green spaces.

Topos 56/2006 Cultural Landscapes

All over the world, the economic activities of mankind leave their mark on the landscape. Depending on land use, topography and climate, cultural landscapes differ greatly. Besides covering the preservation and rehabilitation of particular cultural landscapes, this issue of Topos focuses mainly on the transformations of landscapes and the challenges for planners involved. Examples range from an Italian wind farm to Bangkok's aquacultural landscape.


  • Moderini, Daniela and Selano, Giovanni: Windscapes The experimental wind farms of San Chirico and Spina combine renewable energy and information technologies with the region's distinguished culture to create an innovative strategy for communicating the landscape's inherent complexity.
  • Briand, Gilles and Mousquet, François-Xavier: Reversing the Image of a Coal Basin Long regarded as a serious handicap, the coal basin's brownfield sites in the French Nord Pas de Calais region, heritage of a glorious industrial past, constitute an experimental laboratory for the regeneration of derelict post-industrial land.
  • Bokern, Anneke: Westergasfabriek Cultural Park The interim cultural uses of the former gasworks in Amsterdam led to converting the grounds into a "cultural park". The design intends to demonstrate transformations in the relationship between humans and nature over the last century.
  • McGrath, Brian and Thaitakoo, Danai: Bangkok`s Agri- and Aquacultural Fringe Bangkok's contemporary transportation system reflects ancient layers of waterborne urbanism overlaid with a modern automobile-driven metropolis. Between these conditions, a fresh opportunity arises to re-assess the composite cultural landscape for future bio-energy production.
  • Dailami, Ahmed and Doherty, Gareth: Cultural Continuums in Bahrain Bahrain is experiencing a tumultuous period of restructuring and expansion with an architectural language rooted in a silently salient binary of traditional versus contemporary. Transition and change are not new to Bahrain, having formed an assortment of landscapes that speak of a far more varied and complex place.
  • Akerlund, Ulrika : Russian Coutnry Estates Primarily a country base for the bourgeois, the usadba had a significant social role in pre-revolutionary Russia. Although many are now in ruins, and the needs and structure of society have changed, the agency of the usadba as a cultural hub and focus for rural communities is being rediscovered.
  • O'Donnell, Patricia M.: Preserving Designed Cultural Landscapes There is a broad legacy of cultural landscapes as designed, evolved, relic and associative properties in the USA. While cultural landscapes of all types hold interest for the planning professions, understanding the designed landscape and intervening to further its preservation is most readily taken up by design professionals.
  • Playdon, Dennis: Acoma - A Landscape of Settlement There is a broad legacy of cultural landscapes as designed, evolved, relic and associative properties in the USA. While cultural landscapes of all types hold interest for the planning professions, understanding the designed landscape and intervening to further its preservation is most readily taken up by design professionals.
  • Shannon, Kelly: Drosscape New landscapes are continuously created while others are destroyed. The cultural landscapes of the 21st century include the globe's vast post-industrial landscapes, and territories simply consumed by sprawling development.
  • Krebs, Stefanie: Art and Landscape Artscape Nordland presents 33 works of art in the Norwegian fjord landscape. Different positions on art and landscape range from staging elementary forces and creating spaces for social interaction to re-romanticization and the sublime.
  • Schmitz, Martin: The Strollology of Lucius Burckhardt The political economist, sociologist, art historian and planning theorist Lucius Burckhardt founded "strollology" in the 1980s at the University of Kassel, Germany. It deals with human perception and its feedback into planning and building.
  • Ranatunga, Priyanka: Cultural Landscape and Tsunami Resettlement Following the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka, landscape architects re-interpreted ancient human settlement patterns in order to re-locate affected peoples into culturally and ecological sensitive communities.
  • Adams, Ann: Dimbangombe Project – A Holistic Landscape Approach Over the past decade there has been increasing interest in natural capitalism and a holistic approach to resource management. The Dimbangombe Project in Zimbabwe focuses on creating a healthy landscape.
  • Yu, Kongjian: Positioning Contemporary Landscape Architecture in China In an era of multiple unprecedented challenges imposed by the processes of industrialization and urbanization, landscape architecture is now on the verge of change in China. It is time for this profession to take the great opportunity to position itself to play the key role in rebuilding the Land of Peach Blossoms for a new society of urbanized, globalized and inter-connected people.

Topos 58/2007 City Strategies

Cities are responsible for accommodating most of the world population. Cities grow; big ones get even bigger; new satellite towns are supposed to ease the strain on city centres. Urban planners therefore face major tasks in creating liveable urban environments for millions of people. Topos presents examples of urban design strategies, in Sydney, Shanghai, Dubai, London, Madrid, Chicago, Vancouver and Bogotá.


  • Hawken, Scott: Sydney – City of Landscapes Since the 2000 Olympics, and in light of an ongoing explosion in population, the need for a drastic overhaul of Sydney's urban system has become clear. A series of new landscape projects provide physical models that respond to diverse planning challenges.
  • Kögel, Eduard: Metropolitan Region Shanghai The town planning history of Shanghai has taken many turns with political change in the past century. A consistent planning strategy could not be implemented until the 1990s when development really took off. The achievements will be presented to an international audience at the World Expo 2010.
  • Ruff, Stefanie and Dong, Nannan: Managing Urban Growth in Shanghai The targeted urbanisation of Shanghai's suburbs leads to a decentralized growth that forms a polycentric regional network. New Towns take various Western urban developments as their models.
  • Woodman, Ellis: Livingstone's London Mayor Ken Livingstone has already had considerable impact on London's built environment, but in the coming years his policies are set to transform the city to an unprecedented degree.
  • Ng, Waikeen and Vegara, Alfonso: Spain's Growing Capital City Large infrastructure projects represent a major step forward for Madrid's transport planning, preparing the city for the future – and the next Olympic bid.
  • Davis, Mike : Fear and Money in Dubai Some may consider Dubai the prototype of the 21st century metropolis. Mike Davis describes the luxury urban enclave as the apotheosis of neo-liberalism. Petrodollars are invested in fantasy worlds and architectural landmarks to establish the city as a brand on the world market.
  • Burger, Don, Roehr, Daniel and Soules, Matthew: Mirage Metropolis Vancouver has become such a global model for urbanism that Vancouverism refers to the twin ideals of increased residential density and liveability in the city core. The article critically reflects on this approach which, despite its many failings, nevertheless creates new possibilities for landscape.
  • Lindke, Lybra: Chicago's Green Strategies Long since considered an industrial and economic workhorse within the United States, Chicago's approach to redefining its greenscape has changed its reputation from a city laden with underutilized and vacant manufacturing and industrial sites to a city striving to become a model for comprehensive green urbanism.
  • Chappell, Jim: Chicago Central Area Plan Subtitled "Preparing the Central City for the 21st Century", the Chicago Central Area Plan is nothing less than the next step in Chicago's hundred-year quest to build the world's greatest city, and build it according to a plan.
  • Fajardo, Martha Cecilia and Kawashima, Noboru: Bogotá Transformations Implementation of a series of masterplans in recent years has turned Bogotá from a chaotic, unsafe city into a capital with a progressive transport system, public parks, pedestrian and cycle networks.
  • van Oers, Ron: Safeguarding the Historic Urban Landscape More and more historic cities adopt strategies and policies that assign an important role to heritage in the city's social and economic development. A well-managed historic urban landscape is a strong competitive tool as it attracts not only tourists, but capital and residents as well. It is essential to establish an active partnership between conservation and development.

Topos 64/2008 Growing Cities still to be linked

Cities are becoming home to most people on this planet. Cities almost everywhere grow in a similarly dynamic fashion, even if they do so at different rates and with partly different planning parameters. That makes it logical to try out individual strategies, interventions, processes, developments, models, theories and planning systems in order to make life in the constantly growing cities possible, increasingly also under the pressure to conserve resources and distribute them fairly.


  • Martignoni, Maria Jimena: Strategies for Medellín The Medellín metropolitan areas recent development strategies suggest more integrated ways of collaboration between cities, as a city of cities. New connections have been forged between, and within, the various settlements of the Aburrá Valley in Colombia.
  • Kipar, Andreas: Making Milan a Permeable City A slow city in fast times, Milan is taking advantage of the forthcoming Expo 2015 to rearrange its open spaces. Usually perceived as a city of much work and no play, Lombardy's main city wants to promote its green potential and open up new and old liveable public spaces.
  • Knuijt, Martin: The Connected City Rotterdam's city centre will undergo a true metamorphosis: by strengthening the urban open spaces, the present lack of public realm should improve significantly.
  • Nefedov, Valery: Development of St. Petersburg The urban development of St. Petersburg, Russia's second city with a population of 4.8 million, is realizing a master plan which will guide the city's growth until 2025.
  • Kim, Young-ha: Seoul - Collective Alzheimer's The South Korean capital Seoul almost completely disregards its history and its tradition. An ongoing process of demolition and construction erases the traces of the past from the cityscape. The author describes facets of the ahistorical amnesiac character of the metropolis.
  • Gandy, Matthew: Neither Archetype nor Exception' An exuberant city with a thriving economy yet with over 60 per cent of its people living in slums, the Indian city of Mumbai - formerly Bombay - faces immense challenges, ranging from large-scale infrastructure failure to the threat of religious violence.
  • Nilufar, Farida: Transforming Urban Landscapes The Dhanmondi Lake redevelopment in flood-prone Dhaka, Bangladesh, is a paradigmatic strategic urban project in a growing city. The scheme simultaneously restores and manages a significant urban water resource, provides public recreation spaces, and incorporates clever design strategies to avoid encroachment by the city.
  • Selugga, Malte: Development in China: High Speed, High Rise, High Price Rapid and dramatic urban growth is not new in China's history, and recently has brought many positive changes, but urbanization is now happening at such a scale as to raise serious environmental questions and call for a radical rethink of how Chinese cities expand.

Topos 66/2009 Landscape Strategies still to be linked

People live in cultural landscapes; they change their environments to suit economic requirements or through the way they manage their affairs. In the process, they often exhibit a strong urge to shape things, creating completely new landscapes by means of landfill islands or interventions in the existing vegetation. Landscape strategies encompass both urban and rural landscapes, the latter often being in a state of gradual or sudden transition to becoming urban.


  • Giseke, Undine, Kasper, Christoph and Martin-Han, Silvia: Mega-urban open spaces A joint German-Moroccan research project is exploring new forms of urban agriculture which could offer a solution for open space provision in the mega-cities of tomorrow.
  • Capatti, Tancredi: Metrobosco & Co. Urban forests gain increasing importance from the point of view of sustainable urban development. Besides being sustainable they are also ecological, economical and above all media-effective. The Metrobosco project for Milan is exemplary.
  • Dittmer, Melissa: Detroit: Scale of Crisis = Scale of Intervention The Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge, designed by Hamilton Anderson Associates, is a performative intervention equipped to help people navigate multi-scalar, multi-dimensional urban voids. The project considers the urban void as dynamic, contradictory, and the majority within a post-industrial urban fabric.
  • Lindheim, Tone: Nansen Park, Oslo In 1998, Oslo’s International Airport left the Fornebu Peninsula, and what remained was a depressing wasteland. Today, a new park and development area has been created by Bjørbekk & Lindheim, with visual references to ancient natural forms and the former runways.
  • Strootman, Berno and Zaragoza, Anne: Revealing the Landscape Qualities The strategy by Strootman Landscape Architects for one of the most beautiful areas in the Netherlands, the Drentsche Aa River valley, brings the drama of the existing landscape to life and reveals its historical layers.
  • Corner, James: Shelby Farms Park Parks enhance the competitiveness of cities while making a contribution to sustainable urban development. Unification, amplification, incubation, diversification and loosening are five approaches that help bring about the success of large-scale planning. Shelby Farms Park in Memphis by field operations is exemplary.
  • Fumiaki , Takano: Design by Deletion - The Tockachi Mellennium Forest On Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, a forest park for the next thousand years is taking shape. Through a steady and diligent process, designers are gradually revealing the wonders of the landscape.
  • Ipsen, Detlev: The Peasants and the Genesis of Mega-Urban Landscapes The role of urban villages in the development of mega-urbanism in China

Topos 69/2009 Re-use still to be linked

Topos 69 presents examplary re-use strategies and projects from all over the world: The High Line and Governors Island, New York, Ballast Point Park, Sydney, the Toronto Waterfront, Central Park of Nanju Ecocity, Hammarby Sjöstad, Stockholm, Tokio Midtown …


  • Gerdts, Nadine: The High Line, New York City Opened last summer and already renowned all over the world: High Line Park extends along abandoned elevated railway tracks in New York City. An ingenious roof garden forms a promenade about ten meters above street level, both public attraction and business card for the landscape architecture profession worldwide.
  • Hamlin, Abby: Governors Island For almost two centuries, Governors Island in New York City was a military base. After the abandonment of the military facilities, the unique park-like setting offers an historic opportunity for the city. Open spaces and cultural events are an important early catalyst in bringing the island back to life. But the long-term vision is to create an outstanding park for the 21st century.
  • Hawken, Scott: Ballast Point Park in Sydney Reuse and recycling is a defining feature of Ballast Point Park. Demolition materials and relics of the site’s former industrial use have become important components of the new park on the peninsula in Sydney Harbour. Exciting theatrical spaces intermingle with a new story of sustainability, which has been added to the existing histories.
  • Elsea, Daniel: Land Reuse in Tokyo Midtown On a former military site in the centre of Tokyo a new urban landscape was created, straddling the interface between Japanese tradition and contemporary European parks.
  • Zheng, Xiaodi: South Lake Central Park, Tangshan Within only one year a former mined area in Tangshan, southeast of Beijing, was transformed into a valuable 5.9 square kilometer public parkland that has become the catalyst for the development of the South Lake Eco-Town.
  • Lehtovuori, Panu and Lindqvist, Mikko: Tampere, Finland - The Role of Landscape in Urban Transformation Tampere was founded in 1779 as an industrial and trading town. The hydropower from two lakes attracted the textile industries to the place. Recently the city has received a boost from its redeveloped industrial landscape.
  • Leppert, Stefan: The Horizontal on the Vertical Carl Alexander Park in Baesweiler near the German city of Aachen will be an engine for urban design development. It is already the symbol of a fresh start today, not least for its low-key and yet majestic crown of the mining waste tip.
  • Weilacher, Udo: Learning from Duisburg-Nord Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park in Germany’s Ruhr district is an icon of the handling and reuse of post-industrial sites. The approach chosen and the principles applied in its design also influence the discipline of landscape architecture in other kinds of tasks.
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