space for relational research
Troubled! Architecture of Ruinous Landscapes
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space for relational research
Troubled! Architecture in Ruinous Landscapes
Relational research refers to a broader way of working that has strongly influenced our approach to the specific subjects of this book. Relational research means to not simply study different things, but to focus on the dynamic relationships connecting these things to one another. Relational research builds on an understanding of space that considers space as a network of relationships between different actors, materials and processes that produce space through interaction with each other. Our book wants to emphasise the relational character of space and explore how conditions of production can be created that allow for an ecological, socio- and biodiverse planning of space.
Our research is situated in four different ruinous landscapes of Berlin – a river, a forest, floodscapes and fallow lands. These landscapes are ruinous as they have been killed, exploited, contaminated, dominated and divided. Using this image we underline the destructed character of the environments we inhabit and the necessity to re-ecologise ways of relating to them. We use the term landscape as agglomerations of certain phenomena, ecological relations, life-sustaining dependencies and substances. Ruinous landscapes blur the distinction of city and landscapes, planning and maintaining and between different disciplines.
They cannot be fixed by destroying them and building them up from scratch. They can’t be fixed either, by just reconstructing them as they might have been at some point. And most importantly, they can’t be fixed by humans alone. Re-ecologising ruinous landscapes is a conflictual, cooperative and multi-species endeavour.
The exercise of power through spatial control is a key function of the architecture and spatial planning disciplines. The definition and discourse of planning is historically linked to the expansion of state power and to the establishment and reinforcement of private land ownership. The tools, materials, organisational structures, images and ideals which the planning disciplines reproduce are strongly linked to the demands of anthropo- and capitalocentric exploitation of ecological and labor productivity. In order to imagine sustainable - as well as species inclusive - practices of architecture we have to reevaluate the material conditions of our disciplines evolution. The chapters gathered in the first part of this book look closely at the tools and legal framework of planning and its contradiction with the spaces they seek to control. The first part of the book allows us to regard space production as a more-than-human process of conscious or unconscious negotiation, conflict and life-sustaining-assemblages which are contesting dominant forms of spatial control. They do this simply because they exist, because they take place and thereby reveal how false many basic assumptions of anthropocentric spatial planning are.
by Justus Schweer
The chapter Place of Places captures the daily realities of urban governance, blending personal reflections with administrative procedures and travels to properties of the city of Berlin. Being part of Contested Forms of Spatial Control, it explores how abstraction and ecological simplification dominate the administrative management of Berlin’s public lands. Through fragmented entries, it reveals the contradictions and ambivalences that arise when complex ecological systems are reduced to data points and property issues. Ownership and property management are recurrent themes, showing how bureaucratic efforts to control space often overlook its ecological complexity. The diary emphasizes the conflict between ecological integrity and bureaucratic simplification, highlighting the need for a more transdisciplinary approach to navigating spatial governance.
by Felix Künkel
The chapter Drainage introduces into a historic period in which the relationship between ‚nature‘ and ‚human‘ was drastically altered in order to serve imperialistic expansion. The so-called agrarian revolution was a process in which the commons were divided and privatised, setting the basis for agrarian capitalism, as well as increased extractivist infrastructures, both of which were essential to the increase of productivity in urbanised cities. The Prussian state increasingly began to control the landscape using military strategies, like cartography, as well as military personnel and a growing number of engineers, especially hydro-engineers. the regulation of humidity conditions in the landscape with dikes, ditches and channels, the straightening and deepening of rivers for transportation and drainage reasons drastically changed the landscape. Considering the fluid landscape as an enemy, in this process the state actors developed many tools and perspectives which have a strong influence in practices of planning until today. Following more than human timelines through this historic period, we gain a perspective on nature-culture-history as a process of interfering niche construction, which reveals how these forms of spatial control are contested.
Hydrofeminist Perspectives on Renaturation
by Barbara Herschel
The essay Re-Ecologising reflects on the local and global conditions of renaturating bodies of water. Examining the concept of renaturation as an expression of a certain understanding of nature, the essay questions the predominant opposition between human and natural worlds. By taking a hydrofeminist perspective the legal frameworks, disciplinary boundaries and measures of renaturation are broadened in a way that highlights the powerful potential of intensifying environmental relations for all kinds of spatial practices. Thinking with, in and through water means entering into a fluid, permeable and ever-changing relationship with our environment.
I suggest replacing the term renaturation with re-ecologising. The term refers firstly to the redefinition of the concept of nature, in which culture and nature, human and more-than-human, are no longer seen as opposites. And secondly, deals with the re- in re-ecologising, which is not subject to a temporal or chronological logic, but emphasises the processual nature of non-dominant participation. A hydrofeminist perspective keeps us in the midst of the trouble: concerned, conflicted and not aiming for harmony, calling for a reclaiming of volatility, contradiction and interdependencies.
by Kaspar Jamme
Examining the so-called mixed forest program, in the course of which single-layered pine stands are converted into mixed deciduous forests, this chapter unfolds different ways of planning, maintaining and relating to the ecologies of woods. As a deeply anthropogenic landscape, the Grunewald not only allows us to study the complex histories of Forestry Relations, which have contributed to its ruinous state today. It also serves as a testing ground for exploring ways to re- ecologise these ruinous landscapes in the future. Looking at the forest as a multi-species construction site, this chapter seeks to highlight the dependence of human planning on a variety of agents, spaces and temporalities decentering the modernist trope of the progress-oriented, techno-scientific planner. By analysing concrete forms of planning and taking care of the forest as assemblages of humans, non-humans, knowledge, technology, etc., I wonder what architecture can learn from the ways in which other disciplines relate to space.
Space, understood as a product of relations, is an extensive and branched network. Following the interconnections of a place, entanglements stretching far beyond a specific location become apparent. Just as relationships are inherently dynamic, space is in constant motion. Relations shift, are challenged, strengthen, and dissolve. To grasp the relationality of space means to be in the midst of it, to engage with it and to search for patterns in a web of interconnections. Unfolding relationality requires different approaches to dealing with space - searching, digging, listening, connecting. To trace relationality means to be open for surprises regarding the spaces one finds. A relational understanding of space reminds us that our field of sight is limited and that the abstractions we make to classify and represent space already constitute a selection. Relationality removes the humans sovereignty of interpretation from the center and opens the stage to the numerous more-than-human worlds that participate in the production of space.
Three Ways to Navigate through the Thick Present of Panke
by Barbara Herschel
By following the watery entanglements of the Panke in Berlin Wedding, this chapter presents a dense mapping of different places and bodies of water related to each other by the water that flows through them. In the sense of the concept and practice of re-ecologising, I use mapping as a method to bring together knowledge from different disciplines. The relationality, incompleteness and simultaneity of the contaminated bodies of water and its renaturation measures become an image of the Thick Present. Re-ecologising the Panke, in the sense of acknowledging and intensifying the relationships between humans and their environment, extends far beyond the river banks to include our homes, bodies, streets and courtyards. In this way, a relational understanding of architecture opens up new opportunities for more-than-human and careful spatial planning.
In order to navigate within the thick network, I propose three possible readings that lend subjective contours to the various narrative strands of interdependence: Troubled, Overflowed and Contaminated. As a poetic condensation of my research I formulate a so-called Guide for successful Re-ecologising, demanding for a relational renaturation of space in general.
by Justus Schweer
Temporal Desires reflects on the role of ecological simplification in architecture. It juxtaposes the conceptions of nature within Berlin’s property management and eco-accounts. As part of Unfolding the Relationality of Space and with the knowledge of Place of Places in mind, this chapter identifies the effects that ecological simplification takes in the shape of spatial, functional and temporal decoupling through data evaluation. By graphically depicting how these mechanisms interact with concepts of nature's value, it invites readers to reflect on how careful planning can strengthen ecological networks, which formulates the need for a reconnecting of ecological complexity into our everyday environment. The data-driven approach serves as a tool for critically examining the effects of bureaucratic interventions on urban ecosystems, urging planners to consider the deeper interconnections between temporal planning and ecological futures.
by Kaspar Jamme
The chapter is an investigation of Forestry Relations which are currently involved in transforming Grunewald’s single-layered pine stands into a mixed forest. As a multi-species construction site, the chapter seeks to highlight the dependence of human planning on a variety of agents, spaces and temporalities. In the effort to adapt the forest and the city more broadly to urgently changing conditions, cross-species relations have to be intensified.
by Felix Künkel
The Floodscapes of the Havel river are an especially dynamic landscape in which different creatures and dynamics engage in spatial conflicts and cooperation. The continuous shift between wet, humid and dry conditions in these floodscapes as well as specific spatial interventions of human and non human actors shape very diverse life-depending assemblages and ecological niches. In this thicket space we investigate practices of unruly space production which opposed the niche construction of the imperialist prussian state in the Havel floodscapes. Geological transformations, practices of commoning in the wetlands, the invasion of Canadian waterweed, constructions of beavers, and weir fisheries produce and interact with fluid spaces. Relating the histories of these actors and dynamics, the essay discusses which understanding of space and which modes of engagement with it we can learn from their space production, when we want to take sides for social-ecological diversity against extractivist infrastructures of power.
Instead of rushing to final solutions, the third part of the book emphasises the necessity of cultivating uncertainty, open-endedness and conflict as inherently spatial characteristics. As a discipline that shapes and produces space, we are better off trying to understand space and adjust our movements and actions accordingly, rather than reducing spaces to fit our preferences. Building on the second part, the chapters grapple with the central question of what an approach to the relational complexity of space could look like.
by Barbara Herschel and Kaspar Jamme
The chapter Blue Pearls envisions a sequence of interventions and intimate relationships that could preserve the diminishing habitat of a pond called Lankegrabenteich in the south of Berlin from drying up. The speculative design of a rainwater infrastructure produces visualisations of what the entanglement of private and public property, state and civil society responsibilities, planning and maintenance measures, and human and non-human worlds might look like. A variety of hydrogeological, landscape, technical, structural and maintenance interventions and actions re-ecologise the pond beyond its banks. By outlining a possible interweaving of private and public, human and non-human worlds, the project simultaneously highlights the limits at which the actual implementation of the project might falter. The speculative project is both: an expression of a potential future as well as an alignment with the first part of this book, reminding us of the powerful relationships that hinder a re- ecologising of space.
by Felix Künkel
With a series of drawings we can accompany beavers on their attempt to construct diverse ecological niches, which are open to many with whom they form life depending assemblages. The drawings are an approach to make beaver architectures accessible for the languages and tools of visualisation used in architecture. The drawings are inspired by a multitude of scientific studies and very close observations of beavers behaviour, their tools and the spaces produced by them. But the drawings are also a moment of sympathising with beavers and recognising in their behaviours. How can we learn to create diverse ecological niches like they do? Or even: How can we learn to collaborate with beavers in their attempt to stabilise the openness of space.
by Justus Schweer
Ecosoda builds onto the previous chapter Place of Places and elaborates the proposal in Temporal Desires for a new way of dealing with urban properties, that highlights the spatial resonance for ecological entanglement. In detailed drawings we follow the development and decay of spatial structures and situations. This chapter emphasizes how speculative imagination, rooted in a detailed analysis of what’s there, can reshape and integrate human construction and ecosystems. Through these drawings, the chapter illustrates the complex entanglement of human building activities with natural environments, highlighting how ownership and property issues become sites of negotiation between ecological and human interests. They underscore the simultaneity of space-times and the need for resonance between ecological interdependencies and urban planning. Ecosoda advocates for a planning process that acknowledges these interdependencies, proposing an urban planning category, where human interventions become part of a dynamic and evolving ecosystem.
Abstraction as an Approach to Dive Into Materiality
by Barbara Herschel
Renaturation work along water bodies involves the removal and widening of shorelines and the renewal or dredging of the river bed. Sloping banks must be secured against erosion and landslides. Nets, gabions, deadwood and stones are used as prosthesis for the shore zones, protecting the bodies of water from their own decay.
In this chapter A Prosthesis for Water Bodies I experiments with the materialisation of a specific body part of renaturated waters: the construction of a decontextualised, alienated and self-crocheted stone- mattress. The abstraction creates aesthetic points of connection between engineering construction methods and artistic craft, as well as between materiality and use.
Experimenting with materiality, building for more-than-human habitats and stabilising ecosystems are expressions of more-than-human and careful spatial planning.