Sistema Regional de Información
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Architecture is in need of a global theory, a theory capable to explain architecture in the context of the whole earth. Against the backdrop of a looming ecological crisis that forces architects to reconsider once again the relationship between nature and culture, Scalbert explores a sweeping set of references ranging from architectural history, literature, science, geography or vernacular studies, all in an effort to set the parameters for a contemporary conversation that may reinvigorate once again the way in which architects take on nature as an intrinsic and necessary part of their work.

Considering structural systems, relational events, and temporal cycles as observed in living organisms has always been a source for human inspiration. Nature, seen as an open-ended system, offers the opportunity to learn from both its results and its processes. The construction of new paradigms inspired on nature is the common thread that weaves together the article’s main argument: nature as construction material for new models of thought and organization within the fields of architecture and the city.

 

The Danish architect Arne Jacobsen (1902-71) made the most of every project for his own family houses by designing avant-garde, highly experimental solutions. For his single-family house in the Søholm row-houses (Klampenborg, 1946-50) the experimentation with the architectural project not only entailed designing domestic architecture but also the private garden. Although Søholm housing is widely known in strict architectural terms as an example of the New Empiricism developed in Nordic countries in postwar period, its gardening has been scarcely studied. The aim of this current research is try to verify the hypothesis of understanding the garden of Jacobsen’s own house as a “landscape design laboratory”, a real testing ground for his late works during the 50s and 60s. His botanical trials due to his fondness for gardening, his dedication to stare at the natural forms taking photographs and painting watercolors, and his architectural tests with the spatial screening thanks to “vegetal walls” and movable screens will turn out to be the basis for his following works such as the Munkegårds school, the Tom’s chocolate factory, the St. Catherine’s College in Oxford or the headquarters for the H.E.W. company in Hamburg. Through the analysis of Søholm “work-in-progress” garden it is possible to discover the importance of gardening, photography, watercolor painting and textile designs in the work of Arne Jacobsen, since he brings together all his hobbies with his professional activity as an architect. All of these experiences, besides his outstanding sensitivity towards natural landscape, make this case study into a melting pot of ideas, evocations and landscape sensations which are essential to understand the core of his architectural work.

The life of the 5th Duke of Portland is the story of the obsession with finding a spot of quiet, a zone free of worry, a place to feel safe. Perhaps he found there, in that natural and unfolded space of the visible world, the forces to overcome his difficulty, to understand the scale of space; that is, the way in which others establish relationships of similarity, distance or closeness with oneself. Following his appointment as heir to this immense state, almost immediately began a series of investments of an unprecedented scale, which have been considered, technically and conceptually, pioneers in the domestic and landscape transformations of the nineteenth century. Welbeck Estate is a double city, one visible and the other hidden, one in surface, constructed with physical materials; the other less obvious, submerged between shadows and natural substances, flows, energies, scales, processes and senses.This is the story of a city transformed from the bowels of the earth, beyond where the laws of reason are suspended. A kind of “other nature”, understood as an immaterial unknown with which to reflect on the way things happen in space, and those that happen in time. Spaces and times unfolded and folded over themselves, as materials with which the 5th Duke built this fascinating scenery in which to represent his own life.

Nature was one of the models of premodern imitation. Its canon fell into disuse with the Enlightenment, when humans began to impose technical command over the natural environment. However, with the crisis of post-modernity, a new kind of rational, conscious and free imitation emerged. It is an intersubjective praxis that occurs between two subjects, not between object and subject as in the premodern era. The action of architectural design is based on different materials; these can come from architecture itself or from other aspects of reality, such as art, landscape or nature. Reality provides materials to be used over and over, which require an architect’s skill to organize. This concept of ‘design material’ leads to the idea of a project as the construction of a new order from elements, models or time-tested examples through experience. When the design process is understood in this way, the abstract concept of nature as a subject can be considered a model – a dynamic and living subject oriented towards the future that, with its structural principles and rules, proposes a procedure: the desire and rational action of its use as reference material by the subject-architect. The thesis is not that the process of architectural design is an autonomous act or a consequence of a creation that emerges from a vacuum, but that architecture always refers to certain models, prototypes or memories that rise up in the architect to generate rational, free and conscious imitation. One of these models is nature, as Herzog & de Meuron exemplify in their work. This article analyses some of Swiss architects’ projects as examples of this renewed mimesis. To support this point, it explains what this contemporary imitation consists of, why nature is a subject that provokes a desire for emulation and how it influences the practice of Swiss architects.

With the design and construction of the Emerald Necklace in Boston by Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903), a new urban tool took shape directly targeted at adapting natural landscapes to the interior of a city, conceptualized as a system of parks fused within an urban structure and landscape design. This idea continues to be key to the development process of creating symbiosis between city and nature. Without claiming to be exhaustive, this paper reviews how this idea was introduced to Europe in a variety of ways and through diverse achievements. Through three 20th century “landscapers” rooted in different contexts and places, this paper aims to show how systems of parks have consolidated in Europe with distinctive yet complimentary points-of-views, all contributing to the development of the interaction between city and nature in urban architectural culture, laying the foundation of what is presently called Green Infrastructure.