BOOKTALKS| Urban Landscape Lecture Series—Wild and the City. Landscape Architecture for Lush Urbanism

Event Content

“Prov. The public. The Decisive Tomorrow World series of lectures extends to a late-night reading session for selected books in the arts of literature. Launched by the Wen Shin Arts Foundation, Liu Huifang, Assistant Professor of the Department of Architecture and Urban Design, Culture University, invited experts in digital architecture to submit their favorite theoretical works in the fields of landscape, cities, architecture, and more. Unlike previous discussions of pure architecture, we look at cities, buildings, and public spaces from a more diverse perspective, discussing concepts such as Urbanism, Commonality, Publicity, and Future Cities in the book. The first episode was brought by Professor Su Mengzong, “Wilderness and the City: Landscape Architecture Towards Dark Green Urbanism” (Wild and the City. Landscape Architecture for Lush Urbanism)'s introductory reading.

Wilderness and the City: Landscape Architecture Towards Dark Green Urbanism is co-edited by Italian scholars Annalisa Metta and Maria Livia Olivetti. The wildness in the city appears for a variety of reasons, sometimes due to lack of attention and sometimes deliberate. We gradually developed a mutually beneficial relationship with the so-called “nature” of the post-industrial society. Undisturbed ecosystems and wildlife are becoming increasingly common in contemporary European cities. Untamed land is expanding, inhabited by animals and insects that threaten us, and invasive species that disturb local plants, while dense jungle occupies the roofs and exterior walls of parks and the most fashionable buildings. IN THIS CASE, WILDERNESS CAN BE EXPLOITED BY DESIGNERS TO RESPOND TO DIFFERENT ISSUES: REGENERATING ABANDONED AREAS, BUILDING SUSTAINABLE INFRASTRUCTURE, REVITALIZING VALUABLE PUBLIC SPACES, IMPROVING THE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT OF NEWLY POPULATED SETTLEMENTS, PROPOSING NEW PRACTICES AND SOCIAL RITUALS, RESPONDING TO CLIMATE CHANGE, MEETING PEOPLE'S NEEDS AND HOMES People's “lust for nature” and so on.

From a critical perspective, the book interprets clues to the current relationship between “wilderness” and “city”. On the one hand, exploring the positive value of wild landscapes in improving urban quality from the point of view of beauty, health, and livability, on the other hand, questions the risk of wilderness as a popular term, which will contribute to an anti-urban stance or cheap green policies. Its purpose is to explain the various interpretations generated by urban wilderness, which continue to find their differentiating elements in the unstable relationship between cities and nature.