The evolution of geoplastic techniques, land art, new ideas for sustainable landscapes, as well as topography planning based on BIM was told by Lyudmila Beloded, the founder of the Beloded Landscaping bureau, an active member of the Society of Garden Designers (SGD) and a member of the board of the Guild of Landscape Architects, to PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA. of Ukraine (GLAU).
Lyudmila Beloded, landscape designer, director and founder of Beloded Landscaping bureau
Prepare alpenstocks
I have good news for you: observers of international garden and landscape exhibitions predict a reincarnation and a new surge of interest in mountain landscape in the near future. The harbinger of the trend can be considered the naturalistic garden created in collaboration by designers Karla Kershaw and Ekaterina Zasukhina for the September Chelsea Flower Show 2021, with picturesque streams flowing between blocks of black slate and greenish mica quartzite. Garden Between Continents made a strong impression on the jury of the Royal Horticultural Society. And Lilly Gomm, a popular British garden designer, has already announced another cultural and garden precedent, promising to present a garden inspired by a trip to Switzerland at the show in May 2022.
What associations does the expression "mountain landscape" evoke in you? Are we really waiting for a return to the beginning of the 90s, when the fad for imitation of blooming alpine slopes led to the appearance, including in city parks and squares, of many ridiculous slides - "dog graves" hastily made by amateurs? No, I don't think so. In recent years, we have been pleased with the appearance of a large number of original and breakthrough projects on the border of land art and geoplastics, implemented in public and representative spaces.
Garden Between Continents — the garden of Karla Kershaw and Ekaterina Zasukhina, presented at the Chelsea Flower Show 2021, refers to the landscapes of the Ural Mountains. Photo credit: RHS Chelsea Flower Show
Geoplastics — work with relief, vertical planning — is considered one of the highest competencies of a landscape architect. Until the beginning of the XNUMXth century. the construction of parks was considered not so much creative as engineering and even military fortification specialization. For example, the unique relief of the Uman Sofievka was created by the military engineer Ludwig Metzel, who was invited by Count Potocki from Poland. The Versailles park with its fountains would have been impossible without deep knowledge of hydraulics possessed by the Francina dynasty of engineers from Tuscany. Stowe Park in Great Britain is formed as a series of man-made streams, cascades, grottoes. However, this is typical for most parks of the Romantic era. Large-scale work with soil and water, the creation of hills (positive relief), ravines and depressions (negative relief) are necessary to give more drama to man-made landscapes located on flat plains.
And today we are ripe for a new reading of old practices, the use of which in combination with high technologies and experimental courage opens up tempting horizons for us. It is not by chance that David Leatherbarrow, professor of architecture at the School of Design of the University of Pennsylvania, author of the book "Topographic Stories", believes that topography is a field that unites two related disciplines: architecture and landscape architecture. They are topographical arts, the common task of which is to adapt the place for the successful life of a person and express his worldview.
Sculptural landscapes as pure art
The purpose of creating an artificial relief can be purely decorative: artistic self-expression, creating a spectacular picture. Land art is an art designed to inspire and evoke an emotional response. This is the ego's function.
Sculptural Hills by Charles Jenks in Jupiter Artland Park. Edinburgh, Scotland. Photo source: thetimes.co.uk
One of the most famous parks, where land art is demonstrated in a concentrated form, is, of course, the "Garden of Space Contemplatives", created by designers Charles Jenks and Maggie Keswick (the same Maggie, in memory of whom famous architects are building Maggie Centers in different cities - rehabilitation facilities for cancer patients and their relatives). In the gardens around the Scottish estate Portrack House, not plants play the main role, but geometric shaped hills, ponds and abstract sculptures. Unfortunately, access to the private estate of Portrack House is possible only once a year, and it is quite difficult to buy a ticket - there are too many applicants. Access is limited because crowds of people can damage the "delicate" sculptural mounds. But the land art objects of Charles Jenks can also be seen in Jupiter Park, located near Edinburgh. Jupiter Artland is open from spring to fall.
Geoplastics by Martha Schwartz on the square in front of the Federal Courthouse in Minneapolis, USA. Photo source: minneapolisfed.org
Laconic, but such spectacular convex drops on the Minneapolis Courthouse Plaza in the American Minneapolis are a design of the studio Martha Schwartz Partners, dictated by a reference to glacial drumlins. Similar hills of elliptical shape were formed in the wake of the glacier. The mounds created by Marta Schwartz organically echo the architecture of the new Federal Court building by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. Despite imitating ancient prototypes, earthen drumlins embedded in slate paving with a regular striped pattern look ultra-modern.
The concept of the project dictates the form: within the framework of the naturalistic style, we form soft hills, as if washed by wind and rain, which our subconscious associates with the natural landscape. If our goal is to create a minimalist landscape that will emphasize the modernist character of the architecture, the hills, reservoirs, and amphitheatres will have clear geometric shapes.
Ecological connection between construction and nature
Today, the world landscape community is debating how to correctly correct the mood of the landscape in the light of trends for naturalness. Is it ethical to violate the natural ecosystem for the sake of visual effect? From the point of view of a modern conscious approach to architecture, including landscape architecture, perhaps this is not the best solution. But if we work in the conditions of an already urbanized environment, or in post-industrial territories, then geoplastics can be a method of reclamation at the same time.
Promenade at Hill Residence, laid along the crest of a natural hill. Chongqing, China. Photo source: Atelier Scale
A justified ecological solution is to use construction debris or industrial waste to reinforce the artificial relief. In Berlin and Munich, at the base of the hills, during the creation of public parks, the remnants of the buildings destroyed as a result of the bombings were placed. The same Charles Jenks created his surrealistic waves from waste: for land art in Northumberlandia park he used the rock produced in coal mines.
In China, where megacities are growing at the speed of mushrooms, and territories set aside for construction often have a natural hilly topography, work with topography is focused on creating connections between construction and nature. In Chongqing, the designers of the local studio Atelier Scale combined the new residential complex Hill Residence with a natural elevation, designed an ecological corridor along the ridge of the hill. The trail with suspension bridges and viewing platforms passes over swamps and streams framed by thickets of metasequoia.
The promenade leads to the top and the opposite slope of the hill, where the park is planned. This landscape project is symbolically called Return of the Hill. It should be noted that China is now leading in the number of large-scale and conceptually subtle topographical projects. Architects effectively integrate giant boulders and waterfalls into ultra-dense buildings, relying on the philosophy of symbiotic relations between man and nature.
We are ripe for a new reading of old practices, the use of which in combination with high technologies opens up tempting horizons for us
Since the garden is an environment that is sorely lacking in natural corners of nature, we use any surface for landscaping, including building gardens on terraces, roofs, and parking lot ceilings. In these conditions, it is impossible to provide a uniform layer of soil, sufficient for planting large trees, but we can form an artificial relief with elevations strengthened by retaining walls and integrate into them systems for organizing planting places under trees. All this is also geoplastics.
In our society, the work of a landscape architect is traditionally perceived as work with plants. But this is, first of all, a spatial practice. We work with volumes - they can be made of living trees and grass, soil, as well as stone, metal, wood.
If the early surrealist projects of Marta Schwartz, whom I have already mentioned, balanced on the edge of land art and caused many people to ask quite naturally "How to take care of it?" (for example, the Splice Garden on the roof of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge), today it is focused on the creation of sustainable and "climatic" landscapes. If it is possible to form a relief without "exploding the earth" and turning giant boulders, then it is possible not to do it. For example, in the design of the central park of the Beiqijia Technology Business District in Beijing, the function of massive blocks is performed by voluminous sculptural street furniture. Orange pavilions made of perforated metal play the role of rocks in Fengming Mountain Park in Chongqing, China.
Protection, microclimate, acoustics
Relief can perform a protective function. A ditch with water is a good old fortification method, but it can be successfully used for the same purposes in modern architecture. Remember the state buildings of Brazil, which Oscar Niemeyer surrounded with water bodies. Fortifications of coastal lines and dams can also be an expressive part of the modern landscape. For example, landscape architect Paul Sangh strengthened the embankment of Canadian Vancouver with a sculptural composition of soil and corten.
Butenshot is a noise-absorbing landscape designed by H+N+S Landschapsarchitecten. Amsterdam, Netherlands. Photo source: H+N+S Landschapsarchitecten
With the help of earth embankments, we can form "garden rooms" with a special microclimate, protect delicate plants from the wind, provide drier or, on the contrary, wetter conditions. Since the southern slopes always warm up more, you can create terraces on them for growing fruit trees or for urban gardens. The use of climatic features of the terrain is also an ancient practice, but it is no longer military, but agricultural.
Geoplastics can solve acoustic problems. For example, Kim Wilkie, a British landscape architect, industrial designer and honorary member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, during the reconstruction of the picturesque park of the Great Fosters hotel, formed a green theater surrounded by an earthen rampart. Thanks to this acoustic buffer, visitors to the amphitheater and artists are not disturbed by the noisy highway that runs along the border of the park. In addition, Kim Wilka's geoplastics are amazingly aesthetic.
Specialists of the Dutch landscape studio H+N+S Landschapsarchitecten were able to solve the noise problem at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam with the help of artificial hills. Butenshot landscape park is formed as a series of linear hills two meters high. They dampen sound waves created by airplanes during takeoff and landing. Pedestrian and bicycle paths are laid between the hills, and the park is quite functional as a recreation area, but, most importantly, Butenshot made it possible to halve the "acoustic pollution" in the residential areas adjacent to the airport. The noise-absorbing landscape is not the only innovative project in the portfolio of H+N+S Landschapsarchitecten, their architects create complex space landscapes with equal success both on the industrial sites of treatment plants and on the roofs of parking lots.
Test of strength
Surrealist hills and pyramids of Jenks, as I mentioned, are unstable to intensive loads, and any landscape for public urban space should be as functional as possible. If we assume that dozens of people will sit, lie or run on our man-made hills, then the hills must withstand it.
Gilles Brusse's sculptural landscape in Meirin, Switzerland. Photo source: Paysarchitectures
French architect Gilles Brusse sees the world around him as a gigantic sculpture and creates projects that could be called a fusion of land art with functional disciplines, such as architecture, landscape design, and engineering. In 2014, the municipality of the Swiss city of Meyrin commissioned Brusse to design and build an art object in the park, next to the recently renovated school in the Meyrin Park quarter. It should be said that the city was built in the 60s. XX century according to the project of architects Georges Addor and Louis Payot in accordance with all the canons of the Bauhaus and Le Corbusier schools. In order to build slender rows of modernist buildings of equal height here, the planners leveled the hilly landscape in the foothills of the Jura range to zero. But a series of flat, uniform yards no longer meets modern concepts of high-quality landscaping.
Brusse turned a dreary field on the outskirts of the city into a wrinkled relief, recreating, albeit in miniature, the original Jurassic landscape. Free, natural forms are like the materialization of the opposition of the modern architectural and planning paradigm to orthogonal modernism. The folds of the landscape object The Fold's Childhood are made of aluminum covered with a bitumen mixture. Trample-resistant grasses are planted in the spaces between them. As a result, it turned out to be something between a playground and a giant sculpture. The terms of reference for the project included planting new trees along the perimeter. Brusse proposed to make planting work part of the school curriculum. But the trees here are clearly not the main elements of the landscape.
Gilles Brusse's sculptural landscape in Meirin, Switzerland. Photo source: Paysarchitectures
Rainer Schmidt also created a game landscape, compiled two materials: grass lawn and orange tartan (rubber covering for running tracks). This living space, called BUGA O5, was opened as part of the National Garden Festival in Munich. The contrasting, orange-white-green wavy landscape provokes children and adults to play and be silly.
What is the price?
The oldest landscape garden in America, Middleton Garden, was laid out at the beginning of the XNUMXth century. by the American planter Henry Middleton, created by the efforts of hundreds of African slaves, whose labor was used to form the terraces descending to the water. In the eyes of Middleton's neighbors, this decorative garden looked like proof of the planter's wealth and influence. Nowadays, modern technology is used for landscape modeling, so the ethical problem no longer exists.
Summer Island, created by LOMA designers using BIM technologies. Heilbronn, Germany. Photo source: LOMA
The landscape architect now has the smartest construction equipment of the new generation at his disposal. If we form volumetric hills, then excavators work with the mass of soil, and at the stage of finishing the work and "smoothing" the slopes, mini equipment is used. Landscaping equipment is equipped with various sets of attachments for forming the soil surface. But the final shape of the artificial hills is already given manually - in this handmade process, the landscape architect literally acts as a sculptor.
The relief segment of our green sphere is rapidly evolving. BIM technologies can be used to design and implement large-scale volumes in large spaces. The latest Summer Island project by the German studio LOMA in the city of Heilbronn is the first public park in the world completely designed in 3D. The architects decided to create the most naturalistic hilly landscape, distributing hundreds of tons of soil on an area of 4,5 hectares as it would happen naturally with the help of wind, precipitation and soil erosion. In nature, such a process of formation would take thousands of years. Data on soil density, wind speed and direction, and precipitation volumes were loaded into the computer.
If we assume that people will sit, lie or run on our man-made hills, then the hills must withstand it
The program created a model of a three-dimensional landscape with undulating dunes. All that was needed was to transfer the ego into reality. To do this, excavator-planners equipped with GPS were connected to a single control system with a loaded topographic matrix. Freshly constructed dunes were sown with grass, massifs of bulbs were planted in the hollows, and the landscape was supplemented with two pavilions, also designed with the help of BIM. As a result of this experiment, the city received a delightful innovative park. By the way, the soil from which the relief was formed is also industrial waste: alluvial soil raised during work on clearing the riverbed and deepening the channels of the Neckar River.
So there are no special technical difficulties in the formation of artificial reliefs, on the contrary, there are inspiring prospects. Much more important than technology is spatial vision — the architect's ability to create a holistic image in which the artificial landscape, context, and architecture are in harmony. If such a quality is absent, the result is not a hill, but a ridiculous "dog grave", as you remember.
Summer Island, created by LOMA designers using BIM technologies. Heilbronn, Germany. Photo source: LOMA
The widespread opinion that geoplastics is insanely expensive is actually not justified. Yes, the work on the formation of a complex relief costs additional funds, but these are not the costs that "tear the budget." But the effect of talented geoplastics can be in the millions. It all depends on ambitions.
No right to mistake
Works with relief are considered monumental. This is not the landing of new compositions from annuals, not work with pop-up displays and street furniture. Man-made hills and valleys remain for a long time. If tomorrow city planners decide to change the system of bicycle lanes or lay new ones, it is best to abandon monumentalism. In our realities, in the absence of a new general plan, which is all rewritten and will not come out in any way, in the absence of detailed plans for the territory, long-term planning is difficult. Therefore, if there is no certainty that the territory will not be redeveloped for at least a couple of decades, then it is worth giving preference to flexible temporary solutions, minimal interventions, techniques that urbanists call acupuncture. The choice in favor of creating a complex landscape should be as conscious and thoughtful as possible, and professionals should develop and implement the project.
The relief language of landscape design is a separate dimension, a limitless space for fresh, innovative images
Any elevations and depressions on the site are always additional engineering solutions. When creating a slope, it is necessary to consider where the rainwater will flow. It can get on the pavement, roadway, seep under the foundation. Therefore, it is necessary to calculate the need and place for laying storm sewers, installing trays for collecting rainwater, or arranging drainage fields where the water would be absorbed without reaching the sidewalks and bike paths.
Michael van Valkenburg, an American landscape architect, stabilized the new topography created around the water treatment plant in New Haven (USA) using bioengineering methods. The traditional engineering drainage system made of pipes in his project is replaced by a network of open ditches, streams, overflows and ponds. Plants that filter and purify wastewater are used for greening the soil, including on roofs. At the same time, 70% of the architectural volumes are lowered below the ground level, but the drainage of this complex man-made relief is organized so successfully that the buildings are not threatened by groundwater flooding.
The steeper the slope, the more complex the technical solution. A naturalistic landscape with soft volumes and smooth folds does not require any tricks to hold the soil and plants. But if we create a slope of more than 30-45 degrees, it is necessary to use geogrids and geomats. The assortment of plants must also be selected taking into account the fact that the top of the hill will warm up more than the base, and it will always be drier.
The topographic landscape around the water treatment plant in New Haven, designed by Michael van Valkenburgh. Photo: Alex MacLean
And, of course, in our practice we must proceed primarily from the needs of the city and local conditions. Perhaps, taking into account climatic changes, the increase in average annual temperatures and the increase in the number of hot days, it is time for us to concentrate on "negative" reliefs - do not fill hills, but dig canyons, protecting plantations from heat and dry winds in man-made ravines. And also think about the formation of tanks for collecting rainwater.
In Ukraine, the demand for geoplastics is consistently high among private clients, but the potential of this technology for creating unique city-wide public and representative landscapes is completely undiscovered. We still do not have many specialists capable of implementing non-standard topographical projects.
Today, relief is increasingly used in city squares, moving away from the flat, archetypal image. It's great when you can lie down on a soft grassy hill right in the historic center of the city. Large-scale relief work includes the design of bridge eco-crossings over highways. This, as I already mentioned, is the creation of terraces and green roofs. In a word, the relief language of design is a separate dimension, a limitless space for fresh, innovative images.
