Athos Monastery, Greece: student proposals

In the spring of 2011 a group of Academie van Bouwkunst landscape architecture students traveled to a remote monastery in Athos, where they had been invited to work on concepts for garden restoration and the addition of new gardens to the thousand year old monastery.

We are currently working on a book of all the designs that will be posted here in the coming months; what follows is just a glimpse.

Landscape Renewal in Twente, East Netherlands

De studenten van de afdeling landschapsarchitectuur van de Academie van Bouwkunst Amsterdam hebben in april en mei 2010 een 7-avonden project gedaan met als onderwerp de Natura 2000 opgave voor de Oldenzaalse stuwwal. De opdracht was om een commerciële drager te vinden voor de ontwikkeling van 400 hectare landschap met als hoofddoel het verhogen van de biodiversiteit. Het ging dus niet per definitie om nieuwe natuur, ook tuinen en specifieke agrarische landschappen kunnen de biodiversiteit verhogen.
Alle studenten hebben binnen de opgave hun eigen commerciële opzet bedacht. Er is gezocht naar commerciële dragers binnen de zorg, het wonen, het werken en het toerisme, maar ook binnen de agrarische sector zelf, of combinaties daarvan. Voor sommigen was daarbij de cultuurhistorie van het oude landschap vetrekpunt, terwijl anderen juist veel meer zijn gaan werken vanuit een mogelijk nieuw toekomstbeeld.
Doel van de opgave was dat studenten leren nadenken over grote vraagstukken als biodiversiteit en nieuwe economische dragers voor landschapsbeheer. Van belang was dat de studenten zelf een strategie bedachten voor de totstandkoming van de biodiversiteit en deze strategie vervolgens vertaalden naar een ruimtelijk model voor landschapsinrichting.  Bij allen is het inzicht in de complexiteit van landschapsontwikkeling en welke factoren daarbinnen allemaal een rol spelen enorm gegroeid. Met name omdat binnen de groep 7 verschillende invalshoeken zijn gekozen is dat effect maximaal geweest (hoe onwaarschijnlijk sommige strategieën in werkelijkheid ook zullen blijken te zijn).
Daarbij zitten een aantal benaderingen die wellicht interressante aanknopingspunten bevatten voor de actuele opgave voor de stuwwal, en wellicht ook een aantal benaderingen waarbij mensen de haren te berge rijzen…

Marieke Timmermans
Hoofd Landschapsarchitectuur
Academie van Bouwkunst Amsterdam

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Jacques Abelman – A Walk on the Wild Side

The essence of the “Wild Side” landscape vision is new farming methods that will transform the site into an official “High Nature Value” area. This designation describes certain types of agriculture that increase the biodiversity and ecological health of farmland. This plan has three layers.
First, a network of hedgerows is re-established on existing parcel boundaries. This network of native species creates a diversity of animal
habitats and connects nature areas. Hedgerows also yield biomass as well as a diversity of fruiting and medicinal plant species.

Secondly, agroforestry or forest farming is established. In conjunction with the hedgerow network, stands of trees are planted for fruit, wood, or biomass. Here we have taken the example of Acer saccharum common in North America. These natural stands of trees yield sugar. Orchards and nurseries are also part of the agroforestry strategy. Biodiversity in the hedgerow and agroforestry areas is augmented through a diversity of spatial conditions. Buffer zones, rhythms of closed and open spaces, and the corridor effect of the whole system will create and maintain much higher levels of indigenous biodiversity.

Thirdly, the economic possibilities of farmers are further expanded by tourism. New vacation cabins are located in the “chambers” formed by the agroforestry zones and hedgerow system. These weekend getaway residences
provide an intimate experience of tranquility and nature. Accessible only by small paths, the houses require very little new infrastructure
and are self-reliant for energy production and waste recycling, as well as providing a high level of additional income for the farmers.

The future of Twente can be shaped by a combination of these integrated elements: strengthened nature, renewed agriculture, and enlightened tourism.

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Leen Vanthuyne- The Land of MILK

“Where are those cows?”

Dairy farmers in the area of the Oldenzaalse Stuwwal are under a lot of pressure. In an age where production is in a state of rapid expansion,
the only choice available for farmers seems to be growing or quitting business. While other farms in the country are struggling to scale up,
Oldenzaal farmers find themselves completely stuck in the middle of their high nature-value surroundings.
“The land of MILK” project aims to integrate nature and dairy farming in an economically feasible way. An old, nearly extinct race of cows
is brought in to the system both for grazing and milking. Herbivory is re-introduced as an essential part of the ecosystem. The grazing landscape is a reflection of the cow’s daily menu.

Heathland is allowed to re-colonise parts of the area, while other pasture areas are sown in with herbs. The effects of a varied ration and
specific herbal combinations on the quality of milk will be carefully monitored. A medium sized herd (consisting of 28 cows) is grazed
nomadically, moving from heather to meadow to forest every two weeks. With the help of a mobile milking robot the land is protected from
trampling. Also the cows decide when they want to get their milking session. The proposal zooms in on one diverse-dairyfarm unit, being a role model for many other farms to follow. It explains how to convince the farmer into a fruitfull cooperation with the nature instances that currently own the surrounding land and how a normal farm can be transformed into a diverse-dairy-farm. Existing inhabitants will benefit from this enhanced environment while new recreational and catering facilities can find their place within the grazing landscape. In the long run, milk tasteries can be founded and this unique ‘Oldenzaal’ milk can be processed into a range of gastronomical new cheeses.

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Marijne Beenhakker- Verslingerd aan Twente

NATIONAAL LANDSCHAP/ NATURA 2000 GEBIED
Oost-Twente is nationaal landschap. Het wordt gewaardeerd om zijn kleinschalige afwisseling en coulissenwerking. De stuwwal van Oldenzaal is tevens Natura 2000-gebied: gebied met een bijzondere bijdrage aan de Europese biodiversiteit. Zijn status heeft Twente grotendeels te
danken aan houtwallen. Deze maken het landschap kleinschalig en vormen coulissen; daarnaast herbergen ze rijke natuurwaarden.

PASSÉ Houtwallen zijn de boer niet meer tot nut, dus onderhoudt hij ze niet. De houtwallen verdwijnen uit het landschap. Zonde! Ze romantiseren het landschap hebben een hoge mate van biodiversiteit. Er is een impuls nodig die de landschapselementen nieuw bestaansrecht geeft.

CONCEPT: SLINGERTUIN Een moderne interpretatie van houtwallen laat Twente weer bloeien. Slingertuinen bestaan niet langer bij de gratie van de boer. Het zijn geen erfafscheidingen: ze zíjn het erf. Slingertuinen bestaan uit een slingerwal, een karrenpad en een langgerekte privétuin. Aan de wallen zijn woningen gekoppeld. Bewoners zijn verantwoordelijk voor het onderhoud van de wal. Zo draagt deze nieuwe speler zorg voor het door hem geliefde landschap.

MENSELIJK GENOEGEN EN BIODIVERSITEIT De verschijningsvorm van de slingerwal wordt afgestemd op menselijk genoegen en biodiversiteit. De beplanting van de wal wordt uitgekozen op zintuiglijke kwaliteiten zoals geur, kleur en eetbaarheid.

VEGROTEN TOEGANKELIJKHEID De wallen liggen over de gehele lengte van een kavelgrens. Ze zijn verbonden met andere slingertuinen en bestaande infrastructuur. Door de karrenpaden bij de slingertuinen wordt de toegankelijkheid van het gebied vergroot.

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Marit Janse- Charged with Energy

Van oudsher heeft de energieproductie een zwaar stempel gedrukt op de wijze waarom wij onze ruimte inrichten en hoe ons landschap is vormgegeven. De Weerribben-Wieden is een oud energielandschap waar eeuwenlang turf werd gewonnen, Kinderdijk is een energiepark die zelfs benoemt is tot Werelderfgoed. Het oude energielandschap manifesteert zich vaak in verrassende schoonheid. Een schoonheid die we nog niet erkennen in de huidige energielandschappen zoals windmolenparken en hoogspanningslijnen. Biomassa is een alternatieve energievorm die zich juist ruimtelijk sterk vertaalt. Bossen, hakhout en energiegewassen als koolzaad, goudsbloem, hennep, vlas
hebben naast hun energetische waarde een esthetische en recreatieve waarde. Ecologisch zijn de verschillende gewassen een stuk aantrekkelijker dan intensief bewerkte akkers. Actuele problemen van wateroverlast en verdroging kan worden verandert door het grondgebruik aan te passen aan de natuurlijke omstandigheden in de infiltratie- en kwelgebieden. Deze gebieden zijn niet meer geschikt voor intensief landbouwgebruik terwijl grootschalige bebossing zeer geschikt is voor langdurige berging van water.

Voor de ruimtelijke en economische transformatie van het landschap bij Oldenzaal is een raamwerk ontworpen die de ruimtelijke contrasten van het landschap versterkt. Het verschil tussen de uitgestrekte woeste gronden en de intensief bewerkte akkertjes bij de dorpen, het verschil tussen nat en droog en het verschil in vruchtbaarheid van de grond is vervaagd. Deze ontwikkeling is veroorzaakt door de beheersing van het watersysteem, de uitvinding van het prikkeldraad en de toepassing van kunstmest. De inzet van biomassagewassen maakt de energieproductie zichtbaar en vormt tegelijkertijd een aantrekkelijk landschap. Boerenerven die minder bebouwing nodig zullen
hebben kunnen omgevormd worden tot recreatiewoningen. Juist daar waar het erf op de grens staat van twee landschapstypen kent een hoge mate van aantrekkelijkheid.
Het landschap van Oldenzaal is een door de eeuwen heen gevormd cultuurlandschap door de boer bewerkt. Het oude essenlandbouwsysteem en het latere Markestelsel hadden beiden gemeenschappelijke waarden in het gebruik van het landschap. In deze geschiedenis is een toekomstige groene energiecoöperatie denkbaar met bosboeren die de velden oogsten voor lokale energiecentrales.

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Marlies Rijken- Back to Nature

The assignment was to make nature at the east of Oldenzaal. So ‘What is nature’? In the Netherlands there is no real nature anymore,
everything is man-made. I want to use this in my design but in a more extreme matter. In the Netherlands there’s no place to retreat
in a large quiet area. On the other hand there a lot of people who live in the city and need a quiet place. By making one large nature resort where everything is possible, the way’s of using nature comes back again. People forget how basic skills are important is in our lives. When this park becomes a wilderness-resort I bring people back to nature.

The Park will be surrounded by a fence. Inside it’s possible to rent a tent and stay in a quiet area by yourself. You have to find the things
you need, for example wood to start a fire, edible plants and have a shower in the stream. It’s also possible to buy food at the “park-market”.
Here you can buy original products from the region.

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Nadine Schiller- The new Working Landscape

“The New Working Landscape” creates small office units on a natural estate and a new way of working in the landscape. At the entrances of the estate are two “Park and Cycle” areas where employees park their cars and take a bicycle to their working space. There is one new cycle route introduced to the estate on which office units, conference rooms, open air conference rooms, brainstorm units, a restaurant and sports café are connected. You can only get there by bike; cars are not allowed on the estate. In that way a calm and natural environment is created which is good for the employees and also for the development of natural areas.

The estate is divided in three zones. In the first zone, close to the river “De Dinkel,” is a large area of new marsh. The second zone is a little higher and is composed mostly of meadow and fields and has an open character. Here the office units are situated under the ground and are very long and narrow. This way all the employees can sit at their desks with a view on the landscape. The units in the third zone are situated in new forest areas, standing on high poles. In that way employees will be able to work in the tree tops. The brainstorm units and open air conference rooms on the estate are all different, and their design reacts to their landscape context.

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Ramon Postma – NOABERSCAPE

NoaberScape®: healthcare and collective commercial nature

The health insurer as a new player to create new nature. Healthcare is more and more about saving costs. The population is aging and makes
greater and longer use of healthcare. A huge amount of costs for insurance companies and societies. Frequently it is not necessary for a
patient to stay in a hospital to recover. To offer care and treatment, the concept NoaberScape ® is proposed.

Now the nature comes in.

Healthcare and maintaining landscape are nowadays both about costs. The health insurer is financially strong and can influence the
stressed land policy in a positive way. The insurer will pay the high price because the pastoral landscape is part of the healing process.
The health insurer invests in the landscape and is therefore allowed to realize the concept of NoaberScape® using farmland and farmsteads, the most characteristic aspects of the Twente landscape. The rooms are spread out over six Noaberhuzen®. This small scaled setting accelerates the healing by the feeling you’re on holiday in this pastoral landscape. Current agricultural landscape is too expensive to maintain. For the Noaberscape® landscape a phasing is proposed. In several steps pastures will be transformed into heather. Heather is
low in maintenance, contains more biodiversity and improves the spacial qualities of the landscape. Wood and heather are ingredients
for the new architecture healthfarms, so called Noaberhuzen®. A pure symbiosis of healthcare and renewed care for the landscape.

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Yuka Yoshida- Woodland Urban Living

How can we bring back stewardship through landscape?

The area between Oldenzaal and Dinkel used to be the important source of food for the people of Oldenzaal. Over the centuries, industrialization and large scale agriculture have changed the symbiosis relationship between city and surrounding agricultural
lands. Although the system of agriculture in the area has changed over time, the old pattern of the landscape remains in the area
and attract many visitors to the site. Because of its richness in nature, Natuur2000 assigned this area to increase biodiversity for the future
that is both economically and environmentally sustainable.

My approach is to create a community that is physically involved in the management of nature, food production process and be a place for urban dwellers to come and connected with nature. Although traditional small scale agriculture is slowly fading, there is increasing demand for local organic food production. Farmers can guide the process of natural farming, and inhabitants can provide the labor to maintain the farmland. Natural farming increases biodiversity of the soil, and by making multiple dwellings in the woodland, there will be new biodiversity relating to human activities, and more over, they provide financial stability to allow extensive farming. Woodland communities will not destroy the historical layered landscape pattern, also farmland living becomes more accessible for wider audience, and bring back the stewardship to the area with historical landscape.

Digging for Treasure / Schatgraven 03b

This publication is the result of two years of student work undertaken at the Amsterdam Academy by students in landscape architecture.

“Schatgraven” or digging for treasure is about fieldwork and analysis – and learning to look in new ways. Students were asked to find subjects of personal interest after site visits, ranging from different smells in the landscape  to gradations of  neglect and care in the environment.

The results are personal maps and analytical explorations of what was seen and perceived.  Through this personal map work students learn to graphically materialize their own thinking process with a combination of complete openness to place and cartographic precision.

Featuring the work of:

Inge Vleemingh, Leen Vantuyne, Marlies Rijken, Marijne Beenhakker, Donald Marskamp, Ramon Postma, Joep Meijer, Yuka Yoshida, Oinny Atahuichi Torrez, Gert-Jan Wisse, Marit Janse, Anna Sobiech, Milda Jusaite, Matt Colby, Judith van der Poel, Niek Heijboer, Chenxi Bu, and Jacques Abelman

Studio Leaders: Pepijn Godefroy and Joyce van den Burg

Book design: La4SALE

The entire book is available for download here:

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O3B Schatgraven web book

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“Swimming to Manhattan” Competition

All “Swimming to Manhattan” projects can be seen on the page on the left.

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The Winter term for the third year students of the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam is organized as a competition with twelve teams, a critical jury and an actual prize. In two intensive weeks, interdisciplinary (Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape Architecture) teams worked on intelligent and imaginative perspectives on New York’s Upper Bay. This bay, which is connected to the ocean, has been in the spotlight since hurricane Katrina. Various plans have been devised, among which the plan to supply the bay with a storm-surge barrier, and multiple plans have already been made for various parts of the coastal area surrounding the bay. In all of these design plans, protection against the rising water levels plays a key role. The assignment for the winter term revolved around the idea that the Upper Bay could become a second Central Park.

In designing this vision for the future, the following questions were to be answered: What will this new recreational area look like? How will the area be accessed? How will this new “water park” relate to all the existing developments? What will the intervention produce? In addition, the development of the new park could be linked to other current problems such as energy extraction, food production and coastal protection. The participating teams were supported by various consultants (all of whom are experts in the field) that may be seen during the course of the project. Luc Vrolijks,(Urban Progress) Thomas Oles (lector Living Landscape AvB), Lodewijk van Nieuwenhuijze (H+N+S), John Lonsdale (Achitect), Ronald Rietveld (landscape Architect) en Jeroen Aerts (VU Risk insurance and water managment). The jury was composed of Aart Oxenaar, Machiel Spaan, Marieke Timmermans, Rogier van de Berg and Cees van der Veeken (Lola Landscape Architects).

The winning entry was “Red Point Park,” by Egle Suminskaite, Jacques Abelman, Simona Serafino, Marit Janse, and Txell Blanco Diaz. According to the jury, “Red Point Park breaks with the tradition of  ‘form follows finance.’ The strategy focuses on clean and dynamic water itself rather than on the economic development of the waterfront. The plan shows a convincing development strategy for water and the harbor edges and does it in a striking way.”

All the entries are slated to be exhibited in the New York Architectural center this June 2011 in the context of a collaboration with ARCAM, the Amsterdam Architectural Center. Watch this space for further developments.

Living Landscape: First Harvest / Eerste Oogst

Living Landscape is a research lectureship that will run from 2010 to 2012 at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture. The lectureship is based on a deceptively simple premise: that landscape is less the arrangement of outdoor ‘space,’ than the tasks and rituals that people perform in their everyday lives. This notion of landscape as ‘lived practice’ or ‘performance’ is now widespread in landscape studies, but it has barely begun to penetrate landscape architecture education.

In the first months of the lectureship, students were therefore asked to interrogate their own understandings and prejudices with respect to landscape. They attended lectures and seminars by prominent scholars and practitioners, and tackled difficult readings on landscape drawn from the fields of geography, archaeology, art history, and literary studies. At the end of the term, they were asked to bring their revised—and hopefully deepened—understanding of landscape to bear on design tasks that ranged from urban parks to regional master plans. The following projects are the result.

Thomas Oles

Please navigate the pages on the left to explore student projects and writings as well as the contents of the lectureship.

Living Landscape Lecture Series

Check out the Capita Selecta page to learn more about the international lecture series that took place last fall. The full interviews can be watched at the Academie van Bouwkunst in Amsterdam. Interviews with the guests will be published later in 2011 in the Katern of the Academy.

Living Landscape at the Academie van Bouwkunst, Amsterdam

What is landscape? When, and where, did this word and idea arise?

How have its meanings changed through history? How, and why, did it come to be associated with scenery? How are we to explain its proliferation in contemporary discourse? And, most important, how do the answers we give to these questions determine the methods we use to design places? This is the subject of Living Landscape.

Many people continue to think of landscape as an area outside the city in which certain kinds of activities—agriculture, recreation, water storage—take place. In this view, landscape is a finite resource, one that can be drawn down in order to make room for other, ‘non-landscape’ functions, such as housing or industry. But this understanding of landscape excludes large parts of the human environment, and is increasingly untenable in an urban world. Many geographers, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians have therefore begun to explore older, more dynamic meanings of landscape. They contend that landscape is less an area than the unfolding of human practices, institutions, perceptions, and values in time. In this more holistic view, landscapes are not simply zones lived ‘in’: they are the process and result of living.

Understanding landscape as lived practice calls into question many fundamental assumptions about space, objects, and representation on which the design professions—and design education—rest. It therefore has the potential to transform the process, products, and social mission of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. Living Landscape is a wide-ranging, open-ended forum for exploring these implications, through theory and practice, at every scale of the designed environment, from territory to site to building.

- Thomas Oles, visiting scholar Living Landscape Program at the Academie van Bouwkunst Amsterdam