Water and Land Ur of the Netherlands
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Water and Land ur of the netherlands Department of LanDscape architecture anD environmentaL Planning College of environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley printing: alonzo printing C ison design Water and Land introduction a stuDy tour of the netherLanDs prof. peter bosse L m a n n the birth of the idea for a study tour to the Netherlands developed after Assistant Professor Jennifer Brooke began research on the condition of reclaimed land in the San Francisco Bay Area. The low-lying tidal basins, formerly used for salt production, are now permanently open to tidal action. Large wetlands have emerged and gradually a new landscape will begin to take shape that will not necessarily resemble the original marshes of the Bay’s natural history. It will be a constructed landscape. The levees that protected the former salt flats followed a functional geometry in contrast to the evolving landscape that will become vegetated by successive plant communities and filled with birds and wildlife in a not entirely predictable fashion. Similarly, the Dutch polder (grazing land that is situated below sea level) has been converted to permanently flooded wetlands, and some of these wetlands are now 30 years old. In fall 2005, the catastrophic Hurricane Katrina occurred in the Mississippi Delta and gave the study tour additional impetus. During that fall semester, faculty in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning decided to concentrate efforts on the California Delta, which is formed by the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. We invited Jane Wolff of Washington University dep A rtment of la ndsc A pe A rchitecture A nd environment al p la nning a stuDy tour of the netherLanDs in Saint Louis to UC Berkeley as the Visiting Farrand condition of levees in the California Delta, students and Professor, to offer a design studio that would focus faculty in Jane Wolff’s design studio questioned the on the California Delta. Her 2003 book, Delta Primer, wisdom of California’s legal tradition. In the California a book designed to educate diverse audiences about Delta, responsibility for the integrity of the levee system the contested landscape of the California Delta, gave has historically been in the hands of the farmers, with a unique perspective on the delta landscape with some assistance from the state. Municipalities are now its patterns for agricultural and urban settlements. allowing landowners to build one story, single family Although, hurricanes do not threaten the coast of housing behind such levees in ever increasing numbers; California, an earthquake, if it were to occur on the however, they are not insuring the sustainability of the eastern edge of California’s coastal fault line system, levees over time. In The Netherlands, we hoped to study would create a disaster of very similar proportions to housing types and land development practices that Hurricane Katrina that would affect the low-lying delta provide alternative models for California to consider. landscape. With her knowledge of the California Delta, So, in early 2006, fifteen students met to plan a Jane Wolff was the ideal instructor for this discussion. study tour to The Netherlands. Our interest in urban We thought that a visit to The Netherlands would design, intensive and overlapping land use and creative offer insight for design and planning of the California approaches to residential density necessitated the Delta. Holland has a long administrative history that study tour to The Netherlands and it soon became a deals with land and water issues in the Rhine River reality. To help us with our preparation, we invited Tracy Delta and this is reflected in their standards for levee Metz to visit and lecture on “Holland and Water: A construction and water management. Given the fragile Restless Marriage.” Metz, recently appointed by Queen Beatrix to an independent advisory council for the a) Land is still reclaimed from the sea. Ministry of Nature and Agriculture, is a journalist for Dutch design professionals repeatedly pointed to the Dutch newspaper, NRC Handelsblad writing as a nds J.B. Bakema’s 1964 Pampus Plan, a diagram for building la critic about Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape. a new city on the inland sea just outside Amsterdam. One of her many books, “New Nature,” deals with Professionals used Bakema’s plan as a reference for a the transformation of the traditional agricultural new set of islands that have emerged there as part of countryside. We also contacted Irene Curulli from the IJburg. The effort to create a new land for 30 thousand University of Eindhoven who had visited UC Berkeley inhabitants, and build it out of sand that is piled up from during the Metropolitan Landscape Conference. She dredging the sea, appeared questionable to us, especially had presented a paper on the ethics of designing given the availability of much surplus land that became study tour of the nether recycled landscapes and illustrated her talk with A available after industrial and port closures. Also, to the examples of Dutch sites. Her knowledge of places and outsider, the idea to claim new land from the sea appears firms in The Netherlands is extensive and she helped to contradict the second theme: us to access many design professionals. From our perspective, the professional community b) Water needs more land water andwater land of landscape architects and planners is very tightly The Dutch, however, see the two themes as perfectly knit in The Netherlands. We found that, after visiting a compatible. In her talk, Tracy Metz stressed that the number of firms, two themes began to emerge: Dutch people experience climate change first hand. They are forced to deal with increasing amounts of water, and the water comes from all sides. In the north and west, the tidal level is higher. From the east, the rivers carry more water. From below, the water table is rising, and from above, the amounts of precipitation are becoming greater. To prevent flooding, more land has to be made available for the expanding volumes of water. Therefore, the strategy is to change the river landscape along the Waal and the other Rhine distributaries. Former row cropland with clusters of small forests will be changed into grazing land with streams and lakes while levees along the rivers will be lowered to invite periodic flooding. On the following pages the participants have recorded their impressions through words and images. We start with a narrative by Deni Ruggeri, who describes visits to parks in Paris, where we started our tour. depArtment of landscApe Architecture And environmental planning nds la study tour of the nether A water andwater land dAy1 are LanDscapes for peopLe? in the 1960s and 1970s out of the Berkeley landscape architecture program came the call for user- friendly and people-inspired designs. At about the same time, William H. Whyte found that the secret to the u g g e r i r success of certain plazas and small parks in New York City lied in the flexibility of their designs, the provision of a range of activities, movable seating, edges for people to lean against, transparent tree canopies and food D e n i vendors. Both schools used traditional European park and open space design as precedents. Surprisingly, at least judging by some parks we have visited in the spring of 2006, the answer to the question are parks designed with people in mind? is not as clear-cut for European landscape architecture of the 21st century. 1. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines folly as: lack of good sense or normal prudence and foresight; a criminally or tragically foolish actions or conduct; obsolete: EVIL, WICKEDNESS; especially lewd behavior; a foolish act or idea; an excessively costly or unprofitable undertaking; an often extravagant picturesque building erected to suit a fanciful taste. Parisians love parks. During our visit to Parc des Park André Citröen opened in 1992; it is smaller than Buttes-Chaumont and Jardins du Luxembourg we found La Villette and more traditional. Rather than leaving the dep people running as if they were training for the Paris park “open” to the interpretation of the user, its program A Marathon — some obviously were — others played includes choreographed walks through thematic gardens rtment of boules, had their wedding pictures taken, played with and a series of outdoor rooms designed to provide a their children or simply enjoyed an early spring Sunday range of experiences, from solitude to socialization, la strolling down the winding paths. Historic Parisian parks from active sports to strolling. The result is a park in the ndsc are designed to provide choice and a range of experiences traditional sense of the term, where people can come A even when the space is limited, like at Place des Vosges, in contact with nature in many ways. The careful use of pe A where our hotel was located during the first few days of fragrant plantings, shade and specimen trees make the rchitecture our trip. These three parks are beautiful examples of what visit to André Citröen a pleasant and memorable one. a truly democratic public park ought to be. The park reminds landscape architects that we are most In contrast, contemporary Parisian parks display a successful when we strive to improve the experience of A tension between innovation and tradition, and they do the users and give them choice and beauty. nd environment so with very mixed results. We visited Parc de la Villette on the same Sunday and found it largely empty of people. Villette was originally conceived in 1979 as a new type of deconstructed landscape with follies regularly al p spaced according to a grid as centers of extemporaneous la activities.