Parable landscapes
In the academic year of 2012-2013, the two platforms Urban Landscapes and Spatial Intelligence join forces in a studio collaboration entitled Studio Parable Landscapes (PAL).
This joint venture offers genuine and distinct education in both architecture and landscape architecture.
The studio is structured around two parallel tracks of study, PA (Parable) and LA (Landscape), which share resources and curriculum. Students who want to join PAL are asked to make a prioritized choice between PA and LA in accordance with their professional interests.
The concept of 'landscape' is thought as a shared theoretical framework for thinking in new productive relationships between architecture and the territory it inhabits. The plural form of 'landscape' in the title suggests that this can be done in many equally relevant ways.
Ringkøbing K – on the edge
PAL takes its point of departure in the on-going discussion about the more undeveloped and underprivileged parts of Denmark, sometimes referred to as ‘The Rotten Banana’, and the initiative Ringkøbing K, which is a collaboration between the foundation Realdania By and the municipality of Ringkøbing-Skjern in Western Jutland.
The main idea with Ringkøbing K is to develop a large combined recreational area and nature restoration project southeast of Ringkøbing with 1100 new dwellings integrated in the landscape. As such, this initiative offers a unique opportunity to work with landscape and the relationship between architecture and territory.
Rather than just addressing this initiative as a simple architectural assignment, PAL will deal with more fundamental questions, in particular, how can a deeper understanding of the site inform and qualify the new development? In order to address this question in a qualified manner, PAL proposes to broaden the scope, and also look at the site in a regional context.
Students following PA are expected to come forward with a vision for dense-low housing, which due to its basis in a preparation or 'making inhabitable' of a landscape will be able to perform architecturally as an integral part of the existing town, while also providing a new narrative of Ringkøbing K as being part of a greater landscape.
Students following LA are expected to come forward with a vision for the new landscape of Ringkøbing K, which addresses the aspects of time, change and adaptability in relation to the housing development and/or the larger landscape and fjord region.
Thinning versus thickening
According to Rem Koolhaas, larger and larger territories are inhabited by our culture but the intensity of use is diminishing. This thinning of territories has structural causes like speculation in land use, tourism, recreation and preservation, and refers to the phenomena of a spatial-cultural expansion where the intensity of use is low in relation to the physical size and quantity of the given site or territory. The result is more areas with fewer programs spread thin over larger and larger areas.
Rather than developing Ringkøbing K as a typical housing area next to recreational areas and next to nature, PAL propose to integrate housing into the landscape, causing a thickening rather than a thinning of the site. This is an approach, which embraces the history and specificity of the site as a basis for sustainable development. In this regard PAL recognises landscape architecture as a design discipline dealing with site-specific aspects and a deeper understanding of the site.
An architecture of wonder
Instead of approaching architecture as objects, as something to look at, we consider architecture something to see with. Hence architecture could serve in a way similar to a parable, an indirect form of communication where the point is not to convey a message, but to make the person addressed feel and think for her- or him self. Architecture that makes us see in this manner is making us see the world differently, which is the event of wonder. This is not new. The ancients saw the aim of all human praxis as bringing us to wonder.
