Concrete Jungles: Urban Ecology & Its Design (ETH Zurich, Spring 2018) (original) (raw)

Far from being antithetical to nature, cities are places where human and nonhuman actors come into intense contact and form complex assemblages, where resources are highly concentrated, and where various ecological principles are neglected, reinvented, or put to extreme test. A majority of writing on “the city,” however, leaves nature by the wayside. Meanwhile, the natural sciences, including ecology, often treat the urban context, and the social more generally, as external to their purview. This course—co-taught by a natural scientist and an arts and humanities scholar specialized in the built landscape—takes a hybrid approach, putting a number of specific urban ecological design projects at the center in order to begin unpacking the various issues at stake, especially by addressing them from the respective vantage points of design and ecological thinking. Among other topics, we will investigate: efforts to revitalize cities by way of greening them, wherein natural metaphors and economic imperatives collide; terrain vague, a concept with which both architecture and ecology have had overlapping, if somewhat differently-articulated, multi-decade love affairs for its promise of liminal, as-yet underexplored spaces as well as the potential for a kind of ruinous, postnatural re-wilding (or self-organized healing, depending on one’s perspective); and the growing fortification of cities by built and green infrastructure meant to ward off rising sea levels, urban heat islands, and other perceived environmental threats. Through this, we will consider, in shared step, key concepts and debates within ecology (e.g., restoration, ecosystem services, resilience, wild nature) and the humanities (e.g., social nature, climate justice, green capitalism) today. By switching between alternative, co-dependent, and sometimes conflicting, viewpoints, we aim to hone the skills for engaging in trans-disciplinary dialogue about the role of design in shaping urban nature, especially in a world characterized by ever more intensive urbanization and extreme ecological instability. Special events: field trip to Lettenpark; guest talks by Mierle Laderman Ukeles (USA), Ashley Dawson (USA), Lara Almarcegui (ESP/NL), Stalker (IT), and Michael Beuttler (DE).