1 Modelling Nature in Ecologically Oriented Urban Context (original) (raw)

The natural environment in the contemporary urban landscape: existing condition and alternative approaches towards enhancement

One of the prevalent malfunctions of the contemporary urban landscape pertains to the disruption of the natural environment’s procedures and consequently, the breach of the equilibrium in the composite urban ecosystem. This paper deals with the most common forms of abuse and degradation of the natural elements (vegetation, ground, water and air) within the contemporary urban environment, examining the cause for this abuse in dependence with the conventions of the modern way of living. Furthermore, the impact on the quality of urban spaces and the living within is mentioned. The urgent need for adopting an attitude towards sustainability is underlined by making a brief reference to its multiple advantages - ecological, social, cultural and economic. The main part of the study focuses on proposals made in terms of a sustainable development for the prospective urban landscape. Emphasis is laid, amongst others, on the need for redefining the relation between the natural systems and the urbanization processes; for new design strategies concerning both the public open spaces and the green areas (urban and suburban) by taking into consideration all the natural environment parameters; for collaboration between all the scientific fields involved; and the creation of a network of green areas aiming at the balanced distribution of open spaces into the urban web. Additionally, there are mentioned the current tendencies on the issue of upgrading and enhancing the natural environment of the urban landscape, as these are outlined by the announcements of international competitions, European Programs and Actions, Academic Research Programs etc. Key words: urbanism, ecology, integration, landscape.

Parks, green areas and landscape in view of new concepts related to the shaping of structure and form of a city

Czasopismo Techniczne. Architektura, 2014

The article discusses changes to planning and designing of urban landscape, in particular, green areas and public parks, seen as component of the composition of a city, public space as well as important element of urban landscape and spatial order. It also focuses on a function performed by a landscape architect in these investments. The article includes references to concepts and ideas born in the last fifty years, including Urban Ecology, New Urbanism, Green Urbanism, Landscape Urbanism and green infrastructure. Factors important for the composition, designing, perception of nature and areas shaped by the greenery were also analysed. These days, the concept of planning urban greenery system is construed as a combination of requirements resulting from planning-related issues and pursuit of improvement in terms of quality of place and life.

Integration of Vegetation With Architecture Forms

2018

One of the most interesting ways of returning nature to the city is green architecture, which embraces hybrid buildings at the base of the coexistence of the natural and building worlds. By definition, green architecture does not have to be green at all. Nevertheless, it takes on a number of hybrid forms integrated with vegetation. Built and natural form in the composition is inseparably “tangled” – one follows other to form a cohesive whole. Green architecture becomes part of a larger green infrastructure system. The idea of green infrastructure leads to passage from passive protection, to the active-present in every aspect of human life. It is a development tool respecting the laws of nature. Architecture enters the world of nature as never before, clings to it through the cooperation of designers with specialists in environmental sciences from cellular microbiology to macro scale processes in ecosystems. This requires designers to be particularly sensitive to the natural world, u...

City that embraces nature. Designing with vertical greenery

2021

Vertical greenery offers the possibility of redefining the relationship between buildings and vegetation, promoting a biophilic concept of the city that aims to reactivate natural processes and social cohesion. The flexibility and multifunctionality of these systems allow their application in very different contexts, seeing unused urban spaces as alternative places suitable for plant colonisation. The present contribution expands the contemporary debate within which to evaluate the collaboration between man and nature by exploring functional possibilities aimed at overcoming the use of vertical greenery as mere ornamentation. The approaches presented feed the reflection on the interdisciplinary character of this type of technological green, showing an evolving understanding of the environmental, social and economic impacts at a territorial level.

Integrated urban landscape: nature as an element of transition space composition

2016

The paper explains the genesis, methods and consequences of introducing elements of nature into contemporary cityscape. It shows their significance in creating a new image of the city. The discussion is conducted on the basis of joined urban theories such as: softening the city edge, fluency of space, narrative paths, multilayer structure of urban space. Contemporary forms of relationships between the building and its surroundings are presented in order to prove the tendencies in shaping the connection zone between the building and the city simultaneously, influenced by both of those reactants. This zone, observed as transition space between the building and its surroundings, is constantly changing and growing, generating a variety of urban spaces adjoining, interlacing, penetrating the building structure. It also creates an area of introducing nature as compositional and functional element. The paper discusses the examples of the new types of relationships between architecture and ...

Towards the Emerging Paradigm of Artificial Nature: From Ecological Design to Designed Ecology

With respect to the fact that pure nature has been dissolved in the contemporary cities, and therefore, traditional defensive ecological design methods should go beyond the dualism of man-made and natural towards more broad and more active approaches of ecological analysis and planning. As a part of this revaluating process, this essay investigates the possibility of using landscape - the man-made nature as a structuring medium to construct the new order of urban ecology, and proposes the emerging paradigm of designed ecology to rebuild large scale build environment and to recollect gradually fragmented urban fabrics.

The Management of Green Areas in the Urban Environment

2011

In the simple meaning of green areas nature is expected to carry out many functions in an urban context, which are useful to explain the descriptive characters needed for the analysis and comprehension of specific phenomena. Besides being a significant component of the urban scene, vegetation is also one of the most appreciated: generally speaking, vegetation is synonymous with quality. The structural pattern of green areas, which apparently occupies uneven spaces among buildings, regulates in fact the planning order of the fabric of the city, as an organic system, in which its matrix organises and shows the social mechanisms of the city itself. Starting from a general scheme, the research has to discover the criteria which determined the structure of the environmental and “naturalistic” scene of a specific site, considering the various elements which can illustrate the cognitive context of the territory itself. The comprehension of the site characteristics and the trends of certain...

Sustainability through biomimicry: Urban solutions inspired by nature

Biomimicry means the imitation of life. The term arises from the combination of the Greek roots bios, life, with mimikos, imitation. Biomimicry is a new science and design discipline that studies nature’s models and then emulates these forms, process, systems, and strategies to solve the problems of our time. The core idea is that nature is creative and sustainable by necessity and it can be used as an ecological standard to judge the sustainability of our innovations. After 3.8 billion years of evolution and bottom-up design brilliance, Nature has the key to solve many of the problems we are grappling with because it has learned what works and what lasts. This research is about the scientific understanding of the concept of "life" in urban space and its main purpose is to explain the underlying order that is present in self-organized structures. Until now architecture has been especially interested in models of pure rationally; informal cities were without any interest. Today this perspective is changing as we look more deeply into Nature. We realize that more our built environment functions like the natural world, more sustainable it is. Therefore, this paper intends to speculate about the existence of patterns of self-organization in nature and in cities. The methodology adopted is the process of abduction or hypothesis, which is a kind of scientific inference not purely abstract or inductive. It is above all a process that involves an aesthetic and holistic vision of the world which allows applying a certain knowledge domain into another different domain. It is a mere suggestion of something that can be explained by the assumption that there are some general rules which govern the entire universe.