Climate-Adaptive Design in High Mountain Villages


Book Description

Drawing from the unique context and climate of the Himalaya, this book highlights several innovative design interventions, shaped by a myriad of social, cultural, environmental, and political factors that have been employed in villages to combat climate change. Climate-Adaptive Design in High Mountain Villages focuses on Ladakh, an outpost on the front lines of climate change, and the region’s creative responses to the pressing issues of food security, water management, energy efficiency, design aid, and material resources in the Anthropocene. These strategies – from artificial glaciers to tree armor – showcase the breadth of creative solutions already underway. In doing so, the research addresses the broader concept of climate-adaptive design and how it informs the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning. An ideal read for academics, researchers, and students in these fields, this book presents a focused investigation into climate-adaptive strategies that could provide transferable solutions for the rest of the world.




Water and Sacred Architecture


Book Description

This edited book examines architectural representations that tie water, as a physical and symbolic property, with the sacred. The discussion centers on two levels of this relationship: how water influenced the sacredness of buildings across history and different religions; and how sacred architecture expressed the spiritual meaning of water. The volume deliberately offers original material on various unique contextual and design aspects of water and sacred architecture, rather than an attempt to produce a historic chronological analysis on the topic or focusing on a specific geographical region. As such, this unique volume adds a new dimension to the study of sacred architecture. The book’s chapters are compiled by a stellar group of scholars and practitioners from the US, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Africa. It addresses major aspects of water in religious buildings, such as, rituals, pilgrimage, water as a cultural material and place-making, hydro systems, modern practices, environmental considerations, the contribution of water to transforming secular into sacred, and future digital/cyber context of water and sacredness. All chapters are based on original archival studies, historical documents, and field visits to the sites and buildings. These examinations show water as an expression of architectural design, its materiality, and its spiritual values. The book will be of interest to architects, historians, environmentalists, archaeologists, religious scholars, and preservationists.




Sustainable Tourism, Culture and Heritage Promotion


Book Description

Zusammenfassung: This proceedings book explores future prospects of cultural, heritage, and religious tourism and how it can impact the socioeconomic complexity of a community and future developments. It includes chapters on contemporary digital age pilgrimage, digital interpretation as a management strategy, tourism in the era of digital communication, and the role of social media in conserving intangible cultural heritage. This book focuses on policies and mechanisms for heritage preservation. It includes cultural heritage tourism management, how the digitalization of data has impacted and further developed tourism, World Heritage classification in urban tourism destinations, cultural tourism products, and experiences. Moreover, it discusses the sustainable environment and geography in tourism. It covers topics such as ecotourism and rural sustainable development, heritage in socioeconomic sustainable development, and tourists' perceptions of tourism. Another part of the book explores the social and economic impacts of tourism. It includes chapters on cycling tourism along the Elbe, residents' perceptions of the socioeconomic benefits of restaurants, architecture of historical mosques, tourism as a driver of soft power, tourists' perceptions of service quality, tourism during the Covid-19 pandemic, gastronomic narratives in tourism, and residents' perceptions of festivals. Also, it pinpoints the focus on user interaction-based development. It includes chapters on the role of community-led initiatives in heritage revitalization and addressing connectivity issues between historical and natural touristic heritage sites. These research papers provide valuable insights into the multidimensional nature of cultural sustainable tourism, covering a wide range of topics and offering diverse perspectives on its development, management, and impact




Paul J. Crutzen and the Anthropocene: A New Epoch in Earth’s History


Book Description

This book outlines the development and perspectives of the Anthropocene concept by Paul J. Crutzen and his colleagues from its inception to its implications for the sciences, humanities, society and politics. The main text consists primarily of articles from peer-reviewed scientific journals and other scholarly sources. It comprises selected articles on the Anthropocene published by Paul J. Crutzen and a selection of related articles, mostly but not exclusively by colleagues with whom he collaborated closely. • In the year 2000 Nobel Laureate Paul J. Crutzen proposed the Anthropocene concept as a new epoch in Earth’s history • Comprehensive collection of articles on the Anthropocene by Paul J. Crutzen and his colleagues• Unique primary research literature and Crutzen’s comprehensive bibliography• Paul Crutzen’s scientific investigations into human influences on atmospheric chemistry and physics, the climate and the Earth system, leading to the conception of the Anthropocene• Reflections on the Anthropocene and its implications• Bibliometric review of the spread of the use of the Anthropocene concept in the Natural and Social Sciences, Humanities and Law




Contemporary Landscape Performance Methods and Techniques


Book Description

This book defines, illustrates, applies, and explores current and future tools and methods for measuring landscape performance using the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center (HANC) as a case site, providing the most extensive, comprehensive description and application of existing landscape performance tools in the current literature to date. Landscape performance is a measure of the effectiveness with which landscape solutions fulfill their intended purpose and contribute to sustainability. The design of the HANC is a prime case for measuring landscape performance as the site has undergone a pervasive transformation of its 65-acre core as an initial phase of improvements. The massive six-year effort has reconfigured arrival, circulation, and parking, developed new educational facilities, constructed a network of walks and trails, and established sustainable ecologies of prairie, savannah, riparian woods, and upland woods across the northern half of its property. This book uses landscape performance as an integral method of not only blending science into the design process but using scientific outputs as the rationale for design-decision-making. Through this, the book showcases a multitude of proven quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods which can be applied to other designs and plans, calculating their specific impacts on the HANC, and guiding readers through how to use each tool through an applied process. This book provides a comprehensive set of tools and approaches to measuring landscape performance that could be used as a guide for other projects to replicate or expand upon. The book helps move the design professions beyond simple stereotypes of simple beauty of form, showcasing and describing how the design professions (primarily landscape architecture) are an extremely scientific and evidence-based industry.




Waste and Urban Regeneration


Book Description

Waste and Urban Regeneration examines the Nanjido region of Seoul and its transformation from Nanjido Landfill to the World Cup Park, and its relation to the urban ecology within the context of the city’s urban development during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The study analyses the urban ecological meanings of the site’s two distinct forms by consolidating them with the Lefebvrian urban theory and relational ecological theories. This book looks at environmental transformations and their link to South Korea’s political and economic changes; how Seoul City controlled waste populations, the borderline characterisations of the inhabited landfill and its community, the regeneration of the landfill into the post-landfill park and site-specific artworks which explored the conflict between the invisible presence of the landfill’s garbage and its history. As one of the first accounts of a landfill and landfill-turned-park of South Korea, this study is a must-read for academics and researchers interested in waste management, ecology, landscape theory and history.




Landscape and Utopia


Book Description

This book examines three landmark utopian visions central to 20th century landscape architectural, planning, and architectural theory. The period between the 1890s and the 1940s was a fertile time for utopian thinking. Significant geographic shifts of large populations; radically altered relations between capital and labor; rapid technological developments; large investments in transportation and energy infrastructure; and repetitive economic disruptions motivated many individuals to wholly reimagine society – including the connections between social relations and the built environment. Landscape and Utopia examines the role of landscapes in the political imaginations of the Garden City, the Radiant City, and Broadacre City. Each project uses landscapes to propose a reconstruction of the relationships between land, labor, and capital but - while the projects are well-known – the role played by landscapes has been largely left unexamined. Similarly, the radical anti-capitalism that underpinned each project has similarly been, for the most part, left out of contemporary discussions. This book sets these projects within a historical and philosophical context and opens a discussion on the role of landscapes in society today. This book will be a must-read for instructors, students, and researchers of the history and theory of landscape architecture, planning, and architecture as well as utopian studies, cultural and social history, and environmental theory.




Alvar Aalto and The Art of Landscape


Book Description

Alvar Aalto and The Art of Landscape captures the essence of the Finnish architect’s landscape concept, emphasising culture and tradition, which characterised his approach to and understanding of architecture as part of the wider environment. From the forests of his youth to sights from his travels, Alvar Aalto (1898–1976) was influenced by outdoor landscapes. Throughout his career, he felt the need to shape the terrain and this became a signature of his architecture. Divided into five chapters, this book traces Aalto’s relationship with landscape, starting with an analysis of his definitions and descriptions of landscape language, which ranged from natural references and biological terms, to synonyms and comparisons. It includes beautifully illustrated case study projects from the 1950s and 1960s, discussing Aalto’s transformation of different landscapes through topography, terracing and tiers, ruins and natural elements, horizon outlines, landmarks, and the repetition of form. Featuring archival sketches, garden drawings, and plans, the book also contains Aalto’s text ‘Architecture in the Landscape of Central Finland’ from 1925 in the appendix. This book provides fascinating, untold insights into Aalto’s relationship with landscape and how this developed during his lifetime, for scholars, researchers, and students interested in architecture and landscape history, landscape art, and cultural studies.




Informality and the City


Book Description

This book advances the agenda of informality as a transnational phenomenon, recognizing that contemporary urban and regional challenges need to be addressed at both local and global levels. This project may be considered a call for action. Its urgency derives from the impact of the pandemic combined with the effects of climate change in informal settlements around the world. While the notion of “the informal” is usually associated with the analysis and interventions in informal settlements, this book expands the concept of informality to acknowledge its interdisciplinary parameters. The book is geographically organized into five sections. The first part provides a conceptual overview of the notion of “the informal,” serving as an introduction and reflection on the subject. The following sections are dedicated to the principal regions of the Global South—Latin America, US–Mexico Borderlands, Asia, and Africa—while considering the interconnections and correspondences between urbanism in the Global South and the Global North. This book offers a critical introduction to groundbreaking theories and design practices of informality in the built environment. It provides essential reading for scholars, professionals, and students in urban studies, architecture, city planning, urban geography, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, economics, and the arts. As a critical survey of informality, the book examines history, theory, and production across a range of informal practices and phenomena in urbanism, architecture, activism, and participatory design. Authored by a diverse and international cohort of leading educators, theorists, and practitioners, 45 chapters refine and expand the discourse surrounding informal cities.




(Co)Designing Hope


Book Description

Extreme weather events, droughts, floods, shifts in precipitation and temperature patterns, melting glaciers, sea-level rise, water salinization, and more generally, changes in the water cycle remind us that the climate crisis is mostly a water crisis. Perhaps even more serious is a crisis of imagination connected with thought and with creative, far-sighted action able to combine the visionary and the pragmatic. A response to these two crises can be provided by the disciplines of landscape architecture: these have always featured a plural, collective approach that comprises or originates from living systems and natural forces, on the involvement of human and nonhuman communities in the design process, and the inclusion of the time variable in future plans—without neglecting the necessary flexibility of creative and pragmatic thinking. How can landscape design and different forms of collaboration open new doors to face climate and water challenges? What hopes can spring from collective design in its broader meaning? This book sets out notions and ideas on water landscapes and (co)designed practices, identifying what hopeful routes might be taken for the three states of aqueous landscapes in transition—liquid, solid, and gas. The chapters show different scales and levels of design and collaborative practices: from large and governmental projects to small bottom-up interventions; from creative collaboration among designers to traditional community design; from participatory processes to nature as a co-designer for tackling the climate crisis. People, animals, plants, water, ice, fog, clouds, wind, sand, and rocks—all contribute to the cosmos’ landscape symphony, and designing together can become a seed of hope to listen and embrace the Earth’s climate changes.