NESS.docs is Lots of Architecture’s monographic series. Each issue features one practice or subject for in-depth analysis: interviews, texts, and a variety of graphic pieces cooperate to unveil singular work that can globally inspire modes of thought about architecture and landscape.
—NESS.docs • Landscape as Urbanism in the Americas
EDITORIAL LETTER
A New Language
Landscape as Urbanism in Latin America • Environment, Ground, System, Protocol, Nature
Biological Environments • Non-human living beings are not foreign actors; rather, together with humans, they interact in a complex and constantly adapting realm. Biological Environments features diverse models of thought and practice redefining the interface between design and the environment. It embraces biologically-inspired narratives, technologies, formal and representational trends, and programs that include non-human species as co-creators. Furthermore, it highlights an assemblage of design operations linking the biosphere and the built landscape. This attention towards the biological produces thought-provoking design outcomes, reinforcing the need for both science and culture-oriented public programs.
Breeding Urban Ecologies • An Ethos of Life Among Latin American Designers
Jardín Botánico • New public programmatic needs for the preexisting garden are organized by a spatial scheme, which was inspired by the pattern of an emblematic tree. The project mediates between landscape, art, and society.
Supertourism • Fabrica de Paisaje dives into a fictional world where the dialectics between humans and nature pose new tools and outcomes by critically re-thinking tourism.
Edificio Jardin Hospedero y Nectarifero para Mariposas • Edificio Jardin Hospedero y Nectarifero para Mariposas performs as a fractal hybrid unit that could potentially expand as a biological model for the city
Pharma — Park, Landscape for Biochemical Ecology • Pharma — Park contradicts the usual narrative of black-boxed social and political policies. Instead, it uses natural resources to reimagine extraction in the Amazonian Jungle. Architecture, urbanism, and ideas of nature converge in a dynamic understanding of geography through landscape.
Multisensory Carpet • CAPA questions concepts of sustainability and functionality, designing forms of reciprocity between technology, landscape, and the public. The proposed garden explores the dynamic input and outcomes of variables such us soil, fertility, humidity, pollution, or even noise levels.
Resilient Grounds • A critical synthesis of international perspectives on landscape urbanism helps to imagine how we might more fully-realize the underutilized urban potential of territory. As our conception of the city becomes less constrained by geopolitical boundaries, new design configurations foster more radical political and social frameworks. Eschewing mimetic approaches towards nature, these projects seek to transform civic life through hybrid strategies. The demand for recreational and cultural facilities tends to catalyze the creation of public parks and multifunctional infrastructures. Such spaces allow for broader and more diverse social dynamics, enabling a more critical public awareness of ecology and inclusion, memory and place, and architecture.
Landscape as Common Nexus
Paseo Cívico Metropolitano – Alameda Providencia Corridor • This project is conceived as a piece of urban landscape that deals with questions around history, inclusivity, geographical conditions, and the technical knowledge that supports a future image of the city.
Dom Pedro II Park • The design for this park engages with preexisting complex road infrastructures and traffic flows to use mobility to its advantage. In consequence, the project intends to resignify that historical...
