Lucia Grosse-Bachle
Institute of Open Space Development and Planning Related Sociology, University of Hannover
Designing within the dynamics of vegetation
”Wild Woodlands in the City” is not only a topic for ecologists and landscape planners. As a task involving design and communication, the theme challenges landscape architects to reflect on the aesthetic dimensions of the post-industrial urban landscape. Here, new concepts and models that integrate spontaneous nature and how these might look are discussed.
This paper draws attention to the natural dynamics of vegetation and how these can be used creatively. Possibilities drawn from contemporary landscape architecture illustrate ways to initiate, to work with or to use these dynamic processes in new ways.
The nature of the wild woodland
The term “wild woodland” is used in this context to describe freely developing, essentially undisturbed nature. Since the Age of Romanticism, wilderness and the forest have embodied the longing of humans for selfdetermination and for the development of our own inner spirit. In a society that was increasingly shaped by rationalism, the forest was seen as a place outside civilization. Here emotions could be expressed that otherwise would not be tolerated (Braun 2000: 51). Many people today, in a world primarily organized around performance and practicality, are looking for the experience of the “unattainable” (Seel 1996: 189). To allow confrontations with the impersonal power that is nature, nature should be allowed to develop according to its own rules wherever space allows.
Kowarik I, Korner S (eds) Wild Urban Woodlands.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005, pp 231-246
