to no 101

2018

po
s.

28 MAKING ROOM
FOR LIFE
– How biophilic cities
change the way we inter-
act with urban animals

34 TIMBER TALK
– Social network:
Communicating trees
leave humans speechless

72 ANIMAL

Creatures
ARCHITECTS
– Under construction:
Architectural design
ISBN 978-3-7667-2356-7

made by nature
 to no 101
2018

po
s.
T H E I N T E RN AT I ON A L RE V I E W
OF LA N DS CA PE A RC H I T E CT URE
A N D URB A N DE S I G N

Creatures
 Times Square
DESIGN TANK PHOTO JÚLIA MARTINS MIRANDA

New York City

Enjoying the
outdoors Vestre Stoop
since 1947 Design: Julien De Smedt

Vestre April Go
Design: Espen Voll,
vestre.com Tore Borgersen & Michael Olofsson

COVER
PHOTO: Michael Zegers
Friend or foe? The range of creatures in the
urban realm has been widening over years
which rises the tantalizing question: How do
we re-negotiate our claims to a territory?
Photo: Picture Alliance, Westens61, Michael Zegers
T
he world of fables is a simple
world. Animals that appear in
fables regularly embody precisely
one human character trait: foxes
are clever, monkeys scheming,
hares fearful, goats gullible and
wolves evil. In their one-dimen-
sionality, which serves the purpose above all of
holding up a mirror to the reader they invariably
act in a predictable manner. Human as they are,
the animals move quite close to us – sometimes so
close that it becomes disturbing. This functions
because the obvious dichotomy between human
and animal is caricatured in a way that transforms
it into its very opposite. However, the very ani-
mals we normally only know from fables and
fairy tales are coming closer to us in real life, too.
And there are many of them: in cities around the
globe, wild creatures have been finding a new,
ideal home in the urban realm, or at least con-
sider it an alluring destination for an excursion. In
Rome, for instance, wild pigs, more precisely
boars, have long become part of the urban
scenery. In New York, an impressive number of
peregrine falcons regularly makes circles in the
skies above the city – the agile predator counts
among the fastest animals of the world. Wolves
have been conquering abandoned industrial sites
in Germany, and Los Angeles keeps being visited
TANJA BRAEMER
Editor in Chief
t.braemer@callwey.de
by mountain lions who rather unsuspectingly
take walks on its streets and freeways. What is the
impact of these developments for us humans?
What does it mean that a familiar dualism – so
familiar that it runs in our blood – between
“nature” and the urban realm, between wilder-
ness and an “ordered” world created by man,
finally between humans and animals, melts into
the air? How do we re-negotiate our claims to a
territory and space? How close will we come to
each other in the future? To be sure, there have
always been those who, utterly fearless, stuck their
head in the lion’s mouth and at times paid for it
dearly. The beast as our friend or even life com-
panion – can this end well? That question has
fascinated and inspired mankind from time im-
memorial. The new edition of Topos is devoted to
finding answers to it. Ultimately, the topic is this:
what will cities look like if humans are no longer
exclusively in control, but if instead a new balance
of different creatures is bound to emerge? In this
context it is interesting to consider that man auto-
matically assumes animals will invade their cities.
Quite often, however, it is exactly the other way
round, as a writer for the British Guardian once
remarked quite pertinently: cities grow and there-
by automatically encroach upon the sovereign
territory of the animal kingdom. Keep this in
mind when you meet a fox on your way home . . .
topos 005
 Contents

THE BIG PICTURE CURATED PRODUCTS

Page 8 Page 102

OPINION REFERENCE
Page 10 Page 106

TALENT VS. MASTERMIND EDITOR´S PICK

Page 12 Page 108

METROPOLIS EXPLAINED
Page 14

FUZZY NEIGHBOURS
Page 18

BACKFLIP
Page 110

ESCAPE PLAN
FUZZY NEIGHBOURS BE(E)ING ON TOP Page 112
Photographer Sam Hobson tracks creatures in the city Urban space as dining room for bees
Page 18 Page 58 FROM THE EDGES
Page 114
MAKING ROOM FOR LIFE COMPANION SPECIES WANTED
The Biophilic Cities Network How to promote animal life in urban cores IMPRINT
Page 28 Page 66 Page 113

TIMBER TALKS ANIMAL ARCHITECTS

Are trees social creatures or even human? The constructed world of fauna
Page 34 Page 72

TAMING THE SHREW NATURE AS SPECTACLE

Animal Aided Design: How to plan with the beasts Wilderness among us: Is there an expiry date on the
Page 42 institution of the zoo?
Page 80
BERLIN’S DAKTARI
An interview with THE WILD CONTINUUM
Berlin’s former wildlife consultant Derk Ehlert How to create cityscapes that celebrate humans’
Page 46 kinship with other species
Page 86
WAR OF THE GAZES
How Hollywood and its media mechanisms influence NATURE NEEDS NUTURING
our view on animals Woolly beasts – The loss of
Page 50 landscape by overgrazing
Page 92
CREATURES: FACTS AND FIGURES
Page 56 CONTRIBUTORS
Page 100

WAR OF THE GAZES

Page 50

006 topos ISSUE 101

 OPINION METROPOLIS EXPLAINED

Architects must resist the undirected march of augmented reality Kiril Ass on Moscow
Page 10 Page 14
 THE BIG PICTURE

The Skyscraper
Stratus, Cirrus, Cumulus: Meteorologists recognise ten different types of clouds. The common feature for all
of them is that they float in the sky far above the ground. At the Himalaya Art Museum in Shanghai, one
cloud came nearly close enough to touch. As if riding through the window on a breeze, it hovered over the
staircase like it happened all the time. The force behind this seemingly surrealistic event is Dutch artist
Berndnaut Smilde. As part of his Nimbus series, he has created many of these unexpected encounters since
2012 by perfecting the art of creating ideal conditions for cloud formation indoors. Transported from their
natural context, the artists stages, with the aid of precise illumination, the cloud as if it were a volatile yet
beautiful sculpture. After just seconds it evaporates as if it had never been there. Accordingly, photos taken
at the right moment are the only opportunity to experience and exhibit Smilde's gossamer-fine art.

TEXT: Ines Dorn

008 topos ISSUE 101

 Photo: Berndnaut Smilde, Nimbus Duguan Himalayas Museum, 2015, Courtesy of the artist and Ronchini Gallery

smilde
PI CT U R E
THE BIG

toposmagazine.com/

topos
For more photos go to
Picture
The Big

009
 OPINION

Owen Hopkins
Architectural writer, historian and curator

ARCHITECTS
MUST RESIST
THE UNDIRECTED
MARCH OF AUG-
MENTED REALITY

Architects are leading the way in incorporating augmented reality into their work.
However, there is little debate about the potential of AR to revolutionize not just
how architecture is designed, but the ways we experience it. Owen Hopkins argues
that architects and landscape architects must start steering the conversation about
AR – not just for their own profession but also for the common good.

010 topos ISSUE 101


Has 3D modeling killed the architectural draw-
ing as a serious design tool? Looking at the evi-
dence, it would be hard to conclude otherwise.
Yet, with drawing now freed of its functional
duties, we are already seeing architects resurrect-
ing its corpse for the medium’s innate qualities of
communication. In many ways, this trend can be
seen as a reflection of changes internal to the
discipline of architecture: in the design tools that
architects use and in fashions in architectural
representation. But this is only a small part of the
story. A revolution is coming from outside the
discipline in the form of augmented reality. Even
in AR’s current early stages of development, it is
clear that this technology poses a challenge to
how we conceive, create and experience architec-
ture, which I predict will see drawing become
more important than ever before. Indeed, archi-
tecture itself may become a form of drawing.
AR capable devices are becoming increasingly
prevalent. Soon we will no longer be stuck
experiencing AR through our phones or clunky,
oversized goggles, it will be woven into our lives
– with our every experience capable of being
augmented with digital overlays in some way.
The implications of AR for architecture and
landscape design are troubling. Why bother to
commission anything more than a simple func-
tional frame or box, when every aspect of a
building can be overlaid with some kind of digi-
tal surface that is live and interactive? Why in this
environment would there even be a need for
architecture to exist at all? To find a way out of
this bind, one of the first things architects can do
is focus their attention on what exists outside the
realm of augmented reality. It appears that AR
will remain a relentlessly visual medium, so
architects would be advised to emphasise those
aspects of their work that are not visual – the feel,
Opinion
texture, even smell of their creations. Landscape
architects are already geared up to do this. That
said, the possibilities of working around the AR
revolution will be limited given how pervasive it
will become. Whether they like it or not, the
majority of architects will be forced to embrace
AR’s transformations for better and for worse.
However, the situation takes on a rather different
complexion when we realize that the digital
overlays that define AR are just new forms of
architectural drawing: drawing that is dynamic,
personalized and produced not just on comput-
ers but by computers, but still recognizably
drawing.
As a result, architects are ideally placed to take a
leading role in creating the AR overlays that will
shape our experience. Not only does this offer
architects a way of halting the atrophy affecting
their profession, but it gives them the opportu-
nity to shape or define the nature of these
worlds. As a profession committed to the public
good, architects should play a crucial role in the
resistance of the undirected march of AR. While
the tech giants of Silicon Valley are driving this
technology forward at an ever increasing speed,
they seem to be giving little, if any, consideration
to its social and political consequences. With the
rise of “fake news” and similar attempts to
manipulate popular opinion, we are already
witnessing the effects of algorithms that deter-
mine what we see online in reinforcing our
existing likes, interests and persuasions. When
the social media echo chamber is transferred to
our everyday physical realities, the risk is not just
a further shattering of the public sphere but its
destruction. Architects must therefore lead the
way in showing how the drawn digital overlays
do not have to divide us into own individual
worlds, but must bring us all together.
OWEN HOPKINS is an architectural writer, historian
and curator. He is senior curator of exhibitions and
education at Sir John Soane’s Museum and was
previously architecture programme curator at
the Royal Academy of Arts. His most recent book is
Lost Futures: The Disappearing Architecture of
Post-War Britain (2017).
topos 011
 TALENT

Jimmy Norrman
INTERVIEW: Alexander Russ

Jimmy Norrman is a partner at Funkia, a land-

scape architecture office based in Nacka, Sweden.
Funkia’s current projects include parks and
squares that are part of the Fyrklövern urban
development project situated north of Stock-
holm. Prior to studying landscape architecture,
Norrman worked as a landscape gardener at his
family’s business in Helsinki.

CAREER STA RTING PO INT?

When I learned the power of the pen in the
process of creating environments at my first job
at landscape architect Gretel Hemgård’s office in
Helsinki, Finland.

2 INF LU ENCED B Y
Probably by the Swiss landscape architect
Dieter Kienast.

3 INSPIRED BY
Life and all the surrounding environments that
are included in it.

4 WHY LANDSCAPE A RCH ITECTURE?

Can it be innate? I decided to be a landscape
architect when I was 14 years old.

5 DESIGN PRINCIPL ES?

I adapt the design to each project – the concept
must always be strong and viable.

6 WHAT IS YOUR SPECIAL FO CUS?

To exceed the client’s expectations.

7 FORMULA FOR SUCCESS?

Work hard and believe in yourself and the
team.

8 WHERE WILL YO U B E IN 1 5 YEA RS?

Together with my team, working to create
good and sustainable living environments for
everyone, independent of economic or social
conditions.

9 OBSTACLES FO R TH E PRO FESSIO N

One concern is the trend of privatising public
space and making it market-driven.

012 topos ISSUE 101

 MASTERMIND Talent vs.
Mastermind

Thorbjörn Andersson

Thorbjörn Andersson has practiced landscape

architecture since 1981. He studied landscape
architecture, architecture and art history in
Sweden and the United States. Recent office
projects are the Novartis Physic Garden in Basel
and the Campus Park at Umeå University.

CA R E E R S TA R T I N G P O I N T ?
When I saw Christo’s Running Fence, which
made me see that landscape projects can do
more than just solve problems. They can appeal
to your emotions as well.

2 I N F LU E N C E D BY
Music, gastronomy, dance, literature. The
German choreographer Pina Bausch,
British novelist Bruce Chatwin, and Australian
musician Nick Cave. And Rosseau, of course.

3 I N S P I R E D BY
Rhythm, shadows, seasonal change, topography.

4 W HY L A N D S CA P E A R C H I T E CT U R E
It can change people’s life, so it is political. It
can touch your soul, so it is sensual. It is less
programmed than architecture, so it is poetic.

5 D E S I G N P R I N C I P LE S
Try to get the most out of the least. Don’t over-
do things. Ask yourself what is necessary in-
stead of what is possible. It is a very Scandina-
vian attitude, but that is my origin.

6 W HAT I S YOU R S P E C I A L FO C U S
Photos: left Mikael Johansson / Funkia, right Magnus Bergström

The aim of my generation was to improve the

world and make it fair. Even if that was naive,
the traces of this still stay with me.

7 FOR M U L A FO R S U C C E SS
I would say stay inside your box. Excel in what
you are good at, and leave the rest to other
people with other boxes. And work with them.

8 W HE R E W I L L YO U BE I N 1 5 Y E A R S
In Shangri-La, drinking Margerithas.

9 OB S TAC L E S FO R T H E P R O F E SS I O N
We need to claim our land.

topos 013

“Two Romes have fallen. The third stands.
And there will be no fourth.” – Philotheus of
Pskov to his son, Grand Duke Vasili III, 1510.
Moscow is a hotchpotch of invisible net-
works: Intellectuals, artists and artisans; all
sprouting in scattered bookshops, cafes,
theatres and schools, but mostly hidden in pri-
vate spaces. A young population runs creative
industries. There are corrupt officials, law-
enforcers and bureaucrats, mixing Soviet tradi-
tions with glamourous offices and sophisticat-
ed technology. And there are families, loners,
immigrants, visitors, gastarbeiter and business-
men, and all those who keep this city up and
running. Moscow became a capital more or
less by chance, as the princes who were ruling it
in the Middle Ages and competing with other
principalities of Rus’ turned out to be the most
influential, or reckless, or both. They devoured
the duchies and principalities, collecting titles
and domains. The fall of Constantinople made
them feel like they reigned over the only
Orthodox Christian State in the world – and
were thus infallible. The capital of the Grand
Duchy of Moscow became the central point of
their country. Its spiderweb-shape is inherent
to Russian geography and logistics and to Mos-
cow, where all roads lead to the Kremlin. But
Moscow is as much the stronghold of an
imperial worldview as it is a focal point of all
Russian virtues and flaws. Its grandiose
avenues, enormous squares and high-rises are
magical tools intended to make poverty and
ignorance disappear. The endless concrete
residential blocks may provide housing, but
(in settings) Corbusier wouldn’t approve of in
his worst nightmares. And these blocks
became the background and backdrop of the
worldviews of several generations of Musco-
vites – and of Russians in general. The space of
Russia – and Moscow, which serves as Russia’s
showroom – is marked by two opposites: the
ever-present attempt to beautify its space and a
constant disregard for privacy and private pro-
perty, which doesn’t encourage people to take
care of either themselves or the spaces they live
in. So everything decays – and the climate is only
one of the factors; the main one is disregard. The
014 topos ISSUE 101
METROPOLIS EXPLAINED
Moscow
Moscow is the dream city for most
Russians and for many neighbouring
lands’ peoples; a haven of hope, hard-
ship and often success. But the city has
another face, one that goes beyond
beautified space and that mirrors the
very essence of a proud and complex
cultural and intellectual system.
KIRIL ASS works in Moscow, where he combines artis-
tic research and architectural activity in collaboration
with one of the main proponents of Soviet “paper ar-
chitecture”, Bureau Alexander Brodsky. Ass was born
in Moscow in 1974 and graduated from the Moscow
Architectural Institute in 1998. Among other places,
he teaches at the Moscow School of Architecture.
decay is frustrating and reassuring. It marks the
futility of all endeavours, and testifies to the con-
stancy of things that prevent life from being
(seriously) spoiled by any ruler’s will. Sadly, this
means that all traces and habits of the past are
doomed to oblivion, and those in love with the
past are left with little to enjoy. The ever-busy
streets lined with incomprehensible signage run
to the central area, where there are few resi-
dences, but an abundance of state administration
buildings, luxury shops and vast voids of squares
once intended for parades. The centre of today’s
Moscow is a mix of shiny streets and shady
backyards, of architecture of all scales and
periods. This dissolves into the grey belt of
decaying factories that are being replaced by
new housing developments. Then one enters the
suburbs, an amalgam of former villages, small
towns and gated communities. Daily migration
fills the centre in the morning and empties it in
the evening, leaving only party-goers and a few
locals behind. This ritual is repeated daily,
regardless of the season. But every year there are
three moments when Moscow becomes magi-
cal. The first is the New Years break, when the
snow is fresh and it is cold and sunny. The streets
are empty, the cars don’t spoil the snow, and one
can walk carelessly in the glitter, free of obliga-
tions. The second is the height of summer, when
the nights scarcely get dark and the dusk is post-
poned till midnight. The school kids are on
vacation and half of the city is away in their
dachas. The third moment is in late autumn,
when the sun sends its low light through the
leaves of the trees that fill the city. “Third Rome"
one had once called Moscow. Some people still
call it so today. But this notion is not played out
in life. This was said in a religious context back
then, but the religious connotations were dis-
placed by imperial sentiment, as lands were
acquired to the east, west and south. The centre
of an ever contracting and expanding empire, a
capital whose cultural elite was always kept
separate from its aspirations, a city which is al-
ways being torn up from its foundations, which
is always tense, and yet always relaxed thanks to
the everlasting inevitability of this tension. It is
not a Rome – it’s a place in its own right.
 Map: SCHWARZPLAN.EU/OpenStreet-Mitwirkende/openstreetmap.org

MOSCOW MAP

topos
explained
Metropolis

015
 Creatures

MAKING ROOM FOR LIFE BE(E)ING ON TOP

How the otter returned to Singapore On the roofs of the city

thanks to biophilic city planning and design the bee finds its new home
Page 28 Page 58

TIMBER TALKS NATURE AS SPECTACLE

Wooden chatterboxes? Why zoos

About trees and their ability to communicate with each other still attract people
Page 34 Page 80
Creatures

Fuzzy
Neighbours
What does the public expect a wildlife photo-
grapher to do? Of course, get as far away from
the city as possible, search for wild animals in
their natural habitat and take pictures of them.
The British photographer Sam Hobson follows
a different approach – his target of attraction
are the animals that live in the city. Armed
with his camera, he tracks their nocturnal path
through the urban jungle, depicting the
animals within our immediate surroundings.

SAM HOBSON

018 topos ISSUE 101

The Fox
Curious, adaptable and intelligent, the red fox is the perfect urban survivor. In Bristol, their territories
vary strongly in size. An outbreak of mange in the mid 1990s killed 95 per cent of the fox population.
On a slow path towards recovery, the surviving foxes have become more resistant to the disease.

topos 019
Creatures

020 topos ISSUE 101

The Pigeon
Urban pigeons are the feral relatives of the rock dove, and the architecture of our cities offers
useful substitutes for coastal cliffs. Towns are good places for scavengers, as human-produced
waste creates greater feeding opportunities than on the countryside.

topos 021
Creatures

022 topos ISSUE 101

Fallow Deer
On winter nights, fallow deer venture from the woods to London’s outskirts to feed on the city’s
lawns. Its grass grows throughout the year, due to a warm microclimate and continuous light
pollution. These lush lawns are worth the risk of urban adventure.

topos 023
Creatures

The Toad
For a few days each spring, a migration wave towards the city centre takes place. Unnoticed by
most, this march of the toads is just as dramatic as their mass migrations across the African plains.
Many toads perish while crossing the tarmac, driven by their instinct to pass on their genes.

024 topos ISSUE 101

topos 025
Creatures
The Robin
The Robin is very popular in the UK. In 2015 it won a countrywide vote to be named the national
bird. This iconic red-breasted specimen was photographed in the vicinity of an equally iconic Bristol
landmark, Cabot Tower.
Spending time in a natural environment seems
to be inseparable from leaving behind the city
– getting out into the great outdoors, where
wildlife exists in a state that is considered
natural, beyond the influence of civilisation.
Unfortunately, this merely reflects romantic
ideals. No wildlife on this planet exists
unaffected by the actions of humankind. Even
the most remote areas of wilderness can suffer
from pollution in the atmosphere or the
oceans. There is substance to the notion that
nature is not truly natural if the impact of
humans is apparent. Wildlife and landscape
photographers will go to great lengths to
ensure that no trace of human activity is
present in their pictures, but by doing so they
often edit the story – i.e. the impact of human
intervention – out of the picture.
My approach is to do the exact opposite. I
show the environment and how we influence it
in an explicit way, in order to give the subject a
context and add the human angle to the story.
Around 75 per cent of Europeans live in urban
areas; by telling this kind of story and showing
wildlife in a setting viewers can relate to, the
image provokes a much more personal reaction.
026 topos ISSUE 101
To briefly sum up my approach to wildlife
photography: for me, it is about taking some-
thing commonplace that can be found on your
doorstep and turning it into something worthy
of attention. By getting as close as possible and
shooting at eye level, I try to create a connection
between the viewer and the animal, and by
doing so, elicit a better understanding of the
world the animals inhabit.
To follow this approach, I had to develop
fieldcraft and an understanding of animal
behaviour – the latter simply so that I could get
close enough to take a picture. That developed
into a skill that helps me recognise quickly
when an animal seems to feel undisturbed
when being photographed at close proximity.
In urban areas, wildlife can be more approach-
able – as animals are accustomed to the sight,
smell and sound of humans. This is not always
the case, and there is a need to adjust to such
situations. Sometimes I use remote triggers and
infra-red camera traps to get close-up pictures
without having to hold the camera. With the
help of techniques such as long exposures and
creative lighting, I draw attention to the subject
and aim to obtain a striking image. Further-
more, I often spend a lot of time with my
subjects. In a certain, personal way, I get to
know them and consider them as individuals.
As a result, I communicate something of their
individual personalities in the pictures. By
doing so, the viewer will hopefully show more
empathy towards my subjects and more com-
passion for wildlife in general – particularly in
urban environments, where animals have just
as much right to exist as humans.
Urban wildlife photography has become
my speciality, and I have a clear understanding
of how I first got into it. During my childhood,
my urban neighbourhood and the animals
that inhabited it were a major part of my life. I
also felt a strong desire to document and share
the discoveries I made here. My motivation for
choosing to photograph wildlife in the city is
as complex as it is personal: it is about explor-
ing my own relationship with nature. There
have been times when nature felt increasingly
distant to me, as I was living a busy life in the
city. Being occupied with meetings, paper-
work, emails, social media, bars and parties,
nature started to take a back seat and slowly
fade further and further away, until it ceased to
 exist almost entirely. I had let myself become
surrounded by people so disconnected from
nature that it became nothing more than a
nuisance or inconvenience – a pigeon aimless-
ly wandering the street, a cockroach crawling
beneath the bed, howling foxes waking all of us
up in the night. Yet I was also finding myself in
situations that encouraged me to pick up the
camera and return to my roots. When I was a
child, I sought sanctuary in nature – digging
for worms in my back garden to feed the birds
or climbing trees in my local woods. In those
days, I had no worries about paying bills, meet-
ing targets at work or improving unfulfilling
relationships – my relationship with nature
was all I needed.
Photography helped me ground myself in
nature once more. It encouraged me to slow
down and tune in – to open my eyes and ears
and start to notice the small daily changes in
my environment as the seasons passed. Letting
go of stress and distractions was actually
Photos: Sam Hobson
much easier than I had thought. It is just as
easy to do so in the city as anywhere else – all
one needs is a slight shift in attention towards
the surroundings. The motivation for taking
these pictures developed as a method to coun-
teract the alienation I felt between myself and
nature. Along the way, it also became a mission
about reminding others that nature exists all
around us and that wildlife can be just as
exciting and dramatic in the city as anywhere
else. You do not need fireworks or starry
nighttime skies or dramatic sunsets, you just
need to remember what it was like to be a
child and appreciate the very moment you
find yourself in. Most people dislike the daily
trudge home from work, but remember that
time you saw a fox on your way home? How
exciting! That is precisely the image I intend
to capture. If I can photograph an unusual
animal in a familiar context, even better.
Through my work, people should expect to
see the unexpected, start to open their eyes and
pay attention to the wildlife in their neigh-
bourhood. My aim is for them to begin to
think about nature as something that we C O N Q UE S T O F
coexist with. If people feel compassion for
T HE C IT Y
their local wildlife, it can also encourage an
interest in wider conservation issues, which For more of Sam Hobson’s
photos go to
can contribute to personal fulfilment and
perhaps even global change. toposmagazine.com/hobson
topos 027
Creatures

Making
Room
for Life
028 topos ISSUE 101
In both open and hidden places, in the light and in the dark: Animals
such as bats, otters, birds and fish have all made our cities their
homes. Nevertheless, we hardly include them in our planning efforts.
There is hope, however: The Network of Biophilic Cities, a cooperative
project among cities all over the globe that values residents’ innate
connections and access to nature.
TIMOTHY BEATLEY

topos 029
Creatures
In 1904 William Beebe, a famous explorer and
naturalist, spent an uncomfortable evening at
the top of the Statue of Liberty watching
migrating birds from this elevated perch. He
became alarmed over the course of the night,
as fog settled in, and “the birds began to pass
through the periphery of illumination, then to
strike intermittently against the railing and
glass.” The next morning he counted 271 dead
birds on the ground. It was a remarkable early
episode demonstrating the extent of animal
life in cities, and also the important ways in
which urban design and planning can have
serious, often fatal, effects on the faunal
cohabitants of cities.
Going biophilic
Fast forward more than a century later, and
cities continue to grapple with these issues. In
an important positive trend, cities are imple-
menting a variety of measures to make them-
selves more bird-friendly. San Francisco, for ex-
ample, has now adopted mandatory bird design
guidelines that require bird-friendly glass and
glass treatments for new structures. This shows
a new sense of the important role cities can play
as safe havens for biodiversity and as places
030 topos ISSUE 101
where urbanites can connect with wildlife and
nature more generally.
It is part of a larger and promising new way
of understanding cities – not as divorced from
or disconnected from nature, but deeply
embedded in the natural world, with a new
imperative to design for and design in nature in
every way possible. At the heart of this is the
concept of biophilia, or our innate connection
with and love for nature, an idea championed
by Harvard biologist E.O.Wilson. During the
last five years the idea has been gaining traction,
and the vision of “Biophilic Cities” – cities that
make room for nature, that put nature at the
centre of design and planning, and that seek to
foster new connections with the natural world –
is taking hold as a compelling (and essential)
parallel vision to the goals of urban resilience
and sustainability. In 2013 a global Biophilic
Cities Network was launched. It is now com-
prised of around fifteen cities and is growing in
size. As an aspirational network of like-minded
cities of nature (not a green certification organ-
isation), it is working to share model codes,
tools for implementation and stories of success,
producing films, webinars and articles, and
building a global community of cities willing to
reimagine the role of urban life. Early leaders in
this network include San Francisco, Singapore,
St. Louis, Wellington, Edmonton, Austin, Pitts-
burgh and Washington, among others, and each
city has a unique set of stories about ways to
include animals and nature.
Singapore has proven to be a best practice
city, few cities have done more to advance the
goal of connecting residents to nature. In this
increasingly vertical city-state, nature seems to
be everywhere. New high-rise structures include
new nature in the form of skyparks, green roofs
and living walls. The city has even changed its
motto from “Singapore, a Garden City,” to
“Singapore, a City in a Garden”. It is a subtle but
significant shift, and suggests that nature is not
simply something to visit within the city, but
rather is the city. We are immersed in nature –
why visit the garden, or the park or the forest
when we can live within it? This vision is every-
where on display in Singapore, from its impres-
sive multi-layered tree canopy coverage to its
300-km-long system of Park Connectors, to the
innovative ways its hospitals and health facili-
ties integrate trees and nature as healing
elements.
But can dense and highly developed cities like
Singapore also serve as biological reservoirs and
play an important conservation role? Yes they

can, is the answer. The increasing numbers and
expanding habitat of the smooth-coated otter, a
species rated as being vulnerable by the IUCN
Red List and which has surprisingly returned to
the city, are an indication of this. Max Khoo, who
is studying the otters for his senior thesis, states:
“To see otters and to see wildlife in our highly
urbanised country, it kind of gets people excited
and they want to know more about wildlife.” And
with a little education and engagement, urban
residents can learn how to coexist with species
like otters, coyotes and bears.
Austin: The bat cave
Many other cities around the world are experi-
encing similar connections with nature. They
are becoming biophilic in many big and small
ways. And we are beginning to appreciate that
cities can and must do a better job planning for
and accommodating all kinds of animals and
nature and that they can play a significant role
in global conservation. The urban centres that
are part of the Biophilic Cities Network have
made remarkable efforts to make room for
other forms of life. Austin, Texas is famous for
its 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats that have
taken up residence under the newly renovated
LITERATURE
AUTHOR: Timothy Beatley
TITLE: Handbook of Biophilic City
Planning & Design
Congress Avenue Bridge. While the initial
impulse was biophobic (i.e., eradicating the bats
due to a health risk), the city eventually changed
course with help from organisations like Bat
Conservation International. Today, watching
the bats emerge as the sun goes down. This is
now a city that embraces bats as both a natural
asset (and a tourist attraction) and a nightly
opportunity for awe. Similar events happen
now in other cities as well. If Austin has gone a
bit bat crazy, partner St. Louis has gone a bit
butterfly crazy, expressing its special love for
and commitment to monarch butterflies. The
now-former mayor Francis Slay committed the
city to planting 250 butterfly gardens – a goal
that has been wildly exceeded (there are now
nearly 400).
Habitecture is the new thing
As can be seen, there are many ways that design
and planning can better accommodate animals
and nature, of course. Cities like Edmonton WAN T TO B ECO M E A
have embraced ecological connectivity in land
BIO PHILIC CI T Y ?
use planning, and have already designed and
built some 27 wildlife passages to make it easier Find out more about the
for animals large and small to move through Biophilic Cities Project at
this city. At the other end of the spectrum we toposmagazine.com/biophilic-cities
topos 031
Creatures
must find ways to design new habitats into build-
ings, something that architect Joyce Hwang calls
habitecture. She is pioneering, for instance, new
building wall and facade concepts that make
space for many different kinds of creatures,
including birds, bats and insects. Opportunities
for connections with animals and nature in cities
– physical, visual, mental – offer the possibility of
creating moments of awe and wonder, and a
chance to revel in the beauty and otherness of the
world around us. Some cities, such as Wellington,
New Zealand, are beginning to recognise and
prioritise their connections with the marine
realm. Here and in other coastal cities, much of
the nearby fauna is marine. It is a special chal-
lenge in that this nature is often just beyond the
edge of the land, is hidden to us, though there are
dramatic moments which the life of the sea
presents us, for instance when humpback whales
appear in New York Harbor, or in the case of
Wellington when orcas appear in the harbour.
Studying watery spaces
Cultivating a connection to water and marine
habitats at an early age is important as well. The
Harbor School in New York, is one example. One
of the city’s many specialised high schools,
032 topos ISSUE 101
students who choose to go there can pursue skills
and a career focused on the water – whether it be
scuba diving or marine ecology. Even more
significantly, the school serves as a base of opera-
tions for a remarkable citywide initiative called
the Billion Oyster Project. The aspiration is
embedded in the name, i.e. growing a billion new
oysters in the harbour, and engaging schools and
their pupils directly in this mission and in the
process of education about the ecology and the
nature of this place known as a the City of Water.
When the Europeans originally arrived in this
area, there were billions of oysters growing in the
harbour, which were both an important food
source and a natural water filtration system. The
water quality of New York’s harbour is still too
poor to allow these oysters to be eaten, but they
do have an important ecological function and
most importantly serve as a mechanism for a
physical and emotional connection to the water.
Part of the task here is to reimagine the
watery spaces of cities like New York. Because the
biodiversity and nature of these spaces is harder
to see or appreciate, we tend to view them as
empty or irrelevant. That is certainly the message
we send when we draw planning maps that sim-
ply indicate an area with black or grey shading –
sending the signal there is nothing of biological
importance there. Strategies for reanimating
these spaces by acknowledging their biological
richness and complexity on the maps we prepare
would be good first step.
We need to make room
Biodiversity around the globe is facing many
challenges, of course. One of the most significant
is climate change. As temperatures rise and habi-
tats shift, many species are presented with the
Herculean task of tracking or shifting with these
changes. Cities can play an increasingly impor-
tant role in many of the ways mentioned above.
In the process, we can create important new
dimensions regarding the enjoyment of urban
life – if we see otters (or birds, or whales or ants),
there is a chance that we can experience some
essential and badly needed moments of awe,
wonder and joy. We will benefit individually and
personally in many ways of course, as will the
many other people we encounter in daily life.
Experiencing nature has the effect of softening
and deepening all the relationships in our lives.
For these reasons we need to build a new model
of cities that includes otters, birds, whales and
ants – we need to make room for them in our
cities and in our (biophilic) hearts.
 Children need to play to find the right approach to life. For children, playing does not always
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Creatures

Sending messages in an olfactory language, plants appear to communicate with each other by different
modes and means. Perceived as pleasing scents by humans, trees release chemicals to repel insects or
even warn fellow trees.

034 topos ISSUE 101

 Timber
Are trees human? Are forests the most social
networks of all? In his book The Hidden Life of
Trees, German author and forester Peter Wohl-
leben describes trees as social entities. They even
have the ability to communicate feelings to one
another, he claims. Published in Germany in 2015
the book sold more than 320,000 copies, before
beeing translated into English in 2016. The San
Francisco Chronicle described it as the perhaps
most important environmental book of that year.
How sound are Peter Wohlleben’s ideas?
STUART THOMPSON

Talks
topos 035
 While different from communication between humans understood as a form of social interaction, plants
gain evolutionary advantages through exchanges of information. Translating this information creates
bridges of understanding between trees and humans.

036 topos ISSUE 101


The evidence is now reasonably strong that
plants transmit and receive information from
other individuals of the same species, plants of
other types and other living organisms includ-
ing some animals. The “language” of this com-
munication does not use sounds as ours does,
but instead is mostly chemical. Plants are mas-
ter chemists, producing a vast range of different
substances. They release many of them into the
air and we can sense quite a few of them as
smells. The scent of spring is mostly the cock-
tail of substances that plants start to make as
they stir from their winter rest. Other chemi-
cals escape if a plant is damaged, for example
by a herbivore or a lawn mower. Freshly cut
grass smells as it does because of these. Anyone
who pays attention while gardening, cooking,
or just walking in the country or a park will
know that every plant species has its own signa-
ture mix of aromas. These can be finely tuned
to carry information about the status of the
plant releasing them.
Warning chemicals
If plants are being eaten by insects or experienc-
ing an infection, others nearby will prepare
their defences so that they are ready when they
are attacked as if they had received a warning.
Jasmine and other similar chemicals were
amongst the earliest messages to be identified
Creatures
that carry this type of information. They are
produced by many types of plant when attacked
by disease or insects and stimulate other plants
nearby to produce chemicals that make them
resistant to infection or harder to digest. Some-
times the chemicals released by a plant infested
with herbivorous insects can also act as a cry for
help, summoning carnivores to devour them.
For example, citrus plants release limonene, the
compound that gives oranges their scent, and
this attracts predatory worms to protect the
plants’ roots from beetle larvae.
Unfortunately, whilst the scents that trees
release into the air can be pleasing to us, sun-
light converts some of them into other chemi-
cals harmful to our health. Therefore, their
effects on our quality of life can be mixed.
Fungal networks
But not all chemical signals travel through the
air. The roots of most plants are associated
with fungi in the soil around them. When we
think of forest fungi, we perhaps visualise
mushrooms and toadstools, but these are just
temporary structures used by the fungi to
spread their spores. The real fungus is a mat of
long thin cells spreading through the soil and
many of these connect with the roots of trees
and other plants. In return for sugars and
other nutrients made by the plant using
topos 037
 Plant communication is more than a soliloquy. Taking place within an invisible network based on individual
and community interest, its interactions can be beneficial, adversarial or both, and are reflected by the
physical formation of trees.

038 topos ISSUE 101


photosynthesis, the fungus helps provide the
plant with the minerals that it needs from the
soil. Exchanging nutrients is not the only way
that the plant and fungus help one another.
One fungus can also form a network with the
roots of many plants and act as a conduit
carrying messages between them.
Such fungal networks have been shown to
carry messages from plants, suffering an infec-
tion to surrounding plants causing them to pre-
pare their immune defences, or from plants
infested by insects telling their neighbours to
release chemicals that attract predators or para-
sites of the species attacking the original plant.
What is more, the fungi can also carry other
resources such as food to neighbouring plants.
Invisible to us, communities of plants exchange
resources and information beneath our feet.
Because their connections are invisible, we
have only considered how they are affected
when plants are transplanted into new environ-
ments. In fact, studies now suggest that
although there are some differences between
species and locations, the effects of a transfer
from a rural to an urban location have
sur prisingly little impact on interactions
between tree roots and fungi. However, urban
trees could still be alienated from the broader
benefits of exchanging information and
resources with other trees if none are within
range of fungal networks or airborne signals.
Creatures
Communication or soliloquies?
It may seem that exchanging chemicals is not
genuine communication in the sense that we
understand it. A human conception might
expect some type of intent, but we should note
that we can’t be sure that this exists for many
phenomena that should be included in a bio-
logical definition, such as the complex social
interactions of ants and bees. Instead, biologists
look at whether the organism sending the
message gains anything from doing so. This is
because for genuine communication to have
evolved, it must help the organism sending the
messages to pass on its genes.
For example, signals that trigger defensive
responses can also carry information to other
parts of the same plant and hypothetically this
might be why they are produced. Are other
plants or animals that learn about dangers or
sources of food from them just eavesdropping?
There are indeed instances where other
organisms are clearly taking advantage of
information not intended for them. Some
parasites use plants’ chemical signatures to find
their victims, and herbivorous insects have been
reported to home in on the substances released
by diseased plants, which are less likely to be
able to fight them off. On the other hand, the
advantages of other signals are clear. The colours
and aromas of fruit invite animals to spread a
topos 039
Creatures
Peter Wohlleben has made trees seem less unfamiliar by
translating their responses to their neighbours and their
environment into human terms. But how would we ever know
whether a tree’s experiences are like ours?
plant’s seeds. The scent of a ripe melon or toma-
to is a message telling you that it is good to eat.
Likewise, the colours and smells of flowers can be
seen as calls to pollinators such as bees and but-
terflies. Nor are the ways that flowers pass infor-
mation to their pollinators limited to light and
smell. It seems that some flowers also use electri-
cal fields to guide bees to them, and flowers pol-
linated by bats interact with their sonar, using
sound-reflecting surfaces.
There also do seem to be evolutionary
advantages to sending warnings to surrounding
plants, suggesting that these are not just
soliloquies. A summons to aphid-eating insects
will be much stronger if a plant attacked by
aphids can get its neighbours to join in. If more
plants in an area are resistant to infection, it
becomes harder for disease to take hold, in the
same way that everyone benefits from the “herd
immunity” created by vaccination programmes.
Therefore, it seems that these too can be
considered as real communication.
Self and community interest
But there is a fine balance between competition
and cooperation. All organisms exist in a web of
interactions with communities of their own spe-
cies and the other species that surround them.
Some of these interactions can be negotiated to
the benefit of both parties, others are solely
040 topos ISSUE 101
adversarial, and others still are some combina-
tion. The formation of tree canopies in forests is
an example of the third type. Each individual tree
has to balance gathering as much light as it can
against wasting precious resources in competi-
tion. The result is a slow dance guided by touch,
reflected light and airborn chemical signals, cre-
ating almost jigsaw-like pavements of treetops in
a phenomenon known as “crown shyness”. There
is also a potential balance between self and com-
munity interest in communication via fungal
connections as the exchange of information and
resources is controlled by the fungus. It may give
most help to the plants most useful to it. How-
Photos: Beth Moon; images are from the book: Ancient Trees: Portraits of Time
ever, the fungi can sometimes be duped by one
plant into delivering toxins to poison its rivals.
Peter Wohlleben has made trees seem less
unfamiliar by translating their responses to their
neighbours and their environment into human
terms. But how would we ever know whether a
tree’s experiences are like ours? Trees may not be
people but the behaviours of all organisms have
been shaped by the same types of pressures, and
our interactions with the world, our community
(in the broadest sense) and our environment
reflect our evolutionary history as much as a
tree’s do. Ultimately, perhaps, Wohlleben’s suc-
cess in building bridges between plants and
humans tells us as much about our place in the
natural world and the commonalities that exist
between all living things as it does about trees.
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Creatures

aming the Shrew

In Germany, urban nature conservation mainly focuses on protecting

habitats for plants and animals. Animal Aided Design takes this
traditional approach to the next level: It provides designers with tools
that allow them to put the beast into the middle of the planning process.
By that, animals – which are often difficult to integrate in landscape
architectural projects – become true stakeholders in the urban realm.

THOMAS E. HAUCK, WOLFGANG W. WEISSER

042 topos ISSUE 101

 Urban ecological research has shown that the
built structures of cities, usually thought of as
being distant from nature, offer numerous
habitats for animals across a range of urban
structure types. Inner courtyards typical of the
late 19th and early 20th centuries, the shared
green spaces in residential estates of the 1950s
to 1970s, gardens, schoolyards, and sports com-
plexes as well as other green spaces, all of these
offer room for urban biodiversity. However, this
huge potential space for biodiversity is only
rarely used specifically for furthering urban
biodiversity. Instead, cities tend to eliminate
many of the niches that animals inhabit in the
urban realm, be it through densification, i.e. the
commercial or residential development of pre-
viously unbuilt areas; by maximizing the
energy-efficiency of buildings, resulting in
reduced breeding or hibernating opportunities
for animals such as birds or bats; or by using
public spaces more intensively. As a conse-
quence, urban biodiversity is shrinking, shown
by the decrease in population densities of
synanthropic birds (birds living in close associ-
ation with humans) in Germany or of the house
sparrow in Great Britain.
Design by Rupert Schelle, Georg Hausladen and Sophie Jahnke
In Germany, urban nature conservation is
primarily geared towards protecting and inter-
linking existing habitats for plants and animals.
The planning concept behind this approach
views the urban realm as a fabric in which green
spaces, so-called patches that constitute the hab-
itats of various species, are embedded in a matrix
consisting of the rest of the city. This matrix is
considered to be hostile to animals. Typically,
patches are remaining natural habitats, water
bodies, riparian areas, but also parks, or the
trackbeds of abandoned railway lines. The inten-
tion of most conservation planning is to interlink
these patches, creating a network by implement-
ing additional patches or some ‘corridors’. How-
ever, given the continued decrease of animals in
cities, the focus on patches seems to be insuffi-
cient. Instead, maintaining and increasing urban
biodiversity requires measures that move beyond
care and protection of existing patches. It appears
necessary to turn towards the urban matrix itself
and combine the construction of urban environ-
ments for humans with the creation and devel-
opment of suitable environments for plants and
animals. Such an approach requires that the dog-
ma of the city-nature dichotomy be overcome, in
which cities are viewed as a human realm to be
protected from nature and opposed to a natural
realm that does not include humans. Overcom-
ing the dogma allows us to take a planning per-
spective that perceives the built structure of the
city as constructed urban nature and conse-
quently views any proposal to alter and design it
as a true planning issue. In terms of methods to
be applied, it seems reasonable to tap into the
tradition of proactive urban nature conservation.
This tried and tested practice comprises the sow-
ing and planting of care-intensive and aestheti-
cally pleasing types of vegetation, the construc-
tion of nesting and breeding sites, and the settle-
ment, or conservation, of urban-friendly animal
and plant species through targeted feeding. Such
bottom-up conservation measures are usually
carried out by conservation associations and
supported by citizens who are not professional
biologists. However, due to the fact that this is a
decentralized and often spontaneous form of
activity, bottom-up nature conservation is hard-
ly able to make a systematic and plannable
contribution to settling and maintaining stable
species populations. Furthermore, singular mea-
sures, such as the installation of nest boxes or
“bee hotels”, are often insufficient because they
only partially fulfil the needs of the targeted
species; nest boxes, for example, only fulfil the
requirement of a nesting place. Other essential
needs such as food supply or cover from preda-
tors go unnoticed and are left to chance.
Using the method of Animal-Aided Design
(AAD), we have attempted to endow the proac-
tive bottom-up approach in urban species con-
servation with a systematic city planning strate-
gy. Above all, AAD aims to synchronize the plan-
ning for animals with the planning processes
known from urban and landscape planning, and
from architecture and landscape architecture.
AAD provides an interface between the biolo-
gists or conservationists who aim at conserving
species, and the experts who design the urban
space, i.e. architects, landscape architects, urban
planners, civil engineers, or traffic planners. The
goal of the cooperative planning process is to
explicitly plan the settlement of animals in both
urban open spaces and built-up areas, and to
integrate this into the overall design.
The question of which animals should live in
a particular area provides the starting point of
the planning process. In other words, species
selection, like other programmatic planning
decisions, takes place at the beginning of the
design planning phase. The selection principles
are to involve the different parties in the selec-
tion process and thereby guarantee that partici-
pation takes place before any decision has been
made or the building work is completed. Once
target species have been selected, the needs of
the particular animals can be included in the
design. The toolbox of landscape architecture
and urban development disposes of sufficient
instruments at the appropriate levels of scale to
be able to develop a catalogue of measures that
topos 043
Creatures
cater to the needs of the selected species. Con-
versely, AAD can inspire the design itself. Vari-
ous design proposals that were developed
through AAD show that it is worth the effort to
treat the special needs of animals, i.e. their habi-
tat requirements – nesting place, food, mating
places –, as an additional starting point for the
design process.
In Munich’s Brantstrasse, for example, the
municipal housing developer GEWOFAG is cur-
rently realizing the first residential housing proj-
ect that uses AAD, in cooperation with the AAD
research group and the State Association for Bird
Conservation (LBV). The research project for
integrating AAD into the housing development
has been financed by a three-year research grant
from the Bavarian State Ministry of the Environ-
ment and Consumer Protection. The research
group is part of the Centre for Urban Nature and
Climate Adaptation at the Technical University
of Munich. The project consists of two residen-
tial buildings comprising 99 flats and two day-
care centres for children. The buildings are being
erected in an open space between existing blocks
of flats from the 1950s. Under standard planning
procedures, the animals that used to live in the
green space that is now being covered with build-
ings (hetchhogs, sparrows, etc.) would have lost
their habitat. The purpose of using AAD is to
ensure that the newly built structures as well as
the remaining open spaces continue to fulfil the
critical needs of the existing species. In addition,
AAD allows to create new habitats for other spe-
cies from adjacent areas. Based on mappings
conducted in 2015 and consultations held with
GEWOFAG and LBV Munich, the following spe-
cies were selected to be targeted by the AAD mea-
sures: European green woodpecker (Picus viridis),
house sparrow (Passer domesticus), common pip-
044 topos ISSUE 101
istrelle (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) and the European
hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus). The team creat-
ed species profiles and identified critical habitat
factors for the selected species; it also researched
biologically relevant characteristics of these spe-
cies in cooperation with other experts, in order
to feed this information into the species profiles.
These profiles served as the basis for integrating
the critical needs of the species into the design
and detail planning of the buildings and open
spaces. This took place in close cooperation with
the client, the architects bogevischs buero, and
the landscape architects michellerundschalk. The
planning of the above-ground construction and
open spaces accommodates the following ele-
ments: “barrier-free access” as well as breeding,
day and winter habitats for the European hedge-
hog; breeding burrows and habitats for selected
bird and bat species in the facades of the build-
ings; vertical deadwood structures for the Euro-
pean green woodpecker; and a planting scheme
that fulfils the habitat functions (especially food)
of the selected species. The resident species were
protected during the construction phase; this was
accomplished with the help of members of LBV,
who provided interim habitats for birds, collect-
ed the hedgehogs and helped them to hibernate.
As the construction in Brantstrasse is being real-
ized, the status of the species that existed in the
planning and adjacent areas prior to construc-
tion is inspected and mapped in regular intervals.
Whether these measures will achieve the desired
success for the target species will be determined
by an evaluation after completion of the project.
A given species will only be able to live at a
particular planning site if the animal’s critical
needs are met. The designers and planners thus
need to be competently informed about the crit-
ical needs of the animal in the different phases of
its life cycle in order to factor this knowledge
into the planning. AAD conveys the species’
needs by means of a species profile containing a
life cycle diagram that describes the critical loca-
tion factors pertinent to each phase. The critical
needs include various requirements, such as
food supply for both juvenile or adult animals,
specifications for nesting or wintering sites, or
protection against predators. To assist the plan-
ning, the species profiles also include informa-
tion on plant species that can be used to provide
sufficient food or shelter for the animals. The
information provided in the profiles allows
planners to design the environment of a plan-
ning area in ways appropriate for the species.
Even so, the list of critical location factors is
nothing more than a form of assistance for the
design task. The actual creative challenge con-
sists in devising appealing and innovative design
solutions for the entirety of the critical location
factors as part of the overall design proposal.
Once the design process has been completed, the
planners should be in the position to mark the
places in the preliminary plan where the partic-
ular critical needs of the species are met; the
plan thus makes the entire life cycle visible.
Contrary to concepts that view nature as by
definition “unblemished” by any design activi-
ties, AAD is based on the idea of designing a
new image of nature or, respectively, “recon-
structing” an image of nature that already exists
and conveying it to an observer or user for the
purpose of aesthetic experience. AAD integrates
living beings, here animals, in a design context,
similar to how plants have been integrated in
garden design and landscape architecture for a
very long time. In setting up guidelines for the
individual species and creating the actual
designs, the various participants of the plan-
 AUDIO
S A MP LE
House sparrow
Passer domesticus

COU
RT
SH
IP
DI
SP
LA

Y
&
HA

M
TC

AT
HI
NG

IN
G
&
RA
ISI
NG
Life-cycle and detailed

U P TO 4 X B R U
AAD planning for house
sparrow: The different
ning process are the ones who make the crucial pictograms show where

T
decisions. Yet, like any technology, AAD is not in the urban green
space particular critical
neutral in its ideas and design principles, but UL
T
AD
needs of the species are
instead based on certain basic premises. These met. For the house
sparrow, all of these
are 1. the premise that nature is fundamentally needs are fulfilled
something that can be made, 2. the premise within 50 metres of the
that the evolution of nature is open-ended, and nest boxes.

3. the idea that nature can be experienced

aesthetically through games and experiments.
These ideas can be summarized under the con-
cept of individualistic nature conservation,
based on a similar approach in ecological theo-
SPECIES-SPECIFIC DESIGN COMPONENTS
HOUSE SPARROW
The house sparrow lives in colonies and often breeds indoors.
Nesting opportunities are provided in the eastern fronts of the build-
ing. As the species has a very small home range, all critical needs
such as seeds and insects for food, shrubs for shelter, a water bath,
a dust bath and nest boxes are provided within a circle of 50 metres.

ry. AAD, therefore, is not primarily a method to

CRITICAL NEEDS
protect already existing parts of nature or a Protective sleeping and resting places in thorny hedges with
dense branches at the east facades of buildings (hawthorn, privet,
form of conservation of natural monuments. European hornbeam)
4
Rather, it is a method for initiating open-ended Ears of grasses and other seeds of the species-rich fertile
meadows and dry-grass expanses in the extensified courtyard
settlement processes of animals that have 2
areas

moved into the urban realm. Since the 3 Arthropods and their larvae on open ground and plants; in particu-
lar in areas with sun-exposed dry grass and areas devoid of vegeta-
repercussions and effects of these settlement tion; especially important for supplying the fledglings with food
processes cannot be completely controlled, 1
Nesting place in the east façade, integrated in the insulation layer
in the shape of a nesting brick, height 3–10 mm, openings 35 mm
AAD initiates real-life experiments in order to and 45 mm, distance from adjacent nests 50 cm minimum

test and explore the possibilities of settling ani- Dust bath for parasite control in vegetation-free sand and dust
areas, in the sandy play area and the boules court
mals under different urban conditions, the evo-
lution of the populations of these animals, and Fruit of specimen plants for food supply in autumn and winter;
species: hawthorn, serviceberry, cornel cherry, crab apple, wild
the possibilities, conflicts, and limits of “cohab- roses
Water bath in puddles artificially created in depressions in the
itation” of humans and wild animals in the city. asphalt hill
Design by Rupert Schelle, Georg Hausladen and Sophie Jahnke

How well the target species accept the designed 5

elements will only become apparent after these

Detail of layout drawing
have been realized. For AAD to hold its place in
the daily practice of design and planning two
things are needed: firstly, research that deter- 1

mines the critical habitat factors through

specific experiments, and secondly courageous
municipalities and real estate owners who are
willing to try out AAD projects and maintain
them in the long term so that it becomes possi- 4
ble to determine how functional the measures 2
5
are and to verify their effectiveness through 3

monitoring. Detail of “facade animalisation” (facade greening)

topos 045
Creatures

Berlin’s Daktari
Wild boar, beaver, peregrine falcon? Berlin has them all!
Germany’s Capital city is a paradise for wild animals. Yet
the city also needs to learn how to share its urban space
with wildlife or integrate it into urban planning measures.
This is the cause Dirk Ehlert fights for. For his efforts, he
was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of
Germany in September 2017. Topos author Susanne Isabel
Yacoub spoke with Berlin’s former wild animal consultant.

SUSANNE ISABEL YACOUB

topos: Derk Ehlert, you worked for the Berlin Senate Administration for
many years as wild animal consultant – in the very centre of the city. In
the meantime, you have taken a new position as press secretary and
become known as an advocate for animals. How did you arrive at this
unusual job?
EHLERT: About 20 years ago people in Berlin began to experience wild
animals in ways different from what they had been used to, that is seeing
them only in the forest. Instead, the animals were appearing in built-up
urban areas. Wild boars were digging up front yards, foxes were crossing
inner-city streets. And worried citizens called the Senate Administration
in growing numbers. We were forced to react to that. As the city’s wild
animal consultant, I was able to hire a number of volunteer wildlife
rangers who would capture the animals or, for example, assist the police
in dealing with injured martens.

046 topos ISSUE 101

Taking action: Derk Ehlert fights the
stereotypes and prejudice with which
many Berliners react when seeing or
hearing about wild animals.

topos 047
Creatures
topos: How do you defend your clients?
EHLERT: Our main task was, and still is today, to explain to the people of
Berlin why animals such as foxes, raccoons, etc. even appear in the city and
how they live. We actively engage with the public and try to make people un-
derstand and accept that humans are not the only living creatures in the city.
topos: Do the Berliners take a critical stance towards wild animals?
EHLERT: Actually no. Basically they are very open to them. Because of the
Berlin Wall they are used to living on a kind of island and having to get
along with animals in the city.
topos: So when wild animals became more noticeable in the city, there
was a surge of phone calls?
EHLERT: It is important to take citizens seriously. Many felt insecure
because they didn’t know anything about how wild animals live. Or they
were frustrated because there was no one to help them and give advice.
topos: Do more wild animals live in Berlin than in other cities?
EHLERT: Yes, because Berlin is a very green city: 40 per cent of the city’s
surface area are green and agrarian spaces, wasteland or water surfaces, and
allotment gardens. In addition, there are 19,000 hectares of forest land.
Certain species were able to develop better here than in other places, not
least because hunting rights were restricted exclusively to the Allies and
little hunting took place on city grounds.
topos: There is a lot construction taking place in Berlin, the city is being
massively densified, wastelands disappear. Are you worried for your
protégés?
EHLERT: Any surface area lost to construction causes concern regarding
places of refuge for wild animals. But many of today’s redevelopment areas
are the living spaces of tomorrow and as of yet there still is a reserve of
spaces. In the inner city, however, we are slowly running out of refuge spaces
as even the smallest vacant lots are being built up. This is where animals
048 topos ISSUE 101
really have to prove themselves as genuine generalists. Otherwise they really
could not live in certain areas.
topos: You have invented a beautiful term for the animals who live with
us…
EHLERT: Yes, I introduced the term the “Big Five” for the mammals whom
we encounter most frequently in Berlin, based on the number of citizen
calls: wild boar, marten, fox, rabbit, raccoon. If one considers the particular
species that live in our urban area, this group could easily be extended to
the “Big Ten”, also comprising the beaver, striped field mouse, hawk, sea-
eagle and peregrine falcon.
topos: The sea-eagle? How did this bird come to Berlin?
EHLERT: Well, Berlin is situated in the centre of Brandenburg and the
prohibition of the insecticide DDT lead to a recovery of this endangered
species. We are very proud of our two breeding pairs, who for about ten
years have profited from ideal living conditions. In winter for example, they
live off deer, wild boars and other animals that are failing to survive.
topos: What is your mission? The protection of the animals or the protec-
tion of the people of the city?
EHLERT: It is the public relations work, listening to people’s concerns and get-
ting them interested in our work. I would like to prepare people for the chang-
es the animals bring about. The images of wild animals we have in our minds,
where and how they live, are no longer accurate. Perhaps they never were
accurate. The idea that a roe lives in the forest is our view. In reality, the roe
inhabits fields and meadows – it is we who have turned it into a forest animal.
topos: So, your strategy is that city dwellers have to tolerate wild animals?
Do we really want to keep all wild animals that migrate into the city?
EHLERT: Whether this really applies to all animals remains to be seen. What
matters to me is the living together. We need to show understanding for animals,
not least because hunting does not bring about a reduction of wild animals.

topos: Some immigration stories are true success stories in terms of
species protection. The beaver is a case in point.
EHLERT: Indeed, as recently as 25 years ago we could only dream of a species
that had become extinct in our region, a wild animal like the beaver, re-estab-
lishing itself. When the beaver reappeared in Berlin, this was kept secret at the
time. Gradually, the beaver reconquered the city and soon made an appearance
in every part of Berlin. Where there are neither dikes nor flood protection areas,
the beaver cannot wreak much havoc. But if the animal intrudes upon historic
park facilities and private waterfront properties, one has to cooperate to find
solutions for protecting special trees or replacing a young tree here and there.
topos: In your work, you rely on a high media presence. You have camera
teams accompany you. What are you aiming at when you do that?
EHLERT: In certain situations, I purposely take media partners with me in
order to demonstrate situations, solutions and correct behaviour in front of
a running camera. And it’s important for me to involve the next generation
of city dwellers, the children. There is no use in sugarcoating the world, but
what we can do is relieve people of their fears. Children’s books used to
teach us that foxes who don’t shy away from humans are rabid. We need to
change our thinking and understand that this is not the case. In fact, wild
animals have learned that they survive more easily if they go near humans
because humans feed them.
topos: In Europe, the species we come across tend to be comparatively
friendly like the beaver or the fox. Do animals in India or Africa cause
more serious confrontations?
EHLERT: All wild animals are potentially dangerous. Even ant bites can be
lethal to humans. There is still a lot of educational work that needs to be do-
Photo: dpa/ Gregor Fischer
ne and we realize that society is not ready yet. Europe and Africa are different
continents and their approaches to these questions are worlds apart. What I
can say is this: outside Europe people react with less panic to the appearance
of wild animals, people are more relaxed about it. Despite the fact that
warthogs are really aggressive and there is little one can do against monkeys.
VITA
DERK EHLERT studied landscape planning at the Berlin Technical University of Applied
Sciences. In 1999 he was employed by the Berlin Senate Administration for Urban
Development. He was hunting consultant of the state of Berlin from 2001 to 2007, and
wild animal consultant from 2007 to 2014. Since 2014 Ehlert has been the wild animal
expert of the City’s press office. He has also worked as a freelance instructor for more
than 30 years.
topos: Are all wild animals in Berlin equally welcome, or do we have to
set priorities?
EHLERT: An interesting question. The German Federal Agency for Nature
Conservation has published a species list for such purposes. Whether that
is meaningful and sustainable and will be successful is another story.
Invasive species may become a danger to native ones or even displace them.
Look at the raccoon for example. Thousands of raccoons are hunted across
Germany every year and yet the population is growing.
topos: Other European cities, Paris, London or Zurich, for example,
struggle with similar problems. Do these cities have their own experts
with whom you exchange ideas?
EHLERT: In the German-speaking countries there are exchanges between
Vienna, Berne and Zurich. The Zurich wildlife guard is well-staffed and has
been doing very professional work for years. Contacts with London and
Paris tend to be incidental, for example when individual people turn to us
with their questions. Internationally, we are currently seeing the emergence
of a cooperation on the question of how animals can be better integrated
into urban architecture. Animal Aided Design is one of several joint
projects, co-directed by TU Kassel, TU Munich and the Federal Agency for
Nature Conservation.
topos: Animal Aided Design. What are your expectations towards such
an approach?
EHLERT: Our goal is to achieve a higher degree of integration of wild
animals into urban development planning. Structures made of steel do not
offer much in terms of living space for animals and glass causes the death
of many birds; architects forget that over and over again. The point is to
provide assistance to the architects and urban planners of tomorrow on
how to deal with different species. This is a complex field as every species
naturally has its own demands. What is clear, however, is that cities need to
make steps towards the animals if we want to attain a holistic system. It’s
not going to work the other way round.
topos 049
Creatures

War
Animals are inherently close to us, but at the
same time stranger than ever. Our understand-
ing of these creatures and our relationships
with them are formed by media mechanisms.
This is not a bad thing. But these images cover
up an existential element of human insecurity
when we are confronted with the world of the
beast. A cultural studies-informed essay.

ALEXANDER GUTZMER

of
the Gazes
050 topos ISSUE 101
“No one wants to be eaten ...” FIN SHEPARD IN SHARKNADO 2

topos 051
Creatures
Sometimes, you have to get close to the plagues
that haunt you. We are taught this by one of the
most hilarious scenes Hollywood has ever
produced, i.e. a scene from the cult trash thriller
series Sharknado. In the films, cities are attacked
by sharks flying through the air. In the above
mentioned key scene, which is the culmination
of the tone-setting 2013 opener, hero Fin, having
performed a number of mind-blowing deeds of
heroism, deliberately jumps into the mouth of
one giant shark, only to cut his way out again
with a chain saw. In this way, he kills the final
member of the plague of swimming, and later
flying, sharks attacking Los Angeles. He gets right
in the middle of things. Only by actually seeing
and learning about the animals’ intestines is he
able to get rid of the plague.
Proximity
Through this scene Sharknado becomes a strange
symbol for the highly ambiguous relationship
between man and beast. It is an awkward repre-
sentation of the way in which we engage with the
animals around us, and with the idea of the
“animal kingdom” in general. On the one hand,
we get ever closer to animals, understanding
them better and cultivating the idea that we can
engage in a meaningful relationship with them.
The feeling that we are Mowgli is in all of us.
052 topos ISSUE 101
Animals are still dominated by humans, but no
longer only through deadly adversity, but
instead by proximity. We don’t kill the strange
beast, but instead try to get cuddly with even the
scariest of them. Certain reminders of the fact
that this is still dangerous, such as the attack on
German circus hero Roy of the duo Siegfried &
Roy in 2003, do not change that. You may
remember that the 300-kilogram tiger Mon-
tecore first bit Roy’s arm, then his neck, eventu-
ally pulling him off stage. Roy, who suffered
severe injuries from the attack, later argued that
it had not been an attack at all. Obviously, he
wanted to defend the tiger, thereby emphasising
to the immense proximity both had had before
the attack.
Estrangement
Which brings us to the essential distance
between animals and humans. There is an ever-
widening rift between the two. Animals are
strange to us. They form what psychoanalysis
calls “the other”, as is also argued by sociologist
Joanna Latimer. The ambiguous relationship
between man and beast, or, as it is called in this
issue of Topos, “plague”, is of course a media
phenomenon. We do not operate on any
“essentialist” level with animals; but instead,
we imagine and perceive them as a mass-media
presence. We are used to engaging in a smart,
almost all-knowing way with animals as media
images, much more so than interacting with
them in real life. This is why a film like
Sharknado is possible. As viewers, we under-
stand how hilarious the idea of flying sharks is
because we are acquainted with hundreds of
other films purveying assumedly more
“realistic” images of animals. We can only deal
with their real nature through images. And we
are increasingly experienced in doing so.
In a way, such criticism might be tempted to
employ some kind of natural essentialism itself.
This, however, would be a mistake. It doesn’t
make sense to try and return to an understand-
ing of animals “like they really are”, as opposed
to how they are represented in the media.
Images and their processing form a productive
part in our making of culture and in our under-
standing of the relationships between animals
and humans. Any attempt to separate them
from one another is bound to fail. Iconoclasm
and iconocentrism are in line with one another
and essentially support each other. This argu-
ment is also put forward by cultural theorist
Mimei Ito. In the criticism of certain images
and their assumed essentialist value, we will
only succeed if we create new and perhaps more
complex or informed imaginaries.This is even
more true, as it seems at times nature itself now
“I hate the subway!” FIN SHEPARD IN SHARKNADO 2

topos 053
Creatures

“I never saw a weather pattern like this.” A WEATHERMAN IN SHARKNADO 2

Photos: SYFY Media LLC

054 topos ISSUE 101


appears to work in an iconocentric way. Only
through images does it create moments of, at
times, shocking iconoclasm. It is in these
moments that one can indeed talk about a
return or a revolution of the “real”. It seems
indeed possible that the occasional crocodile
enters a house during a flood – reality meets its
own image here. Time Magazine writes that
right before a storm hits, people might see more
sharks and other fish than at other times. Time
quotes an expert as saying “Usually there’s a lull
in the weather [before storms]. Conditions get
better so it may be easier to see them in those
time periods”.
Opposition
However scary this vision might be, it is not as
intimidating as the many social media memes
of sharks swimming up a Houston highway that
circulated in the aftermath of hurricane Harvey.
These, of course, were hoaxes. Which did not,
however, prevent Fox News (the key channel in
Donald Trump’s campaign against an alleged
fake news syndicate) from assuming the memes
were real. Obviously, the journalists at Fox over-
estimated the capacity of reality to take pro-
ducts of the film industry to heart. This is just
media people believing too much in the power
of the media. We put ultimate trust in our own
FILM
SHARKNADO 1-5 directed by Anthony C. Ferrante,
written by Thunder Levin. SYFY, 2013-2017.
media products. This trust is connected to
another human-centric type of hubris: Our
ultimate belief in the human gaze. We believe in
our capacity to give order to the world through
what we see. This, however, is an overestima-
tion. And this overestimation is also a general
theme regarding the engagement humans have
with animals. Here as well, it is always our
perspective that counts.
One thinker who was intrigued with this
idea was the French philosopher Jacques
Derrida. For Derrida, human overestimation
was a constant source of fascination. In con-
trast, he postulated a theory about a gaze that
was not human, but instead animal. The idea is
that humans look at animals, and the animals
look back. This unnerves humans. We can deal
with the gazes of other humans, but we find the
idea of animals staring hard to comprehend.
They make us feel as if we are being observed by
an alien observing force. And they make us feel
naked. Derrida plays with the idea that there is a
certain gazing animal identity that cannot be
subsumed under human recognition, or under-
stood by human-centric categories.
Which brings us back to the initial scene of
DAN C IN G W I T H S H A R K S
Sharknado. If the gazing shark is a problem,
then what’s the best way to escape this gaze? More pictures from the Sharknado
movies
Where can we go to avoid being seen by the
shark? Right! Inside the shark itself. toposmagazine.com/sharknado
topos 055
 Creatures
15 In Urban Spaces
High density: Surveys indicate population densities of
up to 15 possums per hectare in Melbourne's parks.
In a natural environment, the typical densities range Prowling the hills:
from one to three possums per hectare. in Los Angeles, the
famous mountain
lion P-22 shares
Griffith Park with
millions of people.

170 Urban refuge: 170 bird species reportedly

breed in Berlin, and 97 (57%) of them are on
the Red List of Threatened Species.

500
Diversity counts: Singapore boasts 500
plant and animal species, many of them
previously unknown to science.

Lack of diversity: on London‘s

Trafalgar Square only very few
starlings and sparrows are met
by a huge pigeon population.
 Hatching up high: lacking
proper breeding places, Berlin
mallards opt for balconies.

The sky's the

limit: in 2011 a
red fox found a
temporary home
at the top of the 6.600
then-partially Backyard bears: bear sightings report-
completed Shard. ed in Florida increased from a meagre
99 in 1990 to more than 6,600 in 2013.

6.000
Not quite domestic: the roughly 6000
boars that roam Berlin's urban area
can be experienced up close.

Sharing ecology: Manhattan ants

survive on discarded junk food, City slickers: according to es-
equalling 60,000 hot dogs per year timates, 500 million pigeons
along Broadway alone. live in cities worldwide.

60.000 500 MIO

Creatures

Be(e)ing

A new agratrend has emerged in our cities on the

heels of urban gardening: Urban Beekeeping. This
trend is possible because bees are now able to find a
more varied diet in the cities than in the country.
Whether in New York, Paris or Berlin – entire
colonies are coming and going above the rooftops.

UTE STRIMMER

Photo: shutterstock/ Daniel Prudek; Fortnum & Mason, London

on Top
058 topos ISSUE 101
topos 059
Several thousand bees
live in an elegant
turquoise-green pagoda
atop the roof of the
renowned delicatessen
Fortnum & Mason in
London.

060 topos ISSUE 101


“The bees have a colourful menu available
to them in the city. This diversity is often lacking
in the country.”
JÜRGEN TAUTZ
Professor at Julius-Maximilians-Universität in Würzburg, Germany
For years, bees have been conquering territory
where one would least expect them: large cities.
Whether New York, Toronto or Berlin – urban
beekeepers are maintaining colonies everywhere.
The trendy hobby got its start at one of the most
opulent locations in Paris: the opera. Jean
Paucton, the pioneer of urban beekeeping, had
once been prop master there. He first placed a
bee colony on the roof of the renowned Opéra
Garnier in the early 1980’s. However, this hadn’t
been planned. On the contrary, it was supposed
to be just a temporary stopover. When the hobby
beekeeper picked up his bees two weeks later to
take them to his house in the country he was very
surprised: They had produced much more honey
Photo: Fortnum & Mason, London
than their colleagues buzzing through country-
side. After that, Jean Paucton decided to move
five bee colonies to the original location and
obtained approval.
But, is a large city like Paris really a hospitable
place for bees to live? Where can they find food in
this environment with all of that asphalt, cars
and so much stone and concrete? “Paris has an
unusually large number of green spaces”, says
Jean Paucton. The parks and gardens are home to
a variety of exotic plants and trees that are more
than 300 years old. In fact, the range of flowers is
often larger in the cities than in the country given
the prevalence of mono-cultural agriculture.
Trees and flowers grow along the streets, in parks,
cemeteries, balconies and in gardens. “The bees
have a colourful menu available to them in the
city. This diversity is often lacking in the coun-
try”, explains Jürgen Tautz, Germany’s leading
bee researcher. This is because fields and mead-
ows are mown too frequently - along with the
flowers that are such an important food source.
The expert notes that “bees in the country some-
times even starve to death in the summer”.
In addition, everything blooms longer in the
city because cities are two to three degrees
warmer on average than the country.
For two years now, it has not only been new
parks providing green space but also rooftops
Creatures
that had previously gone unused. Herbs, vegeta-
bles, fruits and hops are now thriving in these
spaces planted on vast membrane walls. For
example, several thousand plants atop the roof of
the traditional French department store Galeries
Lafayette and the new lifestyle shopping centre
BHV Marais are providing additional habitat for
bees. The metropolis on the Seine is a paradise
for the humming insects – in Paris alone there
are now 500 urban beekeepers.
But is honey from the city even healthy and
what about pollutants? The beekeepers have their
product tested regularly – in the laboratory of the
Parisian Prefecture of Police. Chemists at this
laboratory test whether the honey contains heavy
metal residues. Lead represents their primary
concern. The substance is no longer contained in
exhaust since leaded petrol was prohibited.
However, it is still used in building construction
and roofing materials. The bees absorb it via
rainwater. In turn, the lead could pollute the
honey and in the long-term the people who eat it.
topos 061
Creatures
Chemists examine the contents of the honey using
a spectrometer and give the all-clear. This means
that it is safe to eat the “concrete honey”, as the
urban beekeepers in Paris call it, without worry.
The city has since even come to be seen as a
refuge for bee colonies. This is because there are
no pesticides. By contrast, they are often used
on a large-scale in the country and are seen as a
significant factor in the massive die-off of bees.
“This is dramatic”, says Henri Clement, the
chairman of the French beekeepers’ association
Unaf (Union Nationale de l’Apiculture Fran-
çaise). If a field of sunflowers is treated with an
insecticide, this also harms the bees’ nervous
system. “They don’t return to the colony and get
lost.” Apparently, exhaust in the city has less of
an effect on the bees.
Beekeepers explain it like this: The flowers
themselves are well-protected from polluted
water, particulate matter and exhaust. The nec-
tar that the bees collect and make into honey is
located deep within the flower where harmful
062 topos ISSUE 10
101
substances can’t reach. Should the bees absorb
pollutants via the pollen or rainwater nonetheless,
they store them in their bodies and not the honey.
Other Parisian institutions have emulated
the example set by the opera. For example, two
bee colonies were located atop the Grand Palais
and have since been joined by three more. By
contrast, the Bastille Opera and the Centre
Pompidou have proven to be poor colony loca-
tions: At one location, the façades were under-
going renovation and the ventilation system was
too loud at the other. Incidentally, fans of the
Garnier honey bees pay the impressive price of
15 euros for 125 grams at the Opera boutique.
Bees are hard at work making honey in
London as well. Several thousand bees live in an
elegant turquoise-green pagoda atop the roof of
the renowned delicatessen Fortnum & Mason,
where they fan out every day toward Kensing-
ton, Mayfair, St. James’s Park and Buckingham
Palace - with its 6,500 plants and 420 trees, the
Queen’s private garden is seen as an especially
In the early 1980’s a bee
colony was placed on
the roof of the Opéra
Garnier, Paris. Today
bee colonies are located
atop the Grand Palais in
Paris, too.
bee-friendly oasis. They return to their home
with flower pollen from the most exclusive
addresses in the city. Fortnum & Mason,
purveyor to the court, only sells the honey
produced in this manner in the fall – and there
is even a waiting list. There are additional bee
colonies located atop the roof of the National
Portrait Gallery. In the meantime, some one
hundred hotels around the world host bee colo-
nies on their rooftops. The Fairmont Royal York
Photo: Collection Rmn-Grand Palais, Paris/Didier Plowy
Hotel in the Canadian city of Toronto claims to
have been the first. According to beekeeper Mel-
anie Coates, the hotel manager took his inspira-
tion from the Paris Opera. “You can’t have a sup-
plier that is any closer”, she says. “In a manner of
speaking we are a part of the urban agricultural
landscape and beekeeping is an extension of
that”. Hotels from Amsterdam to Washington
have their own bees. In the currently closed New
York’s Waldorf Astoria, six hives are located on
the 20th floor. The bees fly up Park Avenue and
turn left into Central Park.
topos 063
 FACTS & FIGURES

ONE-THIRD of our food is pollinated by honey bees.

THE TOTAL ANNUAL VALUE of insect pollination is
estimated to reach $ 577 billion worldwide.
FROM THE ARCTIC TUNDRA TO THE PEAKS OF THE
HIMALAYAS: Bees can be found anywhere in the world.
THE UNITED NATIONS COUNTS ABOUT 80 million
hives worldwide.
THERE ARE BEEHIVES which can accommodate up to
50,000 bees (apis mellifera).

064 topos ISSUE 101


There are more than
20,000 bee species in
the world. Their size
ranges from tropical
stingless bees (1.5 mm)
to a 40 mm long bee in
Asia (Apis laboriosa).
Manhattan’s best-known beekeeper is David
Graves. He has thirteen bee colonies with some
60,000 bees each. They live in Brooklyn, the Bronx
and in Manhattan – on the barren, hard-to-reach
rooftops of hotels and office buildings or in the
green of privately-owned rooftop gardens. “When
it all started”, he says “I hung out flyers looking for
‘adoptive parents’ for my bee colonies from
among the owners of the largest and most-
blooming rooftop terraces and quickly found a
few.” Rooftop terraces in New York cover nearly a
quarter million square metres. They are comple-
mented by small neighbourhood parks, and in
particular, lush vegetation growing in courtyards
along the residential streets of Lower Manhattan
Photo: shutterstock/ Daniel Prudek
and Central Park on a combined area almost as
large as 500 football pitches. They are the private
refuges and retreats of the wealthy residents of the
city and represent idyllic gardens on a small scale.
David Graves’ bees work non-stop from spring to
late fall. He sells the results of his industrious
workers’ efforts in 40-gram jars at the Union
Creatures
Square Farmers Market every Wednesday and
Saturday: “You can see and taste what time of year
the honey was made. In early summer it’s clear
and light, as fall gets closer it takes on a darker co-
lour and has a sort of caramel taste.” He has also
trademarked his brand: “New York City Rooftop
Honey”. Urban beekeepers are very much in
vogue. For growing numbers of the younger gen-
eration, this hobby once dismissed as something
for pensioners has even become a part of the
modern lifestyle. There are some 95,000 hobby
beekeepers in Germany with more than 500
hobby beekeepers in Berlin alone. And now, even
people who have neither a garden nor a roof can
join in: Hobby beekeeper Johannes Weber has URBAN BEEK EEPI N G
developed a small bee box that can be hung on a
IN LO S AN G E L ES
balcony. The inventor received the Galileo
Knowledge Prize at the GreenTec Awards, one of Learn more about urban
Europe’s biggest environmental prizes. Today, beekeeping guru Kirk Ander-
bees are no longer solely the concern of special- son at
ists and scientists. They have long since been dis- toposmagazine.com/urban-
covered by hipsters – and marketing has followed. beekeeping
topos 065
Creatures

Animals, with their

myriad superhuman
senses, can teach us
new unprecedented
ways of occupying
space.

066 topos ISSUE 101

 Companion
Species
Living with animals is not a new idea. Though today our
animal cohabitants are generally limited to our pets,
scarcely 100 years ago, we lived with more animals in
more shared spaces, more frequently. Where did they go,
and why has this changed? And moreover, what would a
return to greater cohabitation look like in today’s world?

NED DODINGTON
Illustration: Brandon Youndt

wanted
topos 067
Creatures
Today’s cities, not only Western but in general,
have almost no animal life in their cores (…).
There are roughly 163 million pets in the United
States. Approximately 44 per cent of all house-
holds in the United States have a dog, and 35 per
cent have a cat. Said another way, that’s nearly
one pet for every two humans in the U.S.
And while pet ownership is popular and
likely on the rise, our interaction with animal
life in general is increasingly prescribed, con-
trolled, and in decline. But this has not always
been the case, and is in fact contrary to the bulk
of human history. Not all that long ago, animals
and humans – though, really, we’re animals too
– intermingled closely throughout the day in
our public and private lives. Cities were filled
with non-human life: Horses pulled trollies,
street carts, and wagons down urban streets;
pigs, chickens, and other fowl were kept loose in
small city plots; pets and domesticated animals
roamed neighbourhoods. The great cities of the
18th and 19th centuries like New York, London,
Paris, and Berlin were rife with animal life.
Between 1718 and 1852 the number of London
cows grew from 6,000 to over 20,000 at its peak,
068 topos ISSUE 101
dropping slightly to 18,000 by 1914. Similarly
impressive figures can be found for other
animals: 200,000 horses in London at the end of
the 19th century, and hundreds of thousands of
pigs, sheep, fowl, and other animals.
Animal cities
The Georgian and Victorian city was filled with a
constant animal presence in almost every aspect
of city life, with all of the accompanying sounds,
smells, blood, guts, and frankly, disease-inducing
conditions. But by the 19th century, things began
to change. City planners had taken a proactive
attitude towards reducing animal waste in urban
centres, and popular attitudes towards cleanli-
ness, miasma, and disease were also changing.
The presence and popularity of the newly built
London Zoo was a further indication of a
growing trend of separating and reconsidering
animal life and value in the European city. And
by the start of the Second World War, most
animal life had been dramatically reduced in
European cities. In Paris, for example, the horse
population plummeted from 110,000 in 1902 to
22,000 in 1933. Today’s cities, not only Western
but in general, have almost no animal life in their
cores, and if they do, it is strongly curtailed.
But perhaps this is all soon to change.
Despite the century-long trend of declining
urban animal life, there is an increasing desire
among many designers, planners, and thinkers
to reintroduce an animal presence in our
contemporary lives and cities. Driven by the
growing threats of climate change, population
growth, and rising species extinctions, their
projects ask questions about how we could
co-exist with a greater biodiversity in denser,
more populated areas, about the benefits of
animal cohabitation, and about what the
Illustration: Sarah Gunawan
messy, less romantic consequences of this
would be. Several strategies have presented
themselves: Co-species cohabitation, urban
agricultural projects, and urban greenscaping
each offer new and varied lenses through
which we can start to rethink living more
 1’-2”

Antagonism
PARASITISM PREDATION

10”
lice&mite

nematode

merlins

falcons
A population of
raccoons are invited by
helping to aerate and
distribute compost to
keep a chimney flue METAL CHIMNEY CAP
warm for a population CHIMNEY Prevents rain and predators from
entering into the chimney and attacking
SWIFT the chimney swift nests
of swifts. Chaetura pelagica
lifespan 4-6yrs
weight 17-30g CHIMNEY WALL
Brick screen enclosure
Metal brick ties
Metal chimney frame
w/cross bracing

above grade
Chaetura
pelagica
6”

›12’-0”
pest species
curculion
fly

aphids

fire ant
RACCOON FOOD SUPPY
Procyon lotor
lifespan 6-10yrs
weight 4-9kg

HUNTING
Antagonism Predation by raccons is limited in the
urban biome since there is an ambundance
DISEASE PREDATION of human waste
rodents COMPOST PROCESS
bird

eggs
rabies

distemper

coyote

vehicle

1 MIXING
Food and garden waste are combined to
begin composting process.

2 DIGESTING&CIRCULATING
After one month, material transitions to second
chamber. Raccoons aid the digestion process
by ciculsting the compost.

mating season 1 be
ge
sta Wage tu 3 MATURING
tio
Decomposed matter is transitioned to the last
WINTE
n

chamber where aerationholes accelarate the

pe

R
rio

process and reduce odour.

d

2
FALL

SPRIN

riod

d
close
g pe

Compost Release
G

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3
ars
od wea

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SUMMER
s
es
fo

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closely with our animal counterparts. Some of The works of two architects, Sarah Gunawan compost-turning raccoons keep a chimney
these are a reawakening of dormant ideals, and Joyce Hwang, stand out in this field for flue warm for a population of swifts, insects
some are indeed boldly avant garde. their beguiling and sensitive invitations to drawn to the residential waste become food
non-human life. Sarah Gunawan, currently for the bat population, and owls feed on
Co-species cohabitation the Reyner Banham Fellow at the University smaller rodents. Each action creates an inter-
of Buffalo, NY, developed her graduate thesis linked and interdependent world – a web of
Living in closer proximity with our animal at the University of Waterloo, entitled Subur- animal life.
companions, as any devoted pet owner will ban Appendages, to address synanthropic spe- Joyce Hwang, director of the experimental
tell you, is a foundational, loving, and trans- cies in the typcial North American suburb. In practice Ants of the Prairie and associate
formative experience. And there are numer- her thesis, she displays an array of ways in professor of architecture at SUNY Buffalo, has
ous benefits to living with pets: decreased which the average Canadian or American developed several built animal-centric designs.
stress, decreased blood pressure and levels of home could be host to more than a nuclear Two projects, Bat Tower and Bat Cloud, also
cholesterol and triglycerides, as well as family. In the proposals shown here, a small show how successful animal habitats can be
decreased feelings of loneliness. Overall, roost is constructed on the home for nesting when designed for symbiotic uses: In Bat Tower,
pet-ownership results in increased longevity, barn owls, bats are invited to hang out be- an installation outside of a park in upstate New
and a greater desire for physical activity and tween wooden slats along an exterior wall, and York, native plants known to draw insect life are
socialisation. If we can happily coexist with a population of racoons are invited by helping encouraged to colonise a structure for roosting
dogs and cats, why not with racoons, owls, or to aerate and distribute compost while forag- bats. Similarly, Bat Cloud elevates a planted
squirrels? Though the thought of inviting ing through residential waste. Moreover, the garden into a tree canopy to provide food and
“pests” into our homes might strike some as project suggests that these non-human activi- roosts for local bats.
off-putting, several designers are proposing ties can be symbiotic, not only benefitting the But clearly, other than personal, emotional,
just that – if not quite to the extent of our human inhabitants but the other animal lives. or ecological benefits, the main reason that peo-
domesticated companion species. In this newly outfitted animal-centric suburb, ple have lived with other animals is agricultural.

topos 069
 Creatures

BARN OWL BOX

rnatio
n Insulated and nominally heated cavity
s
hibe 9” 3’-4” specifically designed for barn owls.
A small roost is cr
ea
se
WINTE Sized to accomodate a full clutch of

n
R

ri
2-18 eggs and designed to prevent

o
rp
constructed on a home

, to
infiltration by predators

em
erg
e to f
FALL
DORMER ROOF
for nesting barn owls.

eed
Metal cladding on dormer

breeding

SP R
form Air space
Bats are invited to hang nurs
ery
Sheating membrane

IN
+fee

2’-6”
1/2"Plywood sheating

G
ng di
out between wooden R-20 Insoulation batts

d
R

rio
SUMME

ind

pe
1/2" Untreated wood panelling

ery
ep

n
nd tio

e
sta

urs
e t

slats along the exterior ge

en
in g

rs
learn nurs

pe
ti fly

dis
wall. Attic space ventilates into
BR0WN BAT Barn Owl Box providing
warmth for young
Myotis lucifungus
lifespan 6-7yrs
weight 5-14g
Existing roof line

FOOD SOURCE
wasps
wingspan 22-27cm

gnats
e
in
o fl
mosquito ro

PREDATORS
e d
t ch
snake
pi
e
mayflies
ur
at
fe
g
bird tin
beetles is
Ex

HUNTING rat
Echolocation combined
BARN OWL wings
pan 10
0-125c
with 38 sharp teeth enable
Tyto Alba m bats to catch insects

11’-2”
mid-flight
lifespan 4yrs PREDATORS
weight 400-700g
hawks

eagle

opossum

racoon

body
length
32-40c
m
HEARING ADDITIONAL REAL ESTATE
Bonus bdroom/study/storage
Heart-shaped, concave facial disk

6’-5”
and asymmetrically placed hears
heightens hearing capacity
FLYING
Move silently with slow wingbweats
and bouyant, looping flight
patterns allowing them to locate prey
without being detected

10’-0”
HUNTING
FALL Nocturnal hunters who fly slowly over
the ground, even hovering, locationg
prey through acute hearing and ability
ne
stin

90% of diet to see in lowlight conditions

g

incubation
WINTER

SPRING

PREY

rats
d
io
per
ng

R
sti

SU M M E
ne

voles

H ed
ging
mice

birds

Again, the period in Western cities from the shopping cart into a sophisticated chicken animal life indeed already exists in urban
17th to 19th centuries seems to be an aberration roost, repurposing a discarded commercial centres and can in fact flourish there.
of human history: Throughout the majority of tool and suggesting a kind of literal farm- Urban landscapes, rather than commingling
human civilisation, the garden has been a cen- to-table approach to farming, where one can the human and animal spheres as closely as in
tral and arguably centralising part of normal push a mobile coop right up to your doorstep. the above, aim to achieve a kind of pan-species
life. But as the large metropolitan cities of the Still, many other architects and landscape balance between our built and unbuilt environ-
18th century modernised and densified, agri- architects are designing apiaries on urban ments. These are projects that generally seek to
cultural activities were driven further and roof tops, raised planter beds, and indoor soften urban infrastructure and to create “green
further out, and the small urban garden hanging gardens. ways” in, around, and through metropolitan
disappeared. But more and more designers are areas. Many of these projects are large-scale
harvesting the potential of urban agriculture in Urban Greenscaping landscape projects like Arc Wildlife Crossing
their designs, for instance Carey Clouse and located along I-70 in Colorado’s Vail Pass, the
Zach Lamb of the Massachusetts-based archi- One line of thinking, and an increasingly acclaimed Highline in New York City, and
tecture office Crooked Works. Both architects popular strategy for promoting animal life in Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Park, a beautiful,
by training, they address the tough issues of our urban cores, views the city as a whole as a snaking greenway through the heart of a major
urban identity, food security, and environmen- place for increased biodiversity. For decades, urban metropolis. But urban greenscaping
tal stewardship through design interventions. a pervasive sense that “nature” does not exist interventions can be smaller – working at the
Illustration: Sarah Gunawan

Their projects Cart Coop and Window Unit in city centres has dominated how we define scale of a bird house, a bee hive, an insect hotel,
reenvision domestic life with food-producing animal life in and outside of cities. But a or a bird perch. The projects of the Houston-
domestic animals. growing group of landscape architects, ecolo- based Expanded Studio, the London-based
In Window Unit, fish, chicken, and bees gists and planners, bolstered by increasing 51 per cent Studios, and Lisa Lee Benjamin’s
are each positioned within reach of the scientific studies in ecosystem services, are Zurich-based studio are all represenative exam-
kitchen. Cart Coop transforms your basic changing this perspective. They argue that ples of the myraid ways in which small-scaled

070 topos ISSUE 101

There are numerous benefits to living with pets:
decreased stress, decreased blood pressure (…) as well as
decreased feelings of loneliness.
interventions can be deployed within the built
environment to encourage animal colonisation.
There is yet another way of approaching
this discussion of alternative-species room-
mates. And that is through the lens of post-
humanism – or rather, through our own and
generally neglected animalism. There are two
basic truths here: First – we are already ani-
mals. Second – we are also already multiple
animals. Even alone, we have roommates,
permanent roommates. Our bodies are home
to millions of micro-organisms that are
certainly not human. The micro-biome in our
stomachs and intestines is probably the best
example of these symbiotic housemates.
But there are countless other mites, bacteria,
and small organisms that make human life pos-
sible. We are all of them. From this perspective,
the idea of living with other animals is a
centrally human condition. In fact, it would
contradict a key part of our humanity to not
recognise non-human lives in our world. Artists,
designers and architects working in this field
show us a new, or neglected, side of our human-
ity and offer that in a posthuman world, a world
where possibly humans recognise that they are
one of many, many key species, a truer sense of
cohabitation could be achieved.
Designer and architect Simone Ferracina’s
Theriomorphous Cyborg, for example, offers a
human user the ability to enter into the animal
world of a pigeon or a mouse. Sense percep-
tion would be reorganised according to the
animal of choice and the world would appear
to be a very different place. In praise of dust, a
student project by Young-Tack Oh, and a
recipient of the 2015 Expanded Environment
Awards, celebrates the microcosm of microbial
life in a series of architectural ornamental
designs. Similarly, the work of Brandon
Youndt, an LA-based designer focused on the
coexistence of animals and architecture, illus-
trates ethereal worlds where traditional
boundaries of animal/human, animate/inani-
mate, are transgressed, reshaping human and
animal perceptions of the environment.
Future thoughts
Architecture, cohabitation, and animal life are
not your typical bed-fellows – or at least haven’t
been in the Western world for the last century.
After peaking in the 19th and 20th centuries,
animal populations in urban life quickly
declined and the animals themselves have been
continuously marginalised since. But, while we
grapple with cataclysmic ecological events and
as the world’s population soars to new heights,
how we relate and inter-relate to other animal
life will become critical to our own survival.
Whether it’s living more closely with a greater
variety of synanthropic animals or by under-
standing ourselves to be more complexly ani-
malistic, our future will depend on the value we
place on a rich urban ecology. Should we return
to a time where horses pulled trollies and pigs
roamed the streets? Perhaps not… but should
we marvel at and welcome other life into our
urban cores – a coyote, a hawk, or a moose?
Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.
topos 071
Creatures

Animal
Architects

Nests, dams and lodges: Animals can be very gifted

builders indeed! On his trip around the world,
photographer Ingo Arndt spent time taking pictures
of animal-built architecture – from the ingenious
construction of beaver dams to the structural
wonder of anthills.

JÜRGEN TAUTZ

072 topos ISSUE 101

Anthills
Compared to the size of their bodies,
which are around one centimetre in
length, the structures red wood ants
create are true skyscrapers. The
structures are built using plant
materials and earth, and can reach a
height of over two metres. They have a
diameter of up to five metres. Using
pure muscle power, the ants transport
building materials in the form of pine
needles, small branches and pieces of
wood – burdens sometimes weighing
40 times their own bodyweight. Anthills
have complex systems of galleries and
chambers within them, and are
designed so that no water can enter.
Several hundred thousand of these
small insects live together in an anthill.

topos 073
Creatures

Baya
weaver nests
Baya weavers skilfully build their nests
using thin blades of grass. Fresh stalks
of grass are torn off by the birds and
weaved together. Within a short time the
green blades of grass dry out under the
tropical sun, the nest hardens and
changes its colour. The weavers only use
tear-resistant varieties of grass, which
give the nests a high degree of stability.
The artful structures are water resistant
and even withstand violent tropical
storms without falling off the trees they
are attached to.

074 topos ISSUE 101

topos 075
Creatures

076 topos ISSUE 101

Beaver
dams
Beavers create their own habitats
through their construction activities
and use dams to regulate both the
water level and size of the ponds
they create within their own territory.
They also create secure entrances
to their lodges, open up new food
sources and facilitate the transport
of food and building materials. To
build their dams, they primarily use
branches, trunks and mud.

topos 077
Creatures

Termite
mounds
Northern Australia has vast fields of
towers built by compass termites. These
towers have an average height of three
metres and are laterally flattened with
an exact north-south orientation.
Together with an ingenious ventilation
system, this orientation ensures that the
underground structures have a constant
internal temperature. Sunlight in the
morning and evening shines on the flat
sides of the mounds, warming them up
during cooler periods of the day. At
noon, when the temperatures are high,
the sun only hits the narrow upper edge
of the mound, which prevents the
internal temperature from rising more
than a few degrees.

078 topos ISSUE 101


What if animals actively shape their environ-
ment or at least parts of it? This actually does
involve active and deliberate design and is not
merely an accidental environmental impact.
This latter occurrence is what elephants do
with the soles of their feet, which have an
enormous mechanical influence on the soil
and everything found in it.
But what is the fundamental difference
between this and the influence that a beaver’s
dam or lodge may have on its surroundings?
An elephant’s footprints are of no real impor-
tance to its actual life; they are the random
results of the pachyderm’s comings and goings.
A beaver dam, on the other hand, has a pur-
pose: It changes the environment in a way that
Photos: Ingo Arndt
is very beneficial to its builder. Intent means
purpose. At this point the difference between
footprints and animal-built structures should
be obvious. The expression and function of the
LITERATURE
ENGLISH EDITION
AUTHOR: Ingo Arndt, Jürgen Tautz
TITLE: Animal Architecture
GERMAN EDITION
AUTHOR: Ingo Arndt, Jürgen Tautz
TITLE: Architektier. Baumeister der Natur
various organs animals have can be addressed
according to their function – the question of
causality (how do they work and what is the
purpose) and according to their significance
(why are they necessary).
The same is true for the structures animals
build. What is the purpose of nests, what
advantages do they provide their builders and
what consequences do they have? The advan-
tages that nests provide for their builders are
based on the functions of these structures.
They often fulfil several purposes at the same
time. They offer the builders protection against
adverse environmental influences or serve as
miniature universes that provide optimal liv- AN IMAL
ing conditions. Nests can also serve as a means
ARC HIT E CT S
of communication, linking the inhabitants to
one another or sending signals that provide in- For more photos go to
formation about the builder. A location is toposmagazine.com/
binding. animal-architects
topos 079
Creatures

Nature
In today’s society of spectacles, an ancient institution
such as the zoo still attracts millions of people. Why is
that, and how were zoos transformed over the last
century? In this essay, Irus Braverman reflects on the
relationship between zoo design and the broader
societal definitions of nature in order to find answers
to these questions.

IRUS BRAVERMAN

as
Spectacle
Photo: Hagenbeck

080 topos ISSUE 101

The famous entrance of
the Hagenbeck Zoo in
Hamburg, Germany. It
was opened in 1907.

topos 081
Creatures
“Here you don’t see animals killing animals. Our visitors
could never see that. They make no connection between a
piece of hamburger on a Styrofoam plate and a cow.”
JIM BREHENY
Bronx Zoo Director
One would expect that an ancient institution
such as the zoo would have long exhausted pop-
ular appeal, particularly in comparison with
high-tech attractions like amusement parks. But
the zoo continues to attract the masses: Along-
side churches, museums, theaters, shopping
malls, and theme parks, zoos occupy a central
place in western culture. But what is it that
makes zoos so attractive in today’s society of
spectacles? Although there might be many
sophisticated answers, it can be summarised in
a single word: nature.
Back to nature
Zoos’ particular presentations of nature have
changed through the ages, depending on the
focus and goal of the exhibits. These changes
are all apparent in the zoo’s design, and are
most obvious in the shift from the zoo’s ancient
origins as a menagerie – an aristocratic exhibi-
tion of exotic animals – to its 21st-century
manifestation as a conservation park. One way
or the other, a great deal of human work must
be invested to create nature amidst an urban
landscape, and even more work must be
invested to make such human work invisible.
082 topos ISSUE 101
Carl Hagenbeck, often considered the founder
of modern zoos, made the first steps in this
direction when he opened the first bar-less zoo
in the world in 1907. Whereas in traditional
zoos, the means of achieving separation and
enclosure were highly visible, Hagenbeck con-
trived to make them invisible. Specifically, he
attempted to make all apparatuses and attempts
at classification – indeed, any trace of human
intervention – vanish in favour of seeing the
animals themselves.
The American model
In America, zoos came into existence during the
transition from a rural and agricultural nation
to an urban and industrial one. In 1860, Central
Park Zoo, contestably the first public zoo in the
United States, opened in New York. Influenced
by the English garden theory of informal land-
scapes, the legendary founder of American
landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted,
believed that nature could offer psychological
recreation to tired city workers. Nature, under
Olmsted’s interpretation, was to be represent-
ed by winding paths and wide vistas to pictur-
esque pastoral spots, with the least visible artifice
possible. Zoos added a variation to this theme
by placing animals in the pastoral landscape.
American zoos were also products of the move-
ment to create public parks on the outskirts of
cities, a trend tied to late 19th-century anxiety
about urban moral and social decay. As such,
many American zoos were founded as divisions
of public parks departments.
Although European zoos served as both a
model and source of inspiration for building
zoos in the United States, American zoo plan-
ners conceived of their parks as distinct from
the formal urban gardens that were European
zoos. Having more land to work with and
guided by a puritan aesthetic, American zoos
portrayed themselves as places of moral recre-
ation, often making reference to scripture.
Moreover, American architects have increasing-
ly departed from Europe’s colonial-style archi-
tecture in favor of more exotic and natural
forms of design that are meant to enhance the
visitor’s experience of nature. Claiming the
mantle of scientific truth, zoological parks
encouraged popular natural history studies,
using their landscape layout to advance this
mission. Like public parks, they provided a
retreat for city dwellers and a balance of nature
 Carl Hagenbecks zoo
was the first bar-less
park in the world that
had animals on show.

and culture where a middle-class ethos could be

enforced. Finally, the emergence of the disci-
pline of ecology and its associated environmen-
tal movement in the 1970s has brought about
the most recent stage in the zoo’s institutional
evolution: the zoo as a biopark or conservation
society.

Immersion design

Immersion is currently the bon ton of zoo de-

sign. Carefully designed to immerse zoo-goers
in nature, zoos increasingly provide an escape
for their visitors by transplanting them from the
urban space in which they live into a complete-
Photos: Archiv Hagenbeck (below); Wikipedia, gemeinfei

ly different geographical space that is natural

and wild. “Our guests come here to get that
respite from the urban environment”, says Su-
san Chin, vice president of planning and design
and chief architect of the Bronx Zoo. “You have
places to go where you can see trees and squir-
rels and ducks and muskrats. It’s an oasis. It’s
Eden. It’s a place where you can get away from
the dust, the dirt, the grime, the buildings.”
Through immersing their visitors in nature,
zoos attempt to instruct them to care for all of
nature. The award-winning Gorilla Forest
exhibit at the Louisville Zoo by designer Jon
Coe was planned to immerse zoo-goers in an
experience of the Congo rainforest and to con-
nect that experience with knowledge of habitat
destruction. According to the zoo’s website,
“this multi-faceted exhibit immerses you, the
visitor, into the world of gorillas… (where) you
are in the gorilla’s realm.” Unique design fea-
tures use illusions to bridge the audio and tactile
barriers between zoo-goers and zoo animals.
Visitors enter a two-story atrium constructed of
glass walls for unobstructed viewing of the
gorillas. The gorillas can press a button to
broadcast gorilla sounds into the public atrium.
As a result, “the public becomes part of the
troop, being surrounded by the gorillas in a
space that is detailed in a similar manner as the
exhibit space”. Or as Jon Coe explains: “The
ropes inside the gorilla rooms actually extend
out above the public space where they support a

topos 083
Creatures
cargo net filled with straw, like a nest. So when
the gorillas move the rope network, sometimes
straw shakes down on the public. But the big
idea is to try to make the gorilla areas and pub-
lic areas indistinguishable from each other, all
one family.”
Above all, immersion design creates an illu-
sion of nature in the midst of the modern zoo’s
urban space. Jon Coe, who first coined this term
in 1975, explains that immersion design is not
only the idea of showing animals in the context
of nature rather than in the context of architec-
ture. It is also the soliciting of experiences that
make people feel part of, rather than external
observers of, this nature. He recounts the evolu-
tion of this concept: “The immersion concept
was not just about the visitor. From the begin-
ning, it was equally about animal welfare… I
developed the idea that immersion is a biocen-
tric view, especially for the animals. In other
084 topos ISSUE 101
words, we do not know what the animals need…
So the closer you can recreate the environment
in which they evolved, the more apt you are to
meet needs which you did not even know exist-
ed. Initially, naturalistic design was the central
component of immersion; it was also what dis-
tinguished this form of design from earlier zoo
designs, and even from Hagenbeck’s zoos of the
future.”
Authentic and artificial
However, even the founders of immersion design
soon realised the problems with adhering to
strictly naturalistic exhibits. According to Coe,
“even these really nice diverse exhibits are still a
fraction of what (animals) have in the wild and
they are still bored out of their skins most of the
time. So then we realised that you have to have
enrichment and training”. A debate ensued:
Should zoo exhibits be more naturalistic or more
realistic? “Naturalistic meant… soft architecture
rather than hard, climbing structures with poles
as compared to concrete”, Coe explains. “But
realistic means that the animal does not care
what it looks like as long as it can function natu-
rally… In practical terms, we can give them a
whole lot more that’s artificial in an indoor envi-
ronment… And if I can use very high-tech Wi-Fi
things to give the animals control over the gates,
absolutely!”
Under this hybrid paradigm of immersion
and welfare, the zoo exhibit is designed to be a
place of “stunning realism and authenticity”, with
Photo: Eric Lee, Buffalo Zoo
naturalistic scenes to immerse the zoo-goer and
realistic functions to enrich the animal. In order
to design a naturalised exhibit, zoo designers
have been playing on the tensions between au-
thentic and artificial. Bronx Zoo designer Susan
Chin explains the strategic “blurring of lines”
Immersion design:
Buffalo Zoo’s Rainforest
Falls exhibit 22 June
2009.
between the two: “We don’t want you to know
where that line is. We want to blur the line so you
feel like you’re in nature. We don’t want you to
feel like you’re in a contrived space.”
Better than nature
At the zoo exhibit, the eye alone cannot be trust-
ed to distinguish the authentic from the artificial.
By making visitors feel as though they are part of
nature, the exhibit thus erodes the boundaries
between nature and artifact. This way, zoos not
only take on the role of representing nature, but
they also make people believe that the zoo’s rep-
resentation of nature is nature, or, better yet, an
improved version of this nature. At the same
time, the zoo’s nature is distinguished from wild
nature. Zoo design must include elements that
promote a safe and sanitized environment for
both zoo-goers and zoo animals, including
moats, glass windows, air pipes, exit signs, and
water sprinklers. Other distinctions between the
zoo’s nature and wild nature also exist. For exam-
ple, most predatory relationships are eliminated
from zoo exhibits. Unlike in the wild, “here you
don’t see animals killing animals”, says Bronx
WAT E R
DESIGN
since 1999
www.watersculpture.com
info@watersculpture.com | +45 5944 0565
Zoo Director Jim Breheny. “Our visitors could
never see that”, he adds. “They make no connec- LITERATURE
tion between a piece of hamburger on a Styro-
AUTHOR: Irus Braverman
foam plate and a cow.” TITLE: Zooland, The Institution of Captivity
To maintain the zoo-goer’s immersion in a
pleasant image of nature, even nonviolent natu-
ral events such as sickness, aging, and death are
rendered invisible at the zoo. Zoo designers thus
constantly negotiate the image of nature repro-
duced at the zoo. This nature must be harmoni-
ous, pleasant, and manicured so as to elicit com-
passion and awe on the part of the zoo-goer,
rather than alienation and fear. Additionally,
this nature should not distract zoo-goers from
the zoo’s central mission: conservation. Design-
ing a zoo nature that is accessible to the human
zoo-goer yet devoid of signs of human presence
contributes to the objectification of wild nature
and thus to its alienation. In other words, the
zoo’s sanitised and human-free depiction of
nature makes wild nature remarkably inacces-
sible, thereby further reinforcing the human-
nature divide.
This text is an edited version of paragraphs
from the book Zooland: The Institution of
Captivity (Stanford University Press, 2012).
Israels Square, Copenhagen
topos 085
Creatures

The
The days of mankind's rule over the city have passed, nature
is crawling into our urban areas. In their book, Gavin van
Horn, the Director of Cultures of Conservation at the Center
for Humans and Nature in Chicago and his co-editor John
Hausdoerffer explore how people can become attuned to
the wild community of life and contribute to the well-being
of all those who inhabit the wild places in which we live,
work, and play. They call for the creation of cityscapes that
celebrate our kinship with other species.

GAVIN VAN HORN

wild
Continuum
Photo: Gavin van Horn

086 topos ISSUE 101

A bird cautiously eyes
its observer while
perched above an
environment that
reflects both human
intervention as well as
generative processes of
"wildness".

topos 087
Creatures
Wildness can manifest in any landscape, and human
communities can play a critical role in nurturing diverse
and life-generating places.
What is wildness? A jagged, slate-colored moun-
tain, where one can see distinctly where the tree
line ends, where the conifers give up on their climb
and one can see the snowy summit, sheathed in
distant wisps of torn cloud? Or an alleyway
between tall buildings, where paint is peeling from
backdoors and emerald green moss clings to a
rusted gutter pipe; a single lavender flower,
pushing from a lightning-bolt-shaped crack in the
pavement, blooms in a dollop of sunlight and a
bumblebee orbits the flower’s petals? What do you
think of when you think of wildness?
In Wildness: Relations of People and Place,
26 authors from a variety of landscapes, cul-
tures, and backgrounds aim to chart a path
across the landscape continuum, sharing stories
from the most densely human-populated urban
areas to the most remote hinterlands. The book
makes what may seem a surprising claim: Wild-
ness can manifest in any landscape, and human
communities can play a critical role in nurtur-
ing diverse and life-generating places. Whether
it is a place, a nonhuman animal or plant, or a
state of mind, wild indicates autonomy and
agency, a will-to-be, a unique expression of life.
Whereas “wilderness” designates an area specif-
ically zoned for protection, wildness represents
the generative processes that flow through any
landscape as well as our own bodies – or as I
sometimes put it, from the gut to the sky.
088 topos ISSUE 101
The Urban Wild
Celebrating the “entire blessed continuum” of
wildness, as the lepidopterist Robert Michael
Pyle phrases it, is what we, the contributors,
attempt to do in the book. This may account for
why one section of the book (out of four) is
dedicated to the “Urban Wild”. We think the
concept of wildness can be a unifying one, an
affirmation that we all have access to wildness,
at different scales and degrees, and that caring
for the wild nearby can lead to caring about the
faraway wild places that other people call home.
Over half of the world’s population now resides
in urban areas, so it stands to reason that if we
are to learn to care for our more-than-human
communities, a primary context for building
such relationships will be in cities.
In the “Urban Wild” section of the book,
wildlife biologist Seth Magle takes the reader on
a ride through the city to check on the wildlife
he monitors, revealing the ways that scientists
are beginning to turn toward the city’s “com-
plex, interconnected ecological systems”, which
“might be just as or more complicated than
tropical rainforests, estuaries, or any other
natural biome”. Such an on-the-ground per-
spective leads Magle to conclude that “maybe,
years from now, we will look around these city
skylines, once the great villains of our ecology
A trio of turtles charts
its own path along the
urban landscape
continuum, metaphori-
cal companions within
an environment that
reflects the recovery of
urban ecosystems.
soap opera, and see a place that humans and
rare wildlife are both eager to call home”. If this
comes to fruition in urban areas, it will likely be
due to cultivating wild places and encounters
that provide opportunities for learning, caring,
and play. The other contributors to the “Urban
Wild” section of the book – Michael Bryson,
Michael Howard, Mistinguette Smith, John
Tallmadge, and me – each address the varied
small-scale acts and mindful practices that
foster a sense of human connection to a multi-
species urban community. These stories express
a sense of hope about wildness in cities and
offer perspectives as to how this wildness can be
further nurtured. The other sections of the
book provide lessons along the wild continuum
that are equally applicable in an urban context.
Journey through the city’s wildlife
To raise some of these suggestive themes, it
might be best to take a metaphorical and literal
journey down an urban river. I recently
acquired an inflatable kayak – basically a porta-
ble, blow-up, boat-shaped air mattress that,
Photo: Gavin van Horn
when not in use, can be folded into a backpack.
Paddling even short distances on the much-
abused yet now-recovering Chicago River
allows me to experience a life-giving aquatic
corridor that has become a magnet for wildlife.
topos 089
The cultivation of urban
wild places fosters
interactions between
multispecies urban
communities.
Transcending past
notions of colonisation,
transhuman kinship
comes home.

Other animals – including great blue herons,

beavers, kingfishers, snapping turtles, and even
rare species such as mink – rely upon this
waterway for their lives and livelihoods.
Often we watch one another as I float by.
They are wise to be wary. As much as I champion
the wildness of urban areas, cities often offer
visible testimony to a set of values based on
control, anthropocentrism, and colonisation.
I’m convinced, however, that there are alterna-
tive stories to tell about cities – stories that can
shift the plot from acquisition and exploitation
to inhabitation. Stories in which a city is more
than a means to acquire more. Stories in which
the city becomes life-affirming instead of
life-denying, a generator of biological complex-
ity and diversity rather than simplicity and
impoverishment.

Learning from nature

As I arc around a bend in the river, I think of

Curt Meine’s essay in the “Wisdom of the Wild”
section of the book, a section that includes
many stories about how close attention to the
Photo: Gavin van Horn

natural world can be a guide for human

endeavors. The conservation biologist and his-
torian Meine writes about the Driftless Area of
Wisconsin, where farmers, in order to protect
their watershed from the crippling impacts of

soil erosion, have learned to “turn” with the
land, adapting their plowing methods and
shaping their lives to be more in keeping with
this unique landscape. We have a lot to learn in
urban areas about attending to the wildness of
soil and water, about turning toward the land-
scape for guidance and working within nature’s
cycles and contours.
As I lose myself in the flickering leaves of the
cottonwood trees that arch over the riverbanks, I
think of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s and Jeff
Grignon’s essay entitled “Listening to the Forest”
from the “Working Wild” section of the book.
They discuss the regenerative forestry manage-
ment practices of the Menominee Nation, and
the ways in which the health and resilience of
their pine and maple trees are based on a prac-
tice of deep listening – a reciprocity between
people and place that ensures the health of both.
I wonder how we can better listen in our cities,
places where distractions are innumerable. How
can we allow the nonhuman voices that sur-
round us a greater role in the shaping of our
cities, taking our cues from wild processes and
proactively and intentionally creating cityscapes
that celebrate our kinship with other species?
As I tip my chin back, let my paddle rest on
my lap, I think of Julianne Warren’s (she holds a
Ph.D. in Natural Resource Ecology and Conser-
vation Biology) contribution to the book from
Creatures
LITERATURE
AUTHOR: Gavin van Horn, John Hausdoerffer
TITLE: Wildness – Relations of People and Place
the “Planetary Wild” section. “The Story Isn’t
Over” is Julianne’s meditation on what wild-
ness might signify in a world of anthropogenic
climate, soil, and wildlife crises, including her
yearnings for new stories and practices of
belonging. Cities are intimately connected to
energy uses and outputs – not only in their
immediate regions but globally. While we think
about the prospects of our shared atmosphere
in a world beset by climate change, we would
do well to consider the wild forces, carbon
cycles, and feedback loops with which our cities
are grossly misaligned at present.
I float on, shoulders pinched by a bit of an
ache but my spirit refreshed. This corridor
through the city brings me into contact with
other wild creatures, their curious eyes
reminding me that any urban area is part of a
larger community of life, part of the wild con-
tinuum. As I disembark from the river and
fold up my kayak, I can’t help but feel that
those wild eyes are upon me, wondering how I
will choose to respond. Wildness: Relations of
People and Place don’t supply definitive
answers, but it does provide portraits of hope
– stories of human lives and livelihoods that
are intentionally woven into their larger wild
communities, including the urban areas that
provide so many of us with a common habitat
for our shared journey.
topos 091
Creatures

Nature
Glasgow-based landscape architect Stuart Malcolm recently
embarked on a study trip to the Northwest Highlands of
Scotland. It was his first visit to the region and he expected
to find a natural wilderness. The quaint views of woolly
sheep scattered across the landscape and the herds of wild
deer roaming the hills, however, present an almost two-
dimensional aspect, which made him wonder what the
future of Scotland’s landscape should look like.

STUART MALCOLM

needs Photo: Marie Montocchio

Nurturing
092 topos ISSUE 101
Grazing sheep, North
Coast 500 road near
Red Point with the Isle
of Skye visible in the
background

topos 093
Creatures

“Our perception of sheep is so different to the reality of

the sheep. The Highland Clearances, when people were
put off the land, the landlords put sheep on the land and
moved people away. And they’ve left their story behind
them and it’s written in the place, in the landscape. There
is an absence in the landscape because of sheep.”
ANDY GOLDSWORTHY
Land artist

Imagine the magnificent stag, standing proud
with vast swathes of purple heather rolled out
like carpet across the surrounding landscape.
This image is arguably the postcard picture
most people visualise when they think of Scot-
land. It is undeniably beautiful, unique and in
terms of landscape management, intensely
topical. That these two elements in the picture
are part of an increasingly heated debate about
the future of Scotland’s landscape is perhaps
less common knowledge. Over the past two or
three centuries, large herbivores such as deer
and sheep have been allowed to overgraze on
naturally regenerating vegetation before it is
able to grow into mature trees or shrubs. This
problem, coupled with deforestation, has
which reflects the extent of human interven-
tion in its establishment. In order for this
landscape to remain moorland, seasonal burn-
ing is carried out to stop woodland from
returning. This practice, known as muirburn,
dates back hundreds of years and is tradition-
ally used to provide new shoots for livestock
grazing and to increase the number of red
grouse for hunting. Muirburn and overgraz-
ing both constitute a process called arrested
succession, whereby natural regeneration is
halted by anthropogenic impact. Further-
more, recent findings in a five-year study
undertaken by scientists at the University of
Leeds reveal that such drying out of peatland
causes significant carbon emissions.
and protect what native woodland is left, large
culls – undertaken at public expense – are
required. Deerstalking takes place on private
estates across the country and the landowners
need high numbers of deer visible in the land-
scape to attract hunting clients. The romantic
image of the majestic deer in its natural habi-
tat, for all its appeal, lies at the heart of the
matter. But is it defensible that a landscape
monetised towards tourism, sport and
human-focused solutions should come at the
cost of a sustainable, balanced and ecologically
healthy environment?
Overgrazing the landscape
Photo: Marie Montocchio

transformed the ecosystem: The lost woodland
has become heather moorland.
Around 75 per cent of the world’s heather
moorland is in the UK, mostly in Scotland,
and it is perceived as a cultural landscape,
In the last 50 years, the population of red
deer alone has risen from 150,000 to an esti-
mated 400,000. Natural predators such as the
lynx and wolf have been driven out of the
country and in order to keep numbers down
As of 2017, there are approximately 6.83 million
sheep and 5.3 million people in Scotland. If deer
are the wild illustration of overgrazing, then
sheep are the animal husbandry equivalent.
Ecologist George Monbiot, who is an advocate

094 topos ISSUE 101

The wet desert: view
from the North Coast
500 road between
Durness and Rhiconich.

topos 095
 FACTS & FIGURES

PEOPLE LIVING IN SCOTLAND: 5,400,000

SHEEP POPULATION IN SCOTLAND: 6,830,000
DEER IN SCOTLAND: 750,000
MOORLAND: 50 per cent of the land area of Scotland
WOODLAND: 17 per cent of the land area of Scotland

096 topos ISSUE 101


The area of heather
moorland in Scotland
covers approximately
50 per cent of the land.
for rewilding, has savaged the decision to
award Unesco World Heritage site status to the
similarly overgrazed Lake District. He points
out that trees and shrubs in upland areas
absorb rainwater and release it steadily to low-
land vegetation, but when there is only grass-
land with heavily compacted soil from ani-
mal’s hooves, water runs freely off the slopes
and causes flooding downstream. When the
flooding subsides, water levels also fall, and a
continuous pattern of flood and drought is
triggered, causing significant damage to low-
land vegetation.
Although Monbiot promotes the re-intro-
duction of predators such as the wolf, he is
Illustration: Stuart Malcolm
aware that farmers’ livelihoods depend on
their flocks. Many supporters for rewilding
would argue that the risk of re-introducing
predators so that they can coexist with live-
stock is an acceptable one. Historically, this is a
relationship with only one bloody outcome. In
1992, for example, wolves from Italy returned to
France of their own volition and have, of course,
in the following decades, killed many thousands
of sheep. There is no easy solution, but most
balanced opinions would give credence to the
view that wolves are a part of nature and deserve
to inhabit it as much as sheep.
The Isle Martin Project
It is a widely held myth that the predominant
reason for the lack of trees in the Northwest
Highlands is the weather. In fact, it is one of a
number of factors causing the poor quality of
shallow soil, as the Isle Martin Project has
shown: In 1981, Bernard Planterose was a
warden for the Royal Society for the Protec-
tion of Birds (RSPB) who moved to the unin-
habited, 160-hectare Isle Martin off the
mouth of Loch Broom in the Northwest
Highlands in order to oversee an ambitious
Creatures
woodland regeneration project. The island
was home to a treeless landscape consisting of
badly eroded and shallow soil lacking in
nutrients. However, heather burning had
ceased, red deer had never been present on
the island and sheep had been removed
13 years previously when rabbits were still
ubiquitous. Bernard saw a unique opportuni-
ty in this part of the Highlands to confront
what he calls the “mamba” (“miles and miles
of bugger all”) and proposed trialling the
restoration of ecological succession. During
the course of a decade he oversaw the plant-
ing of Scots pine, birch, willow, hazel, oak,
aspen, gean and nitrogen-fixing plants such
as gorse, broom and alder, all which became
established with varying rates of growth. The
island was then given to the local community
by the RSPB, during which time the rabbits
died out, allowing the woodland to thrive.
The grasses and bracken they maintained
topos 097
Creatures
under the woodland were replaced by a diverse
understorey of regenerating trees. The resulting
mosaic of habitats is now full of wildlife and in
a state of soil building. Bernard expects that this
dense undergrowth together with deciduous
leaf-litter will create a more mineral-rich and
deeper brown forest soil, which will significantly
improve the biodiversity of the island.
The beauty of sustainability
Small though it is, and without the additional
pressure of grazing animals, Isle Martin is a
valuable precedent of a well-managed Highland
ecosystem. The island provides a convincing
model for a balanced approach to ecological
and productive land management, and one
which in no way detracts from the beauty of
Scotland’s landscapes. Though the island is
currently unpopulated, a community-led trust
has been set up with the long-term goal of
098 topos ISSUE 101
making it habitable again. There are four build-
ings that can house guests, with running water
from an upland reservoir, a sustainable supply
of wood fuel and a variety of fruits, berries,
nuts and other edible plants. Once the island is
capable of generating all of its own electricity
and the infrastructure is in place, there is no
reason why a community could not be estab-
lished there again.
Over the last 15 years, thousands of hectares
of native woodland have been planted elsewhere
in the Northwest Highlands, though Bernard
suggests that so far it has been a slightly “one-
dimensional” approach. He argues that tracked
access into the woodland would allow for long-
term maintenance and the potential diversifica-
tion of species, including high-value timber,
would provide more productive environmental
benefits than mass tourism. Furthermore, agro-
forestry combines controlled grazing with
woodland production to offer a symbiotic
A rowan tree (Sorbus
aucuparia) out of
reach of deer, sheep
and fire on the north
slope of Sgurr Dubh,
Wester Ross.
approach to agriculture and forestry. Addition-
al advantages include improved shelter for
livestock, an incremental harvest of timber
products and valuable increased biodiversity,
with all of its attendant benefits.
The wet desert
The island is a scalable example of woodland
restoration in this vast region of Scottish “wet
deserts.” Bernard’s pioneering work in ecologi-
cal succession over 35 years at this remote site
potentially has great significance for landscape
architects and thus merits wider research. The
challenge now is to build on his groundwork
and develop it to accommodate human habita-
Photo: Bernard Planterose
tion and grazing animals within a sustainable
model. Once this ecological infrastructure is
established, the landscapes of Scotland and
beyond could be further enriched through
enlightened design.
topos 099
Contributors

Ingo Arndt
is a renowned animal and nature pho-
tographer. His images have been pub-
lished worldwide and in magazines such
as GEO and National Geographic. He has
published fifteen books and won numer-
ous prizes, among them several Wildlife
Photographer of the Year Awards.
ingo@ingoarndt.com
Alexander Gutzmer
is Editor in Chief of Baumeister –
The Architecture Magazine, and Editorial
Director of Callwey Publishing.
He currently lives in Mexico.
a.gutzmer@callwey.de
Thomas E. Hauck
Stuart Thompson
is a Senior Lecturer in Plant Biochemis-
try at the University of Westminster. He
also lectures on food security and bio-
ethics. He studied biochemistry at the
University of Oxford, where he received
his D.Phil. in plant science in 1991.
thompss@staff.westminster.ac.uk

is a landscape architect and holds a

Timothy Beatley
is founder and Executive Director of
the Biophilic Cities Project as well as
the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustain-
able Communities in the Department of
Urban and Environmental Planning at the
University of Virginia. His work focuses
on sustainable communities and ecologi-
cal footprint reduction.
http://timbeatley.org/
Irus Braverman
is William J. Magavern Professor of
Law at the State University of New York
at Buffalo. She served as a public state
prosecutor and as an environmen-
tal lawyer, both in Israel, and was also
trained as a mediator and worked as a
community organizer for environmental
justice issues and as a political activist.
irusb@buffalo.edu
Ned Dodington
is an architect and designer working to
develop new practices for biologically
inclusive design. He is the Founding
Editor and Creative Director of The
Expanded Environment, a web-based
investigation into the performative role
of design in ecology.
nedington@gmail.com
Ph.D. from the Chair of Landscape
Architecture and Public Space, TU
Munich. He is a partner of Polinna Hauck
Gavin Van Horn
Landscape+Urbanism. Since 2014 he is the Director of Cultures of Conserva-
has been a lecturer in the Department of tion at the Center for Humans and Nature
Open Space Planning at Kassel University. in Chicago. He is the co-editor of Wildness:
thomas.hauck@polinahauck.de Relations of People and Place. Currently he
is working on a book of creative nonfic-
tion, The Channel Coyotes: Otherworlds of
the Urban Wild (forthcoming in 2018).
Sam Hobson gavin@humansandnature.org
is a wildlife photographer. A champion
of the commonplace, his intimate
portraits of doorstep wildlife have been
widely published, including the National
Wolfgang W. Weisser
Geographic Magazine, and awarded studied biology and mathematics in Ger-
many prizes internationally. He was many. After completing his doctoral degree
named Wildlife Photographer of the Year at Oxford University, he took postdoctoral
in 2014 and 2016. positions in London and Basel. Since 2011
samhobsonphoto@gmail.com he has held the Chair for Terrestrial Ecol-
ogy at TU Munich, devoting his research to
the causes of biodiversity losses.
wolfgang.weisser@tum.de
Stuart Malcolm
is a landscape architect based in Glasgow
and a co-founder of GRAFT, a creative
collective whose work combines elements
Susanne Isabel Yacoub
of art, ecology, architecture and other studied landscape planning at TU Berlin.
related fields into holistic and multi- Since 1997 she has been a producer
layered landscape intervention and of documentary films under the label
research projects. Landschaftsarchitektur+Video, working
stumalc@gmail.com simultaneously as a freelance specialised
journalist.
www.laview.de
Ute Strimmer
is Editorial Manager of Restauro, Callwey
Publishing’s German-language maga-
zine on conservation and restoration. For
many years she was Editorial Manager of
Weltkunst, the art magazine published in
German by ZEIT Verlag, Hamburg. The
journalist holds a Ph.D. in art history.
u.strimmer@callwey.de

100 topos ISSUE 101

CURATED PRODUCTS REFERENCE

Street Furniture – Flexible, Parklets 2.0 – Oslo’s Car-free City

Mobile and Modular Life Project
Page 102 Page 106
Products

Cities are large common areas, and public open lar street furniture is generally flexible, mobile
space is, so to speak, a city’s living room, which and modular, allowing plazas to be used for

Street is, at best, accessible to everyone at all times.

People meet here, relax, go for walks or to work,
interim activities and users to decide where to
place their seating, as is the case, for example, at

Furniture – go shopping or just drift aimlessly through the

streets. In order to make everyone feel comfort-
Times Square in New York which was redesigned
by the Danish landscape architecture firm
able, the design of parks, streets and plazas is just Snøhetta. Their commission came on the heels

Flexible, mobile as important as one’s sofa at home. Light,

seating, play equipment, bicycle stands, bollards,
of the NYC Department of Transportation’s
“Green Light for Midtown” pilot project in 2009,

and modular etc. often directly help shape and improve the
image of a city or urban space. Useful and popu-
which used temporary paving and street furni-
ture to close Broadway to vehicular traffic.

102 topos ISSUE 101

 Creatures

Domus

Domus is a landscape furniture designed by Ramón Úbeda and Otto Canalda. Its
unique innovations were made possible by its revolutionary UHPC concrete tech-
nology. This one-piece product is not just a bench. Its closed configuration provides
intimate shelter from wind, rain and sun for users who can sit in different positions,
individually, in pairs or in small groups.
www.escofet.com
Photos: Vestre AS, photo: Júlia Martins Miranda; Richter Spielgeräte GmbH; Escofet/Mikkel Møgelvang

Play Cube

The Play Cube from Richter Spielgeräte, Ger-

many, consists of a spatial element designed
according to child-oriented ergonomic
findings that offers a variety of opportunities
to hide in and climb through its different
openings. In addition, its cosy niches provide
children enough space in which to play
fantasy-filled role-playing games. They can
access the structure, which is built of non-
impregnated mountain larch, via a small,
slanted wall or an inclined climbing net, and
can also quickly escape down the stainless
steel slide. The Play Cube is suitable for all
children three years and older, and is designed
to be used at public playgrounds, kindergar-
tens and elementary schools.
www.richter-spielgeraete.de

topos 103
Creatures

Mobile Green Isles

Streetlife’s Mobile Green Isles allow you to make

the most out of your outdoor space, even on
roofs and parking decks. The planters with inte-
grated hardwood seats are mobile, so they can be
adjusted to meet the needs of the site where they
are installed. The base structure is made of indi-
vidual sheet steel units. Using these modular
units, a durable green rectangular or oval oasis
can be easily created. The seats consists of Solid
Topseats with FSC® hardwood slats. Arm- and
backrests as well as a tree planter are optional.
Prefabricated elements can be placed on the pat-
ented Streetrail® system. Using the modular
elements, an infinite amount of designs can be
created in lengths of 6, 9 or 12 metres.
www.streetlife.nl/en

Sonora Double-width Lounger

The basis for the Sonora lounger from Runge is

the company’s double-width modular bench
system of the same name that was recently
developed together with A24 Landscape from
Berlin. For the extra-wide, two-person lounger
both the angle of the back and the lower section
were carefully designed, as it was especially
important that the backrest was neither too steep
nor too flat. Users need to feel very comfortable
when relaxing on the lounger, and should have
the possibility of viewing the surrounding land-
scape and not only the sky above. The lounger has
a sturdy subsurface foundation that effectively
keeps it in place, and its construction uses long-
lasting hardwood – either varnished or untreated
– with solid, hot-dip galvanised steel sides and
feet available in a variety of colours.
www.runge-bank.de

104 topos ISSUE 101

 LED Street and Area Luminaire

WE-EF CFT540, a post-mounted LED luminaire

available with medium symmetric or rectangular
light distribution, was developed for lighting
public spaces and car parks. The OLC technolo-
gy is ideal for achieving a uniform and energy-
saving lighting solution, providing visual com-
fort. Looking at the luminaire, you see a ring of
pearls when lit. There’s no glare. In addition, the
body made of die-cast aluminum with 5CE
corrosion protection is optimally protected
against weather conditions. 37 CFT540 lumi-
naires were recently installed on existing masts in
Fogerty Park in Cairns, Australia. They illumi-
nate the park with only 36 or 72 watts (instead of
70 or 150 watts) and have thus halved energy use.
www.we-ef.com

Surface-mounted Spotlight

The 4.0100 compact, surface-mounted spot-

light by WIBRE has been developed to illumi-
nate fountains, water features, buildings and
exterior areas. Made entirely of V4A stainless
steel, the product has an IP68 ingress protec-
tion rating and can be submerged to a depth
of up to 3 metres. The mounting bracket is
Photos: Streetlife; Runge GmbH & Co KG; WE-EF; WIBRE

adjustable through 180 degrees. A choice of

two illuminants are available: either a board
with four individual Power LEDs in cold,
warm or neutral white, or a 4-Multichip
POW-LED RGB-CW with four Power LEDs
each in red, green, blue and cold white, which
can be operated separately or blended into
numerous colours by a controller. The illumi-
nant and five metres of underwater cable are
supplied with the spotlight.
www.wibre.de

topos 105
Reference
Studio Oslo Landscape Architects (SOLA), in
collaboration with Vestre AS, have developed a
robust modular parklet system that can be com-
bined and adapted to suit urban needs. The pro-
ject is an important contribution to Oslo’s
Car-Free City Life project, Bilfritt Byliv, where cars
are to be restricted from driving in the city centre
by 2020. Oslo has invested in temporary installa-
tions as the primary intervention and parklets will
play a leading role. For the municipality it is
important that parklets are accessible and are
robust enough to withstand use and climatic con-
ditions. The parklets are acting as a test bed in the
transition between today’s Oslo and the future car-
free city, and facilitate dialogue between the com-
munity and the municipality before the council
commits to permanent changes in the streetscape.
Parklets are temporary installations that
extend the pavement and replace parking spaces
with city life. They contribute to a greener and
more liveable city that has increased street
planting and provides new functions and more
safety for pedestrians and cyclists. Parklets also
create new destinations and meeting places in
existing streetscapes, help inspire a new type of
Parklets 2.0 – urban life and have a proven, positive economic
impact on local commerce.
Oslo’s Customisable Configuration
Car-free City Parklets 2.0 consists of a versatile frame (base
Life Project module) with adjustable supports to ensure
accessibility and optional railings that protect
106 topos ISSUE 101
Oslo is transforming
former parking spaces
into “mobile”
parks in order to make
the city more social
and liveable.
users against traffic. Different floor modules
extend and activate the sidewalk and a wide
range of new furnishing elements can be com-
bined to create parklet “personalities”. SOLA has
developed a series of customisable configura-
tions for a variety of “personalities”, fulfilling
important urban functions such as outdoor
dining, display, transport, planting, gathering
and activity. Through standardisation, Parklets
2.0 simplifies the design, planning and produc-
tion processes by offering ready-made solutions,
shifting the focus of both the applicant and the
council to content and ideas. SOLA partnered
with Vestre for the design, production and
delivery of Parklets 2.0 as a new furnishing
concept. Manufacturer Vestre has 70 years of
experience in designing furniture for cities, parks
and public spaces. The products are built in Nor-
way and Sweden using high-quality materials for
maintenance-free use for many years. The
modules consist of galvanised or powder-coated
steel and linseed-impregnated PEFC-certified
pine from Scandinavia, ensuring longevity and
safety regarding fire, traffic and rat problems.
Parklet permeability helps prevent water damage,
and generous planters contribute to local surface
Photos: Vestre AS/Adam Stirling
water use and treatment. The Parklets’ modular
system enables them to be moved and reused
time and time again. This flexibility and reuse
helps make the system a recognisable part of
Oslo’s ambitious urban transformation.
www.vestre.com; www.so-la.no
Creatures
Editor’s pick

Kebony Clear at
Slussplan Park in
Malmö: Due to
weathering the
modified wood now Slussplan, a 1,200 square-metre urban park in
has a beautiful Malmö, Sweden, connects one of the city’s
patina, which has
highest residential buildings with the historic
no effect on its
durability, however. Rörsjo Canal. The triangular park consists of
circular vegetation beds with a variety of shrubs
and plants as well as an urban plaza. Four large
wooden sculptures located between these two
main elements provide seating. One of these is
the large, inviting wooden staircase that runs
along the edge of the water and is oriented
toward the sun. All of the outdoor furniture is
made without the use of tropical hardwoods,
Slussplan which is luckily often the case regarding the
design of public space in Scandinavia. Kebony
Urban Park – Clear was used instead, which was impregnated
with bio-alchohol and then gently cured. The
product chain is sustainable, FSC-certified and
has no synthetic chemicals, disposal is entirely
trouble-free. Kebony Clear (22 x 142 millimetres)
recently became the first modified timber to
receive General Type Approval Z-9.1-863 and
can thus be used for “load-bearing, timber con-
struction in service classes 1 to 3, that are rated
and executed according to DIN EN 1995 1-1 in
conjunction with DIN EN 1995 1-1/NA”. This
means the wood is equally suitable for both dry
and wet areas. This greatly expands its possibili-
ties for use in Germany because balconies, walk-
ways and raised terraces can now also be made of
this wood. Without a general type approval, it
was previously only possible to use proven
timber species for load-bearing construction
Photo: Anthony Hill

Design without result is an especially long-lasting, dimensionally

stable product comparable in quality to teak, and
such as larch, oak, bongossi or ipé that had the
appropriate quality grading.

Tropical Wood which can also be processed like hardwood. It is

mainly used in outdoor areas. Because the entire www.kebony.de

108 topos ISSUE 101

 BACKFLIP ESCAPE PLAN

Schouwburgplein, Rotterdam London

Page 110 Page 112

topos 055
 Rotterdam’s Schouwburgplein is more polarising than almost any other
plaza in the Netherlands. You either love it or you hate it – whereby architects
and planners tend to belong to the first group while a majority of Rotterdam’s
citizens are more likely to belong to the second. Critical voices have existed
right from the beginning, and the plaza is still being worked on in order to
BACKFLIP address its shortcomings.

– Schouwburg-
plein, Rotterdam
ANNEKE BOKERN

ANNEKE BOKERN is a freelance writer who covers
architecture, design and art – often, but not always in
the Netherlands, where she has lived since 2000.
With her company architour she organises guided
architectural tours for groups in Holland. She is
currently writing an architectural guide to Rotterdam.
When the Schouwburgplein was completed in
1996, it was one of the flagship projects of the
“SuperDutch” generation of architects from the
Netherlands, who won international acclaim
for their projects, which were generally both
impressive and pragmatic.
The plaza in Rotterdam’s centre is flanked
by the municipal theatre and a concert hall, on
its west side there is a cinema while its eastern
edge is lined by sidewalk cafés. High-rise build-
ings are stacked up on all sides. Between all this,
West 8 created a plaza that followed no classical
traditions, but was rather designed to reflect the
character of the harbour city and was intended
to serve as an interactive urban stage.
With this in mind, the entire surface of the
Schouwburgplein was raised about 35 centime-
tres. As the strip of light that runs around the
circumference shows, lights and interactivity
are the design’s two major themes. Because an
underground car park is located beneath the
Schouwburgplein, the surface structure had to
be light and the use of plants was limited. West 8
thus decided to explore the potential of the void
and furnished the plaza with nothing more
than a row of benches along the eastern edge,
15-metre-high parking-garage ventilation tubes
with LED displays, the design of which is some-
what reminiscent of industrial smokestacks, and
four bright red hydraulic lighting masts, whose
shape was inspired by cranes in the harbour, and
which perform a mechanical ballet at the push
of a button. The Pathé cinema, designed by Koen
van Velsen, fits into the overall design of the
plaza, and due to its backlit corrugated façade,
becomes a huge island of light at night.
Criticism of the plaza’s design was quick in
coming. Initially this revolved around the paving
materials: a patchwork of perforated sheet metal,
wooden planking and epoxy resin in which
anchor points and electrical sockets were inte-
grated for events, and which proved to be very
slippery in the rain. In 2010, West 8 reacted to
the rebukes and replaced the original black resin

110 topos ISSUE 101


paving in front of the cinema with a more
course, bottle-green layer of epoxy with white
motifs that were supposed to represent seamen's
tattoos. The connection the green colour has to
the overall concept remains somewhat puzzling,
however, and the images are strangely awkward.
It certainly hasn’t done wonders for the plaza.
At the same time, several ramps were added
to ease access to the raised platform. This hasn’t
helped much either. The plaza is still considered
to be inaccessible, inhospitable and slippery,
and a decision was recently made to make more
radical changes. Last spring most of the plaza
was covered with a huge, colourful carpet of
artificial grass surrounded by bamboo planting
containers. This somewhat desperate attempt to
create a more cosy atmosphere will luckily be
removed after only nine months. Next year it is
Illustration: West 8
planned to add more steps to the plaza, to
exchange the benches and offset the void with
chairs and planters full of geraniums. If Joost
Eerdmans, the current alderman for security
Backflip
and open space, has his way, however, these will Polarising from the
very beginning: the
only be temporary measures. In five years he
experimental design of
wants to rebuild and reinforce the roof of the Shouwburgplein. With
parking garage so that the entire plaza can be its custom furniture,
iconic crane-like lights,
redesigned from scratch. and a trademarked floor
“Urban dwellers are no longer unfortunate pattern it reflects the
Port of Rotterdam and
victims of the city who need to be taken care of the identity of the city.
and protected by a gentle green environment”,
wrote historian and architectural critic Bart
Lootsma in reference to the Schouwburgplein
in his 2000 book SuperDutch. Perhaps this
assessment was somewhat too optimistic. The
Schouwburgplein demonstrates a fundamental
dilemma the city of Rotterdam has, i.e. the fact
that it still struggles to define its own identity.
In this modern, rather rough postwar city, with
its love of experimentation, there is at the same
time a marked longing for cosiness and small-
scale solutions. In this sense, it could be said
that Adriaan Geuze and West 8 have success-
fully created a plaza that is truly reflective of
Rotterdam.
topos 111
Escape
Plan

London’s offer of iconic places is abundant, but the Thames remains its
epitome. Beyond the well-trodden embankments of the centre, peripheral
riverside places offer different stories of the city. Within the confines of the
Green Belt, the ordinary high street remains the emblematic structure of
everyday London, giving way to the conviviality of the many migrant com-
ESCAPE PLAN munities. Its deep-rooted authenticity, in combination with improved trans-
port and developments, has brought places like Peckham into sharp focus.
– London
TIM RETTLER
Arcadian Thames
51.454240, -0.299840

Carefully manicured over the last three centu-
ries, the landscape between Hampton and Kew
is so bucolic that one should only experience it
in small doses. On the edge of Richmond Park
sits King Henry’s Mound, a Bronze Age burial
place that was the reputed spot where Henry
VIII paused from a hunting trip to ensure that
Anne Boleyn had been duly executed. To the
Rochelle Canteen, east, a keyhole vista leads to the dome of
Arnold Circus, E2 7ES St. Paul’s: The view has been faithfully pre-
www.rochelleschool.org/ served by generations of landscapers, who have
rochellecanteen/ created a tree-framed sightline from the
mound to the dome. It is one of the key views
protected by the London Plan, leaving one
wondering how the lanky Manhattan Loft
Gardens skyscraper in distant Stratford was
permitted to photobomb Wren’s masterpiece.
To the west, the picturesque panorama across
the fields of Ham and Petersham remains in-
tact. Retaining a distinctly village character,
Petersham is one of London’s more quaint and
quiet corners. The fashionable Nurseries offer
plants, food, and drink to the sauntering
middle class, while cattle graze nearby.

2
Green Rooms,
13-27 Station Road, Wood Green, N22 Rainham Marshes
6UW 51.497028, 0.216684

www.greenrooms.london/

Saint Etienne – Sweet Arcadia
(from Home Counties, 2017)
www.youtube.com/
watch?v=xB-6PZFULNY
Tim Rettler is a Principal Regeneration Officer at the
Greater London Authority. He studied architecture at
the University of Applied Sciences Cologne and the
University of East London. He has previously worked
for ASTOC Architects & Planners, Sergison Bates
Architects, and Design for London.
Map: SCHWARZPLAN.EU/OpenStreet-Mitwirkende/openstreetmap.org
In the east, beyond the heavy industry accumulated around the Ford Dagenham car plant, the
vast expanses of Rainham Marshes remain one of very few ancient landscapes in London.
Closed to the public for over a century while being used as a military firing range, this palimp-
sest of wetlands and more recent manmade features can be enjoyed thanks to Peter Beard’s
carefully designed access infrastructure. A rather heroic elevated trackway on raking columns,
reminiscent of medieval jetties that existed in the area, extends from the existing footbridge
across the Eurostar line, forming the entrance from the village. From there, a network of paths,
boardwalks, dark russet steel bridges and concrete way markers help to explore the area and its
resident birds, water voles, and dragonflies up close. The Royal Society for the Protection of
Birds operates a visitor centre at nearby Purfleet for more serious birdwatching. A short detour
into Rainham itself leads to the restored 18th-century Rainham Hall, built by sea captain and
merchant John Harle partly as a show home for the building supplies he imported. From the
first floor, Harle could see his ships in the distance – the view now is of pylons, windmills, and
sheds, and with the recent haemorrhage of London’s industrial land, it may only be a matter of
time before these become as sacrosanct as the birds.

112 topos ISSUE 101


3 E-Mail: t.braemer@callwey.de
Peckham
51.469661, -0.068100
Peckham’s narrow Rye Lane is a pulsating
microcosm of the world, where traders from
countries like Afghanistan, Iran, Jamaica,
Somalia, Ireland, and Vietnam share space and
collaborate. Almost a third of proprietors can
speak four or more languages, and many of the
shops are subdivided and sublet into smaller
units, creating a dense, day-glo’d strip sur-
rounded by traditional Victorian terraces.
Some handsome buildings extend the depth of
this South London high street: the station, the
Bussey factory, and the municipal car park, on
top of which a rather unusual space is situated.
Not-for-profit creative enterprise Bold Ten-
dencies has taken on the top of the open con-
crete frame hulk, over the last decade progress-
ing its sustained transformation through an
annual commissioning programme of art,
music, and pioneering architectural interven-
tions. This year’s addition, the Peckham
Observatory, designed by Fawcett Cooke and
built by local suppliers and contractors, pro-
vides a new vantage point for artist Richard
Wentworth’s expansive floor painting Agora,
the surrounding neighbourhood and crane-
crowned central London beyond. Perhaps in
doing so it can also offer space to reflect on the
proliferation of mixed-use high-rise blocks
and the risk of losing deep urban structures
like that of the high street that give place to the
manifold activities of Londoners.
TOPOS 102: DARKNESS
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From
the Edges

#3 The two recent earthquakes in Mexico have awed the inhabitants of the capital
city. They made them, and all of us, rethink what a city is all about. We have
seen new fragilities, but also encountered an impressive degree of urban, and
civil, strength.

FROM
THE EDGES
– Shaking
Ground in
Mexico City
ALEXANDER GUTZMER
In the series From the Edges, ALEXANDER GUTZMER
comments on urban phenomena taking place in the
growing metropolises outside the classic urban New
York-London-Tokyo triad. Editor-in-chief of
Baumeister – The Architecture Magazine and Editorial
Director of Callwey Publishing (which publishes Topos),
he currently lives in Mexico.
I am writing this while on unstable ground. To
be more precise, from the very unstable ground
of the earthquake-shaken, but not demoralised
Ciudad de Mexico. This city has seen many
attacks on its spirit. The last one came from its
own soil – the 7.1 magnitude quake that took
hundreds of lives, and tore down hundreds of
buildings. And that raised the question of how
unsafe life is in this megalopolis.
On an abstract level, one can argue that such
earthquakes undermine our very notion of
safety in big cities. Normally, “safe” is inside
one’s own walls. The danger is always “out there”.
When earthquakes occur, however, this is
reversed. Suddenly, walls and ceilings are traps,
and the outside, even in rough urban areas,
becomes a space of relative comfort.
Architecture is not just the creation of urban
beauty. It is also a way to manage life’s risks. A
quake like the one in Mexico makes it clear that
there are lessons to be learned. One thing that
became apparent is that the strict building codes
implemented after an earlier, terrible quake have
not solved everything. Mexicans tend to adhere
to a do-it-yourself urbanism. Architecturally, one
might sympathise with this rolled-up sleeves
mentality, like Alejandro Aravena does. But that
also creates risks.
The earthquake showed how important an
efficient warning system is. Every single loss of life
is terrible, but there could have been many more.
UN Representative Robert Glasser was quick to
ask countries vulnerable to seismic activity to join
the existing alliance with a commitment to make
buildings, in particular schools, safer.
And then, there are the architects. They play an
essential role in maintaining public safety. It
might be true that real estate investors look for
ways to get around regulations, but they can
only do so with the help of those who know how
to build. Architects have to redefine their role,
and not only fight for the creation of pleasing, or
even socially productive spaces, but also for the
development of safe ones. If this means losing
the occasional client, then so be it. This is part of
what I call civil society.
We have seen civil society in Mexico. The
wave of practical, no-questions-asked help all
around Mexico was impressive. This is how civil
society works. This is how cities work. And this is
also how architects work. Many participated as
volunteers in the program to check the more than
3,000 damaged buildings for their stability. What
we see here is very direct proof that architects and
city planners are indeed part of society, and not
some elite unconnected to the rest of us.
The quake is a reminder of the inherent com-
plexity of the urban realm. Yes, Mexico has been
built on soft and therefore challenging ground.
And yet, its people have learned to manage, and
live with risks. That, however, does not mean
they are or should be careless. On the contrary: It
means that all the loopholes where carelessness
was allowed to prevail have to be found. While I
was writing this, a friend came to my table and
told me about a new, smaller quake that had just
occurred further to the south. I hadn’t heard
about it, but she had and it visibly shook her. But
it did not break her. “We Mexicans are strong”,
she says. “We have always needed to be.”

114 topos ISSUE 101

Greenville
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www.berliner-seilfabrik.com
 The International Review of
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