IABR–2014–project #14: Nature Conservation in an Urban World (WWF Netherlands)

^{© Laurent Geslin}

A PLANET CULTIVATED highlights the relationship between city and nature. Starting with gardens and parks all the way to nature conservation and 'building with nature'.

The World Wild Fund for Nature The Netherlands welcomes this opportunity to demonstrate its new approach to nature conservation in an urbanized world. And front stage is given to the results of the IABR–Project Atelier Planet Texel.

IABR–2014–project #03: Pensthorpe Garden (Piet Oudolf) - Fakenham, UK

^{© Imogen Checketts}

Dirk Sijmons:
"A PLANET CULTIVATED illustrates the interaction between humans and nature. Gardens and parks link the shamans, the oldest mediators, with today’s nature conservation and active forms of nature development such as 'building with nature'. Rather than being non-committal, the relationship between man and nature must be continuously maintained and can be activated in several ways: practically and productively (nature feeds us), scientifically (nature informs us), and culturally (nature relaxes us). Architecture and landscape architecture can actually embody this relationship: make sense of it."

IABR–2014–project #17: Sand Engine (Province of South-Holland, Rijkswaterstaat) - The Hague, NL

^{© Joop van Houdt}

In Urban Landscape and Climate Change the results of the competition Rebuild by Design that responds to Hurricane Sandy, will take prominent place.

Superstorm Sandy
On October 29 2012, after a ravaging ride that started in the Caribbean and would eventually cause the death of at least 286 people in seven different countries, Superstorm Sandy slammed into New Jersey and New York with unprecedented force. The chaos that followed was just as unprecedented. The world’s most important metro region remained completely dysfunctional for days. 8.5 million people were without electricity, 650,000 houses and over 100,000 companies were damaged or destroyed. Estimates as of June 2013 assess the damage at over 68 billion US dollars.

Staten Island

^{© Billy Lyons}

Hurricane Sandy was unlike any storm before it. While everyone affected by it continues to push forward with the recovery process, Sandy has made it clear that it is not possible to simply rebuild what existed before. A different approach is a necessity this time around, to make sure the region is resilient enough to rebound from future storms.

On 7 December 2012, President Obama signed an executive order creating the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan was appointed chair of the task force. One of its initiatives was Rebuild by Design. The competition aims at addressing the structural and environmental vulnerabilities that Hurricane Sandy exposed in communities throughout the region and developing fundable solutions that will better protect residents from future climate events.

IABR–2014–project #32D: Rebuild By Design - BIG U

^{© BIG Team}

"How to think like the Dutch?"
Henk Ovink, who was, among other things, one of the curators of the 5^th IABR: Making City, leads the competition. Its approach is new for the United States, and the fact that many Dutch design offices, engineering companies and universities are involved shows how much it is inspired by how the Dutch manage the water. Which led the New York Times to ask "how to think like the Dutch in a Post-Sandy world?"

IABR–2014–project #33: Building America's Great Water City (Waggonner & Ball) - New Orleans, USA

^{© Neil Alexander}

IABR–2014–project #61: Waste Incubator: Makoko! (Fabulous Urban) - Lagos, Nigeria

^{Fabulous Urban}

There are more ways than one to perceive a city. In THE URBAN METABOLISM the urban landscape is considered as a complex, vast and interactive system that continuously works to meet the needs of its inhabitants.

The exhibition is arranged like a matrix.
Along the one axis run nine lines, each covering a single flow. These are air, water, biota, food, energy, waste, humans, cargo, and finally sand, sediment and construction materials.
Using three levels of analysis, each flow is dissected in a separate pavilion. On the first level, the focus is on the design of the infrastructure itself. The second level shows the potential of thinking in terms of flows for solving environmental problems. The third level shows how the analysis of flows can be deployed as a tool for the design, planning, and control of our cities.
The IABR asked the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) to investigate on a global and national level what the separate key issues and bottlenecks for each flow actually are.

Along the other axis, the work of the IABR–Project Atelier Rotterdam shows all of the flows in context, presenting a first synthesis of the metabolic approach as well as proposals for pilot project on specific locations in Rotterdam.

IABR–2014–project #44: Rainmaker - A City Generating Rain (SMAQ) - Casablanca, Morocco

^{© SMAQ}

IABR–2014–project #28: INVERscapes (OficioColectivo) - Guatemala City

^{© OficioColectivo}

Strategies for the Urban Landscape–: How can we accurately portray and map the spatial, morphological, and functional form of this huge artifact that is the carpet metropolis? How can managers, planners, and designers wind and weave an urban carpet in the realization that complete control is an illusion?

Dharavi, Mumbai, India

^{© George Brugmans}

Dirk Sijmons:
"The urban landscape is a giant artifact composed of densely and sparsely built-up areas, residential areas, industrial complexes, airports, opencast mines, enclosed natural areas, scattered buildings, agriculturally cultivated areas, canals, and horticultural areas – and the infrastructure necessary to loosely connect this tissue. How can we control a planning object so large that it ignores administrative or national borders, so complex that any kind of forecasting or management ambition is illusory?"

IABR–2014–project #86: Hydrological Regimes Atlas (Somatic Collaborative) - Kumbh Mela, Allahabad, India

The beginning of an answer to this question is exhibited in STRATEGIES FOR THE URBAN LANDSCAPE–. Cartographic studies, observations on the relationship between city and countryside, strategic plans for entire deltas, practical ways to combat the fragmentation of the carpet metropolis, lessons to be learned in the American suburbs, and a parade of urban planning instruments to be used by designers and administrators. Many of these themes are reflected in the approach of the IABR–Project Atelier BrabantStad."

IABR–2014–Project Atelier BrabantStad: the challenges mapped

^{© IABR}

Pure Resilience

In the exhibition Pure Resilience, photographs of urban nature – dragonflies over a garden pond, pigeons on a balcony, peregrines around Willemsbrug, Nile geese on Spoorsingel, ferns along a quayside – feature in a sweeping panorama of Rotterdam.

Urbanites see (and photograph) urban nature, but not everybody realizes that the city is nature, too. Beyond bricks and concrete, the biodiversity in the built environment is actually bigger than in the surrounding open spaces. This is due to the diversity of urban landscapes, to the warmer urban climate, and to the limitless adaptations – pure resilience – that animals and plants are capable of to utilize the city as a habitat.
In three Pillars of the City – Stone & Street, Food & Water, and Climate & Light – the urban wildlife collection of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam will show which animals and plants have the city as their habitat and what adaptations they have made.
The exhibition dovetails with A PLANET CULTIVATED, the first chapter of the main exhibition of URBAN BY NATURE– in the adjacent Kunsthal Rotterdam.