THE LIVING WORLD AS INFRASTRUCTURE
In the face of today’s tensions linked to climate change and intensive urbanisation, landscape is becoming a major lever for resilience. This conference recounts how territories have gradually become detached from the cycles of living systems, relegating vegetation, water and soil to secondary roles as aesthetic objects. This research highlights the limitations of current planning and governance tools, which are often incompatible with the long timeframes and needs of the living world.
The two projects presented propose a change of perspective: making landscape a living structure that frames urban development on the two study sites. At once ecological, political and cultural, these landscape frameworks are put forward as levers for adaptation, resilience and reconciliation between natural environments and inhabited territories.
Speakers
- Kumari DANIEL, landscape architect, École de la Nature et du Paysage de Blois, INSA CVL
REVEALING THE LOWER VAR VALLEY
Between sea, river and mountains: recomposing a metropolitan territory through landscape
Revealing the Lower Var Valley explores how a heavily urbanised metropolitan territory can regain landscape coherence in the face of land and climate pressures. The project builds on existing structures, the river, side valleys, tree cover and topography, to restore to landscape a structuring role in the planning of the valley. By reconnecting the hillsides to the Var through ecological corridors and soft mobility, it offers an alternative to fragmented patterns of urbanisation. Water and vegetation become living infrastructures, supporting resilience and new uses. At the scale of the valley, landscape thus guides urban form and reveals a territory that is inhabited, legible and sustainable.
- Jérémie MOREL, landscape architect and urban planner, Joint Master UNIGE-HES-SO in Territorial Development. Bureau Oxalis.
SOWING SEEDS FOR TOMORROW
A project for a Geneva planting policy in favour of the living world
In Geneva, trees hold a special place, being both a treasured heritage for residents and an essential resource for the resilience of the territory. However, Geneva’s vegetation still comes up against numerous technical, regulatory and political obstacles, despite the urgency of climate challenges and strong urban pressures. The work presented therefore seeks to understand why vegetation struggles to establish itself in the making of the city in Geneva, and then puts forward ways of overcoming these obstacles. The aim is twofold: to analyse how public policies currently operate and to open up prospects for genuine planning of the living world and the landscape.
Respondent
- Laurence CRÉMEL, landscape architect, Associate Professor HES, HEPIA
REGISTRATION
Image credits:
- From one bank to the other – Sketch of the Var crossing © Kumari Daniel
- Urban reappropriation by living beings – Collage, Plant Utopia scenario © Jérémie Morel
