The Landscape Habitats Research Field addresses elemental habitats of soil, water and air – first for their own sake, then as the basis for regional conservation efforts, and finally as material and energetic cycles enabling the creation of a ‘second nature’. It aims at identifying natural and cultural landscape patterns as a continuous and mutually reinforcing network relating rural, natural and urban territories.
Such a focus becomes increasingly relevant within the new form of the contemporary city, a City-Territory, in which the new relations established between built and open space and between urban and non-urban domains risks fragmenting and thus threatening ecological as well as human habitats, at large. Biodiversity decline, as a result of increased urban and infrastructural development, while being an issue itself could also reduce the benefits that people derive from functioning ecosystems, i.e. ecosystem services, described as the ecological characteristics, functions, or processes that directly or indirectly contribute to human well-being. Water, soil, air…have re-emerged as fundamental actors that will be even more important in the future of Climate Change adaptation, they are at the same time resources and threats for our cities and our lives. The theme of coexistence of different forms of life, so central in the actual societal debate, is at the core of a new pact among living and non-living systems. In this respect, the Research Field promotes interdisciplinary projects going beyond traditional concepts and focusing on the transformation of the urban environment, connecting ecologists, pedologists, hydraulic engineers and environmental engineers… with architects, urban and territorial designers. The aim is to improve the resilience of human and non-human populations as well as living and non-living systems. Habitat Research Center, interested in the ecological, socio-economic and spatial transitions, is interested in developing research on such topics.
INITIATIVES
Exhibition (2019)
Before the industrial agenda of urban design, broadly promoting technology and economy, there was the social agenda of Civic Design, creating ecology and community. This exhibition presented a chronological overview of the evolution of Civic Design as evidenced in the work that was central to it: the creation of regional park systems. Over a period of three centuries – from 1770 to 2070 – the exhibition presents a sequence of projects, from Wolfgang von Goethe’s Park an der Ilm in Weimar (1778), to Paxton’s People’s Park in Liverpool (1857), to the Olmsted Brother’s Regional Park System for Los Angeles (1928). Correlating and comparing historic park system projects in Lausanne and Los Angeles, and highlighting ongoing community-based projects in these two cities, the exhibition also features two major discoveries: a previously unknown park system Frank Lloyd Wright designed for his own community in Spring Green, Wisconsin (1942) – the closest thing we have to a built version of his ‘broadacre’ plans for ‘The Living City’ (1934-58) – and Frank Lloyd Wright Jr.’s previously unpublished multi-modal park system for Los Angeles County (1962). The projects featured in the exhibition demonstrated the historic effectiveness of park systems, shed light on challenges faced by communities implementing contemporary park systems, and encourage the re-evaluation of the intergenerational discipline of Civic Design.
Systems
International PhD Seminar (2019)
This seminar focused on the relationship between urban and rural dynamics, in a situation of competition in the use of the same resources – soil, water and energy. The confrontation between the need for density and food security, the abandonment of traditional agrarian structures in a context of climatic resurgence or the pressure on biodiversity in territories subject to exponentially growing material and energy flows, threaten vital, organic and societal connections. However, from these rapidly changing contexts emerge potential synergies that risk escaping the all too often segmented and specialized descriptions of inhabited territories, and which make it possible to envisage repair and revitalization trajectories.
Open Seminar (2019)
This seminar has represented the inaugural event of HRC’s Landscape Habitats Research Field launch, featuring members of the community – academics and others – who are involved with the well-being of the Sorge and Chamberonne rivers bordering EPFL and UNIL campuses. The objective of this event was to bring these sensitive waterways – which harbour some of the region’s most delicate ecological niches, and slopes subject to erosion at the heart of the region’s hydrological system – into
the public mind by bringing these hidden rivers to light. To this end, Habitat Research Centre initiated this first
“Hidden Rivers” research-by-design project in cooperation with the journalist who broke the story, starting with the causes of the recent disaster and public responses to it, while looking closely at these waterways and their implicit ecological qualities – and finally considering how these can be conserved and further cultivated. The research was organized so as to address pedagogical, practical and policy objectives working together to create design scenarios for ecological coherence, while simultaneously providing enhanced public access, bicycle paths, and space for community interactions: all of which will bring eyes on the river. The basic premise of the research
was first-hand ‘nature study’, collectively producing an inventory of social and biological diversity along the riverways – but also within them, revealing microbial life otherwise hidden.
facing the Challenge of CC
International PhD Seminar (2019)
In the context of increasing exposure to climatic and environmental risks, the category of high-constraint environments is now being extended to all inhabited areas. The concepts, instruments and figures of urban planning need to move away from an approach focused on the needs and aspirations of human beings alone, to deal with the world of vital connections. If, in the 1970s, the concept of the ecosystem offered itself to the disciplines of the project as a strong and reassuring paradigm, on the verge of positivism, it is once again returning to the fore in order to apprehend the specificities of complex socio-ecological situations, for which there are increasing demands for design sustainability strategies. The aim of this seminar was therefore to initiate a dialogue between Morocco and Switzerland, mobilising researchers from different horizons who, by leveraging project issues, initiate (re) implementation trajectories in a holistic and non-sectoral approach. Organised by the Centre Jacques Berque in Rabat, the seminar was part of a partnership between the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, the Global Heritage Fund, and the Institut National d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme.
