Designing Extreme Landscapes: Antje Stokman at TEDxStuttgart

Well, we have already heard about women in business and society, we have heard about the city of the future and technologies and I guess I am a woman and I have a very typical job in that sense because I am a landscape architect and landscape designer. that's usually something that people consider quite romantic if people ask you what you're really doing as a landscape architect. I often go to the taxi and they ask me what are you doing. I say landscape and they, oh, how beautiful, oh, you must design everything. these beautiful parks and gardens botanical gardens people imagine these kind of flower

landscapes

and this is actually when they are working at work and actually this is also what clients really want you to do, they want you to create this beautiful landscape of flowering trees .

It is also a future city project in China and, as you see, it looks totally harmonious, everything is green. You see the blue river flying with some balloons in the sky and as a landscape architect you are helping architects and engineers to create this dream. of the green, green city and everyone, also the investors, are really looking for this image of paradise, the paradise lake, the green paradise, something ecological and, as a landscape architect, you help them realize this dream of creating the paradise lake, you create all these ponds. you create the walks, you plant the trees, you make the grass and of course in terms of space you seek to create a pleasant space and also for the people who live here, it is something really beautiful, but what I realized after working in those types of projects, especially in big megacities like China, this was actually a project that I did in Beijing and after going there and experiencing looking a little outside this bubble of investors and the people's dream of lake paradise and See what's really happening right next door. where you have all these meadows and lakes and then you go forward and you see this river that is actually one of the main rivers in Beijing and in everything that passes through Beijing there is not a single drop of water in this river because it is totally diverted to serve to the city as drinking water, a lot of water goes through for irrigation and then at the end it goes through the water treatment plant and then you find a few droplets of water and also the water table drops one meter deep every year.

Beijing and that's really why this controversy is, also as a landscape architect you are helping people make the dream of lake paradise come true, but what you are actually creating with this type of landscape design is that you are creating deserts because Beijing is losing water . you are destroying the environment and this is really a dilemma within the profession. People want you to do something beautiful, but also, of course, the landscape. It should be about the environment and how to really solve this dilemma in the profession because working in all kinds of different environments. environments I have had projects in China now we are working in Lima in Peru and we have all these totally different natural

landscapes

that are very humid, you see water everywhere in the landscape or very dry like in Lima, but when you drive with When you get to the city With your car, you see the same image of parks and landscapes everywhere in the world and we have had a conference and people have asked: can you guess where it really is?

Is it in a desert? in a wetland, but actually the types of landscape, the grasses, the type of plants and trees that are planted, they are actually almost identical, even the types that are found all over the world because they are very adaptable, they just need enough irrigation , they can withstand a There are many different temperatures, so this also makes you lose the feeling of where you really are because the cities in the world start to all look the same, but in reality the resources necessary to create this type of false paradises are immense and so you create a lot of On the other hand, there are problems because of this type of treatment, because droughts are created, on the other hand, by removing the water, the water could destroy the dikes and floods are created again, waste problems are created, as a landscape architect, we tend to say, ah, this is the engineer's problem, this is not what we should be dealing with, this is really technical and actually studying landscape architecture is usually 70 percent women because we believe that, ah, it's not so technical, we don't have to learn all these things about um, these engineering things, let's try, let's leave these problems to the engineers, we just deal with the beautiful landscapes and this for me was always a difficult position because I found it very difficult to get that out of my head and just forget it.

It's because, of course, in all these cities that exist now we have already heard this phenomenon of people moving to cities and all these people want to have a lake paradise, but how can we create this and how can we ensure that people access to these types of environments? and if we do this, then we will really destroy what we need and with the landscape it is very difficult because this is something that is in people's minds how it should look, it should have this type of grass and trees, but how can we develop? a different answer to this dream of lake paradise and how to create it in the city and for that I have worked with different colleagues around the world to find and identify new strategies to work on projects by myself, but also to research and It really takes a new way of thinking about landscapes and that's also why I gave this talk on the topic of

extreme

landscapes because I would like people to think at the opposite

extreme

of what they normally think about what a landscape should be.

Normally people think that when you want to design a park, this park must be protected from flooding because flooding is considered a bad thing that could destroy the city and that could destroy the park. Typically, if you create a water feature in a park, you add fish, you add a lot of artificial treatment that actually pollutes the water but makes it look blue or green. Sometimes in America they even add colors to the water just to make people feel like they are in a blue lagoon, so this is actually polluting the water to create this image of the lake. paradise also normally when you develop a city, when you build a park, you remove the land that was used productively before it was used as agricultural land, you replace it with something that needs a high maintenance cost and is no longer productive and Normally, when you build a park, you rely on irrigation, which is generally done with potable water, which of course puts a lot of pressure on the water table and these are usually the characteristics of what people think.

Okay, all these things we accept if I want to have a lake paradise, but isn't it possible to actually think in the opposite direction, to design a park that truly embraces the flood and even invites the flood as an experience for people to experience? live as part of a park experience of a park that can purify water and become a machi water purification machine instead of polluting the water that actually grows food as part of the park design and also saves and recycles water as part of the park experience and most people can't imagine this stuff but it's really not that difficult and I want to show you some examples for each of these four topics to show you what the topic of avoiding flooding could look like this.

It's a photo that I like. It's in Hamburg. I live in Hamburg and there are many places that lick the view up to your elbow, but to protect the city and also to protect the walkways, the dikes must be built higher with the rise in sea level every time. several years, so actually what is disappearing is the River Elbow Vista and people just build their fences, but they may lose what they want to have, which is the paradise lake, so I think there is no other way than find new ways to overcome this division and think about how to combine the flood. and this is quite an interesting approach in the city of Hamburg, which is also unique in the world because the main dike that protects the city was a barrier where no residential district was allowed to be put in front of it because of course it is not protected from the floods, but when the city wanted to develop this huffin city, of course, the special thing about this site is that it has a connection to the water and at first they thought they should change the levee to protect the whole site, but then people would not have been able to see plus the water and the boats passing by, so they had to change the concept and even had to change the regulations to build an urban fabric and also an open space that can actually handle changing the water levels at different times, so when it is low tide the water table is very low and changes like this because we have a difference of 3.5 meters between low tide and high tide and the previous level of the port is actually not safe from the storm. surge, but they decided to build warfs on top of this previous level to keep it as a ride as an open space level that can then be completely flooded so that this path here can actually accept the flood.

It is built with materials that are permanent and the buildings are built like the Hulligans that we can find in the North Sea on small docks and these are also connected by emergency routes and walkways so that people, even when there is a storm surge , I can still walk around here and all this is open. space out all the parks, all the walks, that's actually what the landscape architects did, all of this is designed to accept the flood as flood proof and at the same time make it possible for people to go down into the water and this is the example largest in In the world where a new city area was built without any flood protection and it is a very new concept.

The second is a case study. It's about thinking about an urban park, not like this one, there are a lot of fish here, a lot. the geese put food in the water, people are even taken out of the water by building a fence to protect them from the water and this is a project that was part of the exhibition in Shanghai and a good friend of mine built this to show people that a park can even contribute to improving the water quality of the adjacent river by pumping out river water, which is actually quite dirty. This is the Huangpu River in Shanghai, taking it to a higher basin and having it.

Filter through different wetland systems and basins to at the end, at the end of the park, come out and be purified and this actually looks like this: this is the basin that collects the dirty water and takes it to a very long wall where then comes the water. by gravity it goes through this filter which is a gravel filter that is planted with plants that can actually grow in humid conditions and then it flows through these basins and as you can see the kind of image of the park in contrast to This modern Shanghai city looks very different from normal parks that have grass and trees planted because it is actually a water treatment plant.

This park is like the aeration that is also found in a water treatment plant, but it is designed for people to experience the process of water purification by enjoying the water by celebrating the water and also seeing the process of the water changing color and explaining this process and making this part of the park experience the following example this is a photo I took from a project i was involved in which really surprised me that this cultural landscape here with apple trees was completely covered, taking down the mountains and destroying this valley to build the city on top of this flattened area, so it is a very normal process that the agricultural lands ran out. is replaced by this urban land use and this was also the case with this project of my same Chinese friend who was invited to design a campus in Shenyang in China and as is usual for landscape architects, the budget decreased because the cost of Construction was increasing and also there was almost no time left and what he decided then was that this used to be agricultural land with a very famous type of rice that is also special for this area and he decided to incorporate this idea of ​​using rice instead . of grass make this the plant that actually covers the ground and also incorporates the type of harvest cycles of rice growing experience into the university calendar, so within the academic year there is a celebration of rice planting where the students get involved and then at the end of the academic calendar it is also a festival for the rice harvest and it is about this connection with the landscape with the changing appearances, which in the winter looks very different, of course, than in the summer and In addition, it is even sold as a kind of university brand to bring this increase as a special gift when you travel to advertise your civil engineering university by having this very special landscape design which, by the way, was also much more Cheaper than having this one. another design that was originally proposed the last topic about water consumption and waste this is a photo that I just returned from Lima last week where I was with a group of students and all over the city there are these tanker trucks that use drinking water although many people in theinformal areas don't even have a connection to the water network just to irrigate these green areas next to the streets and we were working in an area that looks like this where people don't even have any connection to the drinking water pipes, they also get the drinking water from the same wagons and they actually pay more for water than people who are actually connected to the grid, so it's really about saving water because water is expensive and people here of course can't use the drinking water to water they are green and they don't even have green but at the same time they throw away the water they use to wash the dishes to wash clothes they simply throw it away there is no drainage system they throw it into the street and this is a conceptual diagram developed by a group of students because we worked with the local people and we asked them why they just throw the water into the street why can't they why can't they use this also create a garden as part of your house and have a system that the students then invented together with the inhabitants to first put the water in a small strainer that stores the solids that is later used to create a fertilizer and then the water from this.

The tank passes through these bottles which are recycled bottles. These people here are working as recyclers and that is their job and then they water several trees that are planted to create a small terrace in front of their house and this is what the students did together. with these people in a week this is just the work of a group and the family that lived here were very proud and all the neighbors came and saw their front garden for the first time and this is really about taking care of if you have very little resources, how make the most of them and how to combine them also with the recycling of water and also with the recycling of materials that you already have in this area, so for me as a landscape architect, when I'm just associated with ah you're doing all these beautiful things um it's something which I'm not so proud of but I'm more proud if people are really surprised that I'm working with engineers that we're

designing

these landscapes that can actually produce something that can meet the challenges and that the landscape is not just something beautiful but which is the landscape that becomes part of the city's infrastructure system that is not something that you can only afford to have and something of a luxury, but rather it is something that is really needed and that is integrated into the cycles just like mobility. and it is not just something to see but something to actively work with and become a productive interaction between our natural environment and the people and the space we use and create and this for me is the challenge of being a landscape architect and of course , this work only works in an interdisciplinary team and this is what we are trying to do in our different projects, so this is what I also wanted to share with you because it is more like a kind of extreme experience.

Sometimes I feel like it's strange to get into these issues where you're working with rainwater, you're even working with sewage, that's disgusting, but once you start thinking about how to make the beauty in these things, then it becomes clear. turns into a really big wish and a brick. fun to work this way thanks