In questo lavoro “Progettare Paesaggio, Landscape as Infrastructure” si confrontano: da un lato le stimolanti proposte progettuali redatte dal gruppo di studenti della Harvard Graduate School of Design guidati dalla docente Paola Cannavò; dall’altro l’analisi del territorio portuense ed ostiense e delle possibili future trasformazioni del contesto paesaggistico determinate dai progetti infrastrutturali, in fase di realizzazione o di valutazione, con ipotesi di linee guida per la riqualificazione e la valorizzazione di questa area, intesa come complesso palinsesto storico e paesaggistico, al fine di rendere evidenti le modalità procedurali di quella reale tutela attiva e dinamica del paesaggio affidata al Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali e da sempre svolta. [ANTONIA P. RECCHIA – Direttore Generale, Direzione Generale per il paesaggio, le belle arti, l’architettura e l’arte contemporanee, MiBAC] The project “Progettare Paesaggio, Landscape as Architecture” combines the inspiring design proposals drafted by a group of students of the Harvard Graduate School of Design headed by the teacher Paola Cannavò with a study of the portuense and ostiense areas and how the landscape might change due to the construction of new infrastructure, either being completed or in the design stage. The study includes guidelines for the requalification and enhancement of the area considered as a complex historical landscape; it also highlights the past and present active and dynamic protection measures and procedures adopted by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities. [ANTONIA P. RECCHIA – Director General, Directorate General for the landscape, fine arts, architecture and contemporary art, MiBAC] “Questa pubblicazione e la ricerca progettuale qui documentata, propongono una opportuna testimonianza delle sfide contemporanee della forma urbana, del processo ecologico e dello sviluppo economico affrontato dalla capitale italiana.” “Evidenziando gli impulsi complessi e contraddittori di tipo ecologico ed economico di un paesaggio portuale attivo, Cannavò propone un nuovo ruolo chiave per l’architettura del paesaggio come strumento urbanistico. Così facendo promuove una posizione italiana all’interno del dibattito contemporaneo sul Landscape Urbanism e l’Ecological Urbanism fornendo al contempo una prospettiva futura per l’urbanistica, anche nell’area di Fiumicino.” [CHARLES WALDHEIM – Direttore, Dipartimento di Architettura del Paesaggio, Harvard Graduate School of Design] “This publication, and the design research that it documents, offers timely evidence of the contemporary challenges of urban form, ecological process, and economic development faced by the Italian capital.” “Highlighting the complex and contradictory ecological and economic impulses of a working port landscape, Cannavò proposes a renewed relevance for landscape architecture as a medium of urbanism. In so doing, she stakes an Italian position in the contemporary discourses of landscape urbanism and ecological urbanism, while pointing to a way forward for urbanism, even in the fields of Fuimicino.” [CHARLES WALDHEIM – Chair, Department of Landscape Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design]

As ecology becomes the new engineering, the projection of landscape as infrastructure—the contemporary alignment of the disciplines of landscape architecture, civil engineering, and urban planning— has become pressing. Predominant challenges facing urban regions and territories today—including shifting climates, material flows, and population mobilities, are addressed and strategized here. Responding to the under-performance of master planning and over-exertion of technological systems at the end of twentieth century, this book argues for the strategic design of "infrastructural ecologies," describing a synthetic landscape of living, biophysical systems that operate as urban infrastructures to shape and direct the future of urban economies and cultures into the 21st century. Pierre Bélanger is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Co-Director of the Master in Design Studies Program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. As part of the Department of Landscape Architecture and the Advansed Studies Program, Bélanger teaches and coordinates graduate courses on the convergence of ecology, infrastructure and urbanism in the interrelated fields of design, planning and engineering. Dr. Bélanger is author of the 35th edition of the Pamphlet Architecture Series from Princeton Architectural Press, GOING LIVE: from States to Systems (pa35.net), co-editor with Jennifer Sigler of the 39th issue of Harvard Design Magazine, Wet Matter, and co-author of the forthcoming volume ECOLOGIES OF POWER: Mapping Military Geographies & Logistical Landscapes of the U.S. Department of Defense. As a landscape architect and urbanist, he is the recipient of the 2008 Canada Prix de Rome in Architecture and the Curator for the Canada Pavilion ad Canadian Exhibition, "EXTRACTION," at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale (extraction.ca).

Now available as revised edition: The successful title on integrated ecological landscape planning Infrastructure, as we know it, no longer belongs in the exclusive realm of engineers and transportation planners. In the context of rapidly changing cities and towns, infrastructure is experiencing a paradigm shift where multiple-use programming and the integration of latent ecologies is a primary consideration. Defining contemporary infrastructure requires a multi-disciplinary team of landscape architects, engineers, architects and planners to fully realize the benefits to our cultural and natural systems. This book examines the potential of landscape as infrastructure via essays by notable authors and supporting case studies by SWA landscape architects and urban designers, among them the technologically innovative roof domes for Renzo Piano’s California Academy of Science in San Francisco, the restoration of the Buffalo Bayou in Houston, and several master plans for ecological corridors in China and Korea. Other projects develop smart re-use concepts for railroad tracks that no longer serve their original purpose, such as Kyung-Chun railway in Seoul or Katy Trail in Dallas. All case studies are described extensively with technical diagrams and plans for repositioning infrastructure as a viable medium for addressing issues of ecology, transit, urbanism, performance, and habitat.

Flowscapes explores infrastructure as a type of landscape and landscape as a type of infrastructure. The hybridization of the two concepts seeks to redefine infrastructure beyond its strictly utilitarian definition, while allowing spatial design to gain operative force in territorial transformation processes. The publication provides perspectives on the subject from design-related disciplines such as architecture, urban design, urban planning, landscape architecture and civil engineering. The book builds upon the multidisciplinary colloquium on landscape infrastructures, that is part of the Flowscapes graduation design studio of Landscape Architecture at the TU Delft. The authors explore concepts, methods and techniques for design-related research on landscape infrastructures. Their main objective is to engage environmental and societal issues by means of integrative and design oriented approaches. Through focusing on interdisciplinary design-related research of landscape infrastructures they provide important clues for the development of spatial armatures that can guide urban and rural development and have cultural and civic significance. The geographical context of the papers covers Europe, Africa, Asia and Northern America. All contributions in the book are double blind reviewed by experts in the field.

Infrastructure, as we know it, no longer belongs in the exclusive realm of engineers and transportation planners. In the context of rapidly changing cities and towns, infrastructure is experiencing a paradigm shift where multiple-use programming and the integration of latent ecologies is a primary consideration. Defining contemporary infrastructure requires a multi-disciplinary team of landscape architects, engineers, architects and planners to fully realize the benefits to our cultural and natural systems. This book examines the potential of landscape as infrastructure via essays by notable authors and supporting case studies by SWA landscape architects and urban designers, among them the technologically innovative roof domes for Renzo Piano's California Academy of Science in San Francisco, the restoration of the Buffalo Bayou in Houston, and several master plans for ecological corridors in China and Korea. Other projects develop smart re-use concepts for railroad tracks that no longer serve their original purpose, such as Kyung-Chun railway in Seoul or Katy Trail in Dallas. All case studies are described extensively with technical diagrams and plans for repositioning infrastructure as a viable medium for addressing issues of ecology, transit, urbanism, performance, and habitat.

The book, showing virtuous examples of urban planning in Italy and Europe, exposes certain doubts and open questions: what is the new role of urban planning? What actions / rules are now achievable for the protection, planning and management of local-scale landscapes? The overall reflections gathered in the book contribute to suggest innovative visions about landscape planning at local scale, seen as first steps towards a more functional change of perspective. New landscapes are the result of local planning practices that no longer seem able to “understand” the current society through urban design. Public space and new urban centralities interact with the increasingly complex functions of social life and mark the distance from territorial values, relying less and less on physical relationships (economic and functional) and increasingly on symbolic and intangible relationships, as ‘cultural identity’. Landscape is essential for the sustainable future of the urban and rural territory: the landscape quality is a factor of economic competitiveness and acts also as a factor of social cohesion and integration.