Landscape – Great Idea! X-LArch III - Department für Raum ...

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Frameworks - Preparing rural
landscape for change
Craig Verzone
Landscape Architect and Urbanist, FSAP, ASLA
Principal Verzone Woods Architectes - paysage,
urbanisme, architecture, Producer of Terragrams -
delivering the landscape podcast
(e-mail: info@vwa.ch, website: www.vwa.ch,
www.terragrams.com)
Abstract
Frameworks examines the potential role of the rural
territory in influencing our rapidly evolving urbanized
rural terrain and presents how a multifaceted effort
of landscape analysis, identification and codification
coupled with master-planning and pilot-project
identification can organize future sustainable growth
while also clarifying preservation and reconstruction
tactics of a regional landscape. Frameworks
first offers a lexicon of a region’s most important
landscape typologies, a palette, that serves as the
basis for the identification and evaluation of the
rural landscapes of the canton. With this language,
Frameworks secondly identifies and defines an atlas
of 24 referential landscapes that are to act as a base
of knowledge to structure our decisions and designprocesses.
Frameworks concludes by identifying
the primary themes that will most likely strengthen
these referential landscapes while at the same time
allowing for growth. Pilot projects emerge from these
themes and are meant to drive, focus the energies
and decision-making process of architects, planners
and landscape architects over the next generation.
These tools and generated visions allow us, the
design community, decision-makers and citizens, to
reflect into the future based on careful observation of
the past and a concise assessment of the present.
Key words
rural, landscape, atlas, lexicon, typologies, growth,
referential
Introduction
The rural landscapes of Europe connect us to our past
while also anchoring us into our present. They are both
historic and contemporary entities. These landscapes
frame our understanding of place, are quite often referred
to as referential and are disappearing at an alarming rate.
Too rarely does this rural, agricultural terrain factor into the
discourse of the landscape architect and the role that they
can take when designing for the growth of European cities
and towns.
Commissioned by the Cantonal Administration of Vaud,
Switzerland as a complement to the update of its regional
master-plan, Frameworks focusses on this territory’s rural
landscape, embracing close to 3,000 square kilometers
and a range in altitude of almost 3,000 meters. The project
sets out to describe and codify the diversity of the canton’s
rural landscapes, to identify referential landscapes as
benchmarks for landscape preservation and to anticipate
the major issues confronting the evolution of the landscape
in the next generation.
Context
Switzerland is composed of 23 cantons or states. The
canton of Vaud lies in the western french speaking region
and shares a border with France, as well as the cantons of
Geneva, Neuchâtel, Fribourg, Bern and Valais. It presents
a sampling of the three main geomorphological components
of the country: The Jura mountain range to the west,
the Moyen-Pays or plateau in the center and the Alps to
the east.
In 2004 the Canton, decided for the first time to commission
a landscape study focused on the territory’s rural
landscape. Verzone Woods Architectes piloted the team
responsible for the study. The team was composed of a
group of landscape architects, an architect, a historian, a
geographer, an agronomist, a photographer and the graphic
designers at ACTAR. The purpose of the study was to
assess the current state and diversity of landscapes and
to anticipate the major issues confronting the evolution of
the landscape in the next generation.
A series of investigations [Fig. 1] aided the team in reaching
preliminary conclusions that, once refined, became
codified and tested by a series of pilot projects. To assess
and study the canton, the team drifted across its territory
and were led to define 24 landscapes of reference compiled
in Volume 1 and the creation of a palette of nearly
100 landscape typologies in Volume 2. In Volume 3 a compilation
of landscape videos were made so as to avoid the
overly static perception of the landscape captured solely
through still images. These introductory three volumes of
research led to Volume 4, a conclusion, and the identification
of solutions in the form of pilot projects. The final report
was structured into four booklets and bound together
by velcro. All 4 volumes cross reference one another and
are meant to be used in conjunction. [Fig. 2]
Another corresponding approach to landscape evaluation
includes the National Historic Landscape Characterization
Method (HLC). The HLC arose in 1990 in England, by
1994 was tested on the landscapes of Cornwall and has
since evolved through successive waves of development.
Both the HLC and the Frameworks - Vaud studies focus
on present day landscapes, the use of a pre-determined
classification system, maps as a primary base of infor-