Enhancing urban nature: on design, biodiversity and the construction of experience in Italy

ABSTRACT

Current academic debate suggests that landscape architects have a crucial role in the conservationof engaging of biodiversity within urban and peri-urban contexts. By modulating the visual and physical interaction between humans and wildlife habitats, landscape architecture projects foster an aesthetic experience of biodiversity, contributing to shaping human understanding of its ecological value. This article discusses the relationship between landscape architecture and the promotion of biodiversity in Italy through a critical reading of a variety of design interventions ranging from the enhancement of sites included within nature reserves, to the reconstruction of lost natural habitats, to the inclusion of existing habitats in newly designed urban landscapes. Proposing four different typologies of spatial practices, defined according to the projects’ ability to engage visual perception and bodily movement, this paper aims at positioning the Italian context within the current global discussion on the role of landscape architecture in eliciting an aesthetic experience of biodiversity.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban biodiversity
• biodiversity and design
• aesthetic experience
• public open space
• landscape architecture criticism

Acknowledgments

The authors contributed equally to this article and are listed alphabetically.

The authors would like to acknowledge all the designers of the projects discussed in this article for providing information and/or visual material that informed this paper and for allowing its publication. They would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. It is revealing that the European Biodiversity Strategy 2020 was developed by the UN as a crucial tool for the success of Sustainable Development Goal 11 ‘Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’.

2. Our reading was informed by a research methodology that consisted in a qualitative approach based on site analysis, analysis of visual and verbal material—publications, photographs, drawings—as well as interviews with designers and local communities.

3. On the idea of separation, see Prominski et al., 2014, p. 73–83.

4. This is one of the design strategies Prominski et al. (cf. Prominski et al., 2014, pp. 21, 28–29, 78–79) indicate as pivotal in the conservation of urban nature and in raising public awareness for its value. See also Meyer, 2015.

Additional information

Funding

The article results from the research project Biodiversità urbana e progetto di paesaggio: esperienze italiane [Urban biodiversity and landscape architecture: the Italian context] supported by the Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning, Politecnico di Torino, through a research grant given to Bianca Maria Rinaldi in February 2019. The three authors were all members of the research team involved in this project;

Notes on contributors

Alessandro Gabbianelli

Alessandro Gabbianelli holds a PhD in Architecture Design (University of Camerino). Until November 2020 he was Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture at the Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning at Politecnico di Torino. Currently he is Associate Professor in Landscape Architecture at Department of Architecture at Università degli Studi Roma Tre. His research focuses on residual, abandoned urban spaces and larger territories and the role of landscape architecture in their transformation. He also investigates the themes of agriurbanism in the context of the Italian Adriatic city.

Bianca Maria Rinaldi

Bianca Maria Rinaldi is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning at Politecnico di Torino and serves as member of the editorial board of JoLA-Journal of Landscape Architecture. Her research is at the intersection of landscape architecture history, theory, critique and design. Bianca’s work has been supported with fellowships from Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection Trustees for Harvard University in Washington DC, and the Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation. She received a J.B. Jackson Prize by the Foundation for Landscape Studies, New York, in 2012 for her book The Chinese Garden: Garden Types for Contemporary Landscape Architecture (2011).

Emma Salizzoni

Emma Salizzoni holds a PhD in Landscape Design (University of Florence) and is Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture at the Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning at Politecnico di Torino, which she joined in 2018. She has been collaborating with the Department and with the European Documentation Centre on Nature Park Planning (CED PPN) in particular since 2007. Her research focuses on the role of landscape design in fostering an effective relationship between nature and cities. Emma is a member of the World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) since 2014.