VanderGoot - Architecture and the forest aesthetic: a new look at design and resilient urbanism

ARCHITECTURE AND THE FOREST AESTHETIC

DESPITE POPULATION TRENDS toward urbanization, the forest continues to have a strong appeal to the human imagination, and the human preference for forest over many other types of terrain is well documented. This book re-imagines architecture and urbanism by allowing the forest to be a prominent consideration in the language of design, thus recognizing the forest as essential rather than just incidental to human well-being. In Architecture and the Forest Aesthetic, forest is a large-scale urban construct that is far more extensive and nuanced than trees and shrubbery. The forest aesthetic opens designers to the forest as a model for an urban architecture of permeable floors, protective canopies, connected food chains, beneficial decomposition, and resilient ecologies. Much can be learned about these features of the forest from the natural sciences; however, when they are given due consideration technically and metaphorically in the design of urban habitat, the places in which humans live become living forests.

What is present here in Architecture and the Forest Aesthetic is both a review of many ingenious ways in which the forest aesthetic has already been expressed in design and urbanism, and an encouragement to further use the forest aesthetic in design language and design outcomes. Case study projects featured include the Chilotan building craft of Southern Chile, the yaki sugi of Japan, the Biltmore Forest in the Southeastern United States, the Australian capital city Canberra, Bosco Verticale in Milan, Italy, the Beijing Olympic Forest Park in China, and more.

Jana VanderGoot is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Maryland School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, USA. She holds a Master of Landscape Architecture degree from Harvard University Graduate School of Design, a Master of Architecture from the University of Virginia, and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Notre Dame. Jana is a registered architect, founding partner of VanderGoot Ezban Studio, and the 2011 recipient of the Rieger Graham Prize ICAA affiliated fellowship at the American Academy in Rome.

VanderGoots Architecture and the Forest Aesthetic productively propagates the fertile field of design cultures relations with the forest imaginary. The book gathers historic evidence and contemporary cases in support of a complex and contradictory reading of the forest as a cultural construct.

Charles Waldheim,FAAR, John E. Irving Professor and Director, Office for Urbanization, Harvard Graduate School of Design, USA

The conservation future of the earth will be rooted in the interdependence of nature and society realized through an interweaving of forests, human communities, and agriculture. Jana VanderGoot opens our imagination to that vision and buoys the spirit through a thought-provoking exploration of that future in the landscape today. The result is a marvelous and important volume.

David Foster,Director, Harvard Forest, Harvard University, USA

In Architecture and the Forest Aesthetic, Jana VanderGoot elegantly examines the history and future of wood, trees, and urban forests as the majority of people have come to dwell in cities. Ambitious and original, VanderGoot is a lively guide to arboreal projects ranging from historic woods, mycelium bricks, Beijings Olympic Green, and the wired Harvard Forest. She culminates with the role of urban forests in places as diverse as Canberra, Amsterdam, and Detroit.

Jill Jonnes,author, Urban Forests: A Natural History of Trees and People in the American Cityscape

ARCHITECTURE AND THE FOREST AESTHETIC

A New Look at Design and Resilient Urbanism

JANA VANDERGOOT

First published 2018

by Routledge

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and by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2018 Taylor & Francis

The right of Jana VanderGoot to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN: 978-1-138-83773-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-83774-4 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-73511-5 (ebk)

Typeset in Fedra Sans Alt

by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK

To Mary Elizabeth Petter VanderGoot

CONTENTS

Elizabeth Meyer, Merrill D. Peterson Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of Virginia School of Architecture

Murray Grove Apartment Building, 24 Murray Grove, London, United Kingdom, construction completed in 2009

Gothic Cathedrals, Northern France, 12th16th centuries

Hooke Park, Architectural Association School of Architecture in Londons woodland campus, Beaminster, Dorset, United Kingdom, 1987

UNESCO World Heritage Churches, Chilo Archipelago, Los Lagos, Chile, 17th19th centuries

Afterburn, Architectural Installation, International Garden Festival, Jardins de Mtis/Reford Gardens, Grand-Mtis, Quebec, Canada, 20142015

Hy-Fi pavilion, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Queens, New York, United States, 2014

Architectural Installation, University of Maryland, College Park, United States, 2014

Mosque-Cathedral of Crdoba, Crdoba, Andalusia, Spain, 784987

Beijing Olympic Forest Park, Beijing, Chaoyang, China, 20032008

Future Library, Public Art and Urban Space, Nordmarka, Oslo, Norway, 20142114

Biltmore Estate and Forest and Pisgah National Forest, Asheville, North Carolina, United States, begun in 1889

DUX Forest, Monte Giano, Antrodoco, Italy, 1939

Harvard Forest, University Campus, Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States, 1907present

Instant City, The Archigram Group, 1969

Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia, early 1900spresent

Hantz Woodlands, Lower East Side, Detroit, Michigan, United States, 2008present

Tree City, Design Competition Submission, Downsview Park, Toronto, Canada, 2000

Amsterdam Bos, Amstelveen, the Netherlands, 1937

Bosco Verticale, Residential Skycraper, Milan, Italy, 2014

West Loop Park, unbuilt design project, Chicago, Illinois, United States, 2003

Hundertwasser House, Residential Building and Museum, Vienna, Austria 19831986

Elizabeth Meyer

Merrill D. Peterson Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of Virginia School of Architecture

DURING THE TIME I HAVE READ, and re-read, Jana VanderGoots book manuscript, Architecture and the Forest Aesthetic