Architectural Design V-IX: Profile of the Alps: Landschaft, Landscape, Paysage, Valley (G. Vogt)

Abstract

The alpine landscape is changing at an accelerated pace. This development is contrasted by a rudimentary description of the space as a basis for current planning. Against this background, we argue for a comprehensive and fine-grained profiling of the Alps as a starting point for the design of new landscapes. This under the premise of creating maximum difference.

Objective

Independent thinking and acting

Content

Increased pressure on the alpine landscape The alpine landscape is changing at an accelerated pace. Progressive urbanization as well as climate change are fundamentally transforming the sensitive structure. In the course of this development, the importance of the Alps will strongly increase with regard to a broader context, because the manifold existing resources (fresh air, water, biodiversity) arouse numerous desires. The conflicts of interest and use that already exist today are likely to become even more acute as a result. Blurred view The development contrasts with a rudimentary description of the Alpine region as a basis for current planning. The picture here is characterized by the notion of a heterotrophic division of space (urbanity vs. wasteland). A consequence of this is the paradoxical situation that concrete projects are negotiated on a case-by-case basis and corresponding (and urgently needed) developments stagnate (cf. the discussion about new hydroelectric power plants). Rethinking the Alpine Space Against this background, we plead for the most fine-grained and multi-layered coverage of the space as a starting point for further discussion. This approach is based on the insight that the characteristic feature of the alpine landscape has always been its pronounced small-scale character, whereby each valley community is characterized by specific peculiarities, primarily due to the landscape conditions. We want to trace this "substrate of the landscape" and place it at the beginning of further considerations. In doing so, we are concerned with the accelerated generation of difference. For in the Alpine region "the other" is omnipresent in the neighborhood and has both an identity-forming and a stabilizing effect on the existence of the diverse communities. Profiling landscapes During the semester we will look at alpine valleys on the basis of a concrete case. From this intensive reading of space, we derive specific uses for each spatial chamber, which will subsequently be further sharpened and visualized using design tools. The image of future alpine landscapes has a double meaning. It bundles the levels of use and perception into a synthesis, but it is also the iconographic version of that vision which is to seduce a community into communal action in space. The attempt to find a centered image, a theme for the identification of a place, acts as a speculative anticipation on the way to profiling the Alps. At the same time, the image is always to be understood more as an analysis than as a design, insofar as it represents a theoretical version and evaluation of the already existing lines of development.

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