Emschergenossenschaft Kläranlage, Bottrop, Germany. Photo by “cowboyofbottrop”. Source.)
Natural processes in disguise
Public space is not normally allocated to the understanding and enjoyment of some of the natural energy transfer processes that sustain our daily lives. These processes include energy conversion, distribution, assimilation, filtration and storage.
Some natural processes, or their apparatus, are either practically invisible or too small to see with the naked eye. One cannot easily “see” nitrogen fixation or bacterial decomposition? But other larger ones are deliberately hidden from view by man. Landscape examples include power sourcing and generation, decomposition of human waste or the slaughter of animals for food. In architecture boilers and water cisterns are hidden within buildings. Lyle (1994) said why “reinforce alienation of technology, removing from view one means of understanding the processes that support our lives?”
Why are all the recycling processes of filtration, conversion, assimilation hidden on the outskirts of places we inhabit?
Lyle describes our society’s “technophilia” (a fascination and attachment for products) as opposed to our “technophobia” (revulsion for something’s physical presence). We “clothe it in gaudy costumes that disguise its function”. We push these repulsive apparatuses to the edges of our living space and try and ignore them.
So is “out of sight and out of mind”? And does it matter, because by not concerning ourselves with these details, we free our minds to think and to be more creative – in short, to be more human. Architects turn buildings “inside out” [DN - reference], so why should Landscape Architects not turn places inside out to celebrate the processes that keep us alive. Let’s make the apparatus of these life-bringing processes the centre of attention. Let us also turn them into public landscape and public art?
There is thought and creativity to be harvested from revealing natural processes. Jane Amidon (2001), comments that there is art “in producing mechanisms that reveal rather than systems that interpret” our environment. If the “Bodies” exhibition[1] - which shows the inner workings of the human body - brings a visitor to claim “definite proof that the body is a walking, living work of art”, the same should be possible for biophysical processes in the landscape? Similarly, boilers and water cisterns should be on view as architectural apparatus of the processes that warm us, cleanse us and feed us. Like log fired stoves, they should be created as visible works of art.
Revelation - decomposition as landscape art
Damien Hirst's first major "animal" installation, “A Thousand Years”, consisted of a large glass case containing maggots and flies feeding off a rotting cow's head. One might argue he is morbid and fixated with death. Alternatively, one could argue that he is bringing a natural process - decomposition - to the forefront of our psyche.
At a Christian wake, mourners pass and regard a dead body and as the body is buried, the symbolism of decomposition and regeneration is represented through the words: “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”. These processes are even popularised in Yorkshire culture through the song, “On Ilkely Moor Bah’t ‘at”, where worms then ducks and even friends ultimately end up eating an unfortunate deceased who was not suitably attired outdoors.
But to display, in the landscape, that natural process of decomposition would be taboo. So it must be hidden – in Western culture, underground. Some ancient and modern cultures have tried to arrest decay of their dead leaders through embalming. The funeral pyres of Hinduism and Sikhism continue to be another method for avoiding decomposition. Yet open air cremation is abhorrent to many sanitised westerners and even illegal in the UK[2]. We like our cremations hidden.
Why do Westerners hide the natural process that converts energy back into a form suitable for new, regenerate life? Why can we not bare to look at the final process which completes the cycle?
Perhaps decomposition brings images of disease, noxious smells and repellent insects. But it can also bring a spirit of renewal. This is evidenced by the symbolism of planting of trees on graves. The eco-friendly fashion of green burials has a practical element (as we run out of cemetery space[3]), but it also a symbolic element: recycling of readily degradable cardboard or wicker coffins means space, energy and nutrients can be re-cycled and relatively quickly. Green cemeteries are often indistinguishable from meadows.
But can we make that next step from symbolism? Can we create a space that reveals a natural process – in this case decomposition - rather than a symbolic space for interpretation?
Children are fascinated by glass sided wormeries, where worms drag organic matter down into the soil. They digest it and excrete it for further decomposition, whilst also aerating the subterranean ecosystem. A wormery is not just art (caused by the stratification of the layers criss-crossed with worm holes), because this form also has function – production of compost.
So could we ever see a day where the “dead centre of town” is a landscape wormery, where a glass-sided ramp descends 6 feet (maybe more) into the earth to reveal the decomposition and recycling of our dearly beloved?
Could we envision that meadow above becoming an allotment? Could we imagine being able to regard this section of the earth and watch in wonder as the roots of vegetables tap into this newly released store of energy and nutrients?
Will this revelation help us understand and think more about the place we inhabit? Or will we continue to clothe the process to protect our human sensitivities?
Revelation – filtration and assimilation as landscape art
If death is too morbid a subject, is human waste treatment more palatable? Lorna Jordan created “Waterworks Garden” in urban Renton, USA[4] to treat storm water. The place connects people to the natural cleansing processes of filtration and assimilation. This place is educational, ecological and landscape art. Could we achieve the same or better with a black water treatment plant in and urban centre. Why not in Imperial Gardens, Cheltenham? This would be a mind-bending juxtaposition to the current unsustainable acres of clipped lawns and countless annual plants, the product of intense industrial horticultural.
People will protest. What about the disfigurement to the cultural capital of the find Regency town? What about those toxic sludge bi-products? What about the concentration of heavy metals? What about the use of environmentally harmful disinfecting chemicals? What about the high capital, energy and social costs of placing and running industrial apparatus in the urban heart?
Firstly, those “paleotechnical” problems are happening anyway out of sight. But secondly, “neotechnical”, regenerative solutions are evolving to resolve those problems[5], such as developed by “Living Machine”[6].
Surely that nasty industrial apparatuses would despoil the genius loci? Not if the apparatus was architectural, such as the iconic egg-shaped anaerobic sludge digesters used widely in Germany[7].
As mixed municipal influent is often highly polluted, more treatment would be necessary by drainage into constructed wetlands, where other ecological organisms process pollutants. And so an opportunity presents itself to create green-infrastructure right in the heart of the city, with new wildlife habitat crossed with boardwalks for learning and contemplation. Why not create a landscape version of “The Oil Room” by Richard Wilson, as one descends through an ever deepening, claustrophobic soup of biological regeneration? Why not...?
[1] http://www.bodiestheexhibition.com/bodies.html
[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1820024,00.html
[3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2004/jul/08/thisweekssciencequestions1
[4] http://www.4culture.org/publicart/project_profile.asp?locID=12
[5] Björn Guterstam of “Living Machines”[5] describes how regenerative biophysical processes in contained micro-systems are used to: reduce greatly sewage sludge by conversion into biomass; disinfect effluent (following precipitation of solid sludge) instead of chemical inputs and; filter and assimilate heavy metals through plant uptake (the plants can be incinerated and the metals isolated in ash for safe storage.) He also contends that traditional facilities require larger capital investment and demand more labour and energy costs than their ecological counterparts. [6] http://www.livingmachines.com/
[7] http://pruned.blogspot.com/
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