The "hand of creation" or the "theatre of genes"?

1. Religious symbolism is everywhere

Religious symbolism is all around us. Most cultural landscapes around the world are dominated by the symbols of towers, spires and domes that occupy the heart of settlements from villages to cities. These architectural structures are dominant because they are often on a grand scale, but also occupy the social heart of settlements, often on high-ground or proximal to water both of which provide innate symbolic reaction. This is true across all faiths, whether it be a stupa of a temple in Thailand, the domes of a church in Florence or a mosque in Istanbul.

In more granular form, there is religious symbolism in both the public and private realm, from the “spirit houses” of animism and ancestor worship in south-east Asia, to the road-side shrines of Catholic Europe. Personal habit offers a more literal religious sign, whether the orange robes of Buddhist monks or the hijab of Muslim women or crosses round the necks of Christians.

2. The continued struggle of Darwinism

In 1859, Charles Darwin published his book, “On the origin of species”. This revolutionary work explained for the first time how all species we see on Earth today have evolved over geological timescales through the many biophysical and social processes he collectively termed “Natural Selection”.

The theory was hugely controversial. Although some clergy simply adopted the process as an instrument of God’s design, other theologians attacked it as heresy. The most famous confrontation was the public debate at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The Bishop of Oxford Samuel Wilberforce, argued against Darwin's explanation and human descent from apes. Thomas Huxley's famous retort: “I would rather be descended from an ape than a man who misused his gifts”, came to symbolise a triumph of science over Religion.

But has science and freethinking triumphed over Religion and dogma? The “Darwin-Ape” picture (above) published in Punch magazine in the 19th Century was seen as a symbol of ridicule as much as homage. In 1864, Disraeli asked, "Is man an ape or an angel? My Lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence these new-fangled theories."

In Tennessee in 1925, John Scopes was prosecuted in the “Scopes Monkey Trial”, under the Butler Act, which made it unlawful "to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." Although this act was repealed in 1967, George W Bush has since stated that the “jury is still out on evolution”.

There have also been unfortunate examples called Social Darwinism, where eugenics has been proposed and even carried out in some of the most hated acts of the 20th Century as a way of aiding “natural selection” of the human species.

Presently, US Christian fundamentalists continue to push the creationist agenda by teaching Intelligent Design and focusing on gaps in the fossil record. This dogma is strongly refuted by modern neo-Darwin scientists such as Richard Dawkins in the UK. But even here the national curriculum states that “pupils should be taught...how scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical evidence [for example, Darwin's theory of evolution]”. Some private schools sponsored by Tony Blair, teach creationism at the expense of natural selection.

3. Can a symbol help the cause of understanding?

The Ichthys or fish symbol, below, was used by early Christians to identify themselves as followers of Jesus Christ. Ichthys is the Ancient Greek word for "fish”, which also forms the acronym "Jesus Christ, God's Son, Saviour" in Greek. By express their affinity to Christianity through this code, they hoped to avoid persecution.

Helped by symbols like this, Christianity grew until the Roman Emperor, Constantine I, adopted the faith and reversed the persecutions of his predecessors. Cynics have said that Constantine’s conversion was political not spiritual, but Christianity flourished and spread afterwards through the organisation of the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church.

Given that 21st Century Christianity and creationism has the support of two the most powerful recent leaders in the West, does this pose a threat to freethinking and evolutionary science? Do free-thinkers need a symbol and a code? Probably not! Scientist teachers will fight to teach natural selection in Biology lessons. Animal and plant husbandry will still go on, as will bio-engineering. Eugenics through genetic medicine will progress, despite temporary halts during ethical debates.

But outside of school and university biology lessons and high-tech laboratories, what is it that reinforces the idea that natural selection exists and should be learned and even celebrated and rejoiced? Does anyone really see natural selection at work on a day to day basis? After all it took homo-sapiens 200,000 years to realise it, and even then it was only through the eyes of a few men a mere 150 years ago.

Do we need to put clues out in the public realm, to prompt people to wonder in this process? Perhaps this would also help in the democratisation of the ethical debate on where the human species could or will go? If we do need clues, would these be literal or abstract. What would an abstract clue look like?

Would it be a literal depiction of the beautiful double helix of DNA? Would it be the almost minimalist art of a genetic fingerprint?

Would the co-joining of the male and female sex symbols lead people to explore the importance of sex in creating variety in populations? Might it be a biological equivalent of E=MC2 that signifies variation in a population, i.e.

If anyone saw this equation, would they bother to ask why it was there or what it signifies? Or might it be a series of different coloured or shaped island forms symbolising how new species develop in isolation from their mainland cousins? Might it be a timeline showing just how recently homo-sapiens has existed in biological time, never mind geological time? This would require empirical research.

4. What has this to do with me, I’m a Landscape Architect?

Firstly, artists have long exploited the aesthetic beauty of natural selection mechanics. One can have one’s own genetic fingerprint mounted in glorious colour in your wall at home. But at the moment this art is in buildings and concerned largely aesthetics.

Landscape Architects work outside where natural selection is actually happening around us. And we claim we are just as concerned with society as aesthetics. How many landscape schemes have been influenced by the science of natural selection? I am not referring to the evolution of symbolism or the evolution of cultural landscapes, i.e. the changing extended phenotype of our gene pool (The Extended Phenotype, Dawkins 1999). I am taking about sex and death and extinction and mutation and diversity and survival and their direct links to evolution. Perhaps the Holocaust memorials offer one example - albeit a very negative one - of eugenics. Are there any more positive examples?

Second, and more importantly, does our view on creationism versus natural selection affect our philosophical or ethical position and therefore our designs? Has the longer cultural history of creationism still moulded who we are and what we think?

• Is creationism anthropocentric? Does it encourage us to view humans as a species apart created by the divine hand of God? If so, do our designed landscapes re-enforce the dominance of God and man?

• Is the much younger neo-Darwinism non-anthropocentric? Does it give each biotic community - or even the whole global ecosystem - equal moral standing? If so, do our designed landscapes reduce the position of man and deny God? Do they simply re-enforce the continued struggle for existence of combinations of genes expressed through extended phenotypes?

Ian Thompson (2007) cites Carolyn Merchant’s ‘Ground for Environmental Ethics” (1992). She splits human ethical theories or positions into two:

• Anthropocentric           
     (ego-centric ..............................homocentric)

• Non-Anthropocentric   
     (bio-centric................................ecocentric)

She suggests that most landscape architects are ethically homocentric. The ethics of this position are to “acknowledge that the stewardship of nature is an important concern, but...because this in turn is thought to contribute to aggregate human happiness...human happiness depends ultimately upon the natural systems. It can be argued that human beings take pleasure in the richness and diversity of the natural world, so the loss of biodiversity, for example, is of concern because it threatens those satisfactions.”

One can argue that the homocentric position is entirely consistent with neo-Darwinism. In fact, I suspect there are few creationist landscape architects? The homocentric view reflects the human gene pool’s struggle for survival in an otherwise wild and dangerous planet that threatens its successful reproduction.

5. The "hand of creation" or the "theatre of genes"?

I fear that if we over-emphasise - wittingly or otherwise - the importance of humans and human delight in our landscape, we are hindering the new “enlightenment” of neo-Darwinism. If we continue in our designs to emphasise:

• stability                         versus struggle

• “here and now”            versus “geological time”

• static                            versus mutation and change

• homogeneity                 versus heterogeneity

• globalisation                  versus islands

• tidiness                         versus chaos

• technology solutions      versus natural regeneration

• cultural order                versus “natural” order

• symbolism of dogma      versus free thinking

...we risk supporting:

• creationism                    versus evolution through natural selection

Perhaps this change of emphasis is the symbolism I seek and must investigate further?

Are we talking the same language?

1. What is place?

‘Whatever space and time mean, place and occasion mean more. For space in the image of man is place. Space experience is the reward of place experience”.

(Aldo Van Eyck)

Landscape means many things to many people, but it is certainly “place”. Craik describes landscape as a “human phenomenon...an emergent of the interplay between the observer, on the one hand, and landform and land-use on the other.” It is man who projects ideas upon nature and who creates values, systems, and structures of thought, not the other way round.

2. Do the fool and the man see the same tree?

So if place is a function of man, what effect does the variety of man have on the perception of place? Canter (1977) suggests that a person’s perception of a place has three constituents:

1. Actual physical components or parameters

2. Use of or the activities which occur there

3. Individual’s thoughts, meanings and understandings

The first point seems obvious. Secondly, when people talk about places and their meaning, “they consistently refer to the activities which occur there and whether these are appropriate to the place” (Uzzell, 1991). Activities can also be used much more formally to define places. A prime example is ritual: consecration can turn an ordinary building into a holy place. So, humans have a goal-oriented nature of experience of place.

Finally – and most importantly, what about the individual observer? This provides the real challenge. How do the background and prior personal environments of the observer affect perceptions of a specific setting? How do newcomers and natives differ in their perception of landscape? How does the professional training of one sort or another influence or shape landscape perception? “Do the fool and the wise man see the same tree?” (Craik) How does belonging to a group - for which a place has a particular meaning - affect the meaning it has an individual.

Landscape Architects constitute a group with a shared specialist training that other people have not experienced. Uzzell (1990) says “it is almost a requirement of becoming a professional that one develops a self-image of what it is to be, say a landscape architect, and internalises the values, beliefs and occupational culture of the profession in order to gain access to the occupational community.”

He goes on to say that “problems will arise if there are significant differences between professional and non-professional perceptions, evaluations and priorities. One consequence of such differences could be the creation of design solutions which are incompatible with the needs and wishes of the client or public, leading to dislike of the environment, disenchantment, resentment or even abuse.”

According to Trancik (Theories of Urban Spatial Design, 1986), “perhaps the most destructive aspect of the modern movement and of recent trends in planning has been the self-aggrandisement of designers and a tendency to make simplistic assumptions about human needs. The result can be that buildings have a rich meaning for architects and none for the rest of us, to who they simply look strange.” The same might be said about some Landscape Architects.

Olin (1988) worries that, “in the attempt to avoid banality and transcend imitation, a crisis of abstraction has developed. By adopting strategies borrowed directly from other fields and by referring to work is itself an abstraction, many contemporary landscape designers are producing work that is thin, at best a second- or third-hand emotional or artistic encounter...The self-conscious, continual referencing to contemporary works of art rather than to the world itself is a genuine weakness.”

In Landscape, the implications are much wider than for pure art. Olin remarks that, “we have different needs as individuals and as a group. That which people may indulge themselves on private estates may be of arguable justification when proposed on the public realm.” An individual can choose not to visit a collection of works of art in a museum or move on if he does not like what is on display. But landscape that exists in the public realm is for the democratic enjoyment of people. Landscape also tends to be a more permanent installation. If the majority cannot read the space and do not have a positive experience, this is an expensive missed opportunity.

3. Are we speaking the same language”?

To help avoid creating disappointing places, we should aim to understand better how humans create meaning - not through words, but through the language of sensual media.

For there to be sensual communication, there must be: a) sender and receiver; b) message form and code and; c) the intended meaning. For a designed place to be rewarding, the architect must first understand a form and code, i.e. the sensual language that the receiver understands. Second, he must construct a message in that language, that he knows the receiver is capable of translating and understanding.

What might this language be? Firstly, designers can use forms and figures. Olin (1988) quotes Alan Colquhoun thus: ‘form’ applies to “a configuration with natural meaning or none at all. ‘Figure’ applies to a configuration whose meaning is given by culture”. An actual tree, hill or river would be examples of form with shared natural meanings – at least at a basic level. A geometric shape, such as a circle or cone or square however, might be interpreted differently across cultures.

Figures have also been used as signs and symbols. A figure with a designation as to what it refers is a sign. An example of a sign would be the crucifix and depending on the culture of the individual presentation of such may have a very different effect. However, Olin (1988) feels that some ancient geometry has been drained of its energy due to overuse and exposure. “Today, spheres and cubes, triangles and cones are not as charged with meaning as they once were”, even though their ancient credentials and primacy still give authority to formal structures

Signs are supposed to be univocal, but symbols are supposed to be multi-vocal. This one-to-many correspondence, or abstraction, means they are susceptible to many meanings and so misinterpreted. An example of a symbol might be a name or a fountain. (Olin 1988) contends that the meaning of many of the most famous landscape designs of the past often was established through the use of works of sculpture and architecture that already carried associations with particular ideas and works of art, literature, landscape or society. For example, the name of Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, New York is not particularly emotive now, “but to the Christian, Bible-reading population of the years after the {American] Civil War, the reference was a particularly meaningful one”.

Rapaport (1982) suggests that today it is far more difficult to design in the associational world, since symbols are neither fixed nor shared... “Any attempt to design for association at levels above the personal is thus difficult.” Olin says that as education, experience and beliefs change, metaphors can die; lose their potency; become clichés or stale figures of speech, design or art.”

Therefore, historically, landscape architects may have been communicating in a shared language, but that language lives and has evolved. What point is there in continuing to speak Latin when all around understand Italian?

4. Back to basics!

So, symbolism and association are fraught with difficulties of comprehension and sustainability. Is there a language - new or old - that we understand without need for significant (re)education? Are there combinations of form, figure, sign and symbol that can still be relied upon to convey the intended response on individuals occupying the space?

Olin believes that it is the “biomorphic shapes of nature, the blurry, unclear, compound and complex forms of natural processes that intrigue us with their mystery and promise and atavistic energy.”

Uzzell (1991) explicitly acknowledges the contribution of ‘primary landscape qualities’ such as water, vegetation and other items of evolutionary significance. Do we need to find meanings in physical aspects of our environment that are innate rather than learned?

By rediscovering and exploring our natural being and evolution, we can find common expressions of:

• Hope

• Danger and fear

• Sustenance

• Survival (and social perpetuation)

• Rest and play

• Curiosity

• Spirituality

Hope and prospect

Great symbolic importance may attach to the advantages of elevated ground. There are also implied opportunities for movement along paths and over bridges. There are also disadvantages suggested by unabridged walls, fences and rivers.

Uzzell (1991) quotes Gibson who says the environment can be seen as “offering affordances.” The value of the affordance approach is that it should lead to an analysis of the environment in terms of people’s needs. What do they want to do and feel there?

Refuge from danger

Symbolic importance may also attach to the contrast between open and confined space. It is often the arrangement, not the specific object that suggests behavioural opportunities. Concepts like ‘territoriality’ and ‘personal space find expression in the intrinsic arrangement of environmental objects.

Uzzell also quotes Appleton (1975) who claims that “the factors which make both actual landscapes and paintings attractive are the presence of vantage points offering prospect and those offering refuge. He suggests that, at least in paintings, there may be the need to include hazard so as to give power to the prospect/refuge symbol.”

Very young babies tend to avoid places where there appears to be a sharp drop in floor level, i.e. they are aware that such a place might be dangerous. Ulrich (1983) argues for the importance of threat and tension as a valid meaning of place.

Sustenance

Edible landscapes are fashionable, but landscape design cannot afford to fall prey to the whim of fashion. However, primary research suggests that a landscape of bounty, a veritable “garden of Eden” full of plant and animal life, would be suggestive of an environment where one could sustain oneself comfortably.

Survival & social perpetuation

Penning-Rowsell & Lowenthal (1896) note that the “association of evergreen trees and shrubs with eternal life goes back a long way...Already in classical culture; the cypress was sacred to Pluto, god of the underworld.” Does this expression still hold common truth?

Rest and Play

Natural play is also fashionable, but few can deny the innate feelings of play in young people who see trees to climb, fallen leaves to kick, nooks to hide in, mud or sand to mould or water to dam or splash in.

Curiosity

We instinctively prefer places that, on the one hand, offer complexity and mystery (qualities which are appealing to our sense of curiosity) and, on the other, are also coherent so that we can make sense of them.”

Ulrich (1983) argues for the “importance of complexity and deflected vistas as a means of stimulating our basic instinct of curiosity in space.” How do I make sense of that? What is around that corner?

Spirituality

Penning-Rowsell & Lowenthal note that elevated places often have significance for ceremonies of all sorts. Water symbolism, “which is of great antiquity, endows rivers, lakes and fountains with special religious values”

Olin (1988) agrees that “religious and mystical settings are frequently centred on unusual or dramatic landforms, large or prominent features that dominate regions or sources of water and secret or inaccessible sites.”

Olin also states that “many critics, historians and philosophers have commented upon the ‘verticality’ of Gothic cathedrals, and the fact that this expression of the idea of verticality... gives these buildings a property that is not possessed by other buildings”. “This vertical characteristic, which we read into these buildings, is linked to metaphors for soaring, rising up from and leaving the earth...”

5. Conclusion

It is not enough for a rhetorician to demonstrate that a certain feeling out to be felt, or that his audience would be justified to feel it and perhaps unjustified not to feel it: he is only worth his salt if he gets them to have that emotion and does not just tell you what you should be feeling.

(Aristotle)

On the otherhand, as Martha Schwartz said of her design of the US courthouse plaza, "it is not necessarily important that visitors are aware of the specific meanings of such symbolism. That the space is remarkable in itself, and is used and enjoyed by the populace on a sensual, everyday level, is always the paramount consideration"

Regeneration images

My back garden is full of mushrooms today (Oct 3).  Not sure whether they are edible or not - any ideas?  They look to be in a line suspiciously where the ants nests were in the summer.  I must research this, because I know that other types of ants "farm" the mushrooms in a symbiotic relationship.

Are these structures on my lawn essentially enormous bio-silos of ant food on the ant-scale landscape!?

Latest: Matthew at "Mushrooms.org.uk" says its a Paxillus involutus aka common or brown roll-rim.  He says I shouldn't be eating it!  My desk research suggests there is no ant farming going off, but there is a symbiosis with tree roots, including birch. There is an introduced Himalayan birch (Betula utilis Jacquemontii) nearby and what a beautiful sculptural specimen that is). However, I'm loathe to dig up the lawn to try and prove that association... Damn lawns, they take up so much time to get right.

Oh really, can you come and do my garden?

No, I won't come and design your garden...

I've decided I agree with David Jarvis* and that I shy away from calling myself a Landscape Architect. The word "landscape" has too much baggage. My fellow mature students agree that it is generally misunderstood by most of the public as gardening.

I've nothing against private garden design, its just that the activities our profession performs are much more varied. Some of us plan and design, others build while others maintain. There is also the overall critical activity of management. We also perform these activities on much greater scales in greater places across both rural and urban public space. The content we cover is also varied. There are the functional aspects of ecology, human community (culture and society) and economics. There is also the delight of creating art. This is illustrated in the first diagram at the end of this blog.

Is this identity crisis a problem?

Much of the general public - and therefore our potential future clients, be they councils or politicians or business heads - don't know who we are or what we do. Are we not worried that "architects", "urban designers", "engineers", "planners", "developers" or other environmental groups will steal our patch, because clients do not know what we do? Are we not concerned that we may not get work that we are best qualified to be doing? Or is the pie big enough to share? Maybe not in a boom, but what about a recession?

Trained Landscape Architects have an advantage over other professions, because we alone have the knowledge of all these activities and how to make them work together. This knowledge may not be deep in all areas, but it is deep enough. Do we care that less well trained people may be being given these jobs?

Can we move up the food chain?

David Jarvis* also talked about our profession having to move up the food chain in order to make sure that the right briefs get set in the first place. But if our profession lacks the presence or the credibility, then how easy is it to do so? Our profession is a supplier of services, so our senior consultants must be forming relationships with the leaders of government and business. Hopefully the right sort of projects will result. The rest of us deliverers can get on with working with the owners, i.e. those who will end up living in and loving our creations. This is illustrated in the second diagram below.

So what next?

So do we need a new name? Does "Landscape Architecture" have to go? Probably not. But we do need one hell of a concerted publicity/marketing campaign, in my view? How about a series called "GRANDER DESIGNS". What do you think?


*Per the Sustaianability Lecture series at Gloucester University, 2008

Turning towns inside out - Sewage in the park

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/