DESIGN STUDIO 2: CITY AS LANDSCAPE 1.0 Introduction 1.1 Project Aims To develop an understanding of the city as a landscape and to engage in a process of 'master/action-planning'. That is to say, working across landscape scales to address both the local and planetary context of the city. ● Through a series of studio and site-based workshops you will develop a holistic understanding of the social, cultural, and political ecologies of your site. You will consider the temporal nature of your site and explore the idea of obsolescence in urban landscapes. Informed by your research and experiences of your site and utilising the concept of the 'Landscape Imaginary you will work in groups to develop a collective vision for managing/creating capacity for change in the landscape. Then, working individually you will further explore the potential of this alternative imaginary to develop your own 'Manifesto for managing/creating capacity for change and adaptation in the landscape of Shieldfield. 1.2 Context Master-planning Definitions of a masterplan and of the activity known as master-planning vary, but in general a masterplan is a plan which maps an overall development concept and provides a framework for the provision of future land use, circulation, infrastructure, built form, landscape and urban design, based upon an understanding of place developed through appropriate survey and analysis. Master-planning is a different level of design in that it usually operates at a broader scale. Typically, master-planning scales would be 1:1250 and 1:2500, but the scale chosen will depend upon the size of the site or area to be planned, which can range from a region to a waterfront, a town extension or a university campus. Masterplans are often required when significant environmental assets need protection. Masterplans typically specify governing principles and/or strategies relating to elements such as building massing/heights and orientation, predominant land uses, desirable landscape character, design guidelines, circulation and movement patterns etc. However, they generally do not resolve matters of detailed design. A masterplan should not be thought of as in inflexible process/ document. Many projects involve the production of successive masterplans as circumstances change. Masterplans are often prepared by multi-disciplinary teams and they often embody the values which the client or stakeholders wish to see embodied in the evolving development. For example, they may aim to protect or conserve existing landscapes or buildings, they often identify existing landscape character and suggest where this may need enhancing. They take into account matters of environmental sustainability and resilience and should incorporate green infrastructure strategies. Masterplans are informed not only by the physical context of place, but also by historical, cultural, and social factors, and by planning policies. 'Masterplanning is a problematic term. As Tom Turner has pointed out, a master plan implies the existence of a Master, which in our transdisciplinary world can be misleading. Although there is generally someone leading the project, the master- planning ethos ought to be collaborative. It is also a gendered term, but master- planners can be male, female or may not identify as either. Criticism of the term master plan and the process of 'masterplanning have been further brought into focus in recent years as the profession of Landscape Architecture looks to address its own legacy of systemic racism and colonial practices. As landscape architects push the profession to become more equitable, some landscape architects and planners say it's time to replace the industry-standard term "master plan." (Lee, 2023) A landscape [arts]-led approach? Landscape is a medium which cuts across many different concerns, ranging across issues of health, amenity, play, community, belonging, environment etc., and this suggests that effective plans should be landscape-led. However, as above, the methodologies traditionally employed by Landscape Architects have limitations. In his book 'Ecologies of Inception: Design Potential on a Warming Planet (2022), Simone Ferracina calls into the question the ability of traditional drawing conventions, the language [landscape] architects use to describe the world, to depict the diversity, complexity, and vibrancy of reality. He asks 'How does one draw the humidity condensing onto a windowpane, the smell of wild garlic, or the kneading of dough? How does one draw regimes of maintenance and care, or the slow decay of matter? How are networks of equipmental interdependence depicted? Or how might one represent the memories associated with an old photograph, or the toxicity of a discarded toy? He advocates for 'devising tools and notational systems capable of registering and representing the selected ecologies and events so as to make them worthy of study and attention, turning the drawing into a tool for caring, taking seriously, and making visible for empowering worlds (Ferracina, 2022) In her book 'Art Maps and Cities: Contemporary Artists Explore Urban Space Gloria Lanci argues that beyond measuring and quantifying the city from an abstract viewpoint, where places are coded and categorised, artists have the capacity to insinuate themselves through particularities of the urban space, relieved of the burden to commit with precise and realistic representations. That is what I am referring to as 'cartographies from the ground': maps that tell hidden stories, that register unaccounted moments, that pursue concrete, either real or imagined, viewpoints of the daily life in cities (Lanci, 2022. p2). Through the critical exploration of the 'art map and, in particular, the work of the artist Larissa Fassler, this design brief will invite you to consider how a landscape- led approach to masterplanning might be expanded and made more holistic and plural, by employing a 'landscape [arts]-led approach'. (For the purposes of this brief, we will summarise the process of this landscape[arts]- led approach in a Manifesto, see the Glossary and Brief below for a detailed definition) 1.4 Glossary or Key Words + Concepts Collective (adj) (n): Adjective: Denoting a number of persons or things considered as one group or whole. Noun: A collective body or group. Landscape Imaginary (n): The collective imagination, informed and stimulated by the experiences of the material world (Corner, 2006) Manifesto (n): A written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer. Derived from the word 'Manifest', meaning something that is easy to perceive or recognize. And therefore, a manifesto is a statement in which someone makes Temporalities (plural n): The state of existing within or having some relationship with time. "like spatial position, temporality is an intrinsic property of the object" 2.0 The Site O Shieldfield District, Google Maps Shieldfield is a small district in the east of the city and metropolitan borough of Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, England. It is bordered by the City Centre, Heaton, Byker and Sandyford. The area is bordered to the north, east and west by three rivers, Sandyford Burn, The Ouseburn and Pandon Burn respectively. All of which are now culverted underground. The Central Motorway (A167m) traces the old route of Pandon Burn and separates Shieldfield from Newcastle City Centre. The name Shieldfield is considered to be a reference to a shelter in the forest clearing, derived from Anglo-Saxon sources. The area occupies a plateau of Common Land that was, as noted above, historically encircled by rivers, and sat just outside the City Walls. Its topography made it ideal as both pasture for grazing animals and for growing crops and it remained as Common Land until it was 'enclosed and developed in the 18th century. As the Northeast of England