Marie Davidová, Kateřina Zímová : COLridor

Abstract

Image 1: Distinguished (Collaborative Collective 2011)

The aim of this transdisciplinary community project COLridor (Davidová, 2017b; Davidová & Zímová, 2017) is to create a situation of eco-systemic coexistence across plant and animal species and abiotic factors in an urban environment through their collaborative co-design. Our case study seeks to support the habitat in Zvonařka, which is part of a larger biocorridor that has developed mainly due to the local railway, adjacent parks, gardens, and a stream in the center of Prague. While most urban planners still believe that cities should densify separately from the rest of nature (illustration Image 1), landscape ecologists and biologists disagree. As Europeans, we believe in compact cities, but we also know that there cannot be nature without people, or vice versa.
As this year's conference Our Nature, focused on nature in the city (Our Nature, 2017), confirms, many species are beginning to migrate to cities, partly due to careless or pre-industrialized agriculture. Our project seeks to motivate the concept of “edible landscape” (Creasy, 2004), culture, and habitation for all through so-called “prototype urban interventions” (Davidová, 2004; Doherty, 2005).

Introduction

Image 2: The first author presents our joint speech on the importance of the bio-corridor at a community meeting at the Nusle Stairs (photo: Michálková 2016)

The old garden of the timber house in Zvonařka and the adjacent Nusle Stairs (Image 2) co-create a mosaic complex of urban greenery, perennial grasslands, private gardens, and ruderal growth along the railway track. The greenery has diverse species composition representing all layers from tree to herbaceous. Some trees, due to their age and habitat, have significant horticultural value, specifically the trees in private gardens on the streets Pod Zvonařkou and Na Klenovce. The green complex is located on a sloping terrain, with the entire area descending to the influx levels of the Botič river and the railway line. The complex forms a significant ecological enclave in the midst of an urbanized environment. The location is ecologically valuable from several perspectives:
- The area is an important nesting and feeding habitat for birds and is a hunting ground for bats.
- The area is valuable due to its species diversity and the presence of nectar plants that provide food for honey-producing insects, which are currently classified among endangered groups with priority protection within EU states.
- The placement of greenery on a pronounced slope has a unique anti-erosion function, thus protecting lower-lying locations, which are heavily urbanized, from landslides.
- The greenery positively contributes to the microclimate of the location, thus preventing temperature extremes typical for urban environments.
- The location is the only corridor for the migration of biota between the adjacent systems of urban greenery – Havlíčkovy sady and Folimanka park. These systems of greenery have no other migration options due to the heavily urbanized environment surrounding them.
- The location has significant hydrological importance due to the rich stratification, biomass concentration, and sloping position for water retention in the landscape and protection against local floods.
Since the area is located in one of the most expensive parts of Prague, there is extraordinary pressure for its development. Proposed projects usually argue that green roofs will be created on site, thus preserving the proportion of greenery. Neither the current nor the proposed metropolitan plan protects the greenery at the location (Institute of Planning and Development Prague, 2016). Personal conversations indicate that its creators are purely urban planners who only outline protected areas from a desk. Moreover, there is a prevailing opinion that cities should densify in construction and nature should have its place outside the city. As also confirmed in its justification, the plan does not take into account details (Kubeš et al., 2014). It is also mentioned that due to a lack of integration with landscape planning, the proposal does not align with the European Commission's strategy on “green infrastructure” (European Commission, 2010), instead introducing the term “landscape infrastructure” (Kubeš et al., 2014). This term does not respect the complexity of the European strategy.
While as Europeans we believe in compact cities, in line with current trends, “smart-compact-green city” (Artmann, Kohler, Meinel, Gan, & Ioa, 2017), we believe that they can also be green. Thus, in 2016, our associations Collaborative Collective (Collaborative Collective, 2012, 2016) and CooLAND (CooLAND, 2016a, 2016b) decided to ensure an ecological preliminary study of the area (Zímová, 2016) to justify the intention of a long-term collaborative project and its fundraising.
In the spring of 2017, we initiated a project to support the local biotope, connecting the non-profit sector, academia, industry, and the local community.

Image 3: Action diagram showing the interaction between associations (Collaborative Collective and CooLAND), academia (FUA TUL, FLD ČZU, FŽP ČZU and FHS KU), the community, and material sponsors (Stora Enso and Rohoblaas). (Davidová 2017)

Methodology:
The project for community co-design utilized a systems-oriented design methodology, “Systems Oriented Design” (Sevaldson, 2012, 2013), particularly its tool “GIGA-Mapping” (Davidová, 2014; Sevaldson, 2011, 2015) (Image 4, Image 5, and Image 6). This all led to full-scale prototyping, or “urban prototypical interventions”, aimed at generating greater changes over time through their intervention (Davidová, 2004; Doherty, 2005). Time-oriented design, “Time-Based Design”, where the project does not end with the finalization of the design, was explored by Birger Sevaldson at the turn of the millennium (Sevaldson, 2004, 2005). In this case, the methodology of co-design, “co-design” (Sanders & Stappers, 2008), has two phases: a) prototype design, b) prototype performance in the urban environment through interaction with the entire ecosystem. Thus, it is a form of “non-anthropocentric architecture” (Hensel, 2013).
The fusion of these process-oriented directions, where the product is also a prototype, led the first author to define a new design direction: Systemic Approach to Architectural Performance, “Systemic Approach to Architectural Performance” (Davidová, 2017a, 2017c; Davidová & Zímová, 2017).

Image 4: The first GIGA-Mapping workshop (photo: Davidová 2017)

Image 5: Detail of the pre-printed GIGA-Map after one of the later workshops (photo: Davidová 2017)

Image 6: Speculative GIGA-Map capturing feedback loops among actors within the community, the council, and the ecosystem (Davidová 2017)

Eco-Systemic Urban Prototypical Interventions
Eco-systemic urban interventions, inspired by urban prototypical interventions from CHORY (CHORA, 2017), can serve as stimuli for the flourishing of the ecosystem. For the COLridor project, we classified three types:

Edible Landscape

Image 7: Seed Bombing Workshop by Kateřina Zímová (photo: Robert Carrithers 2017)

The project aims to expand the concept of edible landscape, where having sufficient food is crucial for the function of the biotope. Since the most valuable species in the area are bats and birds, we constructed an insect hotel on site to help ensure their food supply. And as it often happens, food also needs food. Moreover, there isn't enough food for insects either. In Germany, since the 1980s, there has been an 80% decline in the biomass of flying insects (Vogel, 2017). There are no data for the Czech Republic, but the situation is unlikely to be better. Therefore, as part of a community festival, we organized a “seed bombing” event with flowering plant species, whose flowers will provide nectar for flying insects and whose fruits will serve as food for birds (Image 7).

Housing

Image 8: TreeHugger: The insect hotel made from responsive wood offers a variety of climatic and spatial options to create favorable conditions for insect diversity. This is achieved through the different orientations towards the cardinal points, the shape of the hotel, and the cuts of wood from different areas of the tree trunk. Please also note the public appeal. (photo: Carrithers 2017)

Image 9: Prototype of the responsive wall Ray 2 a) in rather dry April weather, when the wall opens for exchange between the exterior and semi-interior b) shortly after a light April rain, the system closed to prevent moist cold air from penetrating through its boundary into the semi-interior. The photo was taken after four years of the prototype being exposed to weather and biotic conditions near the forest. The prototype was inhabited by blue fungi, algae, and lichens. These regulate the moisture of the wood, thus contributing to its deformation. Also, note the organization of algae colonization in the direction of the fibers of the material and thus further interaction with its moisture. (Davidová, 2017a) (photo: Davidová 2017)

The first prototype in the project that serves as housing is the insect hotel TreeHugger (Image 8). The hotel utilizes the concept of “responsive wood” (Hensel & Menges, 2006), in this case, a massive system from Norwegian folk architecture. The interaction with the climate works in such a way that tangentially cut boards from the trunk have different fiber densities on the left and right sides. Thus, the boards bend, or “deform,” at low relative humidity levels. In such cases, the wall ventilates, and in wet and cold weather, it closes again (Larsen & Marstein, 2000).
TreeHugger further developed a responsive wall Ray, designed by the first author (Davidová, 2013, 2016) (Image 9). Ray 4, designed for TreeHugger, utilizes moderation of deformation depending on the positioning of the wood in the trunk, not only for the overlaps of the boards but to create climatic diversity. Boards from the center of the trunk indeed deform more than boards from the edge of the trunk. This thus creates better diversity of climatic spaces, providing various opportunities for the preferences of different species. This wooden platform also offers housing opportunities for algae, which also moderate the performance of the boards through the wood's moisture (Davidová, 2017a, 2017c).

Social Interaction

Image 10: Morning picnic with birds – Joint mapping of birds led by Kateřina Zímová (photo: Robert Carrithers 2017)

Social interaction (Image 10) provides one of the most crucial influences on the environment and the ecosystem. Without public engagement, our mission would stagnate and could not evolve into a concept of sustainability, defined by Ehrenfeld as the metaphorical opportunity for people and other life to flourish on Earth “forever” (Ehrenfeld & Hoffman, 2013). This goal was amplified by the multi-genre festival EnviroCity (Davidová & Kernová, 2016; Davidová & Pánková, 2017). Performers from a rich selection of genres had one condition, to express themselves in any way regarding the theme of the COLridor project. Thanks to various genres, the project reached a wide range of the public across age and social groups.

Conclusions
To ensure the maintenance of ecological and other functions of the site, it is necessary to preserve the current state of greenery (December 2017). The place enables the creation of a biotope for monitored rare or protected species of bats, birds, and insects. It is essential that the site offers enough food and nesting opportunities. This is especially important because some of them have adapted only to life in cities, and the agricultural landscape is often more dangerous for their chance of survival than the urban one. Achieving this situation requires utilizing the vision of both biotechnology research as well as local communities for co-designing the urban environment and co-living and inhabiting it across species.
It is alarming that although the UN Agenda for Sustainable Development for 2030 calls for collaborative partnerships among all stakeholders and for combating poverty while ensuring economic, social, and technological development in harmony with nature for achieving prosperity (United Nations, 2015), its goals are so anthropocentric that cities and communities are discussed under a different goal (United Nations, 2015, 2016a) than life on earth (United Nations, 2015, 2016b). These goals are not even interconnected. Contrary to this approach, which centers only on humans, our project seeks to demonstrate the relevance of viewing urban areas as part of the entire ecosystem.

Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the VIA Foundation, the Forests of the Czech Republic, Stora Enso, Rothoblaas, EEA funds, the Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences at CZU in Prague, the Faculty of Art and Architecture at the Technical University in Liberec, Collaborative Collective, and CooLAND for supporting the project.

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Marie Davidová, Architect and Researcher, Collaborative Collective & Faculty of Art and Architecture, Technical University of Liberec
Kateřina Zímová, Landscape Ecologist and Researcher, Collaborative Collective & CooLAND