WDM 1_23 Lecture | Moving Horizons. A landscape manifesto

23th March 2023
17.30 (CET) | ZOOM | REGISTRATION LINK

Moving Horizons, design praxis through soil transformation. A Landscape Manifesto
by Vittoria MENCARINI, Ph.D, University of Ferrara; Ravenna Public Administration, Natural Area Office

Respondent: Margherita VANORE, Univerisità IUAV Venezia

General subject Area | landscape architecture; landscape theory; landscape observatory; landscape ecology

Abstract | Moving horizon was born as a doctoral investigation that moves across research and design dimension. It explores the relationship between landscape design and soil transformation, focusing on the mutual effects and potential disciplinary developments aiming at structurally linking the two fields.

The soil is one of the most complex biomaterials on Earth in continuous exchange with the terrestrial systems. With humanity today being Earth’s primary geomorphic agent, the quality of human life and the earth’s environment had never depended more on soil management than it does today.
The starting assumption is that, the soil is a condition of inherent shifting in landscape evolution both in physical and semantic relationship.

The value of soil as an element of planning and design lies in handling live and dynamic physical matter. From being ‘background’ for the built environment, the soil transformations become the ‘foreground’ both in landscape design praxis and in theoretical implications, by embedding the soil as a palimpsest in reading and writing the landscape. The framework produced by this assessment has been condensed in 10 propositions, collected in form of a Landscape Manifesto. A first application of Moving Horizon approach has been developed and tested in the Ravenna Climate Change Adaptation Plan (Italy), by identifying a planning procedure capable of integrating territorial adaptation measures to climate change.

The result is not the proof of a theorem but the discovery of an unexpected point of view. The Moving Horizon approach implicitly criticises traditional landscape practice’s seemingly uncritical reproduction of stereotypical ‘aestheticised’ images. It is not a question of rejecting or abandoning a formal and compositional language, but rather of encouraging a view that favours investigation and observation of reality in its different stratifications offered by embedding the soil as a palimpsest in “reading” and “writing” the landscape.

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VITTORIA MENCARINI
Architect, post degree master in Landscape Architecture, PhD in Landscape Architecture. Her professional practices and research activities move around the relationship between landscape design and soil transformation on several scale of intervention. She supported the Municipality of Ravenna in the draft of the planning of adaptation measure to climate change and landscape projects concerning the preservation of protected areas and design practices focusing on improvement of soil health. Worked as facilitator in participative processes in planning process
(such as General Urban Plan in Ravenna in 2019, Territorial Mapuche Plan Management in 2011 at Pucon, Chile). Since July 2021, she has been working at the Municipality of Ravenna, as designer and building site director in Naturalistic Area office. She is also in charge to the SECAP (Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan) dissemination and implementation.

MARGHERITA VANORE
Architect and PhD, Full Professor in Architectural and Urban Design at the Università Iuav di Venezia, she teaches for the degree courses in Architecture and at the SSIBAP School of Specialization in Architectural and Landscape Heritage. She conducts research on the project for the contemporary city, the landscape and the historical-cultural heritage and was in charge of the local research unit for PRIN 2015 The city as cure and the care of the city. In the Iuav Excellence Department of “Architecture and Arts”, she coordinates the laboratory PRIDE_Pro Research in Integral Design Environment for the Research Infrastructure IR.IDE. Among her publications: Suoli urbani all’ombra dei viadotti (2002), Infrastrutture Culturali (2010); Archaeology’s Places and Contemporary Uses (2011-12-13), Heritage of Water. Patrimonio e paesaggi di bonifica (2015), Necessità dell’oblio. Patrimoni e paesaggi costruiti dall’acqua (2016) Paesaggi in produzione tra terra e acqua (2018), Architetture e spazi di sottovia (2019), Forme e spazi del benessere tra risorse, modelli, regole e valori (2019), Il valore della variazione (2020), Città-paesaggio (2021), #CURACITTÀ Venezia vs Marghera e la città-paesaggio (2021).