The UN has
called for a decade of ecosystem restoration from 2021 to 2030, aimed at
reversing centuries of damage to ecosystems, addressing climate change, food
and water security, and creating an unparalleled opportunity for job creation.
For architects, designers and
urban planners, this
decade calls for a shift in focus, onto exploring the potential for architecture and design in
combatting emerging global challenges, and preparing cities for the future.
It also represents a chance for the industry to take on board new, and more meaningful goals, and to embrace a more regenerative and restorative role: with schemes that don’t just extract value from a site, but observe and address the specific environmental and societal challenges that each one presents.
As cities increasingly look to sequester carbon, enhance water security, improve air quality, and adapt urban shorelines to rising sea levels, so our role must, and will change.
This
revised approach calls on architects,
designers and urban planners to involve local communities more than ever, drawing on local knowledge
and local understanding of longstanding
eco-systems, and
empowering local communities to ensure the successful delivery, and ongoing
stewardship of the local environment they know so well – urban or natural.
Rather than focusing our attention on instantly constructed outcomes, ecosystem
restoration presents the challenge of growing and evolving socially sustainable
solutions over time, from the ground up.
As part of
the goals for the decade of ecosystem restoration, the UN specifically links
outcomes for the environment to sustainable development outcomes, for social
equity and economic prosperity. Whether we are working in international
development, policy making, or architecture and urban design therefore, the
decade calls on us to step out of our silos and look to how disciplines can
inform one another to reach these shared goals. At the same time as presenting
opportunities to deliver resilience for our connected urban centres, this decade
will look to restore the livelihoods of communities including agro-ecology
farmers along the Mekong and nomadic grazers across the Mongolian step.
Hassell is an international design practice, with projects in some of the most over developed parts of the world, and also in some of its most vulnerable regions. Recently we have worked on a project set up by The Rockefeller Foundation to make the South City San Francisco Bay Area more resilient in the face of dynamic threats including rising sea levels, storm water flooding and earthquakes. The project is one that has taught us how natural systems and community initiatives can combine to offer up sustainable and long-term restorative solutions to complex global challenges.
Working with community
collaborators and other specialists, as part of an international design
collective, the year-long program combined the creativity, knowledge and
experience of residents, public officials and local, national and international
experts to develop inventive, community-based solutions – seeking out an
alternative approach to the hard-edged, engineering based interventions such as
concrete protective barriers, that have previously failed the region.
The project commenced
with a detailed research and analysis phase of the Bay Area, community by
community, giving way to a responsive design strategy, to redesign the region’s
network of creeks and streets as green linear corridors for water management
and community gathering – transforming the regional structure from a vulnerable
loop into a connected and resilient network. The project also aims to align
with local schools on higher ground to collect, treat and reuse water, as well
as making them better equipped as community shelter points in times of
disaster.
On a day-to-day level,
this approach is designed to bring communities closer to the creek and to the
Bay itself, to enjoy the waterside and the healthy and active lifestyle that it
offers; returning a historical connection between communities and the Bay that
has been lost with recent urban development. It also includes replanting local
species of flora and fauna within public spaces to support the biodiversity
needed to create native landscapes that are more resilient to extreme weather
events.
Throughout the project
the design team actively sought and drew on local South City voices,
transforming a vacant heritage building into a community meeting place, design
hub, education centre and display space. The centre
became a storefront from which the community could come to learn about the
project and chat with the design team, and from which the design team could
hear from community partners and talk to city and county officials. Alongside
this physical space, the team also used social media channels to widen community engagement and reach.
The project, ‘Resilient by Design’, is a good example of where principles of architecture, urban planning, eco-restoration, and community engagement converge. It has taught us the value in turning back to nature for the solution to future global challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, human poverty and migration. Ultimately it has taught us that we need to use humility as our strength when it comes to understanding and facilitating nature’s own systems, when looking to implement large scale design interventions to restore, rebalance and protect natural environments and ways of life. It’s a project we hope will help to prepare us for the decade to come, as the role of design moves towards connecting the environment and communities in the restoration process.
