Lea Johanna Hartmeyer
Flowscapes
The forest formerly known as: Reimagining forest infrastructure as an agent of care
Starting from an understanding of the Anthropocene as a call to care, this project examines how care thinking can be translated into landscape design strategies. By establishing three domains of care (repair, relate, reduce) for spatial development in the Zwischenstadt of Parkstad (NL), the role of forest and forestry in imagining a more caring relationship between landscape and urbanscape, human and other than human, is explored.
This is done by remapping and redesigning the whole territory of Parkstad as a forest, which enables the landscape typology to become the principal agent of development – capable of environmentally and ecologically (repair) transforming the region, but also reframing it spatially (relate), while providing alternatives for housing and public space development in the current shrinking condition (reduce).
In order to facilitate this caring role of the forest, emphasis is put on care for the forest by humans through establishing responsibility schemes and maintenance plans.