STUDIO ETH Zürich
Spring 2023

A Landscape Room of Commons: Regenerative Engagement in Zurich NorthLeonie Ismene Ehrler, Serena Neuenschwander, Paulo Olivato, and Livie Weidkuhn

There is a truce on the northern edges of Zurich. On the side of the urban footprint, a tendency for densification internal to the urban fabric. On the side of farms and protected areas, strong regulation creates a barrier to their shrinking. Stable borders invite a rearrangement of the landscape and agroecological relations on another level of participation and engagement between the inhabitants of these areas, workers, occasional users, as well as non-human agents such as soil, water, and air, among others.

Some initiatives of agricultural production supported by the community around the city and present in the study area inspire the proposal of a broad and integrated territorial vision facing the challenges of social transformations, consumption-food production, and climate change. Could we think of a reordering that can, at the same time, regenerate the soil and the agroecological fabric and re-approach the consumer to the productive processes through arrangements based on solidarity action? Can we delineate other landscape rooms in the metropolitan region?

Acknowledgements

Photographs and images by authors unless otherwise indicated.

The project texts were developed within the LUS Methodology Seminar SS 2023 „Research Methods in Landscape and Urban Studies:Writing Urban Landscapes of the Anthropocene“, Dr Nitin Bathla. The chapters above have been edited for consistency and accuracy by the MAS editorial team: Nancy Couling, Alice Clarke and Cristina Fusco.

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ETH Zürich D-ARCH

Programme Director
Milica Topalović, Assoc. Professor
Chair of Architecture and Territorial Planinng

Programme Co-ordinator
Dr. Nancy Couling

EPFL ENAC

Programme Director
Paola Viganò, Professor
Habitat Research Center

Programme Co-ordinator
Dr. Tommaso Pietropolli