采訪：李方正 翻譯：王鈺

伊麗莎白·莫索普教授是澳大利亞悉尼科技大學(xué)設(shè)計、建筑與建造系系主任、教授，也是Spackman Mossop + Michaels事務(wù)所創(chuàng)始人之一。Spackman Mossop + Michaels事務(wù)所是一個屢獲殊榮的國際事務(wù)所，業(yè)務(wù)范圍為城市策略和景觀設(shè)計。她的研究方向為當(dāng)代景觀設(shè)計、城市化和基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施，參與了多項與海岸生態(tài)修復(fù)、城市景觀基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施設(shè)計相關(guān)的項目、研究、教學(xué)與實踐活動。她曾受邀參加在北京林業(yè)大學(xué)舉辦的2019世界風(fēng)景園林師高峰講壇，《風(fēng)景園林》雜志社有幸對莫索普教授進行了專訪。訪談中莫索普教授結(jié)合自己的研究和實踐，探討了如何將韌性景觀的建設(shè)理念和方法運用到城市基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施建設(shè)和開放空間設(shè)計當(dāng)中，以下是采訪全文。

LAJ：《風(fēng)景園林》雜志社

Mossop：伊麗莎白·莫索普

LAJ：您從事風(fēng)景園林工作近25年，并專注于海灣恢復(fù)計劃，包括著名的新奧爾良和墨西哥灣沿岸災(zāi)后重建以及正在進行的底特律市復(fù)興計劃。您也是路易斯安那州立大學(xué)沿海地區(qū)可持續(xù)發(fā)展工作室的成員。請問您是如何進入這個領(lǐng)域的？參加這些項目時遇到了什么挑戰(zhàn)？您是如何解決的？

Mossop：卡特里娜颶風(fēng)來襲時，我身處路易斯安那州，因此對這一類項目產(chǎn)生了興趣。這個事件影響巨大，幾乎改變了一切，因此我認(rèn)為每個人都應(yīng)當(dāng)參與到重建工作中。當(dāng)時在新奧爾良的會議中，大家都在探討應(yīng)該如何應(yīng)對（這一問題）。我在路易斯安那州立大學(xué)的一些同事也不同程度地參與到了各項工作當(dāng)中。有一位海洋生態(tài)學(xué)家Robert Twilley教授，他對于以科學(xué)家的身份與規(guī)劃師、設(shè)計師合作非常感興趣。因此我們提出了一個構(gòu)想，即創(chuàng)立一個由科學(xué)家、設(shè)計師、規(guī)劃師和工程師組成的工作室。但是這非常困難，因為大家沒有辦法進行（有效的）對話，所以很難達成共識。因此我們第一年的時間都花在了討論并嘗試解決問題上，最終我們確定了一起開展工作的方式。這種跨學(xué)科的合作在實踐中非常普遍，但是在大學(xué)里卻鮮少出現(xiàn)。對這項工作感興趣的工程師、海洋科學(xué)家、建筑師、風(fēng)景園林師共聚一堂，研究生、本科生和博士生也參與其中，同時我們號召大家在整個學(xué)校范圍內(nèi)開展研究工作，地理、宗教研究以及其他不同專業(yè)的教授便也能夠參與其中。這是一項非常有趣、可以廣泛開展的工作，我們不僅做課題研究，也進行教學(xué)活動、舉行講座和專題討論會。

底特律的工作與新奧爾良的工作有關(guān)，因為在新奧爾良的颶風(fēng)過后，許多城市都出現(xiàn)了空城化的問題。大量的房屋消失或被摧毀，致使人們無法回到原來的城市，因而城市中出現(xiàn)了大量的空曠區(qū)域。其中一些空置土地歸城市（政府）所有，他們設(shè)立了“新奧爾良重建局”，與我們學(xué)院的景觀實驗室合作開展項目以研究如何利用這些空置的土地。但是因為他們（新奧爾良重建局）在新奧爾良擁有的錢和資源都很少，所以只能做些像修剪雜草、維持整潔這種幾乎沒有什么花費的工作。即便如此，我們?nèi)赃x擇了一個空置過半的社區(qū)，在25個住宅地塊上進行試驗，其中規(guī)模最大的試驗采取了包括花卉混播、樹木種植等一系列不同的策略。有些策略更適合在沒有也不會重建房屋的地方應(yīng)用，比如鄰近高速公路的地方。因此在該項目中我們嘗試了很多策略，以確認(rèn)哪種策略是最成功的。新奧爾良市還非常關(guān)心周邊居民和社區(qū)的需求，這也是我們使用很多花卉的原因。在此（研究的）基礎(chǔ)上，新奧爾良市采取這種方式管理了許多空置土地。

底特律市也存在因各種不同原因造成的土地空置問題，我想，可能是由于過去的50年美國許多制造行業(yè)的消失，致使底特律市出現(xiàn)了空城化。底特律市的項目目標(biāo)更為遠大，它是一個整體社區(qū)的規(guī)劃，涉及景觀修復(fù)和現(xiàn)有房屋的重建或翻新，還要培訓(xùn)當(dāng)?shù)鼐用袷蛊鋮⑴c到景觀建設(shè)中，因此這個規(guī)劃包含了住房、培訓(xùn)、就業(yè)、景觀多個方面的內(nèi)容。景觀設(shè)計包括公園建設(shè)和道路綠化，但也有一些僅針對空置土地采取的策略。我們種植很多經(jīng)濟作物，或者進行花卉混播。這項工作仍在進行當(dāng)中。這是一項不尋常的工作，特別是針對空置土地較多的城市，尤其像底特律和新奧爾良這樣資源匱乏并且一直在收縮而非增長的城市。

LAJ： 您 在The Hard Habitat of Coastal Armoring一書中定義了一個詞“hard habitat”。您是如何看待它與韌性景觀的關(guān)系的？或者說“hard habitat”在韌性景觀中扮演什么角色？

Mossop：“hard habitat”（低質(zhì)量生境）這個詞來自伯克利大學(xué)Richard Hindle教授在書中寫的一篇文章。有趣的是，他開展這項研究源于他在悉尼港看到了海堤，多年來他通過海堤穿孔增加生物棲息地，隨后他做了一系列研究，最近的項目是在西雅圖水域進行的現(xiàn)場作業(yè)。紐約Ken Smith工作室關(guān)于鮭魚棲息地的項目也在推進。所有這些項目都是對傳統(tǒng)的用墻壁、樁或金屬材質(zhì)做成的硬質(zhì)護岸進行改造。因此我們思考如何軟化它們，使之更有利于生物棲息，開始制造各種各樣的混合物，盡管它們也很堅硬且不夠自然，但可以通過改造為不同種類的動物提供棲息環(huán)境。在這種情況下我們發(fā)現(xiàn)自己（的工作）與城市發(fā)展如此息息相關(guān)。純自然的棲息地已經(jīng)不存在了，例如在悉尼港，過去其自然邊界是200 m的紅樹林；現(xiàn)在，它僅僅是一堵墻。很多時候，開發(fā)的壓力不允許恢復(fù)這種自然的生態(tài)，因為這種自然的生態(tài)通常是非常無序且昂貴的。相反地，我們需要構(gòu)筑像防護墻一樣的邊界（來提供保護）。因此，我們必須極具創(chuàng)造力，必須進行研究以了解如何精準(zhǔn)地對其進行生態(tài)化改造以創(chuàng)造出豐富的生境，這將使悉尼港和城市河流變得更加健康并且讓水質(zhì)得到改善。

LAJ：您參與了密西西比三角洲項目，提出了“與水共生”的理念。能否請您分享一下在做這個項目時遇到的最大的挑戰(zhàn)是什么？風(fēng)景園林師在三角洲修復(fù)與重建工作中的職責(zé)是什么？

Mossop：從三角洲的尺度上，在密西西比河項目中，工程師、生態(tài)學(xué)家、社會學(xué)家與了解航運導(dǎo)航的人們建立了廣泛的合作。工程用水和沉積物給這項工作帶來了許多技術(shù)挑戰(zhàn)。我認(rèn)為在美國，最難解決的是社會、文化和政治問題。就美國而言，密西西比河已被陸軍工程兵團控制數(shù)十年，這在很大程度上是基于工程學(xué)思維建造的（防護工程），即如何預(yù)防洪水、利于通航，即只要船能沿河流順利進入海灣（目標(biāo)就達到了）。因此對河流進行的這種工程設(shè)計和通過預(yù)防洪水而創(chuàng)造的景觀產(chǎn)生了許多難以預(yù)料的后果?，F(xiàn)在，三角洲正在消失，因為長期以來密西西比河的沉積物不斷形成三角洲的陸地，所有沉積物都直接流入海中。在這次“改變航線”競賽中，我們在海岸可持續(xù)性工作室中探討了多種想法。這些想法千差萬別，需要對河流進行重新設(shè)計使其成為一種景觀綜合體，從河流中開辟新的分流點以使沉積物進入該區(qū)域，再次開始建造陸地。這是一項耗資數(shù)十億美元的龐大工程。在美國沒有先例，因此人們花了很多時間研究荷蘭的案例，許多來自地方的和參與大型國際工程的工程師和規(guī)劃師們從中都學(xué)到了很多相關(guān)的技術(shù)。這是完全不同的思維方式。在美國，不同州或不同級別的政府之間幾乎沒有協(xié)作，因此很難想象這樣的事情會發(fā)生。但是在三角洲發(fā)生的事情是如此極端，以至于在100年內(nèi)所有的土地都將消失而且現(xiàn)在正在消失。因此如果（現(xiàn)在）不開始建造陸地，那么海岸將不斷后退。有時我對此仍抱有希望，但有時我認(rèn)為一切都會消失，但是我也不知道（未來究竟會怎樣）。目前我還是覺得這一切都會消失。

LAJ：我們都知道您是悉尼和新奧爾良Spackman Mossop + Michaels事務(wù)所創(chuàng)始人之一。您已經(jīng)參與了很多城市基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施、開放空間類的項目。您是如何將韌性景觀運用到這些城市空間類項目中的？

Mossop：我們一直對公共空間非常感興趣，我們大部分的工作就是設(shè)計公園和公共空間。從2000年左右開始，許多工作就與基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施有關(guān)。我們對城市系統(tǒng)以及城市設(shè)計與城市規(guī)劃的交叉越來越感興趣，并且非常關(guān)注韌性相關(guān)的問題以及城市景觀如何增強城市韌性。景觀系統(tǒng)、水、景觀生態(tài)對城市形態(tài)塑造和城市發(fā)展非常重要。因為沒有這些條件的話不可能實現(xiàn)城市的韌性發(fā)展。例如，新奧爾良總是泛濫成災(zāi)，像沼澤一樣，并且陷入了不可持續(xù)的循環(huán)中。但是在城市尺度上解決這個問題非常困難。我認(rèn)為中國也許更可能實現(xiàn)，因為其似乎有更大的能力來影響或規(guī)劃整個社區(qū)或整個城市。在美國很少有傳統(tǒng)的土地規(guī)劃項目。澳大利亞的規(guī)劃項目很多，但是要想實現(xiàn)大尺度的規(guī)劃非常復(fù)雜。我們傾向于在一個社區(qū)、一個工程、一個公園或一條高速公路的規(guī)模上開展工作，但關(guān)于韌性的原則是相同的。我們相信無論什么問題都要以相同的思維方式來解決，增強韌性以更加適應(yīng)氣候變化，并努力使當(dāng)?shù)馗甙菪院蜕鐣叫裕▓D1）。

1 底特律菲茨杰拉德社區(qū)重振計劃Fitzgerald Neighborhood revitalization plan

LAJ：您能否可以談?wù)勱P(guān)于您的一些獲獎項目，比如堪培拉的Bowen Place人行通道、新奧爾良的Press Street花園、悉尼的庫克和菲利普公園，它們的成功之處在哪里？

Mossop：這些項目中很多都是基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施項目，可能是地下通道、火車站或高速公路（圖2～4）。我們對這些基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施類的景觀越來越感興趣，并且將城市景觀視為基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施系統(tǒng)的一部分。我認(rèn)為我們的教育方式，會使人們?nèi)ニ伎蓟▓@的歷史，去設(shè)計美麗的公園、公共廣場或校園。20世紀(jì)90年代后期，許多人開始思考我們大量時間生活所處的景觀，例如商店、街道、停車場、公交車站、火車站，所有這些非常普通的景觀才是真正重要的人居環(huán)境。我們開始以不同的方式思考它們，僅僅把汽車移到別處是不夠的，它們需要承載更多的功能，必須是公共的、美麗的、有樹蔭的、能調(diào)節(jié)小氣候的。我們必須將水儲存在土壤中，要知道，所有這些都必須是對生態(tài)、社會、文化有貢獻的。我們還要思考如何通過讓自然做功使一切變得更好，努力找到現(xiàn)有條件之間的關(guān)系以及我們創(chuàng)造的生態(tài)系統(tǒng)是怎樣的，有時這可能是來自該地方的歷史，有時可能是通過修復(fù)找回一些東西。但是通常來講我們工作之處是非常城市化或混亂的地方，這實際上是某種新形式的生態(tài)，也需要在我們現(xiàn)有的干燥、骯臟的城市環(huán)境中尋找能夠蓬勃發(fā)展的系統(tǒng)，比如說找到可以在這種地方生存的植物，這是新自然主義生態(tài)種植設(shè)計的理念。

2 Bowen Place 人行通道Bowen Place Crossing

3 Press Street花園Press Street Gardens

4 庫克和菲利普公園Cook and Phillip Park

LAJ：當(dāng)前我們面臨著全球氣候變暖和生物多樣性的挑戰(zhàn)，您認(rèn)為風(fēng)景園林師應(yīng)該如何建造韌性景觀以應(yīng)對這些問題？

Mossop：這是一個很大的問題，也是我一直在思考的問題。我有一個16歲的女兒，她即將面對全球變暖的所有挑戰(zhàn)。幾年前我參加了一個會議，風(fēng)景園林師Kristina Hill做了一個驚人的演講，她說我們無法將全球變暖控制在一定程度，現(xiàn)在我們還有8年左右時間，氣候?qū)⒉辉俜€(wěn)定，我覺得這很可怕，我們能維持穩(wěn)態(tài)的時間屈指可數(shù)，這之后我們不知道會怎么樣。在過去的幾年中，我們已經(jīng)看到了很多全球性的可怕事件，一些大規(guī)模的移民，例如敘利亞難民?？纯矗ㄟ@些事件）造成的混亂，我們鄰近的幾個太平洋島嶼，那里的問題已經(jīng)非常嚴(yán)重。由于澳大利亞變得越來越熱，人們不得不為天氣圖設(shè)定一種新的顏色。自2000年以來，澳大利亞的城市遭受了長期的干旱威脅。這是我所看到的（全球氣候變暖現(xiàn)象），特別是許多人口聚集的低海拔沿海地區(qū)將直接受到海平面上升的影響。因此，這個問題變得非常緊迫。我發(fā)現(xiàn)澳大利亞的政客們對氣候變化應(yīng)對遲緩、一無所知，美國也是這樣。2019年9月20日，我們進行了國際氣候大罷工。教授們和我所有的學(xué)生都參加了大游行。我的同事們都在思考這對我們意味著什么，我們?nèi)绾尾拍苤浦箍觳臀幕?，如何制止人們將塑料瓶投入海中，如何實現(xiàn)更加循環(huán)的經(jīng)濟。風(fēng)景園林師確實在思考這些問題，我認(rèn)為人們也正在自覺地考慮這些問題。我們的城市需要遍植樹木，我們的街道需要通過設(shè)計以保持健康。我們必須徹底改變我們的交通方式，這將使能源結(jié)構(gòu)發(fā)生變化，而且我們必須倡導(dǎo)低碳，我們有很多可以做的事情。作為教育者，我們必須改變教育方式，派學(xué)生參與減緩氣候變化的相關(guān)工作，這其實是一個很大的文化問題。當(dāng)我看到全世界的青少年都在采取行動時，我認(rèn)為這確實可能是文化變革的時刻。作為風(fēng)景園林師，我們可以思考這些問題，可以思考海平面上升問題，可以改變城市設(shè)計的方式。當(dāng)我看到這些憤怒的少年們時，我也更加充滿希望，他們說（氣候變暖）必須遏制，這是一場巨大的文化運動。在景觀設(shè)計中，至少我們知道要如何做出改變，我們只需要找到擴大影響力的辦法。這對風(fēng)景園林師來說是一大挑戰(zhàn)，技術(shù)問題容易解決，社會和政治變革卻很難進行。我認(rèn)為風(fēng)景園林師對這些問題尚沒有足夠的思考。如果只是從一般意義上、從傳統(tǒng)的角度考慮如何做設(shè)計，那僅僅是設(shè)計師在與設(shè)計師交談，而不是與其他所有人交談。我們應(yīng)當(dāng)思考如何更好地傳遞我們所做工作的價值，如何讓更多的人了解設(shè)計師可以做什么以及設(shè)計思想的力量。當(dāng)你開始解釋（這些問題）時，我認(rèn)為這是大學(xué)面臨的真正挑戰(zhàn)，因為我們必須以不同的方式教育大眾，才能培養(yǎng)出新型的設(shè)計師和風(fēng)景園林師，（讓風(fēng)景園林設(shè)計）變得越來越有影響力。

圖片來源：

圖1、3、4 ? Spackman Mossop + Michaels事務(wù)所；圖 2 ? Brett Boardman。

錄音整理：馬子迪

Sustainable Coastal Planning and Design: Interview with Professor Elizabeth Mossop, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

Interviewer: LI Fangzheng Translator: WANG Yu

Professor Elizabeth Mossop is the director of the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building,University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. She is also one of the co-founders of Spackman Mossop +Michaels, an award winning international office for urban strategy and landscape architecture. Her research focuses on contemporary landscape design,urbanization and infrastructure. She has participated in a number of projects, research, teaching and practice activities related to coastal ecological restoration and urban landscape infrastructure design. She was invited to attend 2019 International Landscape Architects Symposium held at Beijing Forestry University, and theLandscape ArchitectureJournal was honored to interview her. In the interview, Professor Mossop discussed with her research and practice how to apply the construction concept and methods of resilient landscape to urban infrastructure construction and open space design.Here is the interview script.

LAJ:Landscape ArchitectureJournal

Mossop: Elizabeth Mossop

LAJ: You have been involved in the landscape architecture field for nearly 25 years, and are focusing on the planning for the reconstruction of Gulf, including the famous post-hurricane reconstruction of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and the ongoing revitalization of Detroit. You are also the member of the coastal state sustainability studio of the Louisiana State University. How did you get into this field? What challenges have you encountered when participated in these projects? And how did you tackle them?

Mossop: I became interested in this kind of work because I was in Louisiana when hurricane Katrina hit the city. It was such a huge event,it took over everything. So I think everybody became completely involved in these questions about reconstruction. I went to meetings in New Orleans, and people were talking about what to do.And then some of my colleagues at the Louisiana State University were also involved in different aspects of what was happening. And one professor named Robert Twilley who is a coastal ecologist became very interested in what it was like to work with planner and designers, as a scientist. So we developed this idea to make a studio that would have scientists, designers, planners and engineers.So that was very difficult, of course. Because nobody could talk to each other, there was no common understanding. So we spent about the first year just talking about things and trying to work things out, and eventually we figured out how to work together. I have been in practice where this cross disciplinary work is very common,but in the university, it was not at all. It was a small room of people from engineering, coastal science, architecture, landscape architecture who were very interested in this. We brought graduate,undergraduate and Ph.D. students. We also made a call for research projects across the university,so other professors also became involved, from geography, religious studies and all kinds of different fields. It was a very interesting wide work.We did research projects, we did some teaching and we held lectures and symposia.

The work in Detroit was related to the work in New Orleans, because after the hurricane in New Orleans, a lot of the city was vacant. A lot of houses were gone or destroyed and people didn’t come back, so large areas of the city was very empty. Some of that vacant land was owned by the city, and they have an organization called the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority. They engaged with the Landscape Laboratory that we had in the school of Landscape Architecture to do experimental projects to see what you could do with this vacant land. But they had very little money and very little resources in New Orleans.What they did is just mowing the grass to make it neat, in that amount of money was almost nothing.But we took one neighborhood that was about half empty. We did 25 house lots, and we did the biggest experiment from flowering meadows to tree plantations, with a whole variety of different strategies. Some strategies were more suitable where there were no houses, and no houses would come back, like close to the freeway. So the project tested a whole lot of strategies to see which would be most successful. The City was also very concerned with what the neighborhood people and the community would like, which is why we used so many flowers.On the basis of this the City used this approach as a basis to manage a lot of their vacant land.

The City of Detroit has many of the same vacancy issues for different reasons, because, I guess in the last 50 years, a lot of manufacturing industries in the US have gone away, a lot of Detroit was also vacant. The project in Detroit was much more ambitious. It was a whole neighborhood, and involved a plan for the landscape restoration and the reconstruction or the renovation of existing houses and also training local people to do the landscape construction. So it has the housing component and training and employment piece and the landscape piece. The landscape design involved making a park, and a green-way, but there were also strategies for just vacant lots. Where there were many lots together,we made a little commercial plot for crops.Otherwise it was flowering meadows again. So that work is still ongoing. It is an unusual kind of work,specific to cities with a lot of vacant land. The particular sets of conditions common to Detroit and New Orleans are few resources and the cities are now shrinking instead of growing.

LAJ: You defined the term “hard habitat”in the bookThe Hard Habitat of Coastal Armoring. What do you think is related to the resilience landscape? Or what role does hard habitat play in building a resilient landscape?

Mossop: This term about “hard habitat”comes from an essay which Richard Hindle wrote in the book. He is a professor at Berkeley. It’s very interesting because he started this project looking at seawalls in Sydney harbor, where for many years they have begun to modify the seawalls just by putting little openings in them to increase the habitat, and he goes on to look at a series of much more recent projects, in the Seattle water front which is Field Operations. The project which has salmon habitat also approaching in New York done by Ken Smith Workshop. In all these projects, it’s all about this hard and constructed water edges,that traditionally has just been walls or piling or metal. Thinking about how to modify them to make them more habitat friendly, so we started to get this strange kind of mixture. These hybrid things,although they are still hard and unnatural, they can be modified to allowing habitation by different kinds of species. It’s the situation we find ourselves in so much with urban development. The natural habitat is gone. In Sydney Habor for example, the natural edge would be 200 meters of mangroves.Now it is just a wall. Very often the pressure of the development doesn’t allow restoration of this natural ecologies that are often very messy and expensive. Instead we have a wall, or something like that. So we have to be very creative, and we have to do the research to try to understand how we can modify them exactly and still create a rich ecology,that will keep Sydney Harbor and these urban rivers more healthy and improve water quality.

LAJ: You have been involved in the Mississippi Delta project and proposed the concept of “building with water”. Can you share with us the biggest challenges you have encountered in this project? What responsibility does the landscape architect have in the reconstruction of the delta?

Mossop: Looking at the whole Mississippi at the scale of delta, there’s very much a collaboration with engineers and ecologists and sociologists and with people who understand shipping navigation. It brings many technical challenges about engineering water and sediment. I think in the US, the most difficult questions certainly are the social and culture and political questions. If we look at the US, the Mississippi has been controlled for decades by the Army Corps of Engineers. It is very much an engineering mind set, which is about how to stop flooding and facilitate shipping. So it’s about getting the ships from all the way up to river out into the Gulf. So there have been very many unintended consequences of this engineering of the river and creation of this landscape through the prevention of flooding. Now the delta itself is disappearing, because historically the sediment from Mississippi has continued to build that delta land, and you put it all inside the levies and all the sediment just goes straight out to sea. The ideas we explored in the Coastal Sustainability Studio in this Changing Course Competition, there are different kinds of proposals. There are all variations of this idea to re-engineer the river to make another kind of landscape hybrid, so to open up new distributary from the river to allow the sediment to come into this areas to start building land again.This is big engineering, billions of dollars. There’s no tradition of that in the US, so people spent a lot of time researching Dutch precedents, a lot of engineers and planners from local and also from big international engineering firms to learn a lot about this sort of techniques. It just completely different way of thinking. In the US, there’s very little coordination between different states, or different levels of government. So it’s very hard to imagine how it might be possible for something like this to happen. But what’s happening in that part of the delta is so extreme that in 100 years, all of that land will be gone and it’s disappearing now.So if they don’t start building land, the coast will just come back and back. Sometimes I feel quite hopeful about it, but sometimes I think it’s all going to be disappear, so I don’t know. At the moment I think it’s all going to disappear.

LAJ: We all know that you are one of the co-founders of Spackman Mossop & Michaels based in Sydney and New Orleans. You have participated in many projects, including urban infrastructure, open space and so on. What do you think about applying resilient landscape to projects in cities?

Mossop: We have always been very interested in public land, most of our work has been parks and public open space. And since about 2000, a lot of work to do with infrastructure. We became more and more interested in urban systems and the intersection about urban design and urban planning,and very focused on this question about resilience and about what the role of the urban landscape can be to increase resilience. It’s very important for urban form and urban development to be formed by the landscape systems, the water, the landscape ecology. Because without that, it’s almost impossible for the city to develop in a resilient way.For example, New Orleans is like a swamp. It will always flood and trapped in this unsustainable cycle.But it’s very difficult to work at that kind of city scale. I think China perhaps has more opportunity,because there seems to be more ability to influence or plan to whole neighborhood or a whole city. In the US, there’s very little conventional land planning.In Australia, there’s more planning, but it’s still very complex to realise large scale plans. We tend to operate at the scale of a neighborhood, a project,one park, or one highway, but it’s the same principles about resilience. We are informed by whatever the problems is, we are always solving the problem using the same kind of mind set about more resilience to climate change and try to make places more inclusive and more socially equitable (Fig. 1).

LAJ: Your award-winning projects like Bowen Place Crossing in Canberra and Press Street Gardens in New Orleans, and Sydney’s Cook and Phillip Park. Can you talk to us about these projects, and where do you think their main success is?

Mossop: Quite a lot of the projects are infrastructure projects, it could be an underpass,railway station or a highway (Fig. 2-4). We became much more interested in these infrastructure landscapes and to think about urban landscape as an infrastructure system. I guess the way we are educated, you would think about the history of gardens, you would design beautiful parks, or public squares or campus. A lot of people in the late 90s started to think about the other landscapes where we spend our time, that we actually live in, like going to the shops, streets, parking lots,bus stops, railway stations, all these very ordinary banal landscapes are really just as important, which people inhabit. We began to think about them very differently, they have to do much more, it’s not enough just to move cars around. It’s public space, it has to be beautiful, it has to have tree canopy, it has to moderate the climate, we have to store water in the soil, you know, all of this has to be ecological, social, has to contribute to culture. We are also trying to think about how to use natural processes to make things work better, so trying to find the relationship between what are the conditions you have, and what is the ecological system you can create, sometimes that might be the ecological system that comes from the history of the place, that might be something that is restorative, we were trying to put something back. But quite often the places we work are very urbanized or very disturbed, so it’s really some kind of new version of some original kind of ecology,also about trying to find systems that can thrive, in this urban environment that we have, the hard, the dry, the dirty, you know, it’s difficult. So we need to find the kind of plants that can survive, this is the idea about new ecology.

LAJ: Now we face global climate and biodiversity challenges, how do you think landscape architects should build resilient landscapes to meet these issues?

Mossop: It’s a big question, but it’s a question I have been thinking about a lot. I have a daughter who is 16. She is going to face all the challenges about global warming just like you will in your long lives. I was in a conference a couple of years ago. If you know landscape architect Kristina Hill, she did a terrifying presentation. She was talking about the issue that we are failing to hold global warming to one degree, now we have 8 more years, and the climate will no longer be stable.I find it quite chilling we have this little piece of stability left, and after that, we have no idea. In the last few years, we have seen terrible global events,some big migrations, like the Syrian refugees. Look at the chaos that caused, we are close to a few Pacific islands, where the problem are already very desperate. I see Australia get hotter and hotter, they had to invent a new color for the weather map. In Australia, since 2000, we have some long periods of drought in the city. I see all of these impacts,particularly when we think about the concentration of population in many of these low-lying coastal areas, they will be directly impacted by sea level rise. So the problem has become incredibly urgent.When I look at the politicians in Australia who are so slow, who are unintelligent about climate change,and in the US, I see nothing is happening. But also on September 20th, we had the international climate strike. All my students and professors went to the big march. In my faculty, we think what does this means to us, how can we stop making fast fashion, how can we stop putting plastic bottles into the sea, how can we have a more circular economy. Landscape architects are really thinking about these questions, I think people are thinking about these questions in a disciplinary way. I think about urban trees, we have to have more urban trees everywhere, we have to design streets to be healthy.We have to completely change our transport system,that will make such a change in energy and we have to decarbonize the economy, there are many things we can do. As educators, we have to change education. We are sending our students out there to stop climate change. It really is a big cultural question. When I see those teenagers taking action all over the world, I do think might be this moment for culture change. As landscape architects, we can think about the problems. We can think about sea level rise. We can change our way of designing cities.I am also a little more hopeful when I see these angry teenagers. They are saying this has to stop. It’s a giant cultural movement. In landscape architecture,at least we have ideas to things we can do to change,we just find ways to be more influential. That is a big challenge for landscape architecture. The technical problems are easy to solve, the social and political changes are more difficult to make. I don’t think landscape architects have thought enough about these questions. If you think about design more generally, historically, there’s designers talking to designers rather than talking to everybody else.How can we communicate better the value of what we do, how can we get more people to understand what designers can do, and the power of design ideas. When you start explaining, I think these are the real challenges in the university, because I think we have to educate people differently to create these new kinds of designers and landscape architects to be more and more influential.

Sources of Figures:

Fig. 1, 3, 4 ? Spackman Mossop + Michaels; Fig. 2 ? Brett Boardman.

Recording Collector: MA Zidi