Productive Urban Landscapes

Research and practice around the CPUL design concept

18 Berlin community gardens were part of the winning project, apart from Spiel/Feld also the Nachbarschaftsgarten Wiecker Straße. (source: Monika Egerer 2020)

Spiel/Feld Marzahn is part of project to win UN Biodiversity Award

Last week, the Wild Pollinators Project received an Award for Biological Diversity in the UN Decade contest by the German Offices of the United Nations’ Decade on Biodiversity. Spiel/Feld Marzahn has been one of the partners in the project led by the National History Museum Berlin [Museum für Naturkunde Berlin] and the Technical University of…

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Bohn&Viljoen’s 1998 proposal for integrating urban agriculture into Sheffield’s Manor Park estate (source: Bohn&Viljoen Architects 1999)

Nature Food: CPULs enable the spatial integration of urban horticulture.

We were very interested to read a Perspective article, The hidden potential of urban horticulture, in the March 2020 edition of the journal Nature Food. The article by Jill L. Edmondson et al. from the University of Sheffield, UK, assesses the potential contribution that urban horticulture (UH) can make to the fresh fruit and vegetable…

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Chatterjee et al. refer to this Integrated Vertical Farming System at Tripura, India, developed and live tested by ICAR Research Complex. (source: Singh, A. KVK South Tripura 2015)

The vision of productive urban landscapes is horizontal and vertical.

February saw the publication of the book chapter Implication of Urban Agriculture and Vertical Farming for Future Sustainability by Anwesha Chatterjee, Sanjit Debnath and Harshata Pal. It takes stock of global urban agriculture thought and practice as well as envisioning a sustainable food-focused urban future for Indian cities. Of interest to us is the strong,…

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View of Bohn&Viljoen’s exhibit at Cuba. La singularidad del diseño (source: Jimena Acosta 2019)

CPUL work exhibited at Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City

Tomorrow, the art and design exhibition Cuba. La singularidad del diseño will open in the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City. Photographs from Bohn&Viljoen’s project Laboratories of Urban Agriculture are shown in this exhibition co-curated by Mexican curators Jimena Acosta and Inbal Miller. Cuba. La singularidad del diseño opens as part of Mexican Design…

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Academic visitor Akane Bessho, University of Tokyo, and Prof. André Viljoen, University of Brighton (source: Dong Chu 2019)

Welcome academic visitor Akane Bessho

We are warmly welcoming our academic visitor Akane Bessho, a second-year doctoral student at the Department of Urban Engineering, University of Tokyo, Japan. Akane is experienced in the theory and practice of urban agricultural design. She received her Bachelor’s degree (BFA) in Architectural Design from Maryland Institute College of Art (2016) with her architectural design…

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Cover of the publication (source: Urban Design International www 2019)

New publication Urban Design for Food Systems out now

We are happy to share the announcement (on 7th July) of a special issue of Urban Design International on “Urban Design for Food Systems” that June Komisar and Joe Nasr guest edited. Extract from the issue’s introduction: The focus of this special issue of Urban Design International is […] the food system, recognizing that this…

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Opening slide from Prof. Howard Davis’ presentation at the 26th ISUF  (source: Howard Davis 2019)

Continuous Productive Industrial Landscapes

During “Cities as Assemblages”, the 2019 International Seminar on Urban Form (ISUF) held in Nicosia, Cyprus, in early July, Prof. Howard Davis from the School of Architecture and Environment at University of Oregon presented a new concept for Continuous Productive Industrial Landscapes. Reflecting on the needs for large vibrant cities like London and New York…

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Architect and food thinker Carolyn Steel refers to CPUL concept in her new article

“Food is the tissue of civilization, weaving cities and countries together. In her essay, architect and food thinker Carolyn Steel provides a powerful prompt for us to reconsider the geographic and societal interdependency of urban centers and food-providing ecosystems and to find a way to move beyond the perils of the modern industrial food complex.”…

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2010 United Nations’ policy report more relevant than ever!

One of the first publications Dong and Katrin looked at in their joint research is the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies’ policy report on cities, biodiversity and governance published in October 2010. Given the current urgency of climate action, this report could not be more timely. Already in 2010, it made reference to…

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CPUL research in China

Research on Urban Productive Landscape Practices, Wang, K., Wang, Z. and Wang, Z. (2014) Based on the urban landscape situation in China, the article puts forward bringing food planting back to people’s daily life. It focuses on productive urban landscapes (here translated as ‘urban productive landscape’), which reflects agricultural production, current urban lifestyles, environmental quality. After…

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Analysis of the aerial photo of Amir-Abad Garden clarifies the quality of synthesis of the utilitarian agriculture with pleasure gardening. It creates two kinds of sceneries concerning their separation in plants, position, direction, planting design, and application. (source: Khalilnezhad, M.R. (2016) Urban agriculture as a tool for city and landscape planning in Iran with emphasis on the role of Persian Gardens, PhD thesis, Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, p 68)

PhD thesis based on Continuous Productive Urban Landscape (CPUL) in Iran

We are happy to share a dissertation written by Dr Mohammad Reza Khalilnezhad from Iran who, by his own words, is one of the first landscape architects in Iran to work scientifically on edible landscapes. His PhD, entitled Urban agriculture as a tool for city and landscape planning in Iran with emphasis on the role…

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