Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

A central theme within the Landscape Architecture for Sustainable Urban Development (LASU) master pro-gram has been the growing environmental pressures faced by cities across the globe. Processes of rapid urbanization, densification, and climate change are transforming our direct environments into sites where ecological and climatological challenges converge with increasing intensity.

Within both academic discourse and design practice, cities have emerged as critical laboratories for experimenting with sustainability strategies, climate adaptation measures, biodiversity protection, and the development of green economies. But despite the growing recognition of the spatial and temporal potential of the urban biosphere, many urban planning and design strategies continue to conceptualize urban ecology primarily through ideologies which see the natural landscape, and the built environment as two separate worlds.

Nature Based Solutions (NBS) are typically planned across the cities ground plane, while the vertical dimension of the built environment remains comparatively underutilized. Yet, contemporary cities are inherently three-dimensional environments in which buildings, infrastructure, and subterranean systems create complex spatial layers that could be valuable hosts for many Nature Based Solutions (NBS).

With this work, I would therefore like to introduce the concept of “Vertical Urban Ecology” (VUE), which I defined as:

“The three-dimensional ecological rethinking of the urban landscape, where volume, height, and both horizontal and vertical surface planning replace two-dimensional thinking.”

VUE explores the stacked relationships and potential between the city’s ground level, canopy cover, and built (architectural) form. Through this perspective, the city can be understood as a layered ecological system in which architectural elements such as façades, roofs, terraces, and other infrastructural surfaces could be re-designed and activated in support of urban ecological, economical and social functioning.

Over the past four months, I reviewed the most documented benefits of building-integrated NBS, while critically examining their potential and practical implementation within everyday planning processes and urban environments in Sweden. This research ultimately evolved into the development of concrete measurement, design, and implementation scenarios in regards to NBS applied to a million housing program neighbourhood in Stockholm.

The thesis finally culminated in four distinct pilot projects and a full scale living wall mock-up, which are meant to inspire planners, designers, developers, residents, and policymakers, while simultaneously addressing the legal, technical, economic, and social constraints that might impact their realizability.

Ultimately, this thesis seeks to reposition the built environment as an active ecological agent, contributing to new spatial imaginaries for more resilient, biodiverse, and climate-adaptive cities.