Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
of species has been greatly reduced and currently there are only 22 species living
there.
The design for the ambitious endeavour to transform Zurich Airport's contami-
nated land into parkland was not easy at all from the beginning. SHAGAL
iodaa
offer a longer term strategy based on natural processes and plant life cycles (succes-
sional development) to rehabilitate the severely degraded landscape. Surprisingly,
these areas provide a regionally significant wildlife sanctuary for diverse species of
animals. SHAGAL
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iodaa envision a rich reservoir not only for wildlife, but also
for cultural and social life, restoring existing grasslands, patches, forests, and rein-
vigorating the rare species of vegetation while introducing new habitats and adding
amenities for learning from flora and fauna.
The entire new master plan (the Naturpark), from the beginning (mid 2002) up to
the final presentation (late 2005) is based on facts: Zurich airport's financial failures,
functional and technical fiascos as well as the high number of accidents per year.
SHAGAL
iodaa's members have interviewed over 250 people, one-on-one, who
live and work in the vicinity of Zurich airport, including citizens and authorities
of the eight neighbouring cities. This was accomplished through house-to-house
visits and questionnaires, collecting data, demonstrators' resolutions,
4
historical
plans, flora and fauna along with statistics etc., organising community charrettes
(workshop conversations) and symposium-type forums.
Planning by listening to the landscape and its users - the core of SHAGAL
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iodaa's thinking - is so logical that it's almost impossible to plan differently. So,
despite the fact that the airport management had planned to expand the airport and
the expansion plans were ready, SHAGAL
iodaa embarked on a redesign of the
entire airport and its neighbourhood (without a commission, SHAGAL
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iodaa's
founders felt the need to reconsider the plans and acted accordingly). We embarked
upon a design programme. It is not only a physical programme; it is also a political,
economic and environmental programme that allows things to happen, a bottom-
up form of Ecological Landscape Urbanism that distances itself from authorship or
trademark control over form, while allowing for specificity and responsiveness to
the environment.
SHAGAL
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iodaa designed a
shrinkage
for the airport reversing the usual
approach to airport design, a re-naturalisation of the territory placing priority on
open space and natural systems rather than on buildings and infrastructure (Figs. 1.1
and 1.2). This master plan proved that the airport can function efficiently at a high
capacity within a smaller boundary. The FOCA (Swiss Federal Office of Civil
Aviation) rightly bans expansion plans for at least 25 years, in order to avoid further
accidents in this area.
The new master plan for Zurich Airport, is a multi-staged approach that evolves
over time, allowing a slow [re]generation of the degraded place into a quintessential
eco-aesthetic landscape, with a dynamic staging offering both indeterminacy and
uncontrolled occupation in four major design phases - which seeks to evolve over
time. The Ecological Landscape Urbanism approach under the
shrinkage
umbrella is
therefore not only concerned with being ecologically correct, but also anthropolog-
ically correct in a place where nature has become drastically impoverished amidst
a weakened urban environment and learning how to work with it creatively. As a
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