|
Rethinking Forests: Author Dan Handel Explores the Relationship Between Forests and Spatial Design
By Andrea Marvin
From rooftop forests to trendy city parks in bustling metro areas, urban forestry has gained immense popularity over the years.
Incorporating more greenspace is a fundamental part of the planning process for city development in places like New York City and San Francisco, given its merits of beautifying a space and aiding the environment.
However, author Dan Handel challenges society to be a bit more discerning about urban forests, as the methodologies involved with going about them may do more harm than good.
In his new book, Designed Forests: A Cultural History, architect and author Dan Handel explores industrial forests from their beginnings and how they’re greatly influenced by people and their culture.
The book reveals how places like the Amazon Rainforest are not as natural as one would think and how incorporating new forests incorrectly can throw off the ecosystem. The book carves a path on how to move forward intelligently when planning landscapes to keep biodiversity in harmony.
Tell us about your new book.
The book is called, Designed Forest: A Cultural History. It stemmed from an experience I had when I was researching the subject of industrial forests.
While visiting a forest in the Pacific Northwest, I noticed there was something eerie about the trees because they all looked exactly the same, like clones.
I learned by looking into the subject that these thousands of trees were produced from the same genetic material and planted on the same date to grow together.
It’s part of this practice of industrial forests. This experience led me to look further into it, and what is happening to our forests and eventually write this book.
The main idea that drives the book is discovery. Even the most famous forests, like the Black Forest in Germany or the Amazon Rainforest, were shaped by humans.
You can view them as part of nature, but that’s not actually true. Originally people cut down or planted trees that transformed into what we now know as these forests. So, what we think of as evergreen forests are not, they resulted from people’s actions.
The book also touches on the connection between certain ideas we have about forests and how different cultures shape the actual forests, and in a way how these forests shape us.
Can you elaborate on how they shape us in return. What do you mean by that?
Whatever culture you come from, you probably have a connection with forests and certain ideas about it that comes from your background.
After we established that forests are not natural, I think the next thing to realize is this difference in ideas, because it’s our ideas that actually shape forest environments.
And when I say how forests shape us, I mean that we can trace how certain ideas about forests are coming back to cities and change the way we live.
Some are applied in intelligent ways and others take the wrong path.
Is there a particular city that comes to mind applying forest design?
I think there’s a big trend that we should look at critically, which is to plant trees on top of buildings in places like New York City so you can have a forest space. But it’s going about it in the wrong way.
I call it the open casket concept, which is you put trees in concrete boxes and by doing so you feel you’re a good citizen, and more environmental.
But what it actually does is ignore the ecological value of forests that is mostly found underground. And I would say that sometimes this very nice appearance is whitewashing what these projects really do, which is perpetuating the patterns of ferocious urban development.
You pretend that you’re introducing the forests to your buildings, but you’re actually doing harm.
With a larger conversation around climate change, do you think eco-friendly design with more greenspace is the future?
I think it happens on several levels and the trend will likely continue towards more awareness to the effects of climate change. Whether one is a pessimist or optimist about the changes we are already experiencing, I think that cities will attempt to integrate green systems in more meaningful ways, which you already see with urban forestry initiatives throughout the United States.
Many cities apply these ideas that argue you can introduce trees and they would act as forests and do all sorts of magic tricks like storing carbon and having certain ecological services.
You can even have food forests in different parts of the cities, which is great. But at the same time, we have to be wary of misleading applications of the idea of a forest, proposing that it would solve all of our urban problems.
While the trend will likely grow and more and more cities will be happy to join this idea, I think now is a critical time to evaluate everything done so far, because urban forestry has gone on in the United States since the 1980s.
So, we have evidence to see whether these ideas and forests actually helped improve the health of ecosystems and citizens of these cities or not.
What inspired the book?
It has just been a rolling journey in a way. It started again with this simple realization that all of these forests we encounter are artificial.
At a very early part of this project, I came across this amazing aerial photo taken in the Pacific Northwest. And what you can see in this photo is a forest laid out in a checkerboard pattern. It really looked like a photoshopped image.
But then when I looked at it, I realized this is the result of the way land had been granted in the United States, given to railroad companies in alternating sections, and later transferred to forest companies.
And 150 years later, when you go there, you still see this amazing pattern. They call it the Checkerboard Cascades in these areas. You see how this pattern impacted not only the form but the ecology of these forests and the land that surrounds them.
Because if you have two forest squares that only touch each other in one corner, animals could only move in a very limited way. You have a very fragmented ecology that becomes a legacy for this place for centuries to come.
This was a very striking kind of moment that inspired me to do this historical research and try to understand the shape of forests and how our ideas about them play out in science, design, and forestry.
What’s your career background?
I studied architecture for my bachelor’s degree and then continued to study the field for my master’s degree. So formally, it was always about architecture. But I found myself early on migrating toward everything that was happening beyond buildings.
I was always drawn to the larger story, the underexplored figures and ideas that shaped contemporary built environments.
That led me to larger scale out of cities and into landscapes and places not investigated by architects and planners.
By that, I happily started talking to people outside of my professional circles. Talking to foresters, land managers, economists, and scientists really informed the writing process.
Who did you write the book for?
I think it’s written in a way that could be attractive to all sorts of people. First of all, people who deal with these subjects on a daily basis. So, I imagine it would be interesting to designers, scientists, and foresters.
But I also hope it would interest readers with interest in current environmental interests, because while the book looks back at how ideas shaped forests, and builds historical narratives out of these ideas, it also allows the reader to reflect on the present moment.
For example, when you say the forest is designed and not part of nature, and our ideas shape forests and cities are based on these ideas. I think then you could say that we can change our own forest ideas and by doing that change our environment.
I hope there’s a call to action from this book.
What’s your next project?
I am currently working on a large-scale research project that is to become a manuscript for a new book, which focuses on a very specific type of afforestation project called shelterbelts.
They are these really large-scale forest strips, sometimes thousands of miles long, that slow down the wind and help prevent soil erosion. The idea is that if you’re able to slow down the wind, you can maintain agricultural production and improve living conditions.
These projects have a fascinating global history as they were designed in various places around the world. You can find them in Russia, in the Great Plains, in China, India, and Africa. So, this next project is really an environmental history of the wind as it meets forest.
Anything else?
Forests are everywhere, so delving into this for a good number of years, you can find yourself in many interesting avenues.
For example, I began seeing the connections between our current AI obsessions and the idea of forest intelligence.
Today, you may find forests filled with machines and sensors that process information and look strikingly different that your usual idea of a natural forest reserve. These forests are a result of our cultural ideas, and they constantly change the ways we think about “nature.”
I think there are still many ideas to explore when it comes to the ongoing relationship we have with forests, because it has been unfolding since the dawn of culture.
Dan Handel is a well-received writer and architect. He was the inaugural Young Curator at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal and has developed exhibitions for the Venice Biennale. Further, he has worked closely with the Israel Museum.
Handel holds a master’s in architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a PhD from Technion Israel Institute of Technology. He has written for numerous publications, including Harvard Design Magazine and the Journal of Landscape Architecture.
For more information: www.handandel.com.
Home |
Actors/Models |
Art |
Books |
Dining
Film & Video |
Food & Wine |
Health & Fitness
MediaWatch |
Money and Business |
Music |
Profiles
Professional Services |
Sports |
Style & Fashion
Technology |
Theatre |
Travel & Leisure
Copyright 1995 - 2024 inmag.com
inmag.com (on line) and in Magazine (in print)
are published by in! communications, Inc.
www.inmag.com
|
Advertiser Info
Subscription Form
Contact Us
|
