by Bradley Cantrell and Justine Holzmann
published in Responsive Landscapes - strategies for responsive technologies in landscape architecture, by Routledge 2015, p. 236-241
The sensing, processing, and visualising that are currently in development within the environment boldly change the ways design and maintenance of landscapes are perceived and conceptualized.
This is the first book to rationalize interactive architecture and responsive technologies through the lens of contemporary landscape architectural theory.
Responsive Landscapes frames a comprehensive view of design projects using responsive technologies and their relationship to landscape and environmental space. Divided into six insightful sections, the book frames the projects through the terms: elucidate, compress, displace, connect, ambient, and modify to present and
construct a pragmatic framework in which to approach the integration of responsive technologies into landscape architecture.
Complete with international case studies, the book explores the various approaches taken to utilize responsive technologies in current professional practice. This will serve as a reference for professionals and academics looking to push the boundaries of landscape projects and seek inspiration for their design proposals.
With the design of METAfoIlies, Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto, founders of ecoLogic Studio, have woven together concepts surrounding the material conditions of contemporary urban landscapes - particularly the landscape of ”urban trash," expanded from the concept of garbage to include an assemblage of "products, landscapes, media content, attitudes and lifestyles." Through a feedback of "metalanguage" the METAfollies ask contemporary society to reconceptualize and evolve our role with "urban trashing" through radical ecologic thinking and material activism. Commissioned for the permanent collection at the FRAC Center in Orleans, METAfolIy is a “sonic environment" digitally fabricated from urban trash and coupled with responsive technologies. Humming similar to the sound of swarming crickets emerges from alien and organ-like pods - the "synthetic organism” records and plays back sounds between the visitors and the installation as a “real-time meta-converstion” about the physical and material pervasion of urban trash”