INVERSION CAP & TREE BORDER - ZONING LARGE SCALE FOR PRODUCTION

ANALYSIS & REGISTRATIONS FROM WERGELAND

REGISTRATIONS FROM WERGELAND

BERGEN - LANDSCAPE, PRODUCTIVE LAND & NEEDS

The  city of Bergen is situated on the west coast of Norway and has been one of the most important national (and international) harbours in its history, with connection to the rest of the world mainly by sea in its first hundred years. 

The city is situated in a landscape with strong
caracter surrounded by 7 more or less steep
mountains, shaped in arcs called Bergens buene.
This hilly topography causes the caracteristic
humid climate the city is known for; mild humid
air from the North Sea and Atlantic comes in and
is pushed up along the mountain sides, causing the
temperature to drop and rain. The topography of
Bergen also makes city-planning challenging,
regarding settlement pattern and infrastrucutral
mobility strategies connected to settlement and
densification.

After centuries of beeing a city connected by sea
and horse (and by foot naturally), from 1900
Bergen developed connection-lines by rail.

Bergens banen crossing the mountain to the
eastern part of Norway (Oslo) was built in the
beginning of the 20th century. But also within its
city-limits and to neighboring municipalities (now
some included into Bergen Municipality) light rail
lines were developed, one of them turning in
todays light rail stop, access-point : Wergeland.

From the middle of the 20th century the private
car was more and more prioritated, and by massive
development of the road system a new settlement
pattern spread out caused by the accessibility of
the car.

Later plane traffic for people and goods has also
escalated. Connecting Bergen to the rest og the
world with oil.











This development of Bergen (prioritating private car infrastructure) has continued up until today,
and still seems to be the political mentality in the Region of Bergen.
Bergen Municipality masters an area of 465,68km2. 50% of this landscape is above 160m. 4,4% is
freshwater surface.

The urban areas are spread out over 108,5 km2, 23,3% of the total area of the Municipality,
divided into eight boroughs. With 267 860 inhabitants it is not a big city.

3,5% of Bergens area is farmland supporting only 11 780 people with food, on a vegetarian diet.
On a meat diet it is only sufficient to support 1980 peole through the year.

If all the 267 860 inhabitants was living on a vegetarian diet and it was all to be produced
within the Municipality it would require 333,58 km2, 71,6% of the landscape floor.

The Goverments amitions for the future is that we must be able to support ourselves
with 50% of consumed food within national borders to not put ourselves in a voulnerable position.
Based on these goals and ambitions to lower our eco-footprints
a change in local political mentality is required.

access-point : Wergeland background info

check the access-point : Wergeland page for updated info

ECO-FOOTPRINTS AND GLOBAL BIO-CAPACITY

The measurement called "eco-footprint" is an abstract size or number based on the earths global bio capacity divided by the number of people living on the planet at any time. Meaning as time goes and we become more people our ideal eco-footprint shrinks, at the same time as our consumption increases and reduces the planets bio-capacity. In 2008 the individual ideal eco-footprint was 1,3 gha (global hectars), while the average Norwegian eco-footprint was 6,8. In the following article I will try to explain the logics behind the eco-footprint way of thinking based on THE LIVING PLANET REPORT from 2008.
Based on the illustration of "food-print" (from the article on "how food shapes our cities and landscape"), the first illustrations show the eco-footprint of an average Norwegian in 2009 (68 000m2/6,8gha in dark grey) and the ideal individual eco-footprint of 2008 (13 000m2/or 1,3gha in green). The illustration below shows the footprints outstretch of 50 people. Both illustrations shown in comparison to the football stadium of Bergen at Minde, the stop next to access-point:Wergeland.



The Ecological Footprint measures humanity’s demand on the biosphere in terms of the area of biologically productive land and sea required to provide the resources we use and to absorb our waste. In 2005 the global Ecological Footprint was 17.5 billion global hectares (gha), or 2.7 gha per person (a global hectare is a hectare with world-average ability to produce resources and absorb wastes). On the supply side, the total productive area, or biocapacity, was 13.6 billion gha, or 2.1 gha per person.
A country’s footprint is the sum of all the cropland, grazing land, forest and fishing grounds required to produce the food, fibre and timber it consumes, to absorb the wastes emitted when it uses energy, and to provide space for its infrastructure. Since people consume resources and ecological services from all over the world, their footprint sums these areas, regardless of where they are located on the planet.

Biocapacity is not evenly distributed around the world. The eight countries with the most biocapacity – the United States, Brazil, Russia, China, Canada, India, Argentina and Australia – contain 50 per cent of the total world biocapacity.
In prior years, Ecological Footprint accounts included an additional component reflecting the electricity generated by nuclear power plants. To improve methodological consistency, this component is no longer included in the accounts. This does not mean that the use of nuclear energy is free of risk or demands on the environment, only that these risks and demands are not easily expressed in terms of biocapacity.

Humanity’s footprint first exceeded the Earth’s total biocapacity in the 1980s; this overshoot has been increasing since then (Figure 23). In 2005, demand was 30 per cent greater than supply.
Humanity’s demand on the planet’s living resources, its Ecological Footprint, now exceeds the planet’s regenerative capacity by about 30 per cent. This global overshoot is growing and, as a consequence, ecosystems are being run down and waste is accumulating in the air, land and water. The resulting deforestation, water shortages, declining biodiversity and climate change are putting the well-being and development of all nations at increasing risk.
Humanity’s demand on the planet has more than doubled over the past 45 years as a result of population growth and increasing individual consumption. In 1961, almost all countries in the world had more than enough capacity to meet their own demand; by 2005, the situation had changed radically, with many countries able to meet their needs only by importing resources from other nations.
The Living Planet Index shows that wild species and natural ecosystems are under pressure across all biomes and regions of the world. The direct, anthropogenic threats to biodiversity are often grouped under five headings:
:: habitat loss, fragmentation or change, especially due to agriculture
:: overexploitation of species, especially due to fishing and hunting
:: pollution
:: the spread of invasive species or genes
:: climate change

ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
Humanity depends on healthy ecosystems, they support or improve our quality of life, and without them, the Earth would be uninhabitable. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) describes four categories of ecosystem services, starting with the most fundamental:
:: supporting services such as nutrient cycling
:: soil formation and primary production provisioning services such as the production of food, freshwater, materials or fuel
:: regulating services including climate and
flood regulation, water purification, pollination and pest control
:: cultural (including aesthetic, spiritual, educational and recreational) services.

The MA reported that biodiversity loss contributes to food and energy insecurity, increased vulnerability to natural disasters such as floods or tropical storms, poorer health, reduced availability and quality of water, and the erosion of cultural heritage.
Most supporting, regulating and cultural ecosystem services are not bought and sold commercially, so have no market value. Their decline sends no warning signal to the local or global economy. Markets lead to decisions about resource use that maximize benefits to individual producers and consumers, but often undermine the biodiversity and ecosystem services on which the production and consumption ultimately depend. The value of biodiversity to human well-being, while not readily quantifiable in monetary terms, could be the difference between a planet that can support its human population and one which cannot.

If overshoot continues to increase, what will the future hold?
Under assumptions of rapid global economic growth and a shift to a balanced mix of energy sources, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that annual carbon emissions will more than double by 2050. Moderate United Nations estimates show global population growing to 9 billion over the same period, while FAO projections show increasing consumption of food, fibre and forest products. Furthermore, if present management schemes persist, fisheries are projected to decline by more than 90 per cent by 2050.
Figure 31 shows the implications of these scenarios for humanity’s footprint through to mid-century. The 2005 overshoot of 30 per cent would reach 100 per cent in the 2030s even if recent increases in agricultural yields continue. This means that biological capacity equal to two planet Earths would be required to keep up with humanity’s resource demands and waste production.
This business-as-usual scenario is conservative as it assumes no unpleasant surprises: no biocapacity losses due to freshwater shortages, no feedback loops that cause a changing climate to reach tipping points, no damage by pollution, and no other factors that could cause biocapacity to decrease.

Ending overshoot means closing the gap between humanity’s footprint and available biocapacity. Five factors determine the size of this gap (Figure 33).
On the demand side, the footprint is a function of population size, the goods and services each person consumes, and the resource and waste intensity of these goods and services. Reductions in population, individual consumption, and the resources used or wastes emitted in producing goods and services all result in a smaller footprint.
On the supply side, biocapacity is determined by the amount of biologically productive area available, and the productivity of that area.
There are many different strategies that could reduce the gap between human demand on nature and the availability of ecological
capacity. Each of these strategies can be represented as a sustainability wedge that shifts the business-as-usual path towards one in which, when these wedges are combined, overshoot is eliminated.
One way of organizing wedges is to link them to the three factors that determine footprint. Some strategies in the per person consumption and technology wedges, such as insulating buildings, produce quick results for shrinking overshoot. Within a wedge, many interventions are possible. Individual consumption can be reduced by designing cities in which walking is preferable to driving. Technological innovations can increase the efficiency of resource use, such as meeting communication needs with cellular phones rather than landlines. Rehabilitation of degraded lands can increase agricultural yields while minimizing increases in footprint associated with agricultural expansion.
Alternatively, wedges can also be organized around major consumption categories such as food, shelter, mobility, goods and services, along with population size. The footprint of food, for example, might be reduced by optimizing the relationship between the distance it is transported and the efficiency with which it can be locally produced. The energy efficiency of residential and commercial buildings can often be dramatically increased, and utilities supporting them can be integrated so that wastes from one system serve as inputs for another.
The ecosystem approach is defined by the Convention on Biological Diversity as a strategy for the integrated management of land, water and living resources that promotes conservation and sustainable use in an equitable way. The ecosystem approach recognizes the relationships between healthy and resilient ecosystems, biodiversity conservation and human well-being. It sets out a series of 12 principles for decision making and action spanning the environmental, economic and social dimensions of sustainability.
It can be applied on any scale from local to global, and encompasses initiatives ranging from large-scale regional planning, such as integrated river basin management, to sustainable commodities management at the farm level. www.cbd.int/ecosystem/principles.shtml

:: Governments set the policy and economic frameworks within which people must live and the private sector must operate; these must encourage and reward sustainability and promote population stabilization
:: The private sector must be committed to good stewardship of the planet, should be committed to the “triple-bottom-line” approach of economic, social and environmental success, and must provide people with solutions that enable them to live sustainably
:: Civil society needs to be aware of the challenges, elect governments who will set policies in their best long-term interests, and exercise personal choice that demands and favors sustainable produce and products from the private sector.

That was it so far, further recommended reading can be the TEEB report;
The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity
(see the article on Minister of Finance called for further development of economic instruments to protect nature).

INTERVIEW WITH M. CASAGRANDE ON URBAN ACUPUNTURE

Urban Acupuncture is an urban environmentalism theory of Finnish architect, Professor Marco Casagrande which combines urban design with traditional Chinese medical theory of acupuncture. Casagrande views cities as complex energy organisms in which different overlapping layers of energy flows are determining the actions of the citizens as well as the development of the city. By mixing environmentalism and urban design Casagrande is developing methods of punctual manipulation of the urban energy flows in order to create an ecologically sustainable urban development towards the so-called 3rd Generation City (post industrial city). Casagrande has developed the theory in the Tamkang University of Taiwan.

Laurits Elkjær / The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts - School of Architecture in Copenhagen interviewing Marco Casagrande.

I am currently working on a large paper dealing with urban acupuncture. I understand that urban acupuncture is a strategy You have developed and would in this context ask You a few questions. If You have the opportunity to answer these, I will be both happy and grateful.

How do you as an architect define urban acupuncture?
Urban Acupuncture is cross-over architectural manipulation of the collective sensuous intellect within a city. City is viewed as a complex sensitive energy-organism, a living environment. Urban acupuncture aims into a touch with this nature.

How do you use urban acupuncture to create architecture?
First you have to determine the sensitive flows of the built human environment. Based on those you have to determine the acupuncture points. The last is to determine what is the needle: architecture. The key to understand this is to be presents. To be truly present one has to give up, one has to be weak. To be present is the key of all art.

What are the benefits of using urban acupuncture?
Weakness and flexibility. Communicative action with the collective mind. Environmental sensitivity. Every grass growing through the concrete or asphalt pavement of an industrial city is urban acupuncture.

What requirements should an area meet if Urban acupuncture is to be used as a strategy?
Urban Acupuncture can be applied as networks to deal with a whole city or it can be used puctually in close quaters. If a city is undergoing some sort of an active process or transformation, UA is a good strategy to tune the direction. Acupuncture is good for hardness and industrial insensitivity. Hardness and strenght are death's companions. What has become hard will never survive. Urban Accupuncture can suggest the Dictatorship of Sensitivity.

What is your experience with the use of urban acupuncture? In what context? What were/are the expectations and what was the outcome?
A good case is the transformation process of the Treasure Hill settlement from an illegal urban farming community into a model example of ecologically sustainable urban living in Taipei. See: http://www.e-architect.co.uk/taiwan/treasure_hill_taipei.htm

The process locally was Urban Acupuncture tunning the direction of the collective Qi from destruction into construction and afterwards the whole legalized settlement acting as an acupuncture needle for the modern Taipei. I have been referring this process to the turning over of a compost - something that is considered to be the smelly and repulsive corner of the city suddenly becomes the most fertile top-soil and source of life.

Link: UA

See also; Projet insolite en bambou

And I strongly recommend reading this interview of MC,
teasers to keep you interested; "flesh is more", "in grandmothers we trust"...

FLESH IS MORE

Marco Casagrande inrerview by Jirawit Yamkleeb for ART4D, Thailand.


Marco Casagrande has been working with both Sami Riintala and prof. Chi which both is connected to BAS. Sami was our teacher under the shelter course in 2005, and in autumn 2007 I did a course with Chi on micro urbanism (www.microurbanism.net). (see the MICRO URBANISM BOOK" under other works on the left column of this page).

see also if you like;
Chamber of the Post-Urbanist

em Interior por Marco Casagrande

SEARCHING FOR RHYTHM, DYNAMICS AND SPACE IN THE URBAN FABRIC

Earlier visual structure tasks has been fun in search of the unknown and desired...
Pictures from VS course at BAS 2005.

(VS description by Gaute Aas;
BAS VISUELL STRUKTUR Autoum 2008 Here are some examples from the teaching process: Teachers; SVEIN HATLØY OG MONA STEINSLAND visual structure–drawing: Oskar Hansen, Architect and artist, professor at the Art Academy in Warsaw. It could be useful to work on a drawing over a longer period – to learn to see. As one (ASP) gave name to the theory ”Open Form” in 1959 on the TEAM X-congress of the traces this is row of practicing, from simple expressions of a few elements in a in Otterlo, Nederland. Oskar Hansen has worked directly from this scheme on closed space, to complex expressions in open form with various objects. the different projects him and his wife Zofia Hansen has developed. He evolved and clarified the visual language through his didactic work, and through his visual structure–“form of space”: engagement at the sculptural classes by the Art Akademy in Warszawa. He has advanced the subject visual structure and worked in order to make a dialog in As professor Oskar Hansen taught it – Looking and Seeing, this is training the ability between and to incorporate together the different subjects -space/ landscape/ and of seeing. As with most of the practices in visual structure, this refers to a situation sculpture. Oskar Hansen had introduced the topic, visual structure and taught the already given, or which is created during the process. Looking and seeing – what subject Visual structure at BAS. What makes you choose what you do? Show it! Here at our school we are operating with a term called DAV (Den Andre Verden time–space: = the other World) – DAV is the key to visual understanding. “Visual Structure” is included under this umbrella. Visual Structure is built upon the teaching of that it is important to create a reflected and controlled relationship between person and form, at the artist academy in Warsaw, by the professor Oskar Hansen*. object, seeing the object walking around it. BAS normaly teach visual structure as an introduction to the 1st year students, visual structure–contrasts: and then more advanced courses throughout the 2nd and 3rd year and as group courses in our 2. Part the 4th class students. Professor Svein Hatløy who teaches Concrete qualities of form characteristics–different types of contrasts between objects. is in collaboration with the other teachers. Of size, of shape, of heavy and light, all presented visually. visual structure–the concept of pressure and tension Bas X was a master course for a mixed group of people coming from other architect schools from different parts of the world. Alle students had a minimum visual structure–open form, dynamic expression, continuity and simultaneity. of 3 years of architect studies before they came to BAS. In one semester we had to go trough every task BAS-students normally takes from the first to the visual structure–by the great number of elements: third year at BAS. But on the basis of our earlier architect studies we already understood the traditional language of architecture. It was an very interesting Making a great number of identical elements legible by adding more elements in a and challenging learning curve understanding the philosophy and thoughts of visual structure, not taking away existing elements. open form and visual structure. The richness in this expression lies both in the number of elements and in their character. The readability lies in an expanding order by a visual structuring. The quality of all the forms, as well as the richness of the whole, would get lost if we take away elements to make it readable. An open form as this will loose its qualities if the elements were restructured into a geometrical order.)

TROUBLE IN THE SKY

It is fascinating how first the financial crisis, and now a volcano (crisis) shows us how much trouble we are in, caused by the way we have chosen to organize the world.

The clouds of ash from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano creeping in over Europe is showing us just how dependent we have made our selves of oil, represented by the aerial traffic. The flexibility and shorted time in travel the planes gives us, including transporting goods and important stuff like organs, makes them almost impossible to replace. The papers tell us about all the things we are running out of due to this incident of nature; organs like a hart needs to be inside its recipient within 4 hours after its last beat if it is to be a successful transplant. Almost impossible unless one live within 4 hours of the hospital doing the procedure, and the organ donor live within 4 hours to that same hospital too. But not only organ transplants have become threatened, if you live out on the islands or far into the fjords of Norway getting to the (right) hospital in time can be a challenge when the ambulance helicopters are stuck on the ground. Lives are suddenly at risk as the aerial traffic is paralyzed and on the ground. But in the future how will we adapt to this change that most likely will come? Oil fuel will become a scarce source of energy and this week shows us how vulnerable we are without it.
In Africa (Ethiopia) they are burning their roses now because without aerial traffic working in Europe they can´t get their product out to the consumers. How weird is that, flying flowers around the world? Things will change if we will make a serious attempt to lower our carbon footprint as dramatically as the goals have been set, to avoid further increased temperatures. What are people willing too give up, and how will they who loose their business adapt?

It will be interesting to see what our local politicians (with Torill Selvold Nyborg, as County Mayor, in charge) decide when they will attempt to agree on a KLIMAPLAN (plan for reducing green gas emissions,GGE) for our county that Bergen is a part of; Hordaland.
The KLIMAPLAN on a world basis is aiming to reduce their emissions based on numbers of 1991. This is argued by many to be quite an unfair share of responsibility. A global fair target will be emission rates pr. person (a footprint based on the individual), would reveal the enormous ecological space some parts of the world takes. GGE for a North American inhabitant is over 25 mill. tons pr year, while for an African it is under 5 mill. tons. A Norwegian based in Hordaland county is responsible for 13,6 mill. tons. If we in Hordaland cut our GGE with 5% every year we will in 2020 be responsible for 7,2 mill. tons individually. (source: Hordaland Naturvernforbund)
Key words to achieve this is short traveled food, bio-energy and a lower energy consumption. And political courage to dispose land and resources smarter in an ecological point of view.

1ST WORKSHOP WITH THE DIPLOMAS

Thursday and friday last week we had a group workshop; discussing, drawing, sketching...trying to pinpoint something of importance to our projects, which can be hard to do... Clearifying your project without all these words!!

The key words (for my project) after the discussions are;
TIMELINE / SCENARIO
ECO-FOOTPRINT
THE PHYSICAL
They need further development but these are the sketches made as the background for my project (so far);