Workshop on BORDERSCAPES 30 June 2023, ULG Liege Faculty of Architecture, Belgium
BORDERSCAPE
...step by step, walking through lands and going beyond limits, edges and borders: the Mountain of Saint Peter as the landscape of continuity. The seminar is part of the research-action and teaching collaboration between UniFi -Architecture DIDA and ULiège-Architecture URA-LabVTP.
The subject of study is the border landscape, which presents itself in different ways in the territories chosen for our experimentations:
- in 2022, the dual city (civil and military) of La Spezia.
- in 2023, the St. Peter’s Mountain, a place of continuity between Belgium & the Netherlands.
The workshop on 30 June 2023 offers the opportunity to observe a territory of valley, slope and plateau, whose characters of landscape continuity - land, water, vegetation – are contradicted by the cuts, imprinted in the landscape strata, narrating the relationships between human communities and their sites of action. These narratives tell of moments of enclosure and boundary definition, followed by phases of openings, passages, overlaps and fluctuations of lines imposed on the territory over time. If, on the one hand, humans, like all living beings, inhabit the earth, on the other hand, inhabiting involves the appropriation and creation of edges: lines of delimitation, appropriation, protection and/or exploitation. Boundaries have always been central to the management of territory, in the sense of control, defence and separation. But today it lends itself to games of reversal, capable of re-associating what humans have dissociated.
“The semantic ambivalence of the edge has always exerted a powerful attraction in Landscape Design, which, through ELC, succeeds in restoring to boundaries both their dynamic and symbolic charge”, due to their being in continuous mutation. Indeed, taking an interest in the cuts, often immaterial, made in the continuity of landscapes, allows us to rediscover the meaning of interrelationships, which are so little recognised, understood and appropriated.
The seminar, which is open to young researchers and Master’s students, is in continuity with the surveying and description work (September-October 2022) carried out as part of the PAYS-ART workshop, an introductory course in landscape observation, and with the Living Lab (13 October 2022), which is devoted to listening to local stakeholders, belonging to several linguistic communities: French-speaking (Wallonia), Dutch (Flanders and the Netherlands), and German (Aachen).
The intensive week will begin with a day in situ, which will invite to the immersion in the site, marked by the former farm of Castert, today managed by the region (Service Publique de Wallonie - SPW). This built complex occupies a significant point on the plateau where the surrounding fields and forests offer a spatial continuity that contrasts sharply with the invisible lines of regional, national and linguistic borders.
Similarly, the wooded slopes and the waterways of the Meuse and the Canal constitute stretches of landscape whose continuity is continually challenged by administrative boundaries and functional land uses. Moreover, this same land, standing like a mountain, enclosed by the flow lines of the Maas
and the Geer, dominates and marks the landscape of the flatlands lying at its feet. However, the strength and the continuity of this mountain is marked by numerous forms of human exploitation. These have sometimes flattened the heights, sometimes excavated the mass, leaving an heritage of either eroded hollows or networks of underground galleries that are unaware of the boundaries delimiting the visible surfaces.
The subterranean world goes beyond the limits, or even “does without” them, by proposing other ways of inhabiting the earth: invisible spaces, now largely re-appropriated by bats. On the other hand, the vegetation is taking over and slowly overtaking the limits. Walking and in situ observations will be the tools for the field study, punctuated by meetings with local actors.
All these observations, transcriptions, overtaking/overflowing, will be gathered in the form of notes, texts, drawings, diagrams, sketches, photos, videos and sound recordings, to constitute the documentation that will be presented, put into perspective and discussed during the day of debate that will close the seminar, on 30 June 2023.
The seminar thus aims to outline a methodology for the study of the cross-border landscape that will make it possible to place the landscape and its characteristics at the centre of community interests, as a common good, which we must reacquire the capacity to care for. The notions of time, material and agentivity (human and natural) will make it possible to outline transformation hypotheses adapted to what the environments demand and can accept.
The landscape will no longer have to adapt to tourism. Humans will have to develop an awareness of the living, in all its forms, by shifting the limits: adapting them to what the environments suggest while remaining in motion.
The final study day will be devoted to the debate with an exhibition, completed by a written/drawn/filmed/recorded report of the experience. This conclusion could lead to the following actions: an article in the local press; a contribution to the International Conference UNISCAPE - Italia Nostra, scheduled for the end of 2023; a cross-border experience to be disseminated in 2024-25 within the Meetings between Cross-border Territories linked to the events for the EU Capital of Culture Italy-Slovenia.
Programme:
30 June 2023 – Workshop FA-ULiège + Castert farm
Scientific Committee
Gabriele PAOLINELLI prof. Arch.Paysage, Faculté Architecture Université de Florence – IT
Ludovica MARINARO cherch. PhD Arch.Paysage, F.Architecture Université de Florence –IT
Tessa MATTEINI prof. Arch.Paysage, Faculté Architecture Université de Florence – IT Directrice UNISCAPE
Antonello ALICI PhD Arch.prof.Histoire Architecture, Ingénierie Civile-Architecture,Université Polytechnique des Marches, Ancona - IT
Docomomo Italy & ICAM (International Confederation of Arch.Museums)
Anja BRULL Dr. Coordinatrice Parc des Trois Pays (3LP/P3P)- Eurégio Meuse-Rhin
Rita OCCHIUTO prof.PhD Arch.Paysage, URA –LabVTP, F.Architecture Université Liège-BE
Marc GOOSSENS prof.Arch.Urbaniste, URA – Lab VTP, F.Architecture Université Liège-BE
Martina BARCELLONI CORTE, chargée cours,arch.,URA-F.Architecture Université Liège-BE
Chiara CARAVELLO arch asp.Phd FNRS,URA –Lab VTP,F.Architecture Université Liège-BE
Elisa BALDIN arch.ass.Phd, URA –Lab VTP,F.Architecture Université Liège-BE
Organisational Committee
Rita OCCHIUTO prof.PhD Arch.Paysage, URA –LabVTP, F.Architecture Université Liège-BE
Marc GOOSSENS prof.Arch.Urbaniste, URA – Lab VTP, F.Architecture Université Liège-BE
Chiara CARAVELLO asp.FNRS Phd,arch.URA –Lab VTP,F.Architecture Université Liège-BE
Gabriele PAOLINELLI prof. Arch.Paysage, Faculté Architecture Université de Florence – IT
Ludovica MARINARO cherch. PhD Arch.Paysage, F.Architecture Université de Florence –IT
Anja BRULL Dr. Coordinatrice Parc des Trois Pays (3LP/P3P)- Euregio Meuse-Rhin
