ABSTRACT

With the goal of bridging the gap between ecology and economy vis-à-vis the contemporary crisis, over the last decades a few emergent viewpoints in the debate on urban infrastructure have tried to contextualize infrastructural objects within a wider epistemological framework and a more comprehensive approach to urban and landscape practice (Perrotti 2011). They emphasize the perspective of re-bundling and redesigning essential urban services (e.g., water resources, waste cycling, energy

4.1 Introduction .................................................................................................... 71 4.2 Why Landscape as an Energy Infrastructure?................................................ 72

4.2.1 Taking Energy Flows into Account within the Field of Landscape Infrastructure .................................................................... 72

4.2.2 Energy and Potential Energies through the Lens of Ecology ............. 73 4.3 How Can Design Capitalize on Energy in the Landscape Infrastructure?..... 76

4.3.1 Landscape Infrastructure Design as a Project of Energy Exchanges and Connections ............................................................... 76

4.3.2 Gardening with and Not against the Biological Engine of Living Systems ............................................................................................... 78

4.4 What Aesthetic Qualities of Landscape Are Understood as Energy Infrastructure? ................................................................................................80 4.4.1 Experiencing Energy Exchanges and Connections within

Landscape Infrastructure ....................................................................80 4.4.2 Closing the Energy-Nature Loop ........................................................ 81

4.5 Conclusion ......................................................................................................86 References ................................................................................................................ 89

generation, food cultivation, mass mobility, network communication) as living landscapes. These viewpoints focus on synergies and geographical, economic, and ecological interconnections between green, gray, and blue networks within metropolitan regions. Indeed, these synergies seem to better support fluid, dynamic patterns of urban growth (i.e., the flow of waters, waste, energy, and food, which mostly transcend geopolitical borders) instead of reproducing or consolidating the vertical, centralized, and inflexible structure of modern “industrial” cities.