Brownfields

 In “Design of Brownfield Landscapes,” the authors give an interesting synopsis on policies in the US and Europe and dealing and designing for Brownfields. In the US, the authors state, “States rarely require remediating contamination to protect wildlife health.” Basically, the US is only considering the land itself as something that needs to be remediated or contained. I understand why this is the case because land has always been an important asset financially to anyone living in the US. However, wildlife is an important asset that can help create a healthy landscape. If there is a plethora of wildlife in the area, the landscape of the land is in good condition.

On the other hand in Europe the author states, “Varied functional definitions of “brownfield” across Europe make it difficult to develop a unified European policy.” This seems as if Europe has not really gotten a hold of defining brownfields to even begin to regulate them. However in both the US and Europe, Peter Latz, a landscape architect, took a generalized and non conforming approach to restoring unwanted places such as brownfields.

The Hafeninsel Park was an abandoned brownfield that Peter Latz stated, “The aim of the syntactic design was to restore and preserve the genius loci.” Many times we want to cover up things that are abandoned and not aesthetically appealing. However, old factories and whatnot were an important piece of architecture during Factory times. Latz essentially created a timeline of each particular section of the park. In the last reading, Elissa Roseberg stated, “Each linear system slices through the park like a datum, defining and explaining the section.” I think by informing participants of the park of the different aspects that created this park will help people to understand the importance of things that have existed and went abandoned after their use was not needed anymore.