UCL, the Bartlett - BSc_Y2+Y3_UG6

2021/2022



UG6


The Gravel is the Place for Me


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Stefan Lengen, Jane Wong


’I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me.

‘A Room of One’s Own’, Virginia Woolf

At the turn of the millennium, landscape designer and writer Gilles Clement sets out in an essay titled ‘Manifeste du tiers paysage’ the notion of the ‘third landscape’ to encapsulate ‘the totality of all those places abandoned by man’, such as abandoned transport infrastructure, industrial wastelands and dormant building sites. For Clement, ‘third landscape’ was articulated largely in the context of urbanism and ecology, referring to the liminal spatial conditions in the built environment and the exceptionally diverse biological communities they harbour.

Following Clement’s rejection of a romantic reading of the places in ruination, the studio will posit that when these ‘third landscapes’ are understood in relation to the conditions of their abandonment – whether it be political, economic or social – and their associated human and non-human networks, they can be reimagined as spaces for new forms of use and exchange that challenge the market-driven processes shaping much of the built environment.



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