Landscape Architecture without Landscape Architects: Exploring CHANS in the Sacred Shadow Conservation Network

The vernacular of the world’s traditional and indigenous peoples has historically inspired innovation in the field of architecture. However, so far there has been minimal impact on the fields of landscape architecture and urbanism. Meanwhile ecologists and conservation biologists have begun to respond to a powerful critique from anthropologists, who point out that “indigenous peoples live in most of the ecosystems that conservationists are so anxious to protect.” Some studies go further, suggesting that indigenous peoples have not simply been preserving, but catalytically increasing ecosystem biodiversity, through subtle modifications and ecological mimicry, for millennia. The following essay introduces this bio-cultural model of conservation into the field of landscape architecture via several indigenous landscape infrastructures that appear intrinsic to these coupled human-nature systems. Continuous human interaction with natural systems creates unique and inseparable organizational, spatial and temporal couplings that can be found in the global shadow conservation network of sacred sites. Indigenous knowledge and its associated infrastructures are recognized in a sub-field of human ecology called Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) as coupled human-nature systems (CHANS). Untangling their complexities can reveal novel discoveries for ecological designers still learning to integrate reciprocal effects and emergent properties into the design and management of landscapes. Several indigenous landscape infrastructures can be found in the environs of ecosystem dwellers of the sub-tropics, including the constructed islands of the Uros in Northern Peru, the artificial reefs of the Tofinu people of Lake Nokoue in West Africa and the Lardil of the North Wellesley Islands and Kaiadilt of the South Wellesley Islands in Northern Australia. These innovations are opportunistically migrated via two case studies to the Boreal Tundra and the Equatorial Tropics. For the Tundra, the innovation results in a hybrid indigenous aquaculture system for an impoverished indigenous fishing community, threatened by climate change and the inevitability of relocation. In the tropics, a recently inscribed UNESCO World Heritage Site in Bali, composed of 19,500 hectares of sacred rice terrace, is appended an ecological and educational program. The result is a hybrid mitigation terrain of integrated vertical rice-terrace wetlands and interpretive Eco-museum landscapes. Landscape architecture is presently querying how design can successfully manifest complex human and non-human species interactions. As for the vernacular, the neglected practices of indigenous peoples have the potential to cast new light upon ecological design practices. Influencing Architecture’s fascination with the non-pedigreed architecture, Bernard Rudofksy (1964) accounted that the vernacular remains unnoticed, being overshadowed by our western fixation on the higher arts, coupled by a lack of documentation of these vernacular practices. This alternative theory of the Indigenous Landscape System affords a new direction of inquiry for landscape architecture, prompting the exploration of the cultural landscape to inspire ecological innovation and an engagement with the ancient that we are only beginning to understand.Chapin, M. (2004) A Challenge to Conservationists. Washington, D.C.: World Watch.Liu, J. (2007) Coupled Human and Natural Systems Ambio Vol. 36, No. 8, December 2007.Nelson, M. (2008) Original Instructions. Rochester, Vermont: Bear & Company.

Volume Editors
Anthony Abbate, Francis Lyn & Rosemary Kennedy

ISBN
978-0-935502-90-9