Conflicting systems: A mediation of the natural, the man-made, and the in-between

Abstract

Architecture and the conceptions of urban and rural space have been drastically transformed by the continuous expansion of the man-made into the natural rural landscape. The collision of man-made and natural environments come together as a continuous overlay of conflicting systems. Complex fields are thus formed, creating systems of "in-between" landscapes that blur the boundaries between the natural and the man-made. The acknowledgment that inhabitants are continually within the city calls into question how society visualizes, constructs, and uses their surroundings. The "in-between" landscape has given way to the possibility of dismantling the common ideas of urban and rural in order to formulate a new type of hybrid landscape. The landscape proposed here, an Environmental Park, becomes a highly interactive field of natural and man-made systems that communicates new ways of thinking, making, and building within the natural, the man-made, and the "in-between."