Nature within the City

1st Tongji Dream Garden Open Night, December 2022, Shanghai
(the open night official page)

Cities have an innate yet hidden intimacy with nature. Urban development brought many changes to the environment and it affects profoundly how we do interact with nature: in our more modern ideas of development we tend to think that nature is separated, if not antagonist, from the cities and therefore from citizens’ lifestyles. Moreover, we are witnessing environmental disruption in many forms, changes in climate, biodiversity, and ecosystem resilience, and therefore we are facing challenges to human development as well as coexistence with Nature.

In this context, how to build our city, what kind of city we need, which kind of different cities we want, how to re-think and reconnect with nature in this process, are open and worthy questions.

In this open night, teachers and students were invited to first have a Plant Walk together, then talk about their views on the topic of “nature and city” based on their own academic background and research experience, and last have a workshop together, focusing on a variety of issues and points of view that can inspire our own understanding of “environment” and our role in it.

Plant Walk：Nature and Culture among Campus Designed Landscapes

Plant Walk aims to re-understand the artificial nature and urban designed landscapes, such as street greenery, flower beds, and street trees, through the lens of “Plant Humanities”.

Collaborated with unpredictable urban nature, like weeds, fallen leaves and fruits, and mushrooms after rain, Plant Walk explores the interconnected network and relationship between humans, urban environments, and nature with its flaneur.

As the prologue of the 1st Tongji Dream Garden Open Night, narrated by Francesca Valsecchi, JIANG Yao and GONG Wei, this Plant Walk narrowed the urban-scale relationship discussion between nature and culture down to the Siping Campus, focusing on several designed landscapes to explore the embedded cultural entanglements of natural plants.

These designed landscapes include Sanhaowu, Wenyuan Square, the Student Activity Center, and the east square of the Auditorium.

This Plant Walk invited its flaneur to see and feel the active individual plant from each designed collective, re-imaging the way how we live together with those plants and the environment for a personal life story in the eye of plants.

Invited Talks on Nature within City

Speakers from different fields discussed from various aspects.

Workshop, City to Bioregion: Re-Discover Your Own Connection with Nature

In the workshop, our idea of nature within cities were challenged and transformed: from something remote, separated, and disembodied from our daily life into something that is at the very centre of our experiences.

Using some simple yet powerful design tools, we will take a look at the more-than-human that surround our environment and imagine, discover, and invent new ways to reconnect with them in mutual and collaborative ways.

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