SPOOL
SPOOL is an Open Access journal in the field of ‘architecture and the built environment’ with a focus on the Science of Architecture, Climate Proof Cities, Energy Innovation, and Urban Europe.
In this issue of SPOOL Landscape Metropolis #6, designerly and discursive work on gardens in the metropolitan landscape is explored. The focus is on the garden as a theatre of landscape in the metropolis, where the city-dweller can stand face to face with natural processes, the longue durée of evolution and natural growth, silence, and open skies, as the counterpart to the excess of the urban programme. This notion of the garden as a theatre, a stage on which landscape and growth are performed, is explored by taking a closer look, spotting those places that merit attention in the vast metropolitan territory. Consequently, this is how we invite our readers to read this issue of SPOOL – by giving attention to the particular, while establishing links between one particularity and another, and to the overarching whole.
When reading about a garden one imagines how the garden would influence one’s state of mind, both after entering and after leaving. As the gardens in this issue of Spool are places of seclusion within the metropolitan territory, we cannot but think about the garden, considering the location and the differences of atmosphere, spatiality and cultivation between the inside and the outside. What is the garden’s imprint seen in the light of this dichotomy? What is the imprint of these research papers on us, the editors, and therefore the first readers?