Wiktor: So you can combinethese different types of nature?
Kasper: Yes. It's a good solution for Polish cities, it seems to me that in Poland there will never be a 100% acceptance of „scrubs” and wildness. We need to find the golden mean between the attitude of „let's not change anything” and „let's change everything.” We need to create new concepts for parks with a minimum of provision and introduction of new greenery. Such solutions at the intersection of third and fourth nature, combining organized greenery with unmanaged ones, are ideal solutions for cities. They respond to growing public pressure to preserve greenery everywhere and not to deplete it. More and more residents and activists are demanding that old trees not be cut down and that urban meadows or wild groves be protected, protesting plans to revitalize them or „clean them up” by landscape architects or green boards.
The time of lawns mowed to two centimeters, thuyas or greens full of oddities requiring frequent watering is slowly coming to an end. The sooner the decision-makers who hold their hand over budgets realize this, the better for us and our cities. The challenges of climate change and urban heat islands are so great that we should not create greenery that is expensive to maintain and biologically barren.
Wiktor: As I understand it, besides the biodiversity or aesthetics issues, fourth nature is also economically viable?
Kasper: Yes. Most landscaping projects in urban greenery, are dramatically expensive to maintain. Instead of planting it, it is better to wait and preferably protect what is already growing on its own. We can model fourth nature instead — mowing or planting with other species. This can be a solution for neighborhood greenery as well. Let's look at non-obvious places like construction depots, former parking lots or embankments. There, plants that hate mowing appear, at the same time they are much more resistant to drought. Why not introduce them into landscaped areas? In lodnyn in new parks I have seen ruderal biotopes designed with the use of construction debris. They attract insects and bloom picturesquely.
This was brought to my attention by Wojciech Januszczyk of the Landscapes Foundation, who suggests that instead of intensive maintenance of greenery, it should be maintained selectively. Meadow and perennial communities that start to become disturbing and too overgrown can be „weeded out” a bit, leaving a quasi-grassland vegetation, but having some control over it. This is a different model of greenery maintenance.
It's not that we don't do anything with fourth nature areas. We limit it to basic maintenance, so we can introduce it into park greenery elements. I look on with incomprehension when developers encroach on plots of land that are very rich in existing greenery — and start cutting everything down to the trunk, to then import expensive vegetation from Dutch nurseries. We need to make sure that more and more self-sown trees are protected so that they can continue to grow.
Gleisdreieck
photo by Matti Blume | Wikimedia Commons BY-SA 3.0
An example is Warsaw's Wola district, which is very poor in greenery and badly needs buffers of such natural-looking greenery in the midst of new housing developments. For me, the fourth nature is a challenge not to see these areas with trash, social degradation or disturbing social phenomena, but to make them appear as real enclaves of greenery and peace. Not every resident of Wola will find the time to go with his or her family to the Kampinowska Forest, but would like to recuperate surrounded by greenery. This is made possible by such refuges of the fourth nature — at the same time they do not have to have exceptional natural values to be preserved. All they need is to be cleared of trash, accessible and provide a minimum of safety.
We need such fourth nature areas, pocket parks or micro-forests in urban spaces. It is important to blur the boundary between the manicured and the unmanicured, the controlled and the uncontrolled, between architecture and nature. This is also an element of adaptation.
Wiktor: You mentioned the Schonberger Sugerlande park. Can you mention other examples of the application of fourth nature?
Kasper: An example of an approach that integrates third and fourth nature with the preservation of this overgrowth is another Berlin park, Gleisdreieck. In this park there is zoning of this nature. The self-growing peat bog divides the western and eastern parts, and is a link and ecological corridor between neighboring areas. The spontaneous greenery is a consciously maintained buffer separating intensive recreation zones for skaters from pedestrian traffic or picnic areas
Another interesting example in Berlin is Nordbahnhof Park. It's a linear park divided into three parts: forest, meadow-forest and meadow. It's amazing for the reason that in the middle of existing and historic buildings we have a substitute for a countryside landscape. The contrast is intriguing. We can walk into the middle of a park with a small area and not see the buildings around us. These are natural spaces of silence. In the middle of this park we can only hear the birds, not the hustle and bustle of the city.
When we move to London, we will see examples of ecological parks being created in dilapidated and post-industrial areas. In them, a mosaic of different habitats — wetlands, forests and meadows — is being recreated. Often there are special information centers at them, which allow environmental education. They also allow residents to become active. These are often neighborhood parks, close to new buildings. Such educational parks are sorely lacking in Poland.
Schöneberger Südgelände
Photo: Jacobo.ka, © Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0
An example of the fourth nature is the Queen Elisabeth Olympic Park, where a lot of habitats along one of the rivers have been renaturalized. What we have is the redevelopment of post-industrial landscapes, even in mapping to first nature. This is an example, too, of the establishment of wetland parks recreating retention, river-related habitats in cities.
Another area I described today protected almost in the middle of Nantes is in Péage Sauvage. It encompasses a large vacant and marshy area where a bypass road was to be built. Happily, these plans were abandoned. Such an investment reserve is gaining great natural value after years. The area is also called the „Petite Amazon,” and because of its unique natural value it was closed to the public, making it very mysterious. It is one of the first examples of the creation of Natura 2000 areas in European cities. Numerous bomb craters as a result of air raids in 1939-1945wyfilled permanently with water and created unique breeding places for amphibians and residence of birds. They can only be visited for a few days a year, and the number of participants in such micro-tours is limited. The challenge for the architects was how to design a vantage point that gives a glimpse of the spaces excluded from accessibility. Artists from the Observatory group excelled at this task.
Fourth nature can surprise us in cities, but it needs time to do so. Often species appear that we would not expect in these places. An example is Krakow's Libana Quarry, which became an ecological use in 2022, which implies a minimum of interference in the natural processes that occur there. After thirty years, orchids appeared inside the quarry. It is also a habitat for amphibians such as toads and great crested newts.
Libana quarry
photo Jerzy Opioła | Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0
Equally interesting is the Pergola Park in Utrecht. It's an establishment on the outskirts of the city, responding to the problem of suburbanization and the disappearance of the urban-rural boundary. Utrecht Park is part of a green ring. Thanks to the designed pergola, it carves out parts that take into account the needs of beings other than humans and a more natural aesthetic. The pergola structure itself contains a number of niches to be inhabited by different groups of organisms. It is also to be overgrown with vines. In doing so, it refers in form to biomorphism — a style somewhat forgotten in architecture but with great potential.
Wiktor: Your book is free to download, as long as you fill out a survey beforehand. Will we know the results of that survey?
Kasper: The book was published two years ago, but we are still collecting the data. The book is the result of my research work conducted between 2012 and 2016, but also the examples and conclusions I drew have not become outdated, and are even more relevant today in Poland.
The study will show how the recipients of my book perceive these areas, what concerns they have about them. I can promise that the moment will come to summarize them.
Wiktor: How is the attitude towards fourth nature and greenery in general changing?
Kasper: In the context of fourth nature, we refer to the concepts of biodiversity and sustainability In Poland, I still encounter opinions that these concepts are newspeak and empty slogans. In the book, I quote authors who spoke about concepts and notions developed in the 20th century, which lived to see practical applications on a large scale only in the last two decades. If we want to be part of these enduring trends, we need to start doing it today. There is no escaping from ecology.
I see architectural offices opening up to these issues. That we should design less greenery, which „is in ICU,” as the Central studio writes, that is, it requires constant treatments to survive in the „urban concrete hellhole.” It is good that architects and architects are opening up to new solutions, adapted to climate change, which will be convincing to developers. It takes courage and not being afraid of experiments to reach for plants until recently pushed out of cities and lawns.
Victor: Thank you for the interview.
Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London
© The Department for Culture, Media and Sport | Wikimedia Commons CC BY 2.0..jpg
