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By contrasting three ongoing research projects along with complementary arguments, this paper explores mediating practices from environmental art and architecture perspectives in the context of industrial forestry and Sweden’s ‘green transition’. The general discourse on ‘green transitions’ significantly amplifies the cultural and economic values of forests within and beyond Sweden. This amplification turns forests into reflexive entities that compel broader value revisions, challenging the extractivist character of modern urbanism. An example is the recent public debate in Sweden about what distinguishes a ‘forest’ (skog) from a ‘plantation’ (plantage). The debate does not reinforce the binary divide between the terms. Instead, it is prompting renewed, if overdue, attention to suppressed Indigenous and rural ancestries, as well as to alternative narratives and techniques that rethink industrial forestry tropes. From that context, our arguments position our respective research works—regarding 1) tree nurseries and climate injustice, 2) the transnational timber industry, and 3) new resource economies for the built environment—in ways which form and encourage research intersections that recognize ancestral, physical, and temporal scales as a potential for enriching the model that is the Swedish ‘green transition’.

The Suez Canal connects the Red Sea with the Mediterranean and shortens the passage between Asia to Europe from previously 24 to 16 days. Constructed in the second half of the 19th century as a ditch canal, it cuts through the Isthmus of Suez as one of the most highly frequented shipping routes globally and an important source of foreign currency revenue for the Egyptian state. It has brought forth multiple generations of cities: Suez, Ismailia and Port Said in the 19th century, Port Fouad in the 20th and New Suez and New Ismailia in the 21st century. With a population increase of currently roughly 1 million new inhabitants every 10 months and a loss of agricultural land due to urbanization of the Nile Valley, the governmental agenda since the 1970s has been to move away from the Nile to urbanize the desert in varying degrees in combination with industrial development and decoupled land reclamation. Global push-and-pull factors around the Suez Canal inform a discussion around how this large-scale infrastructure aligns with a legacy of the megaproject within the Egyptian context, how colonization around it links to the national urban development agenda, and thirdly, the socio-ecological challenges and potentials related to its current reliance on an industrial logic. The assessment of various risks pertaining to the Suez Canal Development, e.g. climate change, is the first step in identifying potential resilience measures to mitigate adverse impacts on the Suez Canal region’s potential trans-industrial future.

In the sub-arctic climate with its extremely short growing seasons and land cover that is dominated by forest with very little agricultural land, the built-up area offers an untapped capacity when thinking about sites for food production. This accounts both for the existing and, given the dynamics of Northern Sweden in terms of development and population growth, the forthcoming building stock.

Designing Cycles at 64° takes a multi-scalar approach addressing individual building typologies - and exemplarily for climate adaptation of northern climate zones - in the city of Umeå, Sweden with its diverse urban fabric as a whole. Expanding on Bengt Warne’s Naturhus (1974) and following examples, we anticipate new multifunctional architectural models applicable in various contexts and scales (see fig. 2). It further builds on the hypothesis that low-tech, low-cost landscape-based solutions are applicable in different societal contexts and therefore potentially contribute to overcoming segregation (Redeker, Jüttner, 2020).

At 64° latitude, interior landscapes and their water-energy-food nexus offer interesting possibilities to extend growing seasons and diversify crops, and to reduce energy consumption while providing hybrid living spaces between inside and outside. By exploring greenhouse extensions and building envelopes (GEEs) as local passive architectural solutions, DC64° sets out to build productive interfaces between the private and public sector, academia - involving the disciplines of architecture and urban planning - urban water management, plant physiology and vertical gardening, as well as the general public in a living lab format. In this text we want to reflect on phase 0 of a living lab set up, reflect on the idea of a new vernacular for local food production in the sub-arctic and the context that defines this adaptive process and elaborate the outline of the methodology to be applied.

Heal and Adapt | From Egypt’s dry landscapes to Sweden’s boreal forests, existing and changing climate conditions are raising questions on how to sustain a productive use of land and buildings. By studying and prototyping solutions for adapted resource management, Yosra Malek and Cornelia Redeker claim that cooperation across hemispheres lays the foundation for jointly elaborating transformational knowledge that matters for professional practice as much as for academia.

Egypt - both one of the oldest agrarian civilizations and fastest-growing countries in the world - is characterized by ongoing anthropogenic transformations of its territory, especially of the Nile. Current landscape designs are strongly influenced by modernist, lifestyle-oriented design approaches, while water and food scarcity, rapid urbanization, and the impact of climate change call for new landscape models.

Reflecting on multidisciplinary design potentials, this book focuses on innovative landscape models. Native productive plants and cyclic design models are considered through the eyes of local and international practitioners, researchers, and design professionals engaged in newly emerging practices. With the goal of making these resources and models more productive, aesthetically valuable, and applicable in both formal and informal contexts, Landscaping Egypt offers a new repertoire for designing open spaces in a hands-on way. While the examples focus on the primarily arid Egyptian context, many concepts represent site-independent, multi-scalar approaches that are globally transferrable to other situations.

This paper intends to throw light on the multiple landscape qualities of wadis as an untapped resource within the Egyptian arid urban context. 

Housing - under capitalism- has been predominantly viewed as a commodity and an instrument for capital accumulation on the expense of its social function as a place to live. The commodification of housing, fuelled by market dynamics and state support, is considered to be the root of housing problems. This produced a global housing crisis of unaffordability, lack of adequate housing and social segregation among other issues. On a more localized note, the Egyptian housing market is showing similar symptoms of commodification supported by an ever-strong real estate market blessed by the state. Under the umbrella of the new urban commons and the right to the city, “Housing-as-commons” are being posed as an alternative beyond the state and market. This paper focuses on the potential of the commons to present an answer to the Egyptian housing problem particularly in light of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - currently guiding all development plans in Egypt. Decommodification and self-organization- being the principles of housing commons- are used as criteria to reflect on Egyptian housing models specifically co-operative housing. The aforementioned analysis, guided with international case studies lays the base for the paper to discuss the potential of up-scaling this model as a de-commodified mainstream model of housing provision. 

Rapid population growth challenges urban planning in Egypt sincethe 1970s. To stop the loss of valuable agricultural lands to informal urbanization, official strategies aim to deviate urban growth away from the Nile Valley. New Towns subsequently were established in the desert as New Urban Communities (NUC) complemented by large agricultural reclamation schemes to securethe country’s food provision. During the last decades, informal urbanization onagricultural lands continued and intensified following the 2011 upheavals (Arabspring) while most formal urban development concentrated in the NUC in the desert. 

The NUC depend on water that has to be brought from the Nile and thus is a scarce and expensive resource. Underdeveloped public transport facilities, long distances to places of work or markets are characteristic of the desert cities. Masterplans of most NUC largely adopt western urban models and conceive residential areas as neighbourhoods with a central service area and a public open spaceor park. (Med-Enec 2013, 11, 15). All residential typologies (social housing and private sector housing) show remarkably large shares of open space either as shared public space or private green space. Brought to the desert, this typical feature of western urban planning is challenged by local conditions of economy, society and climate. The layout and character of residential typologies in the NUC and the quality of their respective open spaces varies notably according to targetedincome group. All residential schemes conceptualize open space as urban greenwhich has to be heavily maintained.

Financially consolidated middle and upper classes can afford a lifestyle based on car ownership and are attracted to live in the NUC that offer lush green open spaces and fresh air. Low income families on the other hand are not attracted tolive in the NUC, as they depend on cheap transportation and a set of strategies to support their livelihoods including social networks, informal employment or subsistence food production which hardly thrive in regulated environments asthe NUC. Strict land use regulations discourage appropriation or any use of open spaces going beyond ornamental greening and beautification. The applied urban model in the context of social housing produces fallow, neglected open spaces that stigmatize their residents while in the context of upscale housing it consumes scarce water resources without delivering any benefit beyond representation or visual attraction. 

Social division and immense resource consumption (land, water) question the sustainability of this urban model and landscape conception. Investigating potential to transform a wasteful system towards more sustainability therefore is an imperative. In the context of formal residential typologies of the NUC this researchexplores possibilities to transform public and private open spaces towards multi-dimensional landscapes that can become productive in many ways. Appliances that comply with local climate, society and economy are the focus. Empirical research compares the conditions of open spaces across a set of residential typologies typically found in the New Urban Communities around Cairo. Drawing from Google map images, site photos, interviews and observations made by the authors and a group of students during a course taught at GUC in 2016, typology, character and conditions of existing open spaces are analysed. Cross referencing the findings of the analysis with local business experiments reveal transferable productive strategies for the context of New Urban Communities in Egypt.