%A Xubin CHEN %T Forbidden Ground: Evolutionary Natural Legacy and Decaying Disaster Heritage %0 Journal Article %D 0 %J Landsc. Archit. Front. %J Landscape Architecture Frontiers %@ 2096-336X %R 10.15302/J-LAF-20170513 %P 133-143 %V %N %U {https://journal.hep.com.cn/laf/EN/10.15302/J-LAF-20170513 %8 2017-11-29 %X

Contemporary monuments tend to foreground architectural form and symbolic significance, rather than the land and the ground on which they rest. This thesis argues that the combination of landscape processes and human operations offers a more critical way to construct a monument to an event. These processes involve earth, water, plants, and other landscape elements, as well as the senses and memories of humans in relation to an event. Landscape is not a static, idyllic scene, but is constantly evolving over time and space through material migrations. Therefore, an event’s monumental landscape continually evolves from a classical to a relative to a systematic aesthetic, which ultimately unveils its economic, sociopolitical and ecological values. Proceeding from a set of design strategies and interventions that deal with integrated timescales, complex materials, and uncertain futures, this project seeks to simulate and manifest natural patterns that have the potential to change the environmental and sociopolitical ecology of a place. It proposes a series of 50-year landscape scenarios since 2016 for the development of the Chernobyl accident of 1986 site, which was confronted with one of the largest-scale technogenic disasters in the world history. With this site as a point of departure, the project serves to memorialize the event and respond productively to various political hypotheses and complex realities.