Ye Yang

As cities have expanded, acres and acres of wild spaces have disappeared in every corner of the earth. Today, people in cities have limited opportunities to get into, or even glimpse, wild space. The landscape in cities is fragmented, flecks and wisps of green dispersed among large areas of grey and brown built-up spaces. Take Glasgow as an example, With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, this city expanded rapidly and become one of the UK’s famous industrial cities. As Glasgow developed, asphalt and concrete gradually took over the city's ground, too much hard surfaces can bring negative impact to this city, for example, water flows over the ground and cannot be absorbed in time, and the temperature of the hard surface are significantly higher than green area. 

This project imagines the development of Glasgow, a car-free zone will be established on the two sides of River Clyde between the Science Centre and Glasgow Green, private cars are not allowed to get into this area, previous car parks and roads covered with asphalt and concrete in the car-free zone will be transformed into rich and biodiverse planting. Local communities will be invited to actively engaged in this project, people will cooperate with each other to break and demolish the ground surface, renovate the sites, and grow plants, then give plants autonomy to let them evolve spontaneously and support the evolution when needed. Though this active participation and evolution, a new wilderness will emerge.

In the period after completing planting, regular human intervention and scheduled maintenance will be provided to support the site development. Then at the time most plants are mature and ecological systems are self-supportive in the sites, there will be less human intervention, instead urban wildlife, insects, and plants themselves will play the role of contributing to the sites succession. In short, this project relies on the collaboration between human, plants, and urban animals. 

This project explores how to create wilderness in the urban context. Furthermore, this wilderness does not mean pristine and absolute liberty, compromise is an inevitable part in some situations. In this project, the balance between urban context and wilderness will be tested through contrast and compromise, such as the combination of asphalt and vegetation, the layout of cutting edges and random rubbles, and the succession from rows of planting to autonomy and evolution of the plant communities.

Through The Cracks seeks to flip the hierarchy of Glasgow inhabitants, to shift human perspectives to appreciate the value and potential of wilderness and cities, and better reflect the interdependence of soil, plants, more-than-humans, and human and coexistence of wilderness and urban cities.