CHANGING CLIMATES: Projects and Research by Bas Smets

A city can be understood as an aggregation of artificial climates. Buildings alter wind patterns and modulate sunlight exposure, while streetscapes modify runoff and affect soil permeability. Within this artificial environment, landscape architects can create microclimates with intention, treating the city as a living laboratory. Informed by the detailed study of how plants and other organisms transform their natural environments over time, landscape architects introduce vegetation into the urban fabric as an agent of change. The resulting new microclimates make the built environment more resilient in the face of the steadily growing crisis of the macroclimate.

Just as natural ecosystems alter the land on which they develop, urban ecologies have the capacity to reshape the environment in powerful ways. Living matter, as Vladimir Vernadsky observed, can act as a geological force. At the thin interface between an uncertain climate above and a malleable geology below, urban ecologies are critical zones of life. Maintained and reproduced carefully, these ecologies can be resources for a sustainable future.

This exhibition of projects and research by Bas Smets illustrates how new urban ecologies can be conceived and constructed. A selection of three major projects from Smets’s international practice demonstrates how landscape architecture can respond to different challenges of the climate crises: from the enhancement of outdoor comfort and reduction of the perceived temperature around Notre-Dame in Paris, to the transformation of a sterile wasteland in Arles into a self-sustaining ecology, to the creation of an embankment park that mitigates the rise of water levels in Antwerp. What these projects hold in common is a commitment to solution-based design grounded in scientific research.

Appointed as a Professor in Practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2023, Smets is conducting a five-year research program into the climatic resilience of cities with his studio, “Biospheric Urbanism.” The students’ projects for two case studies, on New York City and Paris, are exhibited as an illustration of his methodology. The case studies and the projects demonstrate how any given city offers the opportunity to rethink the built environment as an urban ecology that produces microclimates.

Bas Smets is the founder and principal of Bureau Bas Smets (Brussels & Paris)
He is Professor in Practice at the Graduate School of Design of Harvard University

Exhibition Credits
This exhibition is made possible by the Daniel Urban Kiley Exhibition Fund in Landscape Architecture
Exhibition Curation and Design: Bas Smets, Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture
Curatorial and Design Assistants: Dan Borelli, GSD Director of Exhibitions; David Zimmerman-Stuart, GSD Exhibitions Coordinator; Romina Totaro, Bureau Bas Smets
Models: Bureau Bas Smets, Small Hands
Videos: Bureau Bas Smets (Jacopo Fochi, Romina Totaro)
Photos: Iwan Baan, Rémi Bénali, Michiel De Cleene
Installation Team: Ray Coffey, Jeff Czekaj, Anita Kan, Sarah Lubin, Jesus Matheus, Joanna Vouriotis
Harvard Graduate School of Design: Sarah Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture; Gary R. Hilderbrand, Peter Louis Hornbeck Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture & Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture; Ken Stewart, Associate Dean of Communications and Public Programs
GSD Communications and Public Programs: William Smith, Editorial Director; Rachel May, Assistant Director, Editorial; A. Krista Sykes, Assistant Director, Editorial; Maggie Janik, Senior Multimedia Producer; Kyra Davies, Assistant Director of Digital Media
Sarah Rafson, Associate Director of Public Programs; Raquel Rivera, Public Programs Coordinator; Matt Smith, Assistant Director, Multimedia Production
Graphic Design: Chad Kloepfer, Art Director; Willis Kingery, Designer
“Biospheric Urbanism: New York City”: Jiyoung Baek, Li Jin, Tristan Kamata, Julia Li, Angelica Oteiza, Chanwoo Park, Austin Sun (TA), Parama Suteja, Jessie Xiang, Weiran Yin, Sunjae Yu, Zheming Zhang
“Biospheric Urbanism: Paris”: Rocio Alonso, Gina Bernotsky, Leila Breen, Duke Dunham, Emilie Dunnenberger, Roxanne Gardner, Emily Hayes (TA), Slide Kelly, Crane Sarris, Sarah Segura, Jie Zheng, Geli Zhou

These studios were generously supported by the LUMA Foundation, Landscape and Ecology Research Series Fund