SLU Uppsala – a campus full of biodiversity
SLU (Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet) is an agricultural university with multiple campuses and research locations all over Sweden. The SLU Uppsala Ultuna campus is located amid fields and forests six kilometers from Uppsala centre. Students can study topics such as landscape architecture for sustainable urbanisation, animal science, environmental management, sustainable food systems etc. Like in Helsinki University’s Viikki campus, the area also houses an ecology research center. Our research interest being biodiversity, we were immediately impressed by the many meadows, decaying wood elements, insect hotels, bat and bird boxes and a huge variety of plants at SLU Uppsala. The entire campus functions as a green laboratory and learning environment – it truly speaks for biodiversity!
We spent the first day with Marcus Hedblom, professor in Landscape Management, participating in an excursion to the nearby Ulleråker area together with landscape engineering students. The area hosts Sweden’s oldest pines and protected deciduous trees around an old hospital area. However, this was not just an ecology lesson: Anna Jakobsson, environmental coordinator from Uppsala municipality, joined the excursion to explain the challenges of combining endangered species and habitats conservation and the new urban development in the area.
Landscape Day – the City and the Landscape
We also had the pleasure of meeting Helena Nordh, professor in Landscape Architecture. Helena kindly invited us to join the “Landscape Day”, a seminar that was organized for the first time. The Landscape Day brought together students, practitioners and researchers to discuss current challenges in landscape architecture and urban planning. Keynote speaker Anna Aslaug Lund, assistant professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning at Copenhagen University, took us to a visual journey through the coastal landscapes, presenting the various solutions for adapting and mitigating urban areas to flooding. Another keynote speaker was Luc Wallays, the creative director of the Belgian planning office Omgeving, who showcased their seven design principles through realized projects. His main message was to “listen to the landscape”, as landscape and its everyday users was the source of inspiration in their projects.
Additionally, the seminar day consisted of twelve short presentations, covering topics like wildfires, climate change adaptation of urban trees and Norrtälje harbor area transformation, among many others. Different users were also intertwined in the topics: children, immigrants, the elderly, not forgetting visions and imaginations of coexistence through art. During the mingling coffee break, there was time to delve into the works of the SLU landscape architecture students, which showcased the common ground between landscape architects and urban planners. The main theme of the day was the trending concept of multi-functionality, as urban green and biodiversity must respond to many challenges simultaneously. Similar topics have been discussed at the “Green Days” in Jyväskylä and the seminar on urban vegetation at Lepaa last August. These similarities highlight the importance of collaboration between Nordic countries in developing and testing multi-functional solutions.
During the last two days of the trip, we explored two urban seaside development areas in Stockholm where urban design and green infrastructure play a major role in both the identity of the place and biodiversity. The urban development of Hammarby Sjöstad began already in 1994 and is still ongoing. Norra Djurgårdsstaden is a more recent ongoing development, started in 2011. Both high-density developments showcased various integrated stormwater solutions and the accessible waterside areas as social space. Comparing the older areas to the most recently built areas in Norra Djurgårdsstaden, we could clearly see the increased multifunctional use of scarce space, especially regarding increased integration of biodiversity-friendly elements in the design. The variety of plants was considerably greater than usual, and greenery was incorporated everywhere as pocket parks, green roofs and walls and in large planting pots, including bird boxes and insect hotels. Also, the stormwater solutions combined a high diversity of plants and decaying wood.
This trip enabled us to get to know ongoing research and teaching at SLU and to promote research done at Tampere University (e.g. TURNS-research platform, MUST-and BIWE-projects). We gained inspiration and ideas for teaching in our Landscape Design course at Tampere University, as well as for potential future scientific articles. Connections created during this trip will hopefully lead to teaching or research collaborations in the future. Many thanks to SLU Uppsala for hosting us and TURNS-platform for giving us this great opportunity!
Elina Sirén is a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Built Environment at Tampere University. Her background is in landscape design and spatial planning and her current research topic is biodiversity in urban areas.
Laura Uimonen is a university instructor at the Faculty of Built Environment at Tampere University Architecture unit. Uimonen is a post-doctoral researcher on multidisciplinary research projects Biodiversity Intervention for Well-being BIWE and Enabling multispecies transition MUST. Her background includes environmental and public art, field biology, urban planning and design.
