The presence of inactive industrial landscapes has for some decades challenged the professions of planning and landscape architecture in terms of both ethics and aesthetics.
Due to de-industrialisation they have led to an overall shift in urban development from green field development to brownfield transformation questioning the value of these profane leftovers and the planning and design methods. And especially interesting from a landscape architectural point of view, the devastated industrial landscapes are touching upon the complex of nature philosophy and the idea of natural beauty. Simultaneously other major shifts have been taking place and affecting the question of the left over’s reintegration: the dismantling of modernism’s idea of universal values, an increased ecological awareness, and more recently shifting attitudes within preservation. So the question is not only what are we looking for, for what reasons, and how, but also how these questions are related to each other.
In this paper I will address these questions from a landscape architectural point of view through an examination of the relations between ethics, aesthetics and design in a transformation project. My theory is that all these aspects are mutually related and hence both affecting and being affected by each other. The Île de Nantes transformation project will provide the means for this examination by combining literature studies with studies on site. The current transformations at Île de Nantes (2000-2010) is undertaken by the French architect and landscape architect Alexandre Chemetoff. Due to Chemetoff’s explicited ideas of “economizing with the sites” and of “urban ecology” and his attention to an open transformation process, the project is worth examining. Both in order to get a clearer understanding of the mutual relations between ethics, aesthetics and design and of how to handle the reintegration of a former industrial landscape into the urban fabric, addressing some of the challenges mentioned above. Finally the findings will be positioned and discussed in a larger theoretical context.