The fourth nature of the contemporary city: from Rio de Janeiro to Seattle, Washington

Through two case studies evaluating the Aterro do Flamengo in Rio de Janeiro at the beginning of the 1960’s, and the Freeway Park in Seattle, Washington, one decade later, this paper reviews questions of unprecedented categories of urban places that became episodes of exceptional relevance for the originality of their formation and the particular amplification of the effects of nature in the city. To analyze the specificity of these projects means to single out the founding components of project designs in which the urban scene becomes a field of experimentation of strongly innovative approaches that are capable of evoking natural processes, while also validating formal and ideological reflections of a profound ecological significance. The aim of the study is to explore questions of townscape, landscape, and environmental ecology as they are connected to the renewed experience and perception of a ‘fourth nature’, the nature of the city, which embodies the foundation of a modern aesthetic for the urban landscape. Comparisons between these two important experiences in urban landscape design suggest an entirely new project for public space intended as the transposition of an original landscape and a native ecology.