Engaging with Landscape through Architecture (original) (raw)

Looking at the Landscape as a Person, in LANDSCAPE VALUES:PLACE AND PRAXIS, NUI Galway, 2016, pp.44-47

If we look at the landscape not as an object, far away and different from us, to dominate from the top of our superiority, but as a subject, as a person, in an absolutely topological perspective, then we must try to track down an interior light into landscapes, almost like a sap, which becomes an almost invisible but substantial support of the landscape itself .

2014. Past Landscapes. Questioning function and meaning

2014

While landscape is a term that is used within various disciplines in the humanities, one might question whether the term relates to the same notion across disciplines such as archaeology, landscape history and art history. In some instances landscape is considered to be the stage on which actors play out their lives and landscape is passive and objective. In other instances landscape plays a meaningful role in the perception of the human engagement with the world. Landscape is then active and subjective. The essays in this volume question this supposed dichotomy on the basis of case studies from archaeology, landscape history and art history.

Is Landscape Philosophy? in Is Landscape....?, Essays on the Identity of Landscape, edited by Gareth Doherty and Charles Waldheim

We have lost an important connection with the landscape, a way of seeing and understanding its profound significance in our everyday life and culture. This gap in our knowledge is the consequence of a rationalist paradigm that continues to dominate western thinking, a conceptual void that threatens the landscape in the face of 21st century challenges. An alternative philosophical approach argues that refocusing attention on materiality and re-evaluating the relationship communities have with the land would be an important step towards addressing the problem, but it does demand a very different role and agenda for philosophy. This chapter illustrates the potential of a new way of thinking about landscape, consciousness and design and aims to initiate a new discourse by abandoning the philosophical filters that currently obscure a meaningful engagement with the built environment. This would help to establish an expanded definition of landscape as a vital means of achieving a better quality of life and robust sustainable development.

Written at the place. The intangible values of the landscape

Written at the place. The intangible values of the landscape Escrito en el lugar. Los valores intangibles del paisaje MiriaM García García abstract / resumen Beyond the boundaries of a physical space, places, as a means where it is registered the way in which man relates to the world, contain multiple spatiotemporal realities. Its reading requires, therefore, a look that can decipher the universe of ecological, historical, perceptual and cultural relationships that characterize them. However, at the present time, technique and reason seem to have tipped the balance on the tangible values against the intangible ones, banishing to oblivion its cultural, perceptual, emotional and phenomenological components. This article takes a brief look at a range of experiences that, from different disciplines involved with space, allow us to approach a collective and timeless readability of the place. These looks fruit of memory, the experience and creativity, show a very clear direction to serve the project from its identity. In this context, to visualize the information and bring out elements and relations forgotten or unknown, is in itself a creative act that builds again the landscape we inhabit revealing its potential. Thus, the task of uncovering the traces of the place blurs the boundaries of duality between the tangible and the intangible to serve the project at all levels. Más allá de los límites de un espacio físico, los lugares, como medio donde se registra el modo en el que el hombre se relaciona con el mundo, contienen múltiples realidades espacio-temporales. Su lectura requiere, por lo tanto, de una mirada capaz de descifrar el universo de relaciones ecológicas, históricas, perceptivas y culturales que los caracterizan. No obstante, en la época actual, la técnica y la razón parecen haber inclinado la balanza sobre los valores tangibles frente a los intangibles, desterrando al olvido sus componentes culturales, perceptivos, emocionales y fenomenológicos. Este artículo realiza un breve recorrido por una serie de experiencias que, desde distintas disciplinas comprometidas con el espacio, nos aproximan a una legibilidad colectiva e intemporal del lugar. Estas miradas fruto de la memoria, la experiencia y la creatividad, evidencian un camino con el que atender al proyecto desde su identidad. En este contexto, visualizar la información y hacer aflorar elementos y relaciones olvidados o desconocidos, constituye en sí mismo un acto creativo que construye nuevamente el paisaje en el que habitamos revelando su potencial. Así, la tarea de desvelar las trazas del lugar desdibuja los límites de la dualidad entre lo tangible y lo intangible al servicio del proyecto a todas las escalas.

Philosophy of Landscape : Think, Walk, Act

2019

This landmark collection of essays on landscape offers a much-needed comprehensive exploration of an important dimension of our human environment. Landscape is different from such environmental topics as the forest, the city, and the sea. Unlike other subjects of environmental inquiry, landscape is strangely situated, giving it a compelling significance. For landscape is not a place that can be clearly demarcated. It is not a natural object like a mountain or a river, nor is it a location such as a valley or an island. In fact, landscape is no thing at all. Etymologically speaking, landscape is an expanse of the perceived environment: a scene, a region, surroundings as viewed by an observer. This gives landscape unique standing in environmental experience because landscape cannot be considered alone: it is, in effect, defined by and in relation to human perception. Landscape is a relationship. We can think here of the Claude glass, so called because it was an optical device, invented by the seventeenth century French landscape painter Claude Lorrain, through which an artist or a traveler in the countryside could look and adjust in order to frame a pleasing aspect of the scenery, arranging the view through the glass to resemble what a painter would depict with brush and paint. This exemplifies how what is designated as a landscape depends on the viewer, a point of exceeding importance. For there is no landscape "out there", so to speak, no independent object or place. Recognizing this has dramatic implications, for it demonstrates how landscape is actually a complex synthesis of viewer and environment. Recognizing this led me to entitle my first extended discussion of environment, "The Viewer in the Landscape", and that same understanding underlies many of the essays in this volume. Moreover, landscape has been used metaphorically in ways that do not always suit a visual meaning, such as 'earthscape' and 'spacescape' and even in referring to memories of one's previous home as an internal landscape.-Filosofia da Paisagem. Estudos, 2013. A compilation of essays by Adriana Veríssimo Serrão, the principal investigator of the project. Organized in four chapters: "Anthropology and Philosophy of Nature"; "Nature and Art: The Composite Categories"; "Landscape and Environment. A theoretical debate" and "Problems of Philosophy of the Landscape", the book reflects on the essence of Landscape as idea and reality, being and manifestation. 'A piece of nature' is, as such, an internal contradiction; nature has no pieces, it is the unity of a whole. The instant anything is removed from this wholeness, it is no longer nature, precisely because it can only be 'nature' within that unlimited unity, as a wave of that global flow. 2 19 Spazio limitato il paesaggio, ma aperto, perché, a differenza degli spazi chiusi, ha sopra di sé il cielo, cioè lo spazio illimitato; e non rappresenta l'infinito (simbolicamente o ilusionisticamente), ma si apre all'infinito, pur nella finitezza del suo essere limitato: costituendosi come presenza,