Landscape Theory

Although aesthetics distinguishes the design disciplines, including landscape architecture, from others such as engineering, aesthetics remains poorly defined. In  order to better understand the role of aesthetics in design, this paper explores the definition of aesthetics through three historically-influential texts: Vitruvius’ classical triad of durability, convenience, and beauty; Louis Sullivan’s modernist claim that “form  ever follows function”; and James Corner’s presentation of landscape urbanism in “Terra Fluxus”. Each of these authors draws from observations of nature to propose a preferred design aesthetic. For Vitruvius, it is the mathematical proportions found in
nature; for Sullivan, the efficiency of natural forms; and for Corner, the dynamics of natural processes. Collectively, these three texts call into question any reference to a “natural law” for design aesthetics, since these natural laws result in very different design styles. However, if we reconsider these texts by setting aside their references to “natural laws”; other elements remain, revealing an alternative definition for aesthetics in design. For all of them, design also involves a subjective, human experience: a pleasurable experience of beauty, according to Vitruvius and a poetic engagement with the physical world, according to Sullivan and Corner. Defining landscape
aesthetics as a human experience of “the phenomenal richness of physical life,” (Corner, 2006, p. 32) might challenge landscape architects’ authority as experts in aesthetic judgment. However, we can reconsider landscape architecture’s expertise to be more about understanding the relationships between our physical, sensible environment and subjective experiences rather than about laws for aesthetic taste.

This research paper explores the subjective quality of inner-city space; first by introducing a particular geographical approach to landscape study developed by the Finnish geographer J G. Grano: Briefly, Grano partitioned sense-bound space into discrete zones of sensation. His two major divisions were the "landscape"-at-a-distance, and the nearby zone of "the immediate surroundings." Secondly, I will discuss the importance of the sonic environment within the zone of the "immediate surroundings." This paper does not dispute that sight is the dominant sense by which humans gain knowledge of their external environment, but questions that vision alone can provide complete and reliable access to environmental knowledge everywhere and at all times within sense-bound space. Finally, I will cite three implications for cultural geographic field study that come from an increased awareness of the subjective quality of inner-city space. The small city of Sogwip'o, Cheju Island, Republic of Korea, provides useful illustrations of a typical inner-city street market. My major goal is to argue for an updating of traditional geographic field methodology in order to begin to offer "sound advice" to social scientists, and particularly to urban planners and architects, and thereby to help improve the quality of life in many unlivable inner-city streets of America that are now abandoned to the automobile.

In this paper, we engage with the topic of public participation in landscape planning. Academic discussions and policy rhetoric tend to build on a conceptualisation of landscape as a democratic entity, yet practices of participatory landscape planning often fall short of these ideals. Most scholars approach this rhetoric-practice gap from procedural and norma-tive positions, defining what makes a successful participatory process. We take an alternative approach, scrutinising the role of landscape planning theory in participatory shortcomings, and reveal how poor substantive theorisation of 'the political' nature of landscapes contributes to the difficulties in realising participatory ideals. We engage theoretically with the political dimension, conceptualising and explaining the implications that differences, conflicts and power relations have for participation in landscape planning, that is, politicising the landscape. This theoretical engagement helps bring about a much-needed realignment of substantive theory, procedural theory and practice for developing participation in landscape planning.

Estratto da La Val de Sambre et ses friches. Un’indagine progettuale su un territorio produttivo europeo. Tesi di LM in Architettura Costruzione Città, Politecnico di Torino, 26 settembre 2018 https://issuu.com/sttc1/docs/tesi_laurea_magistrale_gonella

This is about the constitution of the sky box in open world games as illusionary space that enfolds and limits actual game space while generating a sense of world and vastness and its architectural and cultural congruities with Josep Paxton's Crystal Palace (1851) that existed for a short time in London. Bringing distant places of the world together under one roof, playing with perception of space as well as with spatial dimensions. Distal to the findings in game studies discourse that linear game spaces are analogous to caves, this paper broaches the issue that open world topography and its characteristics are not like a branching cave system but like a "world-shaped hall" (referring to Sloterdijk, Asendorf and Rilke).

in: Carolin Höfler and Philipp Reinfeld (Eds.): Mit weit geschlossenen Augen. Virtuelle Realitäten entwerfen,  Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 2019

April 10, 2014  by Anette Freytag.

In 2011 we  launched the Topology Project together with Christophe Girot and the Theory Lab of the Chair of Landscape Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH). The aim of this project is to redefine the goals of the discipline of landscape architecture and to discuss the large socioeconomic impact landscape architecture might have on our current society. The project was launched because we detected a crisis in European landscape architecture. In our point of view, a schism exists between the way landscape is understood scientifically – as a functional normative network or an ecological system – and the way it exists cognitively, poetically, and emotionally for people.

The same schism exists in the current practice of European landscape architecture. Few offices merge ecological concerns with a design approach that takes into account the basic factors of modeling a site: The understanding of the terrain as well as the history of a place, its spatial qualities, the condition of its soil, the proper use of plants and building materials, and the adjustment to the expectations of its users while challenging aesthetic sensitivity.

Landscape architecture is obviously a form of complex knowledge. Through its interventions it is capable of making things visible that one does not see otherwise and, among other qualities, it has the potential to create designs  of indeterminacy. These qualities shall be discussed in the lecture, with a focus on an analysis of recent examples of garden art and landscape architecture that embody the topological and phenomenological dimension of landscape architecture. This means that they are bound to space and consciousness. These qualities are considered to be fundamental to the discipline.

A major focus is put on the work of Swiss Landscape Architect Dieter Kienast because it mirrors the development of European landscape architecture between the 1970s and the 1990s, when a redefinition of the discipline took place. The goal of the lecture is to show how traditional skills may help the profession to face its current challenges.

Another important part of the lecture presents a special aspect of the Topology project and the results of the work of the Chair of Landscape Architecture at the ETH Zurich: It propagates a method of design that combines tools of modeling and visualization, so that it can respond to a specific terrestrial situation, defining fields of action over time that can merge on the plinth of a larger territorial continuity.

June 20, 2013 by Anette Freytag.

The lecture presents crucial aspects of Swiss landscape architect Dieter Kienast’s work from the 1970s to the 1990s. Its goal is to illustrate how Kienast (1945-1998) searched for a possible reconciliation of science and memory in landscape architecture, thus giving important impulses for a reorientation of the profession.

Kienast’s projects aimed for a sensual experience of nature and the reintroduction of its symbolic reading and understanding. This occurred after a period in which nature was merely understood as an ecological system. Apart from being ‘nature’s advocate’, landscape architecture followed an emancipatory design paradigm focused on the practical daily use of open space. After receiving a diploma in landscape planning and a doctorate in plant sociology from the University of Kassel, Kienast carried out research on spontaneous urban vegetation and developed a new aesthetic for designing with nature in the city. He was able to go from a study and interpretation of spontaneous vegetation in the 1970s to making his work legible through an emblematic and symbolic use of plants.

In the 1980s Kienast used his concepts based on form to confront and oppose the wildlife gardening movement influenced by Swiss garden architecture. His search for forms that would make spatial and material qualities more conscious was influenced by the literature, art, and architecture of the day.

Some examples of these forms are presented in the lecture. Within this context, Kienast’s nature- and social science-oriented education went through several processes of reinterpretation. The question of whether his increasingly form-driven open spaces were suitable for daily use shows that Kienast successfully modified the emancipatory design paradigm of the Kassel School in his later projects – from practical to contemplative use, from daily life to aesthetic experience – while his subject-related focus remained constant.
Proponents of the Kassel School considered him to be little more than a “postmodern designer of shapes”, a label that more accurately applies to those of his imitators who adopted his vocabulary without considering whether it could be integrated in the landscape or not. Kienast’s projects are bound to space and consciousness; they embody the topological and phenomenological dimensions of landscape architecture.

Der Schweizer Dieter Kienast (1945–1998) ist eine Schlüsselfigur der europäischen Landschaftsarchitektur. An einer markanten Wende im gesellschaftlichen Verständnis von Natur suchte er nach einer Synthese zwischen Gestaltung und Ökologie, ohne stadtfeindlich zu sein oder einem sentimentalistischen Naturbild anzuhängen. Seine Freiräume sollten die sich auflösenden Gegensätze von Stadt und Land lesbar machen und in ihrer ästhetischen Erfahrbarkeit die Bewältigung eines immer komplexer werdendes Alltagsleben unterstützen.

In ihrem Buch bietet Anette Freytag die erste kritische Auseinandersetzung mit Kienasts realisiertem Werk, seiner Entwurfshaltung und seinen theoretischen Positionen. Es beleuchtet zugleich eine prägnante Epoche der Landschaftsarchitektur, die seit den 1970er Jahren darum kämpft, wieder ein integraler Teil der Stadtentwicklung und Impulsgeber für die grossmassstäbliche Planung zu werden. Dieter Kienast wurde deren charismatische Leitfigur. Er hat die neuen Herausforderungen erkannt, benannt und als Entwerfer, Planer, Forscher und Hochschullehrer zur Diskussion gestellt. Städtebaukritik, Partizipationsprozesse und die Bedeutung der spontanen Vegetation der Stadt spielen dabei ebenso eine Rolle wie Kunst, Literatur, Architektur und die Populärkultur der Postmoderne.

Georg Aerni hat die bahnbrechende und zugleich zeitlose Sprache von Kienasts Œuvre in aktuellen Neuaufnahmen festgehalten. Fasziniert von den Kontrastwirkungen zwischen den vom Menschen gesetzten Formen und der sich diesen Formen widersetzenden Natur, erdachte Kienast ein Reservoir an Ideen und Lösungen, um zur Gestaltung einer Umwelt beizutragen, die lebenswert und zugleich schön ist. Seine hochentwickelte Sensibilität für Material und Raum verband ihn mit Künstlern wie Joseph Beuys, Sol LeWitt oder Mario Merz und machte ihn zum engen Partner von Architekten und Stadtplanern wie Herzog & de Meuron oder Diener & Diener.

Vorworte von Erik A. de Jong und Christophe Girot
Mit Fotografien von Georg Aerni und Christian Vogt

Auszeichnungen
«DAM - Deutsches Architekturmuseum Architectural Book Award 2016»
Deutscher Gartenbuchpreis 2016 «Bestes Buch über Gartengeschichte»
Deutscher Gartenbuchpreis 2016 «STIHL Sonderpreis für aussergewöhnliche Leistungen»
Auszeichnung «Die schönsten Schweizer Bücher 2015»

Topology in Landscape Architecture is a theoretical framework and tools to recast the potentials of landscape architecture.  Landscape architecture is understood as an integrative discipline with a deeply rooted tradition in shaping and preserving nature.  The goal of establishing a «topological thinking» is to merge ecological concerns and a design approach that considers the basic factors of modeling a site: the understanding of both the terrain and the history of a place, its spatial qualities, the condition of its soil, the proper use of plants and building materials, and the adjustment to the expectations of its users while challenging aesthetic sensitivities.

Landscript 3: Topology
Topical Thoughts on the Contemporary Landscape
Christophe Girot / Anette Freytag / Albert Kirchengast / Dunja Richter (Hg.) (Bd. 3)
Christophe Girot / Albert Kirchengast (Hg.) (Reihe)

Contributions by:
Annemarie Bucher, Gion A. Caminada, Christophe Girot, Albert Kirchengast, Stefan Körner, Wilhelm Krull, Norbert Kühn, Hansjörg Küster, Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, Lothar Schäfer, Joseph Schwartz, Martin Seelis, Michael Seiler, Antje Stokman, Wulf Tessin.

How can an abstract term like “Topology” become pertinent and effective to landscape thinking today? There is a schism between the way landscape is understood scientifically or economically and the way the same place exists emotionally for people. This disparity calls for a change of approach. Topology, in this instance, can pay greater attention to deeper spatial, physical, poetic and philosophical values, embedded in a long tradition of designed nature. Its strength is to weave together different fields of action, improving the understanding of landscape as a cultural task with all its inherent beauty.

E-BOOK in German
Worüber sprechen wir heute, wenn wir das Wort „Landschaft“ verwenden? Was haben Schlagworte wie „ökologische Dienstleistung“, „Energie- und Infrastrukturlandschaft“, „Zwischenstadt“ oder „Neue Brache“ mit dem alltäglichen Lebensraum der Menschen zu tun? Landschaft sieht – und deutet – jeder anders, und nirgendwo drücken sich die Unklarheiten deutlicher aus als in der tiefen Kluft zwischen akademischem Diskurs und alltäglichem Verständnis. Dieses Buch soll die Aufmerksamkeit auf die räumlichen, physischen, aber auch poetischen und philosophischen Werte lenken, die in der langen Tradition der Gestaltung von und mit Natur eingebettet sind. Es soll eine „Landschaftstopologie“ entwickelt werden, die wieder auf ein „Ganzes“ abzielt, also die Gestaltung eines „sinnlichen“, wirtschaftlich und ökologisch tragbaren Lebensraums. Gestaltung meint dann aber, Form und Erleben – ästhetische Qualitäten – der einfachen Funktionalisierung überzuordnen, um an die Stärke und Schönheit alter Kulturlandschaften für die Gegenwart anzuknüpfen.

Mit Beiträgen von: Annemarie Bucher, Gion A. Caminada, Christophe Girot, Albert Kirchengast, Stefan Körner, Wilhelm Krull, Norbert Kühn, Hansjörg Küster, Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, Lothar Schäfer, Joseph Schwartz, Martin Seelis, Michael Seiler, Antje Stokman, Wulf Tessin.

This essay is the final chapter of Mirrored Resonance: exploring an aesthetics of engagement (MFA exegesis 2017). The writing is informed by practice-led research in the field of fine art photography. This study notes the tension between two major theoretical positions; the formalist argument that photography's identity is a consequence of nature and the post-modernist stance that culture determines photography. One position holds that photographs, in general, are extracted from their source in nature (as the real), and the other emphasises photography as a culturally constructed medium (this perspective also calls attention to " nature " as a culturally premised concept). Rather than taking one side or the other of what has been historically a polemic debate, my intention is to work simultaneously at both ends of a spectrum delimited by notions of nature as the real world and culture as defining, situating and contextualising our access to that world.  I work with the photographic frame and the landscape convention as the pre-given structure into which light arrives.

My aim is to give an account of what Diarmuid Costello (2005) in ‘Aura, Face, Photography : re-reading Benjamin today’, describes as Benjamin’s ‘mature conception of aura’ (Costello 2005, p. 166). In Part One I discuss aura in regards to experience and with regards to the autonomous stature of nature and artworks. My intention is first, to connect Benjamin’s mature philosophical concept of aura and the autonomous stature of artworks with the structure of perceptual experience and second to highlight, as Benjamin does, the refrain of “what is at stake” regarding how we collectively experience and achieve access to the world.

In Part Two, I connect the experiential, relational aspects of aura with the phenomenological approach of this study. I suggest the surfacing of involuntary memories and the exact yet fleeting and momentary instances of affect and beauty contribute to the sensing of auratic atmospheres. In a reciprocal fashion, I propose that auratic atmospheres are composed, in part, of and by somatically registered sensations. I describe atmosphere as contributing to the matrix of auratic relations, suggesting, therefore, that an artwork’s aura and atmosphere are co-implicated and co-extensive. 

This essay is the third chapter of Mirrored Resonance: exploring an aesthetics of engagement (MFA exegesis 2017).

Le changement propre au vivant fait désormais partie de notre idée du paysage ; sous les noms de transition, de mutation ou d’évolution, c’est toujours au renouvellement de ses formes visibles que l’on pense. Est-il meilleure image du passage du temps que la vie matérielle des lieux qui nous entourent ? Leur transformation ne s’arrête pas à des enjeux de représentation : elle s’apparente, avec toute la charge d’inquiétude, de trouble et de rêverie que porte aussi le mot, au phénomène de la métamorphose. Ce numéro des Cahiers de l’École de Blois, associant des travaux de fin d’études à des contributions venues d’horizons multiples, propose un aperçu des changements qui reconfigurent les paysages et bouleversent nos habitudes de perception ; d’un même mouvement, il illustre la vitalité de la réflexion et de l’imagination créatrice qui répondent à cette recomposition permanente, pour mieux entrevoir le paysage qui vient.

Avec les contributions de : Malou Allagnat, Jean-Christophe Bailly, Adèle Beaufils, Lou Besançon, Louise Checa, Bertrand Folléa, Olivier Gaudin, Nicolas Giraud, Alban Lefranc, Kevin Lynch, Grégory Morisseau, Jean-Luc Nancy, Pierre Sepulchre, Bertrand Stofleth, Anaëlle Vanel.

DISPONIBLE EN LIBRAIRIE

Sommaire :
- Olivier Gaudin, "Le paysage qui vient"
- Jean-Luc Nancy, "Au pays mutant"
- Pierre Sepulchre, "La conjugaison du climat"
- Grégory Morisseau, "De gré ou de force. Du Vimeu à la vallée de la Saâne"
- Louise Checa, "Mémoire, effacement et transgression : traverser la frontière entre Strasbourg et Kehl"
- Adèle Beaufils, "L’eau, élément de médiation et de découverte. Paysages de la presqu’île d’Ambès"
- Lou Besançon, "Perspectives en pente forte. Entre exceptionnel et quotidien en Ubaye"
- Malou Allagnat, "Vers une nouvelle gestion des îlots de chaleur urbains. Le centre-ville grenoblois"
- Bertrand Folléa et Olivier Gaudin, "L’indiscipline du paysage" (entretien)
- Kevin Lynch, "Rendre visible le changement"
- Jean-Christophe Bailly, "Une lisibilité à venir ?"
- Bertrand Stofleth et Nicolas Giraud, "La vallée"
- Alban Lefranc et Anaëlle Vanel, "Il ne se passera plus jamais rien ici…"