In search of meta-landscape architecture: the ethical experience and Jaffa Slope Park's design

Abstract

The author undertakes an analysis, interpretation and theorization of an ethical experience and its re-presentation in landscape architecture with a close reading of the design process and the built objects of a newly inaugurated Israeli metropolitan park. Jaffa Slope Park in Tel Aviv-Jaffa is situated at an intersection of human and environmental offences that transform it into an ethically charged site. This reading of the park emanates from Emmanuel Levinas's philosophy, dedicated to the ethics of the Other, and especially his thought concerning the re-presentation of an ethical experience. The inevitable paradoxes that are inherent in landscape architecture's conflicting ethical demands are revealed. The author argues that a reflexive utterance in landscape architecture aesthetics—or what she refers to as ‘metalandscape architecture’—is a productive, even necessary, tool for addressing and re-presenting the competing ethics of morally saturated sites.