The relationship between landscape representation and landscape design

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes E. De Jong, ‘Vistas of the Imagination’,‘Scape, 1 (2008), pp. 38–46. De Jong cites the explosion in computer-aided design as one of the reasons for the return to the scenic qualities of the perspective image, although he does not distinguish between the bird's-eye view and the eye-level perspective. I. Thompson, ‘The Picturesque as Pejorative’, Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, 26 (2006), pp. 237–248. J. Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin (Chichester, Wiley, 2005), p. 21. M. Dorrian and G. Rose, eds, Deterritorialisations…Revisioning Landscapes and Politics (London, Black Dog Publishing, 2003), pp. 13–14. Dorrian and Rose, quoting John Brinckerhoff Jackson and Denis Cosgrove, succinctly describe the historic back drop to recent changes in meaning and representation of landscape, which have partly influenced the increased emphasis on the eye-level perspective. J. Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin, op. cit., p. 10. L. Kieper, ‘Envisioning Boston’, The Boston Business Journal (April, 2010), p. 33. M. Dorrian and G. Rose, eds, Deterritorialisations…Revisioning Landscapes and Politics, op. cit., p. 121. S. Daniels, Humphry Repton: Landscape Gardening and the Geography of Georgian England (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1999). J. Berger, Ways of Seeing (London, Penguin, 1972). S. Daniels, Humphry Repton, op. cit. Contemporary landscape architects provide services as diverse as appraisals of route selection for proposed motorways, mitigation of industrial development and rehabilitation of contaminated land as well as the more conventional services such as landscape design for commercial developments and garden design for private individuals. S. Daniels, Humphry Repton, op. cit. Ibid., p. 115. According to Daniels, for Price the Picturesque was inherent in the landscape, an objective quality that could be discovered (or found). Just as Repton defended his water colours as more than just pictures, today's landscape architects often use eye-level perspectives as unbiased, accurate renderings of future landscapes evolving from natural process. In both cases the impossible is promised and the eye-level perspectives, although evocative, can neither predict the exact spatial qualities of a landscape derived from the scientific principles of ecology, nor replicate the actual experience of the future landscape. For a discussion of the complexities of establishing a nature aesthetic as opposed to a (predominantly visual) landscape aesthetic see K. Soper, ‘Privileged gazes and ordinary affections: reflections on the politics of landscape and the scope of the nature aesthetic’, in, M. Dorrian, G. Rose, eds, Deterritorialisations…Revisioning Landscapes and Politics, op. cit., pp. 338–348. Examples include Neumann and Reichholf's Ecopark for North Munich (1995), the OMA/Bruce Mau entry for Toronto's Downsview Park (1999), and the Landscape Strategy for Sculpture in the Parklands by Dermot Foley Landscape Architects (2008). D. Foley, ‘Sculpture in the parklands – equational landscape’, paper presented at the As Found conference, University of Copenhagen, 2010. A. Berrizbeitia, ‘Scales of undecidability’, in, J. Czerniak, ed., Downsview Park Toronto (Munich, Prestel Verlag, 2001), p. 120. Ibid., K. Hill, ‘Urban ecologies: biodiversity and urban design’, p. 100. C. Bell, J. Lyall, The Accelerated Sublime (London, Praeger, 2002), p. 8. C. Girot, ‘Experimental videos on the perception of landscape’, in, E. Mertens, ed., Visualising Landscape Architecture (Basil, Birkhauser, 2010), p. 119; K. Kamvasinou, ‘Notation timelines and the aesthetics of disappearance’, The Journal of Architecture, 15 (2010), pp. 397–423.