Unsettling eco-scapes: aesthetic performances for sustainable futures
The deep grain of the inquiry: landscape and identity in Icelandic art
The art of transmission: mediating meaning in contemporary French landscape design
Under the Sky: From public garden to corporate plaza: Piccadilly Gardens and the new civic landscape
Two squares in Helsinki: a biography
Corporate ecologies Brett Milligan, University of Oregon School of Architecture and Allied Arts, USA
Abstract Corporate landscape is vaguely defined in the field of landscape architecture. Both the historical and the contemporary design emphasis on the stylized facade of corporate campuses and headquarters suits the interests of corporate clients but ignores the massive landscape effects of corporate production.
This essay seeks to redefine corporate landscapes through typologies borrowed from landscape ecology. Corporate ecologies are defined as geographically dispersed systems that occupy and transform landscapes in specific, modular ways at an unprecedented range of scales. The essay begins with a discussion of ecology-related nomenclature and comparisons of ecological spatial models used in design, including landscape ecology, urban ecology and ecological footprinting. The term corporate ecologies is synthesized from these models and is introduced to redefine the concept of corporate landscape. Having staked out the theoretical terrain and the critical agenda, a variety of corporate landscape designs are reviewed.
top
Unsettling eco-scapes: aesthetic performances for sustainable futures Maria Hellström Reimer, SLU Department of Landscape Architecture, Alnarp, Sweden
Abstract While the current climate crisis tightens its stranglehold on contemporary society, many are those who put their faith in groundbreaking design and artistic innovation. As a side effect of the climate threat, this renewed celebration of creative agency may be welcome, not the least from a landscape architecture perspective since, in the context of sustainable development, every design action is also a landscaping gesture with environmental implications. Nevertheless, isolated from a broader societal context, these new eco-scapes risk ending up as nothing but attractive emerald patches disguising a sprawling global ‘junkspace’. As an expanded field of aesthetic and political agency, however, the emerging sustainability culture offers new perspectives on creative spatial practice. Approaching the environmental issue from the perspective of contemporary landscape related art practices, this article seeks to contribute to the articulation of a landscape aesthetics that would meet the requirements of our agitated time. Such articulation, however, requires a reconsideration of landscape aesthetics beyond the consoling and beautiful, as well as a fundamental shift in landscape thinking from representation to agency. The future eco-scape is not necessarily a sphere where you feel ‘at ease’, but a performative and unsettled space in constant transformation and change.
top
The deep grain of the inquiry: landscape and identity in Icelandic art Roxi J. Thoren, University of Oregon, Departments of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, USA
Abstract This paper examines contemporary Icelandic art as an example of nuanced and substantial place-based design, and extracts lessons for landscape architects interested in the role of landscape architecture in constructing and critiquing identity. The Icelandic landscape is extraordinary; it figures in regional identity forming, and recurs in cultural production. Much contemporary Icelandic art engages with the physical place of the country as subject, medium, laboratory, metaphor or cultural touch point. This essay describes how Icelandic artists conceive of site, and use those conceptions in their artwork to shed light on the relationship between cultures, place, and material production. These site conceptions and design strategies are transferable to landscape architecture; they propose methods of defining and incorporating site in landscape architecture as a component of cultural identity construction.
top
The art of transmission: mediating meaning in contemporary French landscape design Sonia Keravel, Ecole Nationale Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles, France
Abstract Our research examines the transmission of the meaning of landscape projects by designers to users. [1] More precisely, this article seeks to analyze and identify different principles of mediation developed by French landscape designers so that the public may enjoy their projects. Using several case studies, it shows how landscape designers involve the users in the project by inviting them to participate conceptually. As opposed to alternative theories of meaning, our thesis is that the reception of designed landscapes is governed by a combination of both message and effect. To measure and define the different degrees of participation we proceeded by classifying and describing the projects by three categories, each of which corresponds to ways of building the public’s place in relation to the landscape. These three categories are: explicit transmission, implicit transmission and ambiguous transmission. Explicit transmission is based on collective representations of the landscape. It conveys a clear message to the visitor, who knows how to interpret it because he or she is part of a textual community. On the contrary, in implicit transmission, because no message is formally expressed the expression and participation of the visitor may play a more important role. Implicit transmission invites the visitor to participate conceptually in the space. Ambiguous transmission is halfway between these two routes. This process consists of rhetorically confusing an explicit message to render it ambivalent and uncertain. Explicit and implicit at the same time, ambiguous transmission presents several possible messages.
top
Under the Sky: From public garden to corporate plaza: Piccadilly Gardens and the new civic landscape Rowland Byass
Abstract This essay is an appraisal of a major recent public space redevelopment, seven years after completion. The redevelopment of Piccadilly Gardens forms part of a regeneration masterplan that has reshaped the urban core of this great former industrial city. Based on observation of the Gardens and the way that people use its spaces, it characterizes the design language and experiential qualities of the place. The Gardens’ aesthetic qualities – in particular the use of a ‘motif’ geometry designed to be viewed from above and in reproduced images – relate to the policies that informed the space’s redesign. These policies represent an attempt to reinvigorate central Manchester by fashioning it as a marketable location for business, leisure and consumerism – a ‘world class’, ‘twenty-four hour city’. As a major part of the regeneration of central Manchester, the new Gardens have been a success in economic terms – but this has been achieved by an approach that privileges strategicplanning priorities over human-scaled design ones. The space now forms an extension of the surrounding urban commercial districts, but this connectivity has brought about the loss of the space as a bounded, contemplative retreat from the city – a ‘garden’ in the original sense of the word.
top
The European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools ECLAS
ECLAS exists to foster and develope scholarship in landscape architecture throughout Europe by
strengthening contacts and enriching the dialogue between members of Europe's landscape academic community.
Le:Notre
The LE:NOTRE Thematic Network in Landscape Architecture aims to improve the quality and effectiveness of landscape architecture
education in Europe by identifying, analysing and building on current best practice to defi ne new standards and identify future needs for
professional education at undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing education levels, as well as for research methods teaching.
Come in and join Topos
Here you will find an excerpt of the current issue of Topos.
