Landscape – Great Idea! X-LArch III - Department für Raum ...

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Great Ideas in Landscapes Seen
and Known: towards a more robust
discussion on the sentient attributes
of perception
Kevin Thompson
Department of Landscape Architecture, College
of Design, Construction & Planning, University
of Florida, PO Box 115704, Gainesville, Florida,
32611-5704 (e-mail: gday@ufl.edu)
Abstract
Landscapes are replete with meaning, and
understanding that meaning may require more than
simply seeing. Seeing implies a casual observation,
knowing suggests a deeper understanding, one that
may only come from a more intimate contact. A
large part of what we understand about a landscape
develops through the systematic investigation of biogeographic,
climatic and socio-politic forces that bear
their influence. However, how we perceive a landscape
is greatly influenced by how we experience it and is
further influenced by both our cultural conditioning and
professional training. While our perception of landscape
includes nearly all the human senses, our training has
focused almost exclusively on the visual. Other sentient
qualities are nearly always relegated to the periphery
of concern where they are seen as subtle nuance and
therefore disregarded. Nevertheless, these attributes
are essential to how we perceive landscapes. Has
our conventional training focused on visual attributes
because we have historically had limited capacity to
interpret, analyze and communicate the other sentient
qualities of landscape? This paper suggests that
new and emerging tools and methods may provide
opportunities to increase both our understanding and
our ability to talk about more of the qualities that form
the total experience of the landscapes we perceive.
By examining the motivations for needing to study
landscapes, opportunities are identified for using digital
video, a medium that is now readily available and easy
to use. By itself, video cannot entirely compensate for
all of the shortcomings that arise from our obsession
with the visual. However, it does provide measured
improvements in the ways we come to perceive
and understand the Great Ideas of landscape.
Great Ideas
Landscapes go beyond the physical to express narratives
of human endeavor; they tell stories (Spirn, A. W. 1998;
Lewis, P. 1979). Great Ideas are found in the landscapes
we interpret, design and occupy. These Great Ideas
emerge by focusing on one or more perspectives that
motivate understanding of the stories that landscapes
tell.
Great Ideas can be the design genius whose medium
is landscape (Corner, J. 1999). With an enlightened
vision and the necessary requisite skills, the designer or
artist alters the land to either foster or nurture both an
understanding of and a connection to place. Great Ideas
can also be the recognition of the co-dependent and
inter-related processes of natural systems at play in the
landscape. By recognizing the harmony of these forces,
we develop a deeper, more sensitive and meaningful
dialogue with a specific landscape. We also begin to
understand the power of these forces and their affect on
other landscapes more broadly.
Finally, Great Ideas can be the inherent associations
bound-up in the thickly-layered histories of human occupation.
Landscape serves as a sacred, place-specific
repository of human experience, carrying Great Ideas
forward, motivating energies to protect and to preserve,
not just landscape as a medium, but landscape as the
very basis and foundation of human identity.
Depths of Understanding
There are different depths of understanding. Landscapes
can be “seen” (at the shallow end) and “known” (at the
deepest end). Both seeing and knowing represent some
level of understanding a landscape and begin to suggest
a level of association and connection between humans
and place.
A casual observation, seeing is usually our first perception
(or interaction) with landscape; it’s where we begin
to understand the landscape (Cosgrove, D. 2003, 1984;
Holdsworth, D. 1997). At first, seeing enables us to recognize
the landscape’s form and scale. Looking closer
at a landscape or seeing it in greater detail enables us
to better understand its elements and the constitution of
those elements. As textures reveal themselves and as
Figure 1: landscape seen 1: Green Cay, Florida. 2009.
Key Words
Landscape video, landscape perception, spatial
attribution, landscape interpretation, design
communication, landscape visualization