The landscape is a medium, a medium that adapts and a medium that is evolving. The concept of landscape, especially in its relationship to nature exists in a timeline that goes from religious reflection, to theories of beauty, to existing as a juxtaposition to city life (Central Park). These events tie into man’s growth, mentally and technologically. To today where a concept of landscape urbanism is introduced. This I understood to be the landscape’s continual transformation in a time where man has realized errors in planning, importance of nature, and acceptance of a new layer into the city. It is this integration of landscape to the city that develops the concept of landscape infrastructure. It becomes the landscape that provides the blank sheet to be designed for activity and programs. The same way the city relies on electrical grids or sewage systems it now needs a methodology to incorporate the landscape. But rather than including the landscape in last, it becomes the job of the architect to design a process and lay out a model for the new city. This threading of integral layers (historical, natural, man-made, scientific) involved in our way of life is landscape urbanism in the way I understood it.
Landscape
land-scape [lan(d)-skāp]
1a: a picture representing a view of natural inland scenery b: the art of depicting such scenery
2a: the landforms of a region in the aggregate b: a portion of territory that can be viewed at one time from one place c: a particular area of activity
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James Corner's 4 inter-practical themes from which to organize the emerging landscape urbanist practice: ecological and urban processes over time, the staging of horizontal surfaces, the operational or working method, and the imaginary.
ReplyDeleteI related much to the section that talked about Downsview Park and how it relates to the trends of using landscape as a medium. Its like a "manufactured" environment that is supposed to function as a natural environment. I believe that it a good mix of the natural vs unnatural. Its important to have a balance that functions and many won't even notice the "built" aspect, but will enjoy the beauty.
ReplyDeleteTo my mind the explanation that landscape urbanism is able to respond to temporal changes, transformations, adaptions and successions is reasonable and conclusive. Compared to architecture landscape itself is convertable (e.g. changes every season) and is then again -like Frampton siad- a symbol of resistance, because we are familiar with nature since we were born.
ReplyDeleteI like the aspect of the two scales in landscape architecture -the large infrastructure and the small scale of materials- I dind´t note it before...but its true
Through this reading, the word landscape means much more then just land with stuff on it, designed or natural. It has a whole new meaning, a meaning of perpetual change. It's a model for process. Process meaning a series of actions or changes that bring about a result. Landscape as a a medium arises a question of flexibility. It is complex in relating urban infrastructure with public events therefore leaving the landscape with an infinite amount of changing and developing programs that may be planned or unplanned. Urbanization is a dynamic process described more by terms like fluidity, spontaneous feedback, and non-linearity, than stability, predictability, or rationality. Landscape Urbanism appears to be a process in which it will continue to develope and change with social and cultural activities as well as time.
ReplyDeleteI found the origins of landscape urbanism section to be quite interesting. It seems that during the 70s and 80s architecture and urban design were going through some changes. "The rise of the urban design discipline in the 1970s and '80s extended interest in the aggregation of architectural elements into ensembles of nostalgic urban consumption. During this same time, the discipline of city planning abdicated altogether, seeking refuge in the relatively ineffectual enclaves of policy, procedure, and public therapy." Can you have urban design without city planning? I find the two to be interrelated and am finding it very difficult to see how you can do urban design without at least very minimal city planning. Being an LA involves not only design but strategy as well. Without planning for the future or even for the present, it can become complete chaos, especially now in the age of sustainability.
ReplyDeleteonly through synthetic and imaginative reordering of categories in the built environment might we escape our present predicament in the cul-de-sac of post-industrial modernity, and "the bureaucratic and uninspired failings" of the planning profession.
ReplyDeletewhat i got out of this reading was that we must make changes to the way we create our designs, not to look at the landscape as a final project, but instead "a model for process" and respond to the change, transformation, adaptation, and succession.
This reading reveals how the work of Landscape Architects has gone from being merely an aesthetic touch to an undoubtedly essential addition in the planning and construction of future urban areas. Although the change will not happen over night, the reading is hopeful that sprawl and the ideas of suburbia will soon be outphased by the new "landscape urbanism".
ReplyDeleteI appreciated the depth to which this reading discused landscape urbanism. It challenged some of the views and perceptions of the landscape architecture discipline that I have either developed or inherited so far. When said of James Corner "current-day environmentalism and pastoral ideas of landscape appear to Corner, and many others, as naive or irrelevant in the face of global urbanism" and later on that he "rejects the opposition of nature and city". This somewhat complex transition towards interweaving of the landscape into our cities, and using the landscape to inform how we design seems (thus far) the best way to go about design of our world, and it's exciting to know that as landscape architects we can all play a pretty important role in that change
ReplyDeletei feel as though this landscape urbanism movement as i will call it will be lead much by landscape architects, but hopefully they will influence and inspire other architects and engineers to join the crusade for better design.
ReplyDeleteAfter decades of defiling our greatest medium of creation, the landscape, it is time to pay our dues, wear the the shoe on the other foot, put it in reverse, whatever. We need to now look for ways and avenues of design that will compensate and remediate what we have done. we set out to conquer nature, establishing our dominance from one coast to the other, never taking notice of the path of destruction behind us. As we keep expanding, because we will keep expanding, we must do our best to look at the landscape critically, analyzing every option it holds as a medium, and designing the most suitable application for it.
Its 2am and i appear to be rambling..*facepalm*
This reading explains the movement of landscape architecture from what most would think of it as; planting of trees and shrubs, to a theoretical practice that looks at the landscape more as a process of constant change. Through this the idea, landscape urbanism evolves as a model for process this process.
ReplyDeleteThe reading reinforces the message of sustainable design.It tells us to look at the urban lanscape as a living entity, not as a static monument to a current design aesthetic.
ReplyDeleteAs designers in todays world we have to find the simpilest ways to solve problems, usually through sacrifice of the "glitz and glam" of a design and the focus on pure function. Much like what project H is doing, http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/262000/january-18-2010/emily-pilloton
I also found it odd that the subject of oil was never brought up in the reading. Much of what we find wrong in urban landscapes, such as suburban design was a product of an age of plentiful oil.
How can the landscape address oil? Is this a way for the landscape to be productive? Many of the projects we have studied ask the landscape to be productive; to produce soil, or to recondition itself through succession. What happens when the landscape is done doing it's job; when the trash is gone and the soil is clean? Do we then have to redesign the park to give it new purpose? Agriculture? Oil? Windmills? Our job is to make the landscape work harder.
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