Paisajes críticos / Critical Landscapes

A Landscape Conversation: Design, Representation, Process is a paper co-written by Tim Waterman and Ed Wall, recently published in the latest Critical Landscapes issue of Urban. The paper was first presented in 2010 at the Emerging Landscapes conference at the University of Westminster.

Image credit: DIRT Studio, 2001

Paper abstract:

Landscape only exists through our experience. It is a process which acts upon us and upon which we act. It is an idea and an image defined through a conversation between us and the land. Every landscape is unique, and each possesses a character that can only be understood through experience, interpretation and representation. It is only through understanding this conversation that we can both work with the landscape as designers and live within the landscape as inhabitants.

This paper frames an investigation into landscape, representation and design as seamlessly inseparable processes, and proposes that envisioning them as such is crucial to emerging environmental concerns for a designed built environment that values relationships between nature, people and built form. Representation in design process engages with landscape in a couple of vital modes. First, through observation and recording: the task of survey and analysis is often envisioned as a purely objective stage in which a static image of the site is taken for the purpose of understanding the site and its context. Second, through design and change: in which the anterior function of drawing allows the designer to project imaginative possibilities that are frequently driven by abstract concepts that tenuously related to site. The inseparable relationship between people and land is the basis for reinterpreting the role of representation and the design process in the creation of new landscapes; it is a relationship that is being continually redefined through evolving environmental and ecological processes and through changing human spatial processes and practices.