1. What is place?
‘Whatever space and time mean, place and occasion mean more. For space in the image of man is place. Space experience is the reward of place experience”.
(Aldo Van Eyck)
Landscape means many things to many people, but it is certainly “place”. Craik describes landscape as a “human phenomenon...an emergent of the interplay between the observer, on the one hand, and landform and land-use on the other.” It is man who projects ideas upon nature and who creates values, systems, and structures of thought, not the other way round.
2. Do the fool and the man see the same tree?
So if place is a function of man, what effect does the variety of man have on the perception of place? Canter (1977) suggests that a person’s perception of a place has three constituents:
1. Actual physical components or parameters
2. Use of or the activities which occur there
3. Individual’s thoughts, meanings and understandings
The first point seems obvious. Secondly, when people talk about places and their meaning, “they consistently refer to the activities which occur there and whether these are appropriate to the place” (Uzzell, 1991). Activities can also be used much more formally to define places. A prime example is ritual: consecration can turn an ordinary building into a holy place. So, humans have a goal-oriented nature of experience of place.
Finally – and most importantly, what about the individual observer? This provides the real challenge. How do the background and prior personal environments of the observer affect perceptions of a specific setting? How do newcomers and natives differ in their perception of landscape? How does the professional training of one sort or another influence or shape landscape perception? “Do the fool and the wise man see the same tree?” (Craik) How does belonging to a group - for which a place has a particular meaning - affect the meaning it has an individual.
Landscape Architects constitute a group with a shared specialist training that other people have not experienced. Uzzell (1990) says “it is almost a requirement of becoming a professional that one develops a self-image of what it is to be, say a landscape architect, and internalises the values, beliefs and occupational culture of the profession in order to gain access to the occupational community.”
He goes on to say that “problems will arise if there are significant differences between professional and non-professional perceptions, evaluations and priorities. One consequence of such differences could be the creation of design solutions which are incompatible with the needs and wishes of the client or public, leading to dislike of the environment, disenchantment, resentment or even abuse.”
According to Trancik (Theories of Urban Spatial Design, 1986), “perhaps the most destructive aspect of the modern movement and of recent trends in planning has been the self-aggrandisement of designers and a tendency to make simplistic assumptions about human needs. The result can be that buildings have a rich meaning for architects and none for the rest of us, to who they simply look strange.” The same might be said about some Landscape Architects.
Olin (1988) worries that, “in the attempt to avoid banality and transcend imitation, a crisis of abstraction has developed. By adopting strategies borrowed directly from other fields and by referring to work is itself an abstraction, many contemporary landscape designers are producing work that is thin, at best a second- or third-hand emotional or artistic encounter...The self-conscious, continual referencing to contemporary works of art rather than to the world itself is a genuine weakness.”
In Landscape, the implications are much wider than for pure art. Olin remarks that, “we have different needs as individuals and as a group. That which people may indulge themselves on private estates may be of arguable justification when proposed on the public realm.” An individual can choose not to visit a collection of works of art in a museum or move on if he does not like what is on display. But landscape that exists in the public realm is for the democratic enjoyment of people. Landscape also tends to be a more permanent installation. If the majority cannot read the space and do not have a positive experience, this is an expensive missed opportunity.
3. Are we speaking the same language”?
To help avoid creating disappointing places, we should aim to understand better how humans create meaning - not through words, but through the language of sensual media.
For there to be sensual communication, there must be: a) sender and receiver; b) message form and code and; c) the intended meaning. For a designed place to be rewarding, the architect must first understand a form and code, i.e. the sensual language that the receiver understands. Second, he must construct a message in that language, that he knows the receiver is capable of translating and understanding.
What might this language be? Firstly, designers can use forms and figures. Olin (1988) quotes Alan Colquhoun thus: ‘form’ applies to “a configuration with natural meaning or none at all. ‘Figure’ applies to a configuration whose meaning is given by culture”. An actual tree, hill or river would be examples of form with shared natural meanings – at least at a basic level. A geometric shape, such as a circle or cone or square however, might be interpreted differently across cultures.
Figures have also been used as signs and symbols. A figure with a designation as to what it refers is a sign. An example of a sign would be the crucifix and depending on the culture of the individual presentation of such may have a very different effect. However, Olin (1988) feels that some ancient geometry has been drained of its energy due to overuse and exposure. “Today, spheres and cubes, triangles and cones are not as charged with meaning as they once were”, even though their ancient credentials and primacy still give authority to formal structures
Signs are supposed to be univocal, but symbols are supposed to be multi-vocal. This one-to-many correspondence, or abstraction, means they are susceptible to many meanings and so misinterpreted. An example of a symbol might be a name or a fountain. (Olin 1988) contends that the meaning of many of the most famous landscape designs of the past often was established through the use of works of sculpture and architecture that already carried associations with particular ideas and works of art, literature, landscape or society. For example, the name of Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, New York is not particularly emotive now, “but to the Christian, Bible-reading population of the years after the {American] Civil War, the reference was a particularly meaningful one”.
Rapaport (1982) suggests that today it is far more difficult to design in the associational world, since symbols are neither fixed nor shared... “Any attempt to design for association at levels above the personal is thus difficult.” Olin says that as education, experience and beliefs change, metaphors can die; lose their potency; become clichés or stale figures of speech, design or art.”
Therefore, historically, landscape architects may have been communicating in a shared language, but that language lives and has evolved. What point is there in continuing to speak Latin when all around understand Italian?
4. Back to basics!
So, symbolism and association are fraught with difficulties of comprehension and sustainability. Is there a language - new or old - that we understand without need for significant (re)education? Are there combinations of form, figure, sign and symbol that can still be relied upon to convey the intended response on individuals occupying the space?
Olin believes that it is the “biomorphic shapes of nature, the blurry, unclear, compound and complex forms of natural processes that intrigue us with their mystery and promise and atavistic energy.”
Uzzell (1991) explicitly acknowledges the contribution of ‘primary landscape qualities’ such as water, vegetation and other items of evolutionary significance. Do we need to find meanings in physical aspects of our environment that are innate rather than learned?
By rediscovering and exploring our natural being and evolution, we can find common expressions of:
• Hope
• Danger and fear
• Sustenance
• Survival (and social perpetuation)
• Rest and play
• Curiosity
• Spirituality
Hope and prospect
Great symbolic importance may attach to the advantages of elevated ground. There are also implied opportunities for movement along paths and over bridges. There are also disadvantages suggested by unabridged walls, fences and rivers.
Uzzell (1991) quotes Gibson who says the environment can be seen as “offering affordances.” The value of the affordance approach is that it should lead to an analysis of the environment in terms of people’s needs. What do they want to do and feel there?
Refuge from danger
Symbolic importance may also attach to the contrast between open and confined space. It is often the arrangement, not the specific object that suggests behavioural opportunities. Concepts like ‘territoriality’ and ‘personal space find expression in the intrinsic arrangement of environmental objects.
Uzzell also quotes Appleton (1975) who claims that “the factors which make both actual landscapes and paintings attractive are the presence of vantage points offering prospect and those offering refuge. He suggests that, at least in paintings, there may be the need to include hazard so as to give power to the prospect/refuge symbol.”
Very young babies tend to avoid places where there appears to be a sharp drop in floor level, i.e. they are aware that such a place might be dangerous. Ulrich (1983) argues for the importance of threat and tension as a valid meaning of place.
Sustenance
Edible landscapes are fashionable, but landscape design cannot afford to fall prey to the whim of fashion. However, primary research suggests that a landscape of bounty, a veritable “garden of Eden” full of plant and animal life, would be suggestive of an environment where one could sustain oneself comfortably.
Survival & social perpetuation
Penning-Rowsell & Lowenthal (1896) note that the “association of evergreen trees and shrubs with eternal life goes back a long way...Already in classical culture; the cypress was sacred to Pluto, god of the underworld.” Does this expression still hold common truth?
Rest and Play
Natural play is also fashionable, but few can deny the innate feelings of play in young people who see trees to climb, fallen leaves to kick, nooks to hide in, mud or sand to mould or water to dam or splash in.
Curiosity
We instinctively prefer places that, on the one hand, offer complexity and mystery (qualities which are appealing to our sense of curiosity) and, on the other, are also coherent so that we can make sense of them.”
Ulrich (1983) argues for the “importance of complexity and deflected vistas as a means of stimulating our basic instinct of curiosity in space.” How do I make sense of that? What is around that corner?
Spirituality
Penning-Rowsell & Lowenthal note that elevated places often have significance for ceremonies of all sorts. Water symbolism, “which is of great antiquity, endows rivers, lakes and fountains with special religious values”
Olin (1988) agrees that “religious and mystical settings are frequently centred on unusual or dramatic landforms, large or prominent features that dominate regions or sources of water and secret or inaccessible sites.”
Olin also states that “many critics, historians and philosophers have commented upon the ‘verticality’ of Gothic cathedrals, and the fact that this expression of the idea of verticality... gives these buildings a property that is not possessed by other buildings”. “This vertical characteristic, which we read into these buildings, is linked to metaphors for soaring, rising up from and leaving the earth...”
5. Conclusion
It is not enough for a rhetorician to demonstrate that a certain feeling out to be felt, or that his audience would be justified to feel it and perhaps unjustified not to feel it: he is only worth his salt if he gets them to have that emotion and does not just tell you what you should be feeling.
(Aristotle)
On the otherhand, as Martha Schwartz said of her design of the US courthouse plaza, "it is not necessarily important that visitors are aware of the specific meanings of such symbolism. That the space is remarkable in itself, and is used and enjoyed by the populace on a sensual, everyday level, is always the paramount consideration"
No comments:
Post a Comment