Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Landscape
Urbanism
Reader
" Intcrdisciplinarity is not the ca lm of an casy security; it
b egin s clJcctivcly ... when th e solidarit y of the old disciplines
breaks down-perhaps even violently, via the jolts of fash-
ion- in the interests of a new object and a new langua~e ... "
- Rol a nd lIarthes
arly backgrounds. Some arc established scholars, others emerging voices. All have + based media in apprehending the suhje"'s of land scape urbani sm . Girot's theo -
found the discourse surrou ndin g landscape urbanism to be signifi Cililt to their ! retica l reflections derive from his own teach in g and research on the role 01" video
own work, and have devoted considerable tim e ,lild energy to the articulation of
its potential s in thi s coll ec tion . The eSS:l ys collected here, and the projects and
t: in capturing the sub jec ts 01" urban lanti scape, particularly over time. Julia
Czerniak uscs th e framework of landscape urbanism to inform her reading of
propositions the y po in t to, provid e clear evidenc e o f landsc:lpe's invo cat ion t, th e topic of "site" across disciplinary, professional, and generational boundaries.
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as a medium thro ugh which the contemporar y city might be apprehended and Her essay "I.ooking Back at Land sca pe Urbanis m : Specul:ltions on Site," while
implyin g that the landscape urbanist moment has passed, prompt s read ers to
intervened upon .
In hi s essay "Terra l'Iuxus," James Corner describes the intellectual and prac-
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L, consid e r the complex conceptual apparatus that is the site ',n a design project,
ti ca l underpinnings of the la nd sc ape urbanist agenda , framing the recent •i
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referencing the available li terature of recent notions of site and proposing a
renewal of int erest in landscape within the hi storical disciplinary f(Hlllations of ren ewed relevance fo r questions of si te in relation to urbani zation anti land -
architectu re, urban design, and planning. Corner's proposal put s '"Hth four inter-
practi cal themes from wh ich to o rgani ze the emerging landscape urbanist prac -
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scape practice. Linda Pollak conti nu es this interest in the essentia l or fu ndamen-
t al precepts of ur ban landscape wo rk wit h her essay "C onstructed Ground:
tice: ecological and urban processes over time, the staging of horizontal surL,crs, t Question s of Scale," whi ch examin es Ilcnri Lefebvre's ana lysis of nested sca les of
th e ope rationa l or worki ng method, and th e imaginar y. H e argues that o nl y space to inf""'m her reading of several contemporary urban landscapes relative
through the imaginative reordering of th e design disciplines and their objects of +i
L to their social and scalar dimension s.
study might we have sOllle potential trac tion on th e f"H1nation of the contem - With her essay " Place as Resistance: I.andscape Urbanism in Europe," Kell y
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porary city. Following Corner, my essay " Landscape as Urhanism" focuses on th e Shannon chronicles the rise of lands cape urbanism in European lan dscape
discourses surrounding landscape and urhanism ovcr the past quarter-century, practice, parti cularl y as a mechanism for resisting the commodification of urban
construc ting a lineage for the e mergent practice beginning with the restructur- ti form. Based on Kenneth Prampton's interest in land scape as a medium of res ist -
an ce to placeless urbanization, Shannon's essay traCt' S the evolution of Kenneth
ing of the industrial economy in the West, th e rise of postmodernislll, and th e
ongoing transformation of the industrial city through flex ibl e production and
• hampton's interests in a regionali sm of resi stance, first through architectoni c
consumption, global capita l, and decentralization. Il ere, landscape urbanist ten-
d encies e merge within the discourse of architects in response to the economi c,
1 form, and more recen tly through the land scape medium. The essay cites numer-
ellIS contemporar y European examples o( landscape design offering a specific
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01 6 [ HARLES WAL DH EI M + I NTRU UUCTl ON : A RCH RE N CF MAN IH STO 0 17
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regional id entity in the face of ongoing urbanization. Eli zabeth MossoI' extends asp irin g to descr ibe, delineate, and design th e contemporary cit y. The book
the co nversa ti on of landscape in rdation to urban infrastructure with an anal y- records the subtle sh ifts and sharp shocks of a deep. ongoing, disciI'I i nary hreak-
s is of the various rclat ion sh ips available between t he two. Not ing exa mples from down, in t~lVor of a new object, a ne w langwlgc.
Europe, North Aln~riGl, Australia, and Asia. Mossop <lsscmblcs a convincing array
of precedents in support of the notion that practices of 1<lIHlscape urbanism arc
most evident in relations between the horizontal ecological field and the net- Notes
works of infrastructure that urbanize theill. Extending th e theme of urban infi-a - Fpig,nlJl/I. RO\;1Ild Barthcs. "hom \!\'ork to Tcxt," Ill/(/y,c ,\111., j( 'Ii'XI, trans. Stephen Heath (New
structure, j'lcquciine Tatolll chronicles the hi story and future of the urban York: Ilill ;1IlL! \tVi\ng, llJ77), 155.
highway as a locus of landsca)Je )Jractice. Citing a range of historical cases li'olll
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, 'l'ltOIll folds more contempora ry inter-
ests in the int eg ration of highways into the l'lhric of cities, espec iall y as soci'll,
ecological , and ultimately cultura l artifacts.
Ala n Berger, in his essay " I>rosscape," advances it con ce ptual and analytical
framework for coming to terms with the e normous territories left aba ndo ned in
the wake of d c -indu s tri a li zation. Theorizing these s it es as p<Ht of a hroader
econolllY of waste, Bl'I"ger advocates landscape urbanism as an inter-practical
framework for approa ching the appropriation of territories left in the wake of
industrial abandonment. With "I.a ndscapes of Exchange: Re-articulating Site,"
Clare Lyster describes th e changing scale of economi c activity as one basis for a
model of urban l'lI'I11 and an explanation for contemporary interest in landscape
urbanism. Following from several historical examples of urban I,'rm, l.yster locates
the operational dnd logistical imperatives ofjust - in -timc production and other
cOlltclnporar y paradigms for post-industrial CO 111 111 cree as analogs fur horizon-
tal landscapes of exchange. Pierre Ill-Ianger continucs this interest in the surt'lCes
of con tcmporary commerce and offers an hi storica l inquiry into the develop-
m e nt of No rth America's la nd scape of paved surfaces. BClan ge r chronicles the
tech ni ca l and so cial milestones in th e unrele nting ons laught of aspha lt across
tile continent , from hi ghways and ports to inter-modal tran sit hubs and foreign
trad e zones, in th e 'll aking of a horizontal network of urbanized surfaces. The
collection concludcs with Chris Reed's meditations on the changing conditions
f"r public works practice in North America. Citing a nlllgc of public projects li'olll
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Reed descrih es th e role of landscape
urbanist pra ctices as an analog to the organizational, politica l, and procedural
conditions through which public projects are conce ived and co mmissioned.
Taken (ogether, these essays describe the positions, practi ces, a nd projec-
ti ve potentials of la ndscape urbanism. Equally, the y art iculate the expanding
international re levance of wha t ca n no w be und erstood as the s in g le 111 0s t
s ignifican t sh ift in the design disciplines' description s of the cit y in th e past •
quarter centur y.
rile l.al1dS(tlp ~ Url",n;S11I Reader assembles the fullest accou nt to date of the •I
origins, affinities, aspirations, and applications of this "Illerging body of
knowledge, In so doing, it chro nicles the shifting attention s of those disciplines