Foto in bianco e nero di persone che ammirano una struttura e il paesaggio

The need to live our places “outdoor”

We suddenly found ourselves in an emergency, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, in which all our usual habits have been abruptly interrupted. We had to adapt to new ways of living and working, experiencing difficulties and slowly overcoming them, trying to be as resilient as possible.

In recent months we have felt like birds locked in a cage, forced to look at the outside world exclusively through the glass of our windows and to communicate only through the monitors of our computers or the screens of our cellphones and tablets, without being able to enjoy the usual human contact that is the pivot of sociality, a feature that has always distinguished us.

Shot in black and white from the window towards the city of Vercelli

Shot from the window towards the city of Vercelli (VC), March 2020

The lockdown has been loosened only since a few weeks, and it was precisely in these days that we were finally able, with proper precautions, to see our loved ones in person and, above all, to regain possession of the open spaces of our cities. How much did we actually miss?

In recent months I have been thinking a lot about all this; I wished with all of myself, as well as being able to embrace all the people I love again, to be able to ride once again on the bike path of the city where I am, to be able to cross the large tree-lined avenues again and enjoy the shade of the greenery sitting on a simple wooden bench.

So I asked myself: how much and how does the frequentation of an urban park affect everyday life? How inherent in us is the need to live a place even through its “natural spaces”? And, therefore, how important can the design of green spaces be for a community within the various neighborhoods and places where it lives? This is how I began to reflect, once again, on a branch (if you can define it) of architecture that is very close to my heart: landscape architecture.

The landscape architecture is a type of architecture that is not realized exclusively with classic building materials, and which, although it is dressed in magical spatial reasoning, does not create places that are closed in themselves, or open metaphorically towards the outside, but are itself outwards. Hard and soft landscaping coexist in landscape architectures, that is, classic materials coexist, such as stone or concrete, wood or even corten, and so on, and materials that breathe, but really breathe: plants.

Querini park with green lawn

Parco Querini, Vicenza (VI), April 2014

Architectures speak to us, they have a soul, to really be architectures they have to enter it and from there we can understand what affinities we have with them, if there are any, if there will be any. I have discovered many affinities with landscape architecture, with those architectures that do not come from the primordial idea of ​​having a roof over your head, but rather from that of living fully, sometimes in symbiosis with nature, sometimes not, just a place .

Someone may presumptuously think that the landscape has nothing to do with architecture, but we are talking about Landscape Architecture, Landscape Design and not exclusively Landscape.

“Landscape” and “Project”

The Treccani encyclopedia tells us that the “landscape” is that “part of the territory that is embraced with a gaze from a certain point. The term is used in particular with reference to panoramas characteristic for their natural beauty, or to places of historical and artistic interest, but also, more generally, to the whole complex of natural assets that are a fundamental part of the ecological environment to defend and to preserve.”

The landscape, however, is not only what essentially exists in nature or in the historical-cultural essence, but is, as Michael Jakob also states in his book “The landscape”, the sum of the subject who admires, for example, nature (caring for it, loving it) and nature itself. Because, you know, each of us looks, feels, perceives differently. So think how nice it is to imagine how many shades of a landscape can exist! Each of us, loving a place, already creates a landscape, if only admiring it.

Black and white photo of the Sila National Park with trees and shed

Parco Nazionale of Sila, May 2018

A farmer looks at his lands, plowed and cultivated, in a totally different way from how an explorer looks at them. Here, therefore, we already have two different landscapes. It is a matter of effort, love, work, sweat, survival, for the former, a matter of heart, of poetry, of study, of discovery, of interest, for the latter.

What happens, then, when it is man who puts his hand in it? What happens if man starts to design a “landscape”, to modify a place according to the rules of the design?

Since ancient times, man has felt the need not only to shelter himself from the elements by building a “house”, but also to, for example, cultivate the land, in a specific order, following the seasons, choosing a place rather than another for the type of land, and so on. But not only all of this. He slowly felt the need to treat himself, perhaps near his home, to a garden, where to stop, where to enjoy a moment of tranquility, of silence, thus starting to modify, to his taste, the place that surrounded him.

Indeed, man’s perception of the landscape over time has changed a lot, just look at his representation in art, as Jakob always shows us in his book. Man passes from the representation of himself always in the foreground, leaving the landscape absent at first, then faintly present, in the background, until he gets even more to magnify him, to actually show his overbearing presence. In the end, many artists ended up making him definitely the protagonist; just think of Manet, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Pissarro, Renoir.

Painting "L'Hermitage a Pontoise" by Camille Pissarro exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in New York

“L’Hermitage a Pontoise” by Camille Pissarro exhibited at Guggenheim Museum of New York, September 2019

We have reached a point in history, where we realized that we are not exclusively us, men, at the center of the universe, but that we are fully immersed in the places, to be part of them, until we get to think and admit of actually being dots in the middle of infinity. This has meant that a different relationship was created with nature, but in general with the places themselves, trying more and more, in some way, to make them an active part of everyday life.

So we come to talk about the project. Regarding the word project, the Treccani encyclopedia tells us instead: in engineering and architecture, the complex of works (drawings, calculations and relationships) that determine the shapes and dimensions of a work to be built, establish its materials, the way of execution, the construction details […]

It can be deduced from the outset that a project does not exclusively contain terms relating to houses, villas, public buildings and so on, but that it can also be traced back to gardens, to large urban parks. Where shapes and dimensions of a cycle-pedestrian path are determined, which is at 0.00 m or elevated, or even, perhaps, in the basement, of flowerbeds and borders, of lawns, of simple seats or of steps, of aggregation spaces under the rain or indoor.

The materials are then determined, and in this particular case, the vegetation that will be an integral part of this project is chosen. From turf and grasses to shrubs and trees. Here too, the construction details are established, the need to think about rainwater, and therefore the conveying and disposal systems, how a path made of a stone or concrete pavement will be created, or perhaps one made of stabilized earth.

Urban regeneration and participation

Furthermore, landscape design is an integral part of urban planning, made not only of buildings for every intended use, but also and above all of infrastructures, networks, agricultural areas and even parks.

Precisely in relation to urban planning, as early as the end of the last century, we are increasingly realizing how urban space should be recovered, regenerated, rather than still built. Urban regeneration does not exclusively concern a building, a complex of buildings, but concerns most of the times entire parts of the territory, abandoned, fallen into disuse, which have become non-places in all respects.

They can derive from the process of the endless production of urban areas, almost like scraps from this unbridled urbanization, others instead, which have fallen into disuse due to important economic and social changes. Not to mention the important phenomenon of climate change, which really invites us more and more to rethink our spaces, regenerating them, with a view to safeguarding our home, the world, for the well-being of all its inhabitants, including us!

 

The New York High Line with green area between buildings

High Line in New York, September 2019

It can absolutely be said that landscape architecture overwhelmingly enters most of these new regeneration processes. But beware, regeneration does not only concern construction processes, it must, in fact, look beyond, up to economic and above all social logics.

We must never forget, in fact, that urban planning, as well as landscape architecture, practices necessary for the regeneration of the territory, must not leave out at all a fundamental component for their success. This component is nothing more than human resources, vulgarly, but more humanly called “people”.

People must influence and converge, with their way of doing and thinking, in a predominant way in the design choices concerning a place that they live every day, each in a different way. Because it is for them that we work, and therefore we should do it with them. History teaches us that the impositions from above, even if with all the good intentions, have often combined little less than disasters. It hasn’t worked and it still doesn’t work. The dialogue with the people who live in a place is itself a component of the process and then of the project.

Here we find ourselves connecting the so-called “participation” to landscape architecture. Dialogue with communities allows us not only to understand their needs and requirements, but also to guide them towards a different view of the places in which they live.

The figure of the landscape architect, but in general that of the architect, becomes almost a guide for those who will undergo the transformations of the territory. With his knowledge and skills he/she will improve the territory, but he/she will do it in accordance with the communities, who will feel the change not as something harmful, but rather as a new opportunity for change and growth.

Conclusions

It is really difficult, in a single article, to combine all that is inherent in the processes that lead to a true and accurate landscape design and therefore to landscape architecture. I hope that this series of small reflections, however, could have contributed to the birth in the reader of a greater interest and curiosity towards what are the themes (which continue to change and evolve every day more and more) that concern architecture of the landscape and the transformations that concern or will concern the places we live in.