In contemporary times, the scope of the landscape theme moves between scales, disciplines, and occupations; through a journey, it leads to unprecedented experiences about the human-nature relationship expressed in the territory, thus relating to new collective aspirations towards the environment (1). In this sense, our starting point is the understanding of the term landscape as an original quality evinced as a human expression (be it discourse, image, or practice) in relation to nature. Attributing meanings and definitions to landscape is only possible upon a reflection that allows to identify its intrinsic values, whether environmental, aesthetic, philosophical, cultural, or moral. These values lead to an understanding that landscape is not nature itself, but rather a mediation (2) present in the human–nature relationship (3).

Such aspirations, qualities, and understandings unfold into a complex nexus between Landscape and Architecture, allowing new fields available in present times to experimented in, be them technical, artistic, economic, or social. In the context of this article, we focus on in situ dimensions, based on the territory, covering a cultural and phenomenological field whereby the relationship between Landscape and Architecture is mediated by experience, by phenomenon.

Thus, it dwells on the belief that the landscape implies a geographical dimension — termed “geographicity” (4) by the French geographer Eric Dardel (1952–2015), — a concrete relationship between the being and the Earth, experienced through multiple senses and achieved by relating to the various elements that make up the world. Such a fact leads the individual to an approximation beyond material perception, extrapolating the levels of understanding of a rigorous, objective science, but without excluding it.

With Dardel, the field of Geography gains a phenomenological dimension, developed by investigating the being-Earth relationship. For him, the geographical experience is an encounter, to put oneself within place and its physiognomy. Through this direct contact, the body is invaded by the nuances proper to a place, thus constructing the meanings.

For the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961), before a reflexive process that theorises and categorises what is perceived, one should seek to understand the subject-object, subject-world relationship, side-lining the epistemological constructions that control the intellect and suppress perception. The author opposes to the idea that perception should be corrected by reason — an idea historically constructed by the Western society, according to which the truth of things is determined by a rational thought that concatenates the order of perceptions, revealing the meanings of the real.

Such an abandonment of explanatory practices would allow us to return “to things as they are” by the intentionality of consciousness — that is, the observation of a phenomenon through attention and judgment, for consciousness makes the phenomenon present as a direct experience. The act of feeling is a form of vital communication with the world, making it familiar to human beings (5). For the author, the world gains meaning from the perception, from beings who give themselves to it, beings who feel beyond senses, without dispensing with them, perceptive beings:

“We must habituate ourselves to think that every visible is cut out in the tangible, every tactile being in some manner promised to visibility, and that there is encroachment, infringement, not only between the touched and the touching, but also between the tangible and the visible, which is encrusted in it, as, conversely, the tangible itself is not a nothingness of visibility, is not without visual existence” (6).

Thus, the body acquires a philosophical status; a being who speaks of the world but is inserted within it. The intentionality of perception (perception is not empty of intention; it is the power, latency held by experience) establishes a relationship between consciousness and object, whereby the individual is not understood as possessing a body: the individual is the body that perceives and, in doing so, is impregnated with lived experience.

For the field of Architecture and Urbanism, the 1970s phenomenological issues determine an inflection point: in a period of crisis and revision of modern assumptions, Architecture incorporates the phenomenological contribution, proposing a resumption of cities focused on understanding the place, using the context as a starting point and indispensable element to the design process. According to this perspective, the city is understood as a place with its own characteristics, folds, and roughness (resulting from processes of suppression, accumulation, and superposition), expressed in the landscape (7).

Landscape: insertion of the individual in the world

“The geographical world is only authentically accessible from the level of lived experience, in which the terrestrial and the human adjust to an original measure” (8).

The contact of the individual with the world occurs through perception, experience. Place experience is fundamental for landscape Architecture: the environment is the physical structure materialized by the passage of time, carrying traces of its journey within its essence. In this sense, Architecture — understood as the act of perceiving, imagining, and proposing changes in the landscape — creates places, support points for human existence. Through it, individuals — beings who give themselves to the world, who are of the world — build it while carrying it within their bodies.

The landscape experience occurs in an instant, at the moment when the body is physically affected by the surrounding world, by its structures, textures, and spatialities. Thus, such an experience comprises a dynamic presence, revealed through the displacement in space, in a continuously unveiling horizon. New landscape feelings emerge from the understanding that this process occurs dynamically, with displacement — this is innate and inextricably intertwined with the emergence of its new formal unity: a new landscape. According to Besse, the horizon is “the overflowing power of the being that presents itself in the landscape” (9), modifying it according to their feeling and desire.

From the notion of geographic space, Dardel states that “geography authorizes a phenomenology of space” (10). The space to which the humanist geographer refers is a mediation between scientific knowledge and experience; a space that is concrete, practiced, perceived and lived on; the space for life; an environment with distinct faces that relate and give rise to singular phenomena, ensuring its unfolding power. However, such a space made place will only become present upon its understanding as the human habitat, assuming different scales and complexities that range from towns and municipalities to cities and countries.

The starting point of Dardel’s approach is the material space, from which other spaces emerge and are unfolded into metaphors, whose abstraction aims solely to allow these experiences to help in the construction of understandings, explanations, and meanings of a larger and more complex reality that linear rationality can conquer. These ensuing spaces are: the telluric space, marked by the notions of plasticity, thickness, and solidity; the aquatic space, which entails a constant movement in which the notion of time will be established; the airspace, invisible, permanent, and changing, through which comes the light, modifying the perception of the Earth; and the constructed space, the work of humanity, often presented in a rudimentary way and, at the same time, as too significant in its capacity in changing the form of fields, plantations, mountains terraces, and cities. The modes of space construction reveal and assign new meanings to geographical reality.

In this context, Dardel introduces the phenomenological and cultural dimensions of Geography, whose apprehension is only possible through a totality of the landscape. Thus, the landscape is revealed through the interactions and combinations of a set of constrictions and natural conditions (botanical, morphological, geological etc.) and a grouping of human realities (social, cultural, and economic) in space and time.

The notions of phenomenological and cultural landscape manifest as the singular effect and expression of a system of evolutionary causes, in which changes in vegetation cover or agricultural production mechanisms, for example, are translated into their appearance and perception through culture (11). Thus, Dardel states that the landscape “is a set, a convergence, a vivid moment. An internal connection, an impression, which unites all elements” (12), and “the geographic landscape is not, in its essence, only to be contemplated, but refers to the insertion of people in the world, a place of life, a manifestation of their being with others, the basis of their social being” (13).

That is, through landscape the human being becomes conscious of the fact that they inhabit the Earth, and that inhabiting it means modifying it from a culture. From this angle, the landscape is not only characterized as a simple action to organize the outer space, but also as a succession of overlapping marks throughout history, thus holding a temporal quality and constituting a “symbolic and material thickness” (14).

According to these considerations, the landscape is also a work that is constructed and constructs memories, embodying cultural values that change and transform in time and space. This space shapes human life in a complex and diverse way — the spatial experience of each being largely forges their identity, contributing to the construction of the meaning of existence. For individuals to orient themselves, explore the environment, insert themselves within the social fabric, they must acquire broad knowledge (15), and the landscape participates in this movement.

Such a theoretical construction reinforces the claim that landscape is not the picture of physical nature, but rather the expression of human practice inscribed on nature. As the landscape is variable, taking different forms according to the culture in which it is inserted and changing over time, it can be more or less modified based on this same culture record, due to experiences, aesthetic values, or needs of that time. That is, the landscape will assume an aspect that corresponds to the translation of human cultural variability in relation to nature at a given time.

The ideas so far presented regarding the human–nature relationship show that the landscape, in its multiple manifestations, provides a fertile dialogue between the world and communities socio-affective needs, especially and more evidently when it comes to praxis and the inhabited space. In view of this dimension of meanings, John Jackson (16) concludes that all landscape pursues these goals. The moment has arrived for understanding the landscape in a more comprehensive and complex way — as political and cultural, aesthetic and phenomenological, modified and designed.

The unfolding of new landscapes

“Beyond the displacement of a given, one finds oneself no longer before a juxtaposition of objects that are able or not to gather in a landscape, but before a simultaneity of different moments, or vertical fractions each having its own necessary space, so that is results in an ensemble of associated structures mutually valorized by their temporal differences” (17).

The individual lives in the practical universe, and in this environment the landscape begins to be apprehended and expressed from the human–nature relationship. Thus, investigating a landscape is, above all, understanding the territory, physical and tangible reality, the societies that inhabit it, and the accumulated meanings.

The landscape presents the issue of the totality of the human being, its connections with the Earth, and the original “geographicity” put by Dardel: the Earth as a means, place, and basis of their realization; an attractive or strange presence, but always an experience; the relationship that affects the senses, participates in society, and transforms the territory. In this sense, Dardel states that the landscape “is not a closed cycle, but an unfolding. It is not truly geographical, unless by the real or imaginary background that space opens beyond the gaze” (18).

In general, landscapes are elaborated from objective information (topographic or water issues, e.g.) and communities’ organization. Thus, spaces are created from actions that are fundamental for the existence of these communities, such as economic and social organizations; from actions directly linked to the offer of leisure spaces; the possibility of contact with nature; the creation of spaces for social enjoyment; and profitable activities or spaces that can function as urban infrastructure.

When overlapped, these layers harbour a set of modifications made by individuals in physical space — either intentional (planned and designed based on specific knowledge and objectives) or unintentional (resulting from various personal objectives that, together, cause considerable spatial changes). In both cases, the landscape results from the practical action of the human being on the world, from experimentations and actions of societies that have inhabited the earth for centuries. Such material and symbolic thickness shapes a society landscape, a cumulative texture (19) understood as a cultural landscape.

In this context, the landscape project process is complex, for it is followed by intentions manifested both by a rational (present in the practice that impose and arrange the project stages) and a subjective action, which permeates the fields of experience, culture, and history. That is, it constitutes a “reflection that engages interpretations, activates repertoires, and impregnates the original experience of meanings” (20), evinced as the scale is approximated.

Bernard Lassus (21) offers an strategic approach to landscape, leading to the notion of its multiscale dimension: by moving through different scales, one enters the symbolic, material, environmental, and phenomenological thickness provided by the landscape, especially when seeking the congruence between reading, interpretation, and practical action over the territory — it consists of a conductor wire of landscape interventions, which emerges from the context, from the visual and tactile scale, from individual perception and needs.

This perspective aims to enter the thickness and reach the multiple landscape layers through the experience, the phenomenon, so that one may design it from the apprehension of such experience, or experiences. It comprises an essentially mediation task performed through the landscape, in a deeper and denser way, to reveal, requalify, and assign new meanings to the space — functionally and aesthetically — or, as stated by Lassus, “the sensory choice of the landscape entity gathers in it numerous factors nourished by the processes of the place itself, processes that find themselves inflected in return” (22). Thus, the landscape unfolds, flexes, and originates new places — an emergence of new landscapes.

What is observed are dynamic, fluid, multiscale landscapes; places where time is present either in the process, in the project, or in the built place. The landscape is manifested in the form of parks, gardens, squares, or free space systems that dialogue with other architectural elements and trigger landscape enjoyment, elaborated by and for the sensible, meeting technical and aesthetic issues.

Place: where all experiences are shaped

“The man-made parts of the environment are first of all ‘settlements’ of different scale, from houses and farms to villages and towns, and secondly ‘paths’ which connect these settlements, as well as various elements which transform nature into a ‘cultural landscape’.”

When resting on the ground, the buildings interfere in the landscape, building places from their qualification while suffering interference from them — an inextricable complicity reinforced by the openings connecting the here and the beyond, whereby inhabiting a place implies inhabiting the world (23). Through the architectural gesture, the space becomes place, the place becomes territory; a territory produced, practiced, and inhabited by human societies, a place that opens up to sensible experiences, a place manifest through the landscape.

Joseph Rykwert identifies such a link in the field of Architecture: for the author, the “strange” and the “familiar” of the architectural object entails a poetic mediation. At birth, the individual acquires something like a second skin, the Architecture, which protects them from an unknown world. When the individual is born, their bodies need a protective space, a space in which they can recognize themselves, dream, establish a nexus between a known world and an unknown and “dangerous” vastness (24) — the individual requires places to live, to manifest their existence, to be their support points, relations that are mediated by the landscape.

Such issues concerning a phenomenological approach to the place in the field of Architecture took shape in the period following World War II, notably as one of criticisms to the modern movement. The phenomenological trend arising in the architectural and urban field during the revision of the Modern Movement (1950–1960, consolidated in the 1970s) is a counter-flow: it does not intend to deny such a movement within its matrix of change; rather, it seeks to offer a revision of certain assumptions deemed as limiting and detached from everyday life, strongly associated with a functionalist rationality.

The common place lies in the assumption that Architecture sustains life, and human beings cannot achieve their full development based only on scientific dimensions, requiring abstractions of another order, namely symbols, artworks, feelings, representations of life — dimensions that transcends functionalism, for the purpose of Architecture goes beyond technical definitions.

Amidst this debate, Norwegian architect Christian Norberg-Schulz introduces and deepens the so-called phenomenology of place. His contribution to the critical revision of the Modern Movement is grounded on a phenomenological approach, come backing to the place, to its features: “The existential dimension (‘truth’) becomes manifest in History, but its meanings transcend the historical situation’ (25).

With Intentions in architecture (1968) (26), Existence, space and architecture (1971) (27), and Genius loci: towards a phenomenology of architecture (1980), Norberg-Schulz seeks to understand the basic relationships between individuals and the environment, mediated by the landscape and built by architecture. Such an approach is materialized from his hypothesis that the Architecture offers a support point to human existence, pointing to the need for a phenomenological and qualitative understanding of the subject, enabling the realization of existential space: “The existential purpose of building (architecture) is therefore to make a site become a place, that is, to uncover the meanings potentially present in the given environment” (28).

Nature would be a conjunction of interrelated physical elements that materialize fundamental aspects of existence. Thus, the landscape incorporates meanings over time and provides the bases for building, layers revealed by experience — the project is a dialogue between form and context, form and landscape, understood as the overlap of historical layers. In Genius loci: towards a phenomenology of architecture, the author states that a place is marked by landscapes and settlements and can be understood from the character and design of its spaces, which are formed by two components: a structural and technical component, comprising three-dimensional geometry, materialized through edges and boundaries; and a perceptual and aesthetic one, marked by its qualities.

Such a conception postulates that places have particular identities, described by qualitative issues (perceptual component): houses, cities, open spaces consist of a multiplicity of places. All places have character — that is, the means through which they are granted life, their formal and material constitution. And only upon understanding a place character one may reach its genius loci, its essence and possibility of understanding.

Architecture would be potentially responsible for releasing such essence, composing a significant place capable of being a support point for human existence, producing an element that enables self-identification and, at the same time, identification with the world. By doing that, architecture participates in the production of the act of dwelling, an integral part of existence, for “Human identity presupposes the identity of place” (29).

Thus, the place is a totality made of concrete elements with essence, shape, texture, color. Together, these elements determine the character and assemble an atmosphere. For the author, the place is a qualitative phenomenon in its totality, irreducible to its constituent parts — the place is a plethora of phenomena that molds experiences.

In this regard, Peter Zumthor states that the first and greatest secret of architecture would be to “gather things and materials of the world so that, united, [they might] create a certain space” (30), thus causing a sensory effect. These works move, offer refuge and protection to the individual, architectures that are not only landed, but rooted in the landscape in total congruence. The author also dwells on the body analogy, comparing Architecture to the body and its interactions — a body that can cause commotion and evoke feelings. Like Norberg-Schulz, Zumthor employs the term atmosphere, an aesthetic category that is immediately perceived, through which the individual captures a place character based on their experience (in compliance with the dialogue between its materials, colors, textures, shapes, lights, shadows, sounds, the inside/outside).

These authors are in line with the methodologies that defend projects production from a phenomenological approach to the place, whereby thinking about a project implies thinking about the place in which it is established, as a work that becomes part of its surroundings, which in turn becomes part of the work life; as a form that refers to the place through its dimensions and materialities.

This designer also imagines that the project comes to life from such subjective interaction with its users — through this interaction an emit sounds or be silent; that this designed place has momentary, present atmospheres, and, at the same time, is a work for the future — what sense will it incorporate over time? How will it be remembered? (31).

For Besse (32), dwelling a place implies a commitment to that space; entering its folds and making use of its history, its culture, its nature. Thus, it is about establishing a metabolic interaction that unfolds at all levels (physical, symbolic, emotional, sensitive). A place is a qualified space where coexistence, relations, and exchanges are established; a space where a series of political, cultural, and social issues participate. Making a space inhabitable means promoting conviviality, establishing relationships, creating connections between space and the human being, thus transcending the strict sense of sheltering.

Understood as an inseparable unit that brings artifice and nature together, Architecture and Landscape comprise a fruitful means to think about the process of development and occupation of territories. Moreover, before the clear criticism regarding eminently technical and subjectivity-free responses over the last decades, the Architecture and Landscape Architecture disciplines can and should relate to provide memorable and necessary experiences by means of complicity with the place and the commitment to reveal its unique qualities.

Final considerations

The landscape can be deemed as a territory produced, practiced, and inhabited by human societies for physical and metaphysical reasons (environmental, political, economic, social, cultural, moral, spiritual). Essentially, such landscapes are inhabited, transformed, and experienced by individuals through the time.

Landscapes in which one lives with the world, its things and beings; landscapes in which we participate and that contribute to the living conditions in its many dimensions. Thus, the landscape is beyond physical nature: it is an expression of human actions on the territory, accumulating transformations and meanings, thus constituting a symbolic, material, environmental, and phenomenological thickness.

The materiality and meaning of the landscape as a lived phenomenon are presented from the transformations made by the human being on nature, either individually or collectively. All these actions converge into a notion of landscape as mediation, a nexus between humanity and nature.

The landscape is also constituted from the place where encounters and experiences occur, where experiences gain objective and subjective forms and unfold, not only at the present moment, but through memory and history, in identity and belonging — at once, it connects past, present, and future. Through experience, one enters a concrete, practiced, perceived, lived space; the space for life; an environment with distinct past, present, and future ‘faces’ that relate, giving rise to singular phenomena.

In this sense, the landscape is not a closed cycle, but an unfolding; the landscape is fluid, a space that opens beyond the gaze, transiting between different scales, entering its thicknesses and establishing a dialogue between individuals and the place they inhabit.

Inhabiting is being in the world, which constitutes the environment of life: from the first civilizations to the contemporary world, beings require support points for their existence; existing is building meanings, thus justifying the importance of places and their landscapes, with which existence weaves affective relations, as guiding landmarks before a vast and unknown world.

Architectural elements, understood in analogy with the body, cause commotion and evoke feelings, triggering landscape fruition. These places shape human life in a complex and diverse way: the spatial experience of each being participates in the conformation of their identity, giving meaning to their lives.

From this understanding, one of the challenges in designing inhabitable spaces suggests that entering this fine line requires a singular attention to the margins of exchanges and ‘confrontations’ between interior and exterior, between Architecture and landscape — points to be perceived as places of porosities and exchanges. These are threshold locations, crossing spaces, doors, windows, openings, gaps, yards, gardens, blocks, parks, routes, streets, and paths, where boundary provides the key to a transition and potential understanding of meanings; a connection that liquefies and allows Architecture to root itself within the landscape upon landing, transforming them into one place, a place permeated by experiences — a nexus between experience and project established through the landscape.

notes

NA — To the Research Commission — CPq IAU and the Culture and Extension Commission — CCEx IAU of the Institute of Architecture and Urbanism of São Paulo University — IAU USP, for financing the article translation — Notice CPq and CCEx — 01/2021. The opinions, hypotheses and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect Fapesp’s view. Grant #018/16973-1, São Paulo Research Foundation — Fapesp.

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DARDEL, Eric. Op. cit., p. 25.

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DARDEL, Eric. Op. cit., p. 30.

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BESSE, Jean-Marc. O gosto do mundo: exercícios de paisagem (op. cit.), p. 34.

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DARDEL, Eric. Op. cit., p. 31.

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LASSUS, Bernard. The landscape approach (op. cit.).

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LASSUS, Bernard [1993]. The obligation of invention. Part 2: Essays in landscape theory (op. cit.). p. 77.

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CARERI, Francesco. Walkscapes: o caminhar como prática estética. São Paulo, Gustavo Gili, 2013; CULLEN, Gordon. Paisagem urbana. Lisboa, Edições 70, 2008; NORBERG-SCHULZ, Christian. Genius loci: towards a phenomenology of Architecture. New York, Rizzoli, 1980.

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RYKWERT, Joseph. A casa de Adão no paraíso: a ideia da cabana primitiva na história da Arquitetura. São Paulo, Perspectiva, 2003.

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NORBERG-SCHULZ, Christian. Genius loci: towards a phenomenology of Architecture (op. cit.), p. 6.

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NORBERG-SCHULZ, Christian. Intentions in Architecture. Cambridge, MIT Press, 1968.

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NORBERG-SCHULZ, Christian. Existence, Space & Architecture. London, Studio Vista, 1971.

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NORBERG-SCHULZ, Christian. Genius loci: towards a phenomenology of Architecture (op. cit.), p. 18.

29
NORBERG-SCHULZ, Christian. Genius loci: towards a phenomenology of Architecture (op. cit.), p. 22.

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ZUMTHOR, Peter. Atmósferas: entornos arquitectónicos — las cosas a mi alrededor. Barcelona, Gustavo Gili, 2006, p. 23.

31
Idem, ibidem.

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BESSE, Jean-Marc. Ver a terra: seis ensaios sobre paisagem e geografia (op. cit.).

about the authors

Gabriel Braulio Botasso holds a bachelor’s degree in Architecture and Urbanism (IAU USP, 2018), with academic exchange to the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto — FAUP, Portugal (2015–2016); PhD in Theory and History of Architecture and Urban Planning (IAU USP, 2018); researcher at the Research Centre in Language Studies in Architecture and City — N.Elac (IAU USP).

Cauê Martins Silva holds a bachelor’s degree in Physical Education (USCS, 2010) and Architecture and Urbanism (Unip, 2016), with academic exchange to the Universidad Rovira i Virgili — URV, Spain (2015); Master’s degree in Theory and History of Architecture and Urban Planning (IAU USP, 2019); researcher at the YBY — Group for Land Studies, Urban Policies, Space and Landscape Production (IAU USP).

Luciana Bongiovanni Martins Schenk holds a bachelor (FAU USP, 1990), Master (FAU USP, 1997), and PhD (EESC USP, 2008) in Architecture and Urbanism; Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy (FFLCH USP, 2001); Professor at the IAU USP; co-leader of the YBY — Group for Land Studies, Urban Policies, Space and Landscape Production (IAU USP); ABAP National President; ‘Landscape Architecture amid Picturesque, Olmsted and Modernity,’ dissertation, EESC USP, 2008.