Professional Documents
Culture Documents
James Corner is an Assistant Professor Abstract: This essay is about the crisis of creativity and meaning in contemporary Western
of Landscape Architecture at the Uni- culture and how the use of modern landscape and architectural theory works to perpetuate an
versity of Pennsylvania, Graduate excessively "hard" or neutral world--a world in which culture can no longer figure or recollect
School of Fine Arts. He holds a B.A. itself. A brief critique of three predominant approaches toward contemporary theory is presented:
degree with honors from Manchester positivism, the use of paradigms, and the Avant-Garde. In different ways, each approach
Polytechnic, England, and an M.L.A. derives from modern techno-scientific thinking and invariably seeks closure, certainty, and control.
degree and an Urban Design diploma The built landscapes that result often suffer from an equally closed explicitude: a stifling imma-
from the University of Pennsylvania. nence where all is exposed and nothing is left to imagination. The essay suggests an alternative
His interests focus on landscape design strategy grounded in the tradition of hermeneutics. Here, theory is something ever-open, permitting
theory and criticism. a free association of ideas through the mechanics of situational interpretation and metaphor. Herme-
neutics provides the basis for a landscape architectural theory that transcends pictorial image and
historical style by critically engaging contemporary circumstance and tradition. The landscape
itself is a hermeneutic medium and becomes the ground for such an endeavor, enabling the remem-
brance, renewal, and transformation of a cultural tradition. The author argues that a hermeneutic
approach to the theory and practice of landscape architecture is a way of returning to our designed
landscapes the powers of the everyday and the revelatory--the grounds of memory and hope.
Those who have always avoided the labor located culture works toward a new interests of efficiency and production,
of the concept say they are tired of debates time of consciousness, "learning anew while at the same time it has displaced
about theories, that one should get down to to be human" (Steiner 1990, p. 2). The the movement of tradition (because of
the thing itself, to the texts. This" kind of difficulty of our search, however, is that its progressivist position) and sup-
talk is the symptom of a scientific crisis faith has been superseded by reason in pressed the poetries of art (because of
marked by the disjuncture of... theory its ideology of objectivity and optimi-
a world now plagued by disillusion-
and the practice of interpretation.
ment--a world governed primarily by zation), thereby devaluing an already
--Peter Burger,
Theory of the Avant-Garde the logic of modern technology and impoverished life-world (at least spir-
global economics. Heidegger (1977a) itually). Many humanists have conse-
For, if without prophecy there is no hope, quently attributed much of society’s ills
refers to the resulting human condition
then without memory there can be no com-
as a "loss of nearness" or a loss of inti- to the alienating effects of technology
munication.
--Colin Rowe, Collage City macy between humans and their envi- and capitalism, arguing for the need to
ronment as well as between people and transcend the reductionism of techno-
T he social and cultural di-
mensions of our postmod-
their communities. Clearly much of
our built environment today reflects
economic thinking prior to the realiza-
tion of a more humane built environ-
ern condition have been explored by this estrangement and is perpetuated ment (Husserl 1970; Heidegger 1977a,
many over the past two decades, but by most contemporary attitudes toward 1977b; Perez-Gomez 1983). Indeed it
the primary characteristic of the Post- theory and practice in landscape archi- could be argued that the primary prob-
modern can be traced back through the tecture and the related arts (Figure 1). lem of survival for the developed
whole modern era to the enlightenment This essay explores this condition by cultures of today is less a techno-bio-
shift during the 18th century (Haber- looking at the role of theory in land- logical one than it is an aesthetic and
mas 1983; Lyotard 1984; Huyssen scape architecture and its ability to moral one (Lyotard 1984).
1986). ~ Since that radical break with address the existential problems of our Landscape architecture has not
tradition, our culture has been caught times. 2 remained untainted by these develop-
in a period of transition, roaming with- The objectifying logic of tech- ments. As a discipline, it has become
out center in a time between times. nology has emerged as a dominant increasingly estranged from a sense of
"Too late for the gods and too early for force in our world during the past two traditional and poetic value. In partic-
Being" (Heidegger 1977a, p. 37), a dis- hundred years. It has enabled societies ular, this refers to what might be
to control the external world in the
Corner 115
tions are often rendered naive in a
scientific world, where pragmatic val-
ues of efficiency and optimization are
often considered more "real" (Perez-
Gomez 1983).
Theory today is therefore quite
different from theoria, the origina!
Greek formulation of theory. 4 Whereas
theoria was mediative and reflective and
was derived from the primary realm of
human experience and perception,
modern theory has largely become an
instrument of certainty and control,
founded upon autonomous principles of
external origin. The predominance of
instrumental techniques and rational
methods in an anthropocentric world is
what has most characterized modern
thinking. While the scientific attitude
has led to a multitude of accomplish-
ments in modern science, it has also
underlain the emergence of a disem-
bodied culture struggling to find access
to a lived continuity of being and time.
Ours is a landscape of estrangement.
How might landscape architec-
tural theory rebuild an "existential
ground," a topography of critical con-
tinuity, of memory and invention,
orientation and direction? Through
our works in the landscape how might
we mediate a cultural dwelling in tran-
sition? To find answers, we must first
explore and challenge three predomi-
nant approaches toward contemporary
theory, each of which has a tendency to
degenerate into a tyranny of control
and closure.
The first approach is positivism: a
dogmatic, empirical approach that
believes a logical synthesis will follow
Figure 1. "Computer Man," drawn by a computer. Taken from Design Quarterly, No. 66/67, from a comprehensive and objective
1966. Source: Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota. fact-structure. The second is the use of
paradigms: a belief that problems may
be solved by looking to universal mod-
perceived as the current inability of difficult to manage this relationship. els for solutions and methods. The
landscape architecture to simulta- Many fail to even appreciate the role third is the Avant-Garde: a movement of
neously engage the recurrent and that landscape architecture plays in the intentional subversion, where the quest
thematic workings of history with the constitution and embodiment of cul- for originality spurs on an endless
circumstances peculiar to our own ture, forgetful of the designed land- series of experimental reactions. In dif-
time. Traditionally, cultura! products scape’s symbolic and revelatory powers, ferent ways, each approach derives
(as found historically in literature, especially with regard to collective from modern techno-scientific think-
painting, music, building, or landscape memory, cultural orientation, and con- ing, perpetuating an excessively
architecture) represent an infinitely tinuity. It is not unfair to say that "hard" world in which culture simply
rich array of interpretative gestures contemporary theory and practice have cannot figure or recollect itself. 5
and figurative embodiments that have all but lost their metaphysical and
attempted in various ways to critically mythopoetic dimensions, promoting a Three Tyrannies of Contemporary Theory
reconcile the historical with the con- landscape architecture of primarily Positivism. Positivism involves the
temporary, the eternal with the mo- prosaic and technical construction. ~ explicit description and explanation of
ment, the universal with the specific. After all, symbolic and poetic inten- the factual phenomena with which it
Today, however, we find it increasingly deals. Positive statements are asser-
Corner 117
into it, effectively destroying any pos-
sibility for a cohesive and stimulating
public realm. The result is an urban
landscape of "free for all" developer
projects that relate very little, if at all,
to one another (Figure 3). In terms of
scale and experiential coherence, the
Isle of Dogs appears ad hoc and lacks
any clear spatial vision or idea. Wilford
(1984) describes the plan as "sim-
plistic. It does not express either an
exemplary image, or mood of confi-
dence or credibility. It is a highly
innocent diagram.., based on cau-
tion, modesty, and the least possible
imposition" (p. 15).
Other built landscapes that re-
sult from the positivist attitude seem
equally impoverished and uninspiring.
They are usually mathematically effi-
cient and economically profitable,
while the poetries of place have been
blindly erased. Built and planted over
in universal fashion, the hygienic
image is empty and inoffensive. Think
of the sterility of Milton Keynes, much
of the London Docklands, or many
American shopping malls and subur-
ban developments. Cleansed of mem-
ory and consciousness, these deserts of
quantitative reasoning form a striplike
cortege of anaesthetized landscapes
(however much-loved they may be by
mass-culture).
To extrapolate a future from an
illusory, albeit quantitative, fact-struc-
ture is highly dubious. If metaphysics,
poetry, myth, and interpretive imag-
ination are excluded from any synopsis
of the real, then any outcome must be
considered incomplete, if not com-
pletely erroneous. The existential
world cannot be reduced to mathe-
matical formulae imposed by techno-
economic logic. This cybernetic atti-
tude is anathema to anybody who
knows the world to be as wonderfully
Figure 3. Isle of Dogs, London Docklands. Concept Plan (1982). This weak and simplistic enigmatic as it is, charged with mys-
plan, devoid of a strong public-private hierarchy and spatial structure, was the result of an
overly cautious attitude based in positivist-economic reasoning and ad-hocism. Source: Isle of tery and infinite value. Yet how diffi-
Dogs: A Guide to Design and Development. Courtesy of the London Docklands Development cult it is for many of us today to imag-
Corporation. ine there being anything more to the
world, or to a landscape, than its value
as a resource--either practical, eco-
etrating critique of a planning process accommodating--as was demanded by nomic, or aesthetic.7
gone awry elucidates the failings of a the Thatcherite regime--it lacked Paradigms. Another approach
"rational" design methodology sup- strong formal and physical charac- toward theory is that of the paradigm.
ported by reams of analytical data and teristics. An example of the "new A paradigm represents a lens through
augmented only by populist vignettes pragmatism" in urban design, this which a group of practitioners share a
in seductive marketing brochures. "weak" form of flexibility was subse- view of history and nature so as to be
While the resulting plan at the quently abused by the private and able to proceed in a stable, coherent
Isle of Dogs was infinitely flexible and economic interests of those who bought manner. Thomas Kuhn (1970, p. viii)
Corner 119
styles should not be mixed, proclaim-
ing that one should "always endeavor
to heighten, or to make that single
expression pre-dominate; it should,
clearly, either aim at the Beautiful or at
the Picturesque" (p. 30). Sketches,
planting plans, massing diagrams, and
layout plans were used as models to
illustrate the application of either style
(Figure 5).
Herein lies part of the problem
with paradigmatic thinking in the arts.
That is, by the time Downing wrote his
Treatise the original ideological and
intellectual fervor that initially pro-
duced the English Landscape School
had degenerated. The philosophy had
become illusory; only the image per-
sisted. When the ideological content of
the original model dissolves, the empty
form becomes nothing more than an
icon for past cultures and their ideals.
This is the danger of paradigmatic
models, or "types": they persist long
after the philosophical basis has been
forgotten. Form lingers, replacing con-
tent.
This accounts for part of our dif-
Figure 4. Jefferson’s plan of the University of Virginia. Drawing by John Neilson and ficulty today, where much of practice
engraving by Peter Maverick, 1822. Trustees of the University of Virginia. looks primarily at the formal image of
certain models without understanding,
or finding relevant, the origin or tradi-
tion of their being. This consumption
of signs merely perpetuates the ex-
cesses of aestheticism and historicism,
exemplary models being reduced to
"stencils" for easy reproduction as fash-
ion and taste desire.
Two contemporary advocates of
the typological approach in architec-
tural and urban design are Leon Krier
(1984) and Rob Krier (1988). 10 For the
Kriers, exemplary type is a de facto
form, something invariable and not
open to radical transformation. They
understand architectural form to be
external to historical evolution, with
eternal and immutable laws. The
Kriers’ taxonomy of"types" and
"design rules" is based on confined
interpretations of Classical models and
the writings of the town planner Ca-
mille Sitte (1965).
While there is much good sense
and aesthetic quality in the Kriers’
work (Seaside comes to mind), one must
be wary of an underlying nostalgia that
effectively nullifies the movement of
Figure 5. A prototype plan for a picturesque farm (ferme ornge) by Andrew Jackson Downing in
creative time and cultural change, (Fig-
his book A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1841). ure 6). The workings of art stand still
Corner 121
rity and meaning. Braque and Picasso
developed the languages of Cubism
and collage, privileging everyday
materials. Duchamp went even further,
reacting to the new formalism by pro-
posing a completely "anti-retinal" art,
an art where the pleasure was to be
found in the "playfulness" of purely
mental concepts. For the early avant-
garde therefore, the media of expres-
sion itself and the techniques of pro-
duction became the aesthetic object,
leading the critic Clement Greenberg
(1965) to define such a movement as
"autonomous," "self-referential," and
"self- generating."
In the early 1920s a few gardens
that appeared in France sought to give
expression in landscape architecture to
the new ideas expressed in modern art.
The landscape architect Andre Vera
criticized historical approaches to
garden design--especially those of
LeNotre--as early as 1912, and his
writing clearly influenced the archi-
tects Robert Mallet-Stevens and
Gabriel Guevrekian. 15 Guevrekian’s
Jardin d’eau et de Lumiere, built at the
Paris Exposition des Arts Decoratifs in
1925, was a striking triangular com-
position of stepped pools and terraces.
Some were tilted and planted with col-
ored flowers and grasses ranging from
light pink to crimson. In the center was
a sphere of stained glass and mirror,
which would periodically flash brilliant
light across the surfaces of the garden.
His garden at Hyeres was equally radi-
cal (Figure 8). Here, a chessboard of
terraces, some planted in vibrant col-
Figure 7. Raoul Hausmann, "The Art Critic," 1919-1920. Source: Tate Gallery, London. ors, others finished in concrete and
Copyright ART Resource, New York. Reproduced with Permission. mosaic, were tiered and rose toward
the apex of a walled triangle. Saw-
toothed beds of plants zigzagged up
each of the walls. Both gardens were
meant to be new, and to be new meant other movements. Polemical man- unprecedented at the time, reflecting
that one had to be original. ifestos (usually to the political left) Guevrekian’s spirited exploration of
In the arts this view rejected the announced the end of classical notions cubist composition and simultaneity
traditional bases of art, especially the of beauty and harmony and rejected and the use of new materials.
traditions of mimesis--the notion that the traditional idea that nature be the Fletcher Steele wrote enthusi-
an artwork refer ti~ an idea outside supreme metaphor for all art. The work astically about Guevrekian and other
itself, as in mimetic representation. 14 ofMalevich, Tatlin, Lissitsky, and French landscape architects in an essay
Instead, Konrad Fiedler and others Chernikov displayed the formal and entitled "New Pioneering in Garden
talked of the "opacity" of a work of art, nonrepresentational nature of these Design," published in Landscape A rchi-
where art need only refer to its own early experiments, completely unfore- tecture (1930). Thereafter, landscape
making (Colquhoun 1989; Junod seen in any of the preceding art architects such as Eckbo, Church, and
1976). As societal modernization movements. In addition, the non- Burle-Marx ambitiously explored new
stormed ahead, the early avant-garde figurative works of Mondrian and ways of using materials, plants, and
sought refuge in this new-found auton- Kandinsky explored how the pure color in the forming of geometrical
omy. Thereafter followed Futurism, qualities of color and shape alone space. This modernist "tradition" con-
Purism, Constructivism, and a host of might be seen to have their own integ- tinues today in the extraordinary work
Corner 123
Burger goes on to describe how this lived continuity of culture? The decon-
cynical disregard of convention and structivists would probably answer that
everyday virtues "merely represents to structure such a vision is impossibly
the deep-solitude of an individual’s will singular and utopian in what is now a
to make a statement" and remains out- heterogenous and ever-changing world.
side the norms and codes of a larger However, their counter-reason strat-
social group. This subversive attitude egies only work to embody the chaos of
is most prevalent when the avant-garde our time--something that is ironically
enters its most radical phase. Here, the traditional by virtue of the recourse to
avant-gardists construct a particularly representation. Just because one might
acute attack on whatever it is they are "deconstruct" a landscape in order to
against, while failing to present any see it afresh does not necessarily mean
positive alternative or remedial vision. that it has to appear fragmented and
This nihilistic attitude is apparent in disorienting.
much of the writing of Nietzsche and The replicant automatons in the
Derrida, as in their progeny, the film Bladerunner similarly failed to see
deconstructivists. the limits of their own being. Unable to
Without hope of truth or tran- "figure" themselves, they wandered
scendence, the deconstructivists launch aimlessly, searching in vain for origin
a massive assault on the bases of mean- and meaning (Bruno 1987). The
ing and stability in the world, seeking French philosopher Jean Baudrillard
instead to maintain the irreconcilable (1988) captures the emptiness of such
contradiction of our times. 16 As Fran- disorientation in the phrase, "I exist,
cois Lyotard (1984) has proclaimed: ¯ . . I have no name, I have no mean-
We have paid a high enough price for ing, I have nothing to say" (p. 30).
the nostalgia of the whole .... Let The Tyrannies. The three attitudes
us wage a war on totality; let us be discussed above represent the bulk of
witnesses to the unpresentable; let us our approaches toward theory and
activate the differences and save the practice in contemporary landscape
Figure 9. Rio Shopping Center, Atlanta, honor of the same (p. 82). architecture, even though it is fair to
Georgia. Plan. Photograph by David say that landscape architecture has
The language here is vehemently
Walker. Courtesy of Martha Schwartz generally been conservative in both its
(1989). resistant to completion, stability, and
holism (utopia). A new syntax, based usage and contribution to such devel-
around the prefixes de-, dis-, and opments. This may have left the discip-
lost, and to intoxicate himself with diz- trans-, forms the core of the decon- line with a certain innocence, insulated
zying syntaxes; seeking odd intersec- structivist’s vocabulary. Consider the from the errors of excessive intellec-
tions of meaning, strange corridors of language used by Eisenman and tualization, but it has also led to an
history, unexpected echoes, unknown Tschumi: "decentering... decon- uncritical and unsophisticated dog-
humors, or voids of knowledge," wrote struction.., dislocation... matism. In our search for a theory and
Robert Smithson (1979, p. 67), but he dissociation.., transference.., frag- language specific to landscape archi-
warns that "this quest is risky, full of mentation.., fracturing" and so on. tecture, we must first realize how the
bottomless fictions and endless archi- As in psychoanalysis, the fragments of predominance of methodological prob-
tectures." meaning by which the world may be lem solving, systems theory, ecologism,
In this sense the work of the understood are assembled in displaced typologies, historicism, formalism,
avant-garde can be provocative, if not and purposefully unresolved combina- behavioralism, and so forth are all var-
productive. The danger lies in what tions. Through techniques such as iants of the three attitudes outlined
Peter Burger (1984) has referred to as collage, montage, scaling, superposi- above.
the "neo-avant-garde," or the subver- tion, and grafting, the sheer hetero- While each approach is complex
sive: geneity of our postmodern times is and not without some value for land-
The neo-avant-garde institu- multiplied in an "intertextual field." scape architecture, these theories
tionalizes the avant-garde as art, and Such a field, without limits, knows of generally operate outside the full com-
thus negates genuinely avant-gar- no single center, no single logic, and no plexity of the existential realm and
diste intentions .... It is the status single order. As with nature, it is irre- tend to reduce and close as humankind
of their products, not the con- ducible (Figure 11). continues to demand absolute certainty
sciousness artists have of their While one might be curious, if and control. The modern emphasis on
activity, that defines the social effects not completely seduced, by some of the objective and pragmatic reasoning has
of works. Neo-avant-gardiste art is promoted a view of life that is more
creative strategies used in deconstruc-
autonomous art in the full sense of about the efficiency of means and ends,
the term which means that it negates tion, some disquieting questions
remain: What of the future and the methods and techniques over questions
the avant-gardiste intention of
of existence and being--the question
returning art to the praxis of life
(p. 58). "why" displaced by "what" and "how."
Corner 125
circumstances (Irwin 1985; Leather-
barrow 1988). While much of today’s
theory is derived from a scientific
approach--which tends to produce an
ideal from a hypothetical or artificial
arrangement--interpretation is always
situated within particular contexts and
must respond flexibly to the specific
circumstances within which the inter-
preter operates. In Truth and Method,
Hans-Georg Gadamer (1975) states
that "what makes modern scholarship
scientific is precisely the fact that it
objectifies tradition and methodically
eliminates the influence of the inter-
preter and his time on understanding"
(p. 333). The very idea of a situation
means that we do not stand outside it,
but rather that we inhabit it. We
"dwell" in situations (Veseley 1988).
Moreover, because interpretation
is situated and circumstantial, it never
presumes to be anything more than
interpretative and partial. Interpreta-
tion recognizes its own incompleteness,
working with smaller units of inquiry
Figure 12. Salvador Dali. "Dali at the Age of Six, When he Thought he was a Girl, Lifting the as opposed to grand utopian models or
Skin of the Water to see a Dog Sleeping in the Shade of the Sea," (1950). The painting depicts holistic schemata. Gadamer (1981) has
the role of imagination in disclosing hidden aspects of our world. Comte Francois de written that interpretation is "only an
Vallombreuse Collection, Paris. Copyright !990 Demart Pro-Arte/ARS, New York.
Reproduced with permission. attempt, plausible and fruitful, but
never completely definitive. Interpreta-
tion is always on the way." Unable to
presume certainty, a situational and
interpretative approach to theory and
practice defers singular understanding
and remains ever open to the world
(Figure 12).
2. The second working assump-
tion is that primary knowledge is that
which comes from direct experience.
We live in a corporeal and phenomenal
world, amongst real things, in specific
places, and it is only through the per-
ception of this primary realm--rocks,
rivers, solar cycles, seasonal change,
human encounters, and so on--that
different cultures have understood and
found access to the ideal. 18 Humans
make perception out of things per-
ceived (Merleau-Ponty 1962).
Traditionally the arts have sought
to unveil and make explicit the ideal
(the invisible) through an interpreta-
tion of this phenomenal world. In this
way the most inspired landscape archi-
tecture has provided humankind with a
Figure 13. Japanese water edge detail, Kyoto Gosho. The photograph depicts a poetic and sense of meaningful belonging and ori-
tactile use of various materials; the innate qualities of which can only be properly understood entation while transcending earthly
through sensual and bodily appropriation. Source: Norman Carver. 1955. Form and Space of limitations--think of the very concept
Japanese Architecture. Tokyo, Japan: Shokokusha Publishing. Photograph by Norman Carver. of"garden" or "place," for example.
Reproduced with permission.
Through physical embodiment, cul-
are essentially bonding mechanisms such recoding and transformation. an existential term referring to our
whereby meanings once considered dis- How might seemingly disparate and being in the world. As Veseley (1983)
parate or antithetical can be joined to banal meanings in the landscape dis- writes:
find commonality--connections be- cover new life and usage, renewing an
tween art and science, theory and art form while also maintaining its tra- Situations are the receptacles of
practice, or humans and nature, for experience and of those events which
dition? That is, how can we make the
example. In addition to joining, meta- sediment in them a meaning not just
ordinariness of everyday situations into as survivals or residues but as an
phors also extrapolate new meaning something imaginative or fresh, perti- invitation to a sequel, the necessity of
and usage to old figures, thereby dis- nent to our time but not estranged from a future. Situations endow experi-
closing hidden and latent relationships. tradition? ence with durable dimensions, in
The deployment of metaphor is there- Part of the answer lies in Gada- relation to which a whole series of
fore both a reconciliatory and inno- mer’s (1975, p. 278) statement that "the other experiences will acquire mean-
vative practice. In cultivating tradi- heart of the hermeneutical problem is ing .... The richness of situations
tions from within, hermeneutics that the one and same tradition must depend on the reverberations of
enables a re-cognition: a knowing of again and again be understood in a dif- meaning through the depths of their
things anew. ferent way," and that in landscape history (p. 9).
Much of the difficulty in contem- architecture this tradition may be said Human situations such as birth,
porary landscape architecture lies in to consist of situations. "Situation" is death, love, healing--or on a different
128 Landscape,Journal
level, public encounters, friendship,
learning, discussion, and so on--are
what have constituted culture since its
conception (Veseley 1983). They are
based in a profoundly human mythol-
ogy that is pregnant with forgotten and
latent meanings. Landscapes and
buildings have traditionally formed the
settings for these situations, framing
and symbolizing their content. Highly
situated events are thereby embodied
and presented as the ultimate frame of
reference for any future meaning.2~
Inevitably there is a correspondence
between the setting and the situation, a
dialogue that not only pertains to the
moment but also relates to an ongoing
conversation between past and future.
A hermeneutical landscape architec-
ture is therefore something that is
based on situated experience, placed
both within space and time as well as in
tradition, and is equally about resur-
gence or renewal as it is about Figure 15. San Cristobal, horse stables and pool. Architect, Luis Barragan (1968). ~Fhere is
invention. something remarkably modern, and yet also traditional, or "familiar," about Barragan’s work.
In describing hermeneutics and Source: Emilio Ambasz. 1976. The Architecture ofLuis Barragan. New York: Museum of Modern
Art. Photograph by Carlo de Benedetti, Milan.
art, George Steiner (1990) wrote that
all serious works of art are "critical
acts" that embody "an expository It is the well-formed world of occupied clarifying the world and our place
reflection on, a value judgement of, the places as opposed to the world outside within it. The textual landscape is thus
inheritance and context to which they of that--the unplaced place. In other a hermeneutic medium. Landscape ar-
pertain" (p. 11). The previous accom- words, prior to language, "landscape" chitecture might therefore be thought
plishments of culture--landscapes, is a phenomenon beyond immediate of as the practice of e-scaping and re-
buildings, paintings, literature, and so comprehension; it is not until we scaping our relationship to nature and
on--therefore provide a remarkable choose a prospect and map what we the "other" through the construction of
resource in terms of reflecting on and see, marking some aspects, ignoring built worlds. In the desire to reflect
relating to our present situation.24 Any others, that the landscape acquires both on our modern context and on our
such judgment is, however, an imagi- meaning.25 Such interventions include inheritance, landscape architecture
native task--not something that can be paintings, poems, myths, and liter- might practice a hermeneutical plotting
prescribed by equation or formal cod- ature, in addition to buildings and of the landscape--a plotting that is as
ing--and demands that any interpre- other interventions upon the land. much political and strategic as it is
tation occur through working from These works are the encodings that set relational and physical. The landscape
within, as opposed to conceptual- and enframe human situations. They architect as plotter is simultaneously
logical reasoning from without. are the posts that map out a "land- critic, geographer, communicator, and
scape." maker, digging to uncover mute and
The Hermeneutic Landscape As time passes, this marked land- latent possibilities in the lived land-
The landscape is itself a text that scape weathers, ever subject to the scape. With every "projection" there
is open to interpretation and transfor- contingencies of nature. Other points might follow a rebirth: the artifact of
mation. It is also a highly situated of view are chosen as circumstances culture and the enigma of nature ren-
phenomenon in terms of space, time, change and new ways of marking are dered fuller with every pass. 26 To plot,
and tradition and exists as both the overlaid upon the old, producing col- to map, to dig, to set: Are these not the
ground and geography of our heritage lagic and weathered overlays. Residua fundamental traditions of landscape
and change (Figure 14). in this topographic palimpsest provide architecture?
Landscape is distinguished from loci for the remembrance, renewal, and As a partial attempt to exemplify
wilderness in that it is land which has transfiguration of a culture’s relation- such an approach, one might consider
been modified by humans. But it is ship to the land. Such are the familiar the work of Luis Barragan, especially
more than this. Landscape is not only and unexpected places of authentic E1 Pedregal (1945-1950), in the vol-
a physical phenomenon, but is also a dwelling. canic region of Mexico; or the ranch
cultural schema, a conceptual filter As a human-made projection, and stables at San Cristobal (1968); or
through which our relationships to wil- landscape is both text and site, partly many of his numerous small chapels
derness and nature can be understood. and gardens (Figures 15 and 16). The
Corner 129
built order is truly original and ab-
stract, derived from the tenets of early
Modernism, but the spaces are still
rooted in the continuity of Barragan’s
culture, becoming meaningful to a
larger culture through their appeal to
primordial experiences we as human
beings all share. The cultural arche-
types are inexhaustibly reformulated
with a religious passion--walls, steps,
gates, paths, seats, and so on are the
elements of both memory and proph-
ecy, providing "places" for the col-
lective orientation and perpetuation of
culture. The serenity of enclosure and
setting; the poetic accommodation of
ritual and cultural situation; the sen-
sual control of body placement and
motion so as to arouse expectation and
intrigue; the surrealistic quality of
composition and arrangement; the
hierarchical control of space, light, and
tactile experience: all embody the pos-
sibility of a lived continuity within a
forward-probing culture recalling its
heritage.
Conclusion
A hermeneutic approach to land-
scape architectural theory might better
provide an ontology grounded in the
continuity of culture, as opposed to an
ideology of blinkered reconstruction on
the one hand, or of abstract destructive
freedom on the other. What is sought is
"a dialogue between culture in its pres-
ent form and those possibilities
forgotten or dormant in the depths of
its tradition, alive in memories, in liter-
ature, in philosophy" (Veseley 1984,
p. 12). Such dialogue demands that
one view the history of human
endeavor as a deep repository of mean-
ing, wherein certain profoundly
human situations continually recur and
are embodied in an infinitely rich vari-
Figure 16. The Plaza and Garden of the Trough, Las Arboledas, Mexico. Architect, Luis ety of ways. This quarry of human
Barragan (1950). Barragan is able to re-set traditional activities within modern settings, consciousness might thereby provide
settings which evoke past accomplishments. There is no simulation of the past nor any radical the very source of our work, recalling
break from it, but rather there is an "assimilation" or absorbance of the old into the new and the past while also disclosing new pos-
the new into the old. Source: Emilio Ambasz. 1976. The Architecture ofLuis Barragan. New York, sibilities for a future that transcends
Museum of Modern Art. Photograph by Armando Salos Portugal, Mexico City. the given present. Rather than a mim-
esis of nature, there might be a mimesis
of culture, a mimesis of "exemplary sit-
uations"--that which humanity has
already made, including landscapes
(Veseley 1984, p. 12; Perez-Gomez
1988).27 Merleau-Ponty (1964, p. 59)
talks of "the fecundity of the products
of culture which continue to have value
after their appearance and which open
Corner 131
religious claims; with blind inclination, passion, result of an eidetic abstraction (imaginary ideal Baudrillard,Jean. 19~3. Simulations. New York:
or fear; and have indulged ourselves fully in the of history) and is therefore only partial or second- Semiotext(e)/C olumbia University.
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