Proceedings of the International Conference on “Changing Cities“: Spatial, morphological, formal & socio-economic dimensionsISBN: 978-960-6865-65-7, Skiathos island, Greece , June 18-21, 2013

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Exploring the ordinary to understand landscapeness

C. Mattiucci1,2,* 1DICAM, University of Trento, 38100, Trento, Italy

2 AMP-LAVUE (UMR CNRS 7218) of the ENSA Paris La Villette (Marie Curie Post-doc Research Fellow 2011/2014)

*Corresponding author: E-mail: cristina.mattiucci@gmail.com, Tel +39 3287447934

Abstract This paper aims to discuss the ordinary landscape as a device to understand landscapeness. Landscapeness is here conceived as a way to grasp the contemporary landscape, in its material and immaterial features, as a kaleidoscopic image/space that actualizes several political themes and expresses the space-society relationship. Since ordinary landscapes are a consequence of the different strategies that work in the space, transforming the territories and influencing the imaginaries, through their exploration the political implications of landscapeness emerge, in terms of economical, environmental and cultural issues. We argue that the ordinary landscape has the potential to render the contemporary, by visualising and by critically reading it, giving us some elements to put its forthcoming trends in perspective, and so to plan it. The paper will start from a conceptual overview and will present some visual materials to discuss these themes. Keywords: ordinary landscapes; kaleidoscopic landscape features; landscapeness; garden as heterotopia.

1. INTRODUCTION In the contemporary city, which calls into question many of the current interpretative paradigms, starting from the assumption that the vast majority of the worldwide population lives in urban areas, but imposing at the same time the reformulation of the urban-rural dichotomy (post-metropolis with a regional dimension, suburbanism, rurbanity, etc.), we are witnessing the diffusion of an idea of nature that expresses aspirations and needs very different from a couple of centuries ago, when – in the cities of the nineteenth century – nature was introduced in parks and public gardens for the welfare of the new urbanized citizens. The human aspiration to live in contexts where nature is a discriminating presence, understandable in a more general “longing for landscape”, conveyed and summarized in a variety of social representations [1], is characterized by complex meanings, that combine environmental worries with a more general trend to the verdissement de la societé [2], providing the same concept of the desired nature with new attributes and showing the same desire for it in very different ways, both spatially and temporally. These trends are recognizable in the practices of space use, expressed both by individual subjectivities and collective subjects in associations, as well as by more radical reclaiming acts, such as the guerrilla gardening initiatives, that trigger processes of transformation in some city areas [3], or the rural squatting movement, that characterizes the longing for nature of the neo-rural movement’s instances against capitalist economies in crisis [4], and that links it with other social issues, proposing an ecological-economic model programmatically based on rhythms and processes more symbiotic with the natural ones. At the same time, as they make policies and architectures, institutions – recognizing the strategic importance of greenery to increase the ecological and economic value of some areas, as well as to build consensus by riding a rhetoric, and to experiment new forms of sustainability – interpret and play on this "need of nature", updating its attributes by means of a technology that evolves in proportion to the decreasing "natural" character of the produced spaces, even if they refer to nature

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(from the green walls, that also serve real estate development in reducing the green areas extent, to the eco districts, and so on). So, assuming landscapeness as an expression of these different needs of nature and desires of landscapes, which inevitably has to be understood based on the understanding of landscape perception1 – as a "container" of different instances related to space, not necessarily connected to a mere natural character – this paper intends to explore landscapeness, or rather the representations contributing to build it, in order to understand uses and meanings, on the one hand, and the role and power of those same images (and therefore of landscape) in making contemporary cities and territories, on the other. The landscape is expressed by the plurality of perceptions [5] and multiple representations, by various forms of "reclaiming the nature" and by different policies that ride its rhetoric, interpret its instances or shape the imaginary (while they are being shaped by it). And it is in the ordinary condition, where these multiple expressions are placed, that it is possible to find the elements to understand landscapeness, while the project of spaces includes, excludes and longs for it. According to Irene Nierhaus (2010), who explored landscapeness with a greater focus on the bio-political implications of its representations, <<landscapeness connotes a dovetailing of display spaces within the framework of a motivic reproduction of landscape and is here a metonymic instance of relational spaces that ultimately appear unplanned or "naturally" developing>> [6]. This refers to the studies which suggest cultural interpretations of the idea of landscape [7], even when it does not express itself through exceptional landscapes, but regards the whole territory, in its ordinary manifestations. Due to its different physical expressions, landscapeness – as it has been defined so far – is not linked to exceptional selected landscapes, but addresses a multitude of different landscapes by widening the traditional notion of landscape as garden, park or alpine scene to include the "vernacular" landscaped in everyday "interim terrains" and urban peripheries [6]. It means, in other words, that it addresses the ordinary landscape [8]. As a consequence, this paper aims to discuss the ordinary landscape as a device to understand landscapeness, since in its physical features it is possible to understand and build strategies pertaining to the different tensions linked to the ideas on landscape, to work in the territories. Although many studies have been reported regarding the investigation of the ordinary landscape and its centrality in the space transformation process, this paper aims to explore landscapeness with a focus on its political role. Actually, the naturalness can be considered as the quintessence of the contemporary imaginary horizon, that is obviously a political horizon and that has its own ground in everyday practices, in the experiences of life, in alternative lifestyles and so on. So, since ordinary landscapes are a consequence of the different strategies that work in the space, transforming the territories and influencing the imaginaries, through their exploration the political implications of landscapeness emerge, in terms of economic, environmental and cultural issues. In any case, it is clear that the interpretation of this "need for nature" has tangible and significant implications on the dynamics and projects transforming the territories and reveals the power of landscape [9], as an instrument of cultural force, highlighting the centrality of knowing it.

2. MATERIALS AND METHODS

Working with ordinary landscape, implies understanding the landscape as representation of everyday life, exploring its material and immaterial features, by the way it is lived and perceived (and thus through practices and imaginaries nurturing the ways of life) and by its conceived 1 The paper has been developed following the landscape definition signed in the European Landscape Convention

(Florence 2010), according to wich “ landscape means an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors” and it makes reference to the interdisciplinary debate in progress concerning all the issue for its application.

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representations (the planned, ordered, controlled representations, coming basically from projects and policies) [10], in order to understand how it has been (and it is being) produced and to offer useful narratives as tools for interdisciplinary planning and design. What people produce as perceived and conceived landscape representations can constitute an useful visual material to discuss and understand landscapeness. 2.1 Exploring the innerscape This paper assume the complexity of these representations and so, following the methodological assumptions developed and improved in the range of some researches in progress and/or already done, it sees landscape as synthesis of a sort of archetypal landscapes, which may be defined as interpretive paradigm to split the perceived landscape into three layers: the “daily landscape” – the everyday one - the “representative landscape” – the stereotypical one - and the “innerscape” – the desired one [5]. This affects not only the perceived landscapes, but also the conceived represented landscapes, since the imaginaries that produce the latter are strongly related to the first ones. Among this three kinds of landscape, we will focus on the innerscape to explore the idea of desired nature standing behind it. The innerscape, rather than as an object, emerges through the exploration of an attitude, an inclination, a taste or an aspiration by which the subjects express the features of a place where they can live the wished condition of “well being”, that usually people associate to the landscape. For its first of all cognitive existence, the innerscape may be imagined as a container of leitmotivs, a sort of container of the History of Landscape, where all the themes it has been charged with by the people who perceived it emerge in the imaginary each one draws on to express it. As we have underlined in the introduction, we are stressing the idea of nature as a feature of the landscapeness because, beyond the general association of terms (nature & landscape) that still exists even if the landscape concerns not only the natural context, we aim to explore its spatial consequences, and what are the projects and plans that it drives, in the understanding the political potential of policies that move from or that contribute to give place to it. 2.2 Looking for the garden. The garden as device. Innerscape can be also interpreted as an heterotopic garden, where claims, desires and meanings are expressed. The reflection on the desired landscape to be investigated as an attribute of the innerscape within a discourse such as this one – which aims to look at ordinary landscape representations, so starting from real places, to explore the landscapeness, so going to understand imaginaries, elements and features, not always linked to real places – can be declined heterotypical landscapes. They exist with the presence of the body and of the thought which produce them, and take shape through the very act of thinking of a place where they may be implemented. Michael Foucault [11] himself recognized in the garden the most ancient example of heterotopia, thus confirming how in that landscape the whole world fulfills its symbolic perfection. Furthermore, the garden is in itself at the same time representation and presentation: it represent in time and in several traditions the idea of Paradise, that belongs to a transcendent and inaccessible sphere and refers outwards the representation [12]. Therefore, the garden refers visually and conceptually to various meanings, often not directly readable. It could be use as device to understand innerscape and so the ordinary landscape, than the landscapeness, because its imaginary is also contaminated by external patterns, which are manifold and often are not directly experienced, but through cinematographic, photographic experiences and virtual journeys, and so on. So, the heterotopic garden is a kind of innerscape, which could be proposed as device-container of the contemporary dimensions of the human/nature/place relationship, to understand by the elements

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and the significance of its representations/evocations (in the projects, in the policies, in the activities). Moreover, following the Michael Jakob analysis, who has drawn an interpretative path along the representations of the garden in paintings, photography and films [13], the garden represents several current political issue, such as the nature in the city, the radical modification of the nature, the ambiguity of the luxuriant imaginary linked to the parks, its borders or accessibility and the following inclusion and exclusion, the garden's social costs, and so on. 2.3 Visual material. Landscapeness into ordinary. We are basically exploring a concept that grows up in urban milieu, looking at how the nature is called and reproduced by the visual material collected in different research contexts. We put here, in exemplifying way, three images coming from a selection of images, collected during some very different research experiences. The figure 01 is the garden photographed by a respondent during the field work of a research, that aimed to explore the perceived landscape2. The photography is the answer – built though a photo-elicitation process [14] - when she was asked to let us see a representative image to express her own landscape. The comparison of the two gardens in figure 02 comes from the preparatory works for a workshop3 that aimed to explore the participants’ garden image/idea, by discussing shapes and features of that places that are garden in their experience, starting from a chosen image. The images represent the Parisian habit to spend in the parks and in open public space their free time in sunny days. The first one is a shot in the Villette Park in a spring Sunday, the second one is taken from the promotional material for the praire set up in a club/bar in Paris. During the preparatory work several different images was collected, since the discussion have been driven along a visual path of images interpreting a garden by representing techniques, projects, actions, practices, symbols, in order to make an iconic tales expressing the garden complexity. The workshop constituted a pretext to discuss a space that belongs to human culture and its feature and potentialities influencing the contemporary uses of it. The figure 03 is a shot done during the excursion “Urban gardening and socialising” of INURA conference 20124, in Tallin. It represented the communal gardens in Soodevahe where people go to spent their time, to cultivate flower and vegetables and sometimes to live, frequented by inter-generations in times, since in the city it was also a refuge of homeless and a source of subsistence farmer. When we visited it, it was a really quarreled place, since the local administration aimed for that area to expand the Tallinn Airport. So, it was the theater of people association activities and performance, to support the gardeners, and also of repression actions, such as the several fires and demolitions occurred to put garden (and the gardeners) out.

2 Mattiucci C. (2010) PhD thesis. A kaleidoscope on ordinary landscapes: the perception of the landscape between

complexity of meaning and operating reduction. Online: http://eprints-phd.biblio.unitn.it/348/ 3 Mattiucci C. “Invito a tavola in giardino”, workshops during “Innesti”, a festival placed in the green areas of Trento,

4th October 2012. http://innestinnesti.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/invito_a_tavola_in_giardino.pdf 4 http://inura2012tallinn.wordpress.com/

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Fig. 01

Fig. 02

Fig. 03

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3. DISCUSSION The paper proposes a reflection, letting emerge the importance of visual cultures in defining the imaginaries. It concern the rule of images, both in making visible in a not-mediated way processes otherwise hidden, or difficult to be expressed, and in spreading ideas. So, in our case, each of the presented images is significant because of its elements and because it makes reference to a very placed landscapeness. Here we discuss a selection of themes from the shown pictures. 3.1 Themes: landscapeness belongs to ambivalently natural places In the figure 01, the representation of the myth of the private house with garden, update in a mountain ”horizontal condominium” context [15], synthesizes the need of nature developed in western cities, giving it a private answer, by taking care of a small, enclosed, not deep, green grass. This is one of the possible way to satisfied this need, as it was already interpreted and planned in city-garden or suburban models, that touches the masses moving to the peripheries to live with a small plot of land or going regularly to the countryside on weekends or during the holidays. As well as it is satisfied by the collective taking care for the not planned green, such as the community gardens, the urban agriculture places and the sidewalks with flowerbed. But, in the figure 02, this same desire to spend the sunny days in the parks (as each parisienne has had way to experiment in spring and summer) is conveyed into an advertising message, that evokes the nature in a very artificial and commercial context, where, while we have the idea to stay on a green grass, space could be consumed in a commercial way. Anyway, as emerged in the workshop, the garden interprets the harmonies and sometimes the frictions that characterize the relationship between human and nature, in the various ways by which it takes place, while it manifests itself, from its earliest forms, such as an artificial space made to fit different logical and social structures and often to give place to a multiple-use desire of a public space. Moreover, this is the same desire is used in policies that, using the rhetoric of putting the nature in city, often can hide urban speculation or more simply orient the city development, by means of a even more sophisticated and technologic nature. Paul Wapner, providing a powerful vision for environmentalism's future, defines the current a “postnature age”, where it is necessary to overcome the conventional anachronistic polarization of environmental politics (nature vs. mastery), as we can note an increasing disappearance of the wild, in empirical sense, and the conceptual end of the nature [16]. In any case, we can note that this artificialization is really common because it deeply belongs to the ambivalence of human desire of nature, that shows the wild/domestic opposition in the building of this desire [17]. Often, the bodies live “naturally” into the spaces only if mediated by a very technological devices (such as for example the ones structuring the eco-quarters) or in very domesticated natural places (such as for example the regulated wilderness areas or the planned territories). More in general, any plan and project in itself, even if they have been developed in landscape architecture or urbanism field, express a desire to manage nature interpreting the human need of nature, as we can see in the safeguard parks regulation, in the coast plans and in any other territorial planning processes. In any case, all this issues make us affirm that the landscapeness belongs to the relativity of the same concepts of naturality in western societies, where different cultures co-habit. 3.1 Themes: landscapeness belongs to spaces in common In the fig. 03 the nature emerges as political question. There, we have seen the rests of an unauthorized cottage and gardening settlement, made by a

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mostly elderly Russophone community, who, perhaps following a dream of having a suburban dacha, decided to settle themselves without permission and to realize a common space. Actually, the pictures have told us a story of a space in common. By the several activities happened around this gardens, the periphery took a new shape, by means of an art project possible only there. As Timo Toots said << Soodevahe was the quintessence of Tallinn as a place, containing plenty of contradictions and different layers. In Soodevahe village, improvised houses stood next to an airport territory, an over-controlled space met a self-regulatory one, an impersonal non-place met an intimate space created by people themselves, a machine-oriented environment met one of human scale. The project addressed various aspects, including those of the emergence of the shack village in the political context of its era, the land ownership issue, the constant temporariness, the impending doom, people’s personal stories and a lot more>> [18]. Even if nowadays the subsistence values of those gardens are probably disappeared, as well as the same garden because of the airport expansion, their symbolical values maintain their power. As we can see in different expression all around the world [19], green movements express at different scale a “reclaiming the space” action, letting emerge a landscapeness that often connects and summarizes other political meanings, from the critic against the current developing, social and economic model. And it belongs not simply to the being public of such places [20], but to their capability of generate common shared spaces, whose people share care and maintence, out from exclusive private speculative or commercial interests. But, moreover, in its common being, the landscapeness express itself in the spaces of encounters, where the different and not homogeneous cultures inhabiting contemporary cities could have place. 4. CONCLUSIONS As we have seen, tracing an horizon of the contemporary imaginary, producing the landscapeness, implies to manage a complex material. Actually, landscapeness belongs to the manifold socio-spatial configurations, where the concepts of nature, public space and inhabiting are continuously reformulated. All the visual material collected – that we present here by a little selection of some exemplificative pictures - contributes to build a discursive lenses or socially embedded narratives, by means of how we perceive the nature. It makes evident how nature is affectively a repository for several meanings, useful to know to have a consciousness (a confirmation) of the political power of landscape and to find theme and issue that projects and plans can/must give place to. The reflections concerning the research path stricto sensu, let us confirm that exploring the ordinary is a way to understand landscapeness. More specifically, following the paper's aims, and according with the scholars that underline the political topicality of the landscape, as collective ouvre [21] to explore ordinary landscape, we have looked at the practices that happen and also at people imaginaries in living and representing the places. Moving from everyday activities, and from the material links and belongings by working, housing, crossing, etc., we grasp landscapeness, by interpreting the ordinary landscape in relationship (by comparison, by analogies, by contrast, by co-existence) with the innerscape, that belongs to everyone. Landscapeness can be effectively conceived as a way to grasp the contemporary landscape, in its material and immaterial features, as a kaleidoscopic image/space, that actualizes several political themes and expresses the space-society relationship. Moreover, since the ordinary landscapes are the consequence of the different strategies that work in the space, transforming the territories and influencing the imaginaries, through their exploration, by in analysing and producing visual material, by working with space and place, the political implications of the landscapeness could emerge, in terms of economical, environmental and cultural issues.

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contemporanea. Scienza & Politica 44. 21. Cosgrove, D. E., 1984. Social formation and symbolic landscape, Croom Helm, London. The paper has been developed during a research in progress, with reference to a broader topic concerning the exploration of the landscapeness and the garden’s meaning, to work within disciplinary field of landscape architecture and urbanism. The research project of reference - “Mountain as an urban garden. Understanding devices and operational proposal for Alpine Metropolis” - is carrying out at the University of Trento and at the ENSA Paris- la Villette, in partnership. It is founded by FP7 - European Framework Program 2007-2013 - specific program “People” - Actions Marie Curie – COFUND (project: "Trentino - The Trentino programme of research, training and mobility of post-doctoral researchers" of the Autonomous Province of Trento).