Landscape as Image

Bruno Notteboom

‘Can one think differently about the world without also or even first seeing it differently? It isn’t easy to look differ-ently. World views are developed in a slow and semi-con-scious process, and a long image tradition has crystallised in codes that rule making and viewing representations of the world. Landscape is one of these.’ Bart Verschaffel1

In 2001 the Department of Architecture & Urban Planning of Ghent University organised a symposium entitled Landschap = Beeld (Land-scape = Image), with contributions from Pieter Uyttenhove, Bart Ver-schaffel, Denis Dujardin and Steven Jacobs. The event took place two years before Labo S started work on its first research project on landscape transformation, but it spawned a number of theoreti-cal notions on landscape that would go on to relate to the landscape research of Labo S in the decade to follow. This chapter is a reflec-tion on the concept of landscape as image from a theoretical point of view and on its role as instrument in the practice of Labo S. It will first outline a number of theoretical notions on landscape as image, by means of some contributions to the Landschap = Beeld symposium and a number of other authors. Secondly, this chapter will investigate how these theoretical notions of landscape as image relate to some of the research projects of Labo S.2 As the title of the symposium suggests, a key issue in land-scape research and design is the relationship between the physical landscape – often also referred to as the ‘land’, ‘territory’ or ‘environ-ment’ – on the one hand and its representation, the landscape image, on the other. Labo S deals with ‘real’ landscapes, analysing them and p. 127

as a common – yet not totalising – background for human life seems essential in understanding how the landscape image works, not only in historical painting but also in the landscape imagery of Labo S.

Landscapes In Visu, In Situ and In Mente

How the landscape works as a common background is a topic explored by Pieter Uyttenhove in relationship with the technique of the narra-tive. In ‘The Sense of the Landscape,’ his contribution to the Land-schap = Beeld colloquium, Uyttenhove’s main hypothesis is that we should move away from a comprehension of landscape merely as a product of art history rooted in landscape painting, and include other conceptions of landscape as well. He refers to the landscape philoso-pher Alain Roger, who makes a distinction between landscapes in visu and landscapes in situ: the in situ landscape is a place that stretches out in front of the observer, while the in visu landscape is a represen-tation of a real or imagined place.6 In other words, the in situ land-scape refers to the territory, while the in visu landscape refers to the landscape image. Uyttenhove adds a third category, the landscape in mente, which allows us to imagine places mentally and to produce images that we – consciously or unconsciously – handle in our think-ing and action. These ontological meanings of landscape, Uyttenhove claims, do not exist separately: they are related by means of all kinds of cross-connections, interferences and shifts. One kind of landscape is often mistaken for another, an evolution that has been accelerated in the age of digital media. A second hypothesis is that every landscape image is meant to present an internal coherence. This coherence is constructed in dif-ferent ways: representational techniques, the choice of point of view, the construction of the image but also the discourse and the narra-tion that are part of the image. This idea of coherence should not be misread as a holistic unity that gives an unambiguous meaning to eve-rything. The landscape serves as a ‘scene’ that includes some things and excludes others, that conceals and makes it impossible to see the backs of things: ‘Landscape is by definition not panoptic or holistic. It is not a map. A map strives for completeness and accuracy, doesn’t offer front views, works without overlap.’7

subjecting them to development strategies for various reasons and within the agenda of different types of commissioners. In order to do so, the landscape has to be represented on paper or on a computer screen. In the work of Labo S, the landscape image serves as an ana-lytical device, a design instrument and a communication tool all at once. However, despite the instrumentality of the landscape image, it is in the first place a symbolic construct that is part of a long histori-cal tradition. In their contributions to the Landschap = Beeld sympo-sium, Bart Verschaffel and Pieter Uyttenhove outline how this sym-bolic construct operates, as we will see below.

Rest and Distance

In ‘De Wereld van het Landschap’ (‘The World of the Landscape’), Ver-schaffel reflects on how the landscape image operates in painting.3 The starting point of his argument is that the landscape painting is not an unreflective representation of an ‘environment’ but a coded image type with a specific structure. It imagines something that is not visible as such: the world. In line with Immanuel Kant, Verschaffel argues that the world is not an empirical given, but a regulative idea, a basic prin-ciple that allows us to order our experiences. One feature specific to the landscape image is that, as opposed to other means of represen-tation such as the map, it suspends action. While the ‘environment’ is something we are part of, the landscape image creates a distance: we find ourselves by definition outside of the image, as the image opens a space we can look at but remains inaccessible. According to Ver-schaffel this state of rest, or to use Alois Riegl’s term, the ‘Ruhe’, is closely related to the concept of distance.4 The landscape image is organised differently to the theatrical historical tableau that fills the whole frame with action. In a landscape image the action in the fore-ground is limited and balanced by middle ground, distance, horizon and sky. The action of human beings is subordinate to the world. As Verschaffel observes, the landscape image does not unite the human figures living in it but positions them on a common background or ‘gemeinsame Tiefe’, paraphrasing Rilke: ‘Human lives are not any-more entangled in a whole, but they are connected by a world that is far and behind everything as a landscape.’5 The concept of landscape p. 129p. 128

elements of a territory … Territory and text are the objective carriers of respectively the landscape and the narrative. A text only becomes a narrative when it is read and interpreted by a reader. A territory only becomes a landscape when it is perceived and experienced by an observer.’9

From Landscape to Land and Back Again

The analogy between landscape/territory and narrative/text indi-cates a dual meaning of the word ‘landscape’ that is essential in many reflections on landscape and takes into consideration the double defi-nition of ‘landscape’ as both a piece of land and the perception of it. In ‘The Word Itself’, John Brinckerhoff Jackson addresses the com-plex relationship between land and landscape in a cleverly hyperbolic way.10 ‘What we need is a new definition of landscape. The existing one, “a portion of land which the eye can comprehend at a glance”, is more than three hundred years old and was drawn up for artists.’ Jackson’s text can be read as an attempt to break away from the con-cept of landscape imagery as a hegemonic instrument: landscape is a concrete, three-dimensional, shared reality. He underpins this argument with etymology. In Old English, for example, scape could indicate an organisation or a system, which redirects the definition of landscape to the formula ‘a composition of man-made spaces on the land’. ‘Landscape’, Jackson argues, ‘is not a natural feature of the environment but a synthetic space, a man-made system of spaces superimposed on the face of the land… to serve a community – for the collective character of the landscape is one thing that all genera-tions and all points of view have agreed upon.’11 Therefore, according to Jackson, we should expand the definition of landscape to ‘a com-position of man-made or man-modified spaces to serve as infrastruc-ture or background for our collective existence’. By background he means ‘that which underscores not only our identity and presence but also our history’. This notion of landscape as infrastructure, system or space seems to counter the notion of landscape as image. How-ever, Jackson concludes the essay, the concept of background does not only allow us to think about landscape in relation to organisation of space, but it also has the virtue of including the visual experience of

The Narrative versus the Totalising View

The contributions of both Uyttenhove and Verschaffel to the 2001 Landschap = Beeld symposium imply that the medium of landscape does not evoke a closed or totalising set of relations, even if land-scape images shed light on relations and even suggest coherence. A seminal book that explores the way people relate symbolically to the landscape and to each other is Denis Cosgrove’s Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape.8 Cosgrove considers the landscape image to be a pictorial way of constructing the world symbolically in close relation-ship with power relations in society. In the capitalist socio-economic system that has gradually replaced the feudal system since the fif-teenth century, man has developed a new relationship with the land. The ‘natural’ relationship based on the direct utility value of the pre-capitalist world gave way to an ‘estranged’ relationship characterised by a commodification of the land. According to Cosgrove the medium of landscape, product of the invention of the linear perspective, was a tool used by a class that controlled and dominated the land. Ver-schaffel acknowledges this relationship between power and landscape representation. He points out a certain tendency in Western thinking that made representation suspicious: it considers the aim of repre-sentation to be presence, identification, homogenisation, appropria-tion, dominance, violence and destruction. However, the resistance to totalisation is inherent to the landscape tradition, Verschaffel argues, because distance always appears in the represented space. Pieter Uyttenhove makes a similar argument stating that the inherent narration of landscape allows the coherence of the landscape medium to resist a ‘holistic’ position. A landscape is not determined by a single narrative but by multiple ones: narratives are trajectories that are followed within a landscape or that create internal coherence between the constituent parts. The ‘reading’ of landscape images in the Recollecting Landscapes [3] project, we will argue further in this chapter, is an eminent example of the kind of multiplicity of mean-ings that the landscape format can provoke. With regard to narra-tives in the reading of landscape, Uyttenhove points out an interest-ing analogy between the pairings of narrative/text and landscape/territory: ‘A narrative gives meaning to a text the same way a land-scape as image creates coherence between the constituent separate p. 131p. 130

However, in the later images by Georges Charlier in 1980 and Jan Kempenaers in 2003 we see a landscape shaped by totally different mechanisms. The images are not the outcome of a careful composition chosen by the scientist/photographer who wanted to create a coherent world view. In fact, since Charlier and Kempenaers could not choose their point of view, the rephotographic images show ‘random’ pieces of land where the different elements within the frame do not always express a clear relationship – or any relationship at all. They indi-cate the lack of a negotiated, common background. The landscape in Ruiselede in 1980 consists of elements that are situated in Ruiselede, but find their reason for existence elsewhere: the pig stable converted into a bicycle factory, the fields with corn for export etc. What unites

Fig. 1 Ruiselede in 1905 (Jean Massart), 1980 (Georges Charlier), 2003 (Jan Kempenaers) and 2014 (Michiel De Cleene): from an agricultural community to agro-industry.

our everyday world, which brings him back to the definition of land-scape he started out with: ‘that old-fashioned but surprisingly per-sistent definition of landscape: “A portion of the earth’s surface that can be comprehended at a glance”’.12

Recollecting Landscapes: In and Out of the Landscape

The movement Jackson makes in ‘The Word Itself’ – evacuating the image from the definition of landscape in order to reinsert it again afterwards – is emblematic for what happens in the Recollecting Land-scapes [3] project and for the work of Labo S in general. The images of Jean Massart in Recollecting Landscapes [3] are careful compo-sitions: what is included and excluded was determined by the world view Massart wanted to construct. In this sense they were hegem-onic: Les aspects de la vegetation en Belgique, the albums in which Mas-sart’s images were published, presented a coherent world in which the inhabitant/cultivator and his relationship with the land was closely related to the geographical features of the region.13 Modern phenom-ena, such as the railways or urban and suburban houses, were left out of sight: the main goal was to construct a coherent image of the sys-tem of geobotanical regions that the world in Les aspects was based on. The word ‘background’ seems appropriate here, in fact, Jackson’s definition of landscape as ‘a composition of man-made or man-mod-ified spaces to serve as infrastructure or background for our collec-tive existence,’ seems almost written for Massart’s images. This back-ground differs from the concept of distance coined by Verschaffel: in the images of Massart distance does not refer to something ‘other’, it does not serve as a horizon for ‘human lives not anymore entan-gled in a whole’, but it is a background for a collectivity that is pre-sented as a closed circle where every element derives meaning from its relationship with other elements. For example, in Massart’s image of Ruiselede the landscape is presented as a perfect agrarian circle between the fields, the haystacks, the windmill and the farms, without interference from the outside. The railway that connected the commu-nity of Ruiselede with the outside world and the global agricultural market is left out of sight. p. 133p. 132

‘blank areas’ that fell in between the relics mapped in the Landscape Atlas, the reference document for landscape preservation. Referring to Recollecting Landscapes [3], one might say that the Department of Monuments and Landscapes knew very well what to do with the coherent Massart landscapes (preserve them) but did not know how to deal with the fragmentary Charlier and Kempenaers landscapes.

The report that came out of the New Landscapes [1] study is charac-terised by a juxtaposition of multiple representational means: maps, photographs, axonometric drawings etc. Traditionally, the map and the landscape image defined two ends of the representational spec-trum. As mentioned before, Pieter Uyttenhove attributes a panoptic or holistic quality to the map. In contrast to the landscape image, it strives for completeness and accuracy. In an article entitled ‘The Map and the Landscape’, Michiel Dehaene points at the complemen-tary nature of both media as well: ‘The map allows the problem to be deconstructed and coordinated in time and space. The landscape provides the space to reconcile the conflicting images produced by modernity in a new aesthetic, by means of an appropriate design.’14

Fig. 2 Multiple representations of a landscape that combines parking and nature in New Landscapes [1].

these elements is that they share the same distance, they are part of the same landscape although they aren’t part of any whole that is limited to the frame of the image. In the 2003 and 2014 image, this distance has disappeared altogether: the horizon is hidden behind a screen of poplars that hides the slaughterhouse in the foreground from the rest of the world. Can we still call this a landscape? Or is this a record of what happens on the land, on a site, in an environ-ment? The only way to make sense of these ‘landscapes’ is to recreate their narratives. Nonetheless, it will not be the narrative of the one who made the image – as was the case in the images of Massart – but rather the narrative of the ones who interpret or read the landscape and those who shaped the physical landscape, the land. The narra-tives of Recollecting Landscapes [3] have been reconstructed by step-ping in and out of the frame, by going back and forth between land-scape and land, by meticulously investigating every single element in the image on the one hand, and consulting maps, pursuing field work, talking to inhabitants, searching through archives and discussing all this material with specialists in the fields of agriculture, environmen-talism, urban planning, etc. on the other.

The Instrumentality of the Landscape Image

In retrospect, Recollecting Landscapes [3] did not only kick start the landscape research of Labo S, it also provided the analytical framework of most of the Labo S research in the years to follow. The researchers continuously went back and forth between land and land-scape, between the site and its representation. A central issue in the studies is the concern with the effect of past and future transforma-tions on the landscape image, in other words, the relationship between the landscape in situ and the landscape in visu. A good example is the first study assignment on landscape Labo S was engaged in: New Landscapes [1], which ran parallel to Recollecting Landscapes [3]. New Landscapes [1] was commissioned by the Department of Monu-ments and Landscapes of the Flemish Community to develop a way of thinking about landscape that would be more proactive in terms of spatial development instead of preservation. Basically, the challenge for Labo S was to develop a vision and a strategy for the so-called p. 135p. 134

formerly rural world in transition. The images are instrumental in a discussion about where the landscape is heading, a topic debated in circles of policy makers and administrators but gradually involving other groups in society. In Regional Identity of the Hop Region [2], perspective drawings visualise various redevelopment scenarios for historical farms and residences that are currently subject to rapid transformation. This use of images as ‘good examples’ – the Prov-ince of West Flanders published an instructional folder based on the Labo S study – has historical precedents. As demonstrated in Bruno Notteboom’s PhD, the Belgian Farmers’ League and the Flem-ish Tourist Board, each with their own agenda regarding the aes-thetic quality of the countryside, both published instructional books and articles about appropriate architecture in the countryside in the inter-war era.17

The underlying concern then and now was the loss of a legible and rec-ognisable rural landscape, a common background for an increasingly fragmented reality – as visualised in the Recollecting Landscapes [3] series of Ruiselede. Jackson’s definition of landscape as ‘a composi-tion of man-made or man-modified spaces to serve as infrastructure or

Fig. 3 Good and bad examples of rural architecture.18

A good example of how the landscape image complements the map is a series of images produced to visualise a development scenario for the area of the A12 highway (fig. 2). The construction of this high-way and its adjacent industrial and commercial development created a conflict with the existing rural landscape and the historical pleasure grounds in the area. The solution proposed in this scenario is a buffer consisting of rows of trees that also serves as a parking space for the commercial and residential developments. This buffer, presented as a classic zoning tool in the map, is in the composed landscape image a place of reconciliation of two different worlds: parking and forest. As opposed to the Landscape Atlas, which is based on maps and exists to delineate areas to be preserved, this kind of imagery inserts the user’s perspective into the discussion and, moreover, reconciles worlds that are perceived as irreconcilable in the current policy of the administration. Obviously, juxtaposing different media in analysis and design was not invented by Labo S nor can a strict line be drawn between these media. In the example of New Landscapes [1] the map and the landscape image are flanked by an axonometric perspective of the larger area and a bird’s-eye view of the site, as intermediates between the map and the landscape image. In the early 1990s urban planners such as Stefano Boeri started to combine photography, topograph-ical maps, and diagrammatic and axonometric drawings in order to create an ‘eclectic atlas’ of the Milan region.15 This approach, which was anchored in a historical survey tradition, has resonated during the last few decades in other Belgian research institutions as well, for example, in the series of atlases of South West Flanders produced by KULeuven from 2002 onwards.16 However, in this range of studies of the contemporary urbanised landscape Labo S has developed a par-ticular position, working in landscapes that have an overt heritage value and where urbanisation was only one driving force alongside agriculture, tourism, nature development etc.

Values

In the Labo S studies commissioned by the Province of West Flan-ders, landscape images – as well as maps and other visual media – are part of a search for a landscape as a ‘common background’ for a p. 137p. 136

As was the case with the images produced for New Landscapes [1], here a landscape is visualised in which conflicting claims are rec-onciled in a new kind of landscape. The development of the area is steered by a zoning plan that is not determined by functions, but by a distinction between open and closed areas, thereby creating a system of ‘rooms’ that can be filled in with different occupations. The accom-panying collages show a landscape in which agriculture, recreation, nature and residential development are reconfigured in a new con-stellation. The careful staging of open and closed areas reveals selec-tive views on the surrounding landscape. This is not the rural land-scape visualised by Massart, where every element is part of an organic whole, but rather a composed landscape where different users in the foreground share a common background.

Fig. 5 Territorial Vision for the Region of Kemmel Hill and Scherpen Hill [12]: ‘Open and closed zones’.background for our collective existence’ becomes problematic faced with the reality of an increasingly complex field of actors (residents, farmers, tourists, preservationists, etc.) who project conflicting claims on the landscape. In its series of studies for the Province of West Flan-ders, Labo S developed a method based on a set of values that are to be mediated with society as a whole: the functional value, the cul-tural value, the locus value and the experiential value. Landscapes in Transition [11], and the subsequent Territorial Vision for the Region of Kemmel Hill and Scherpen Hill [12] take into account the different users and the incompatible claims on the landscape in South West Flanders to create an atlas that tries to find a middle ground and a direction to further develop the region. Again, this does not result in one landscape image, but in a combination of landscape images, maps, sections, schemes etc.

Fig. 4 Territorial Vision for the Region of Kemmel Hill and Scherpen Hill [12]: ‘Zones for forest expansion’.

p. 139p. 138

Fig. 7 Veduta from Pilot Study: Collective Housing [15].

Fig. 6 Veduta from Scheldt Landscape Park [5]. The Veduta and the Picturesque

The examples of landscape images from Labo S studies discussed above, from the photographs of Recollecting Landscapes [3] to the collages of Landscapes in Transition [11], are based on the perspective of the observer standing in the landscape. However, a different type of landscape image plays a crucial role in two studies: the veduta. This landscape format, which has its roots in sixteenth-century Flemish painting, is a very detailed, mostly large format image of landscape shown from an elevated point of view. The veduta takes a prominent place as the conclusive image at the end of the Scheldt Landscape Park [5] study. The atlas explores the potentialities of a region of 25 municipalities abutting the River Scheldt, a region subject to claims and challenges on the levels of mobility, industry, agriculture, resi-dential development, nature, recreation etc. The veduta at the end of the atlas displays a panorama of this landscape stretching from Ghent to Antwerp, imagining one vast space where the River Scheldt unites all kinds of future developments, inserted as micro-landscapes in this mutual background. A similar – albeit less spectacular – veduta adorns the last pages of Pilot Study: Collective Housing [15]. In this study the notion of the picturesque is the starting point for a design process in search of a new alliance between landscape and dwelling: the fragmented Flemish landscape consisting of a series of ‘scenes’ offers the basis for alternative development models in which hous-ing constructs landscape rather than destroying it. The picturesque point of view is translated in drawings that represent the residential setting as a sensory experience of the landscape from a low perspec-tive. Each redevelopment type is illustrated by a landscape drawing that balances a contemporary architectural rendering and the picto-rial convention of eighteenth-century picturesque landscape drawings. These images play with the layered quality of the Flemish landscape, for example, in the view taken from within a house, into a garden where someone is gardening against the background of a meadow. This landscape is far from panoptic or holistic – the point of view is that of the inhabitant in his private sphere – but from there it does offer a perspective on the outside world and other people’s lives: sin-gle family houses and a collective housing block continue the resi-dential landscape at the horizon. Instead of the private garden sur-

Fig. 8 Perspective drawing from Pilot Study: Collective Housing [15].

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Notes

1 B. Verschaffel, ‘Het landschap’, in De Witte Raaf, vol. 95, 2002, p. 1.

2 See also: B. Notteboom, ‘Ouvrons les yeux!’ Stedenbouw en beeldvorming van het land-schap in België 1890–1940, (PhD), Ghent, Ghent University, 2009.

3 B. Verschaffel, ‘De wereld van het landschap’, De Witte Raaf, vol. 95, 2002, pp. 1–4.

4 A. Riegl, ‘Die Stimmung als Inhalt der modernen Kunst’, in Gesammelte Aufsätze, Augs-burg/Vienna, 1929, cited in B. Verschaffel, ‘De wereld’, p. 1.

5 B. Verschaffel, ‘De wereld’, p. 3.6 P. Uyttenhove, ‘De zin van het

landschap’, in V. Van Eetvelde, M. Sevenant and L. Van De Velde (eds.), Re-Marc-able Landscapes/Marc-ante Land-schappen. Liber Amicorum Marc Antrop, Ghent, 2008, pp. 110–117; A. Roger, Court traité du paysage, Paris, 1997.

7 P. Uyttenhove, ‘De zin’, p. 112.8 D. E. Cosgrove, Social Forma-

tion and Symbolic Landscape, Madison, The University of Wis-consin Press, 1980, repr. 1998.

9 Uyttenhove, ‘De zin’, p. 114.10 J. Brinckerhoff Jackson, ‘The

Word Itself’, in Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, New Haven, 1984, pp. 3–8.

11 J. B. Jackson, ‘The Word Itself’, p. 8.

12 Ibid.13 J. Massart, C. Bommer, Les

aspects de la végétation en Bel-gique. Les districts littoraux et alluviaux/Les districts flandrien

et campinien, Brussels, Jardin Botanique de l’État, 1908–1912.

14 M. Dehaene, ‘De kaart en het landschap’, Archis, vol. 2, 2004, pp. 60–65.

15 S. Boeri, A. Lanzano and E. Marini, Il Territorio che cam-bia. Ambienti, paessagi e imma-gini della regione Milanese, Milan: Abitare Segesta, 1993.

16 B. De Meulder, M. Dehaene and O. Devisch et al, Atlas Zui-delijk-West-Vlaanderen: fasci-kel 1, Kortrijk, Anno ’02, 2001.

17 For example L. Edward, Bou-wen in het Dorp en op het Land, Antwerp, De Sikkel/Belgische Boerenbond/VTB, 1928. Also see: B. Notteboom, ‘Ouvrons les yeux!’, pp. 347–393.

18 L. Edward, Bouwen in het Dorp en op het Land.

rounded by a hedge – the usual view from a suburban house – we see a landscape that is the result of the interplay of private and collective efforts. The veduta that concludes Pilot Study: Collective Housing [15] places the different types of collective housing types presented in the study into an existing suburban landscape, introducing a scale that surpasses the single family house with garden. Patches of col-lective open space connected with public paths break up the duality of residential and agricultural grounds, currently in a back-to-back relationship. This model, which tries to validate the landscape that is underneath or behind this fragmented world, is exemplary of much of the design effort in Labo S during the last decade. The design does not unite everyone who is living and working in this suburban land-scape, which is the result of millions of individual dreams and expec-tations, but rather creates a landscape in which these expectations are reconciled against a common background, a ‘gemeinsame Tiefe’ in the words of Rilke.

p. 142 p. 143