Landscape in Transition. The Agency of Time in Understanding and Representing the Landscapes of the Anthropocene

Abstract

This contribution examines the representation of landscape temporal scale as a driver for landscape design and planning, questioning the univocal relationship between human and environmental processes, both from an aesthetic and procedural point of view. The aim of controlling and measuring the physical space by representing it has progressively evolved into an attempt to narrate the dynamic, ecological and social interactions that characterize its change in order to aesthetically penetrate the reality of objects that ontologically withdraw from us. Design directions can be developed from the quantification and representation of environmental time-based processes and directed towards future-oriented landscape transformations strategies and imagery. Among these perspectives, this essay interweaves the concepts of time and space, exploring how this merging represent a prerequisite for landscape designers, and a necessary exercise for students, in order to critically address design practices within the context of landscapes in transition.

Keywords

• landscape architecture
• landscape representation
• time based drawing
• design process