Architecture’s involvement with Landscape

Abstract

While nature is an important component of architectural theory, we must reevaluate how architecture deals with nature in theory in order to place landscape in this thesis in the disciplinary context of architecture. While revisiting 17 of architecture's crucial exponents throughout twenty centuries, I explore their dealings with landscape or nature and the concepts thereof. The beginning of this chapter (3.1) will touch on some crucial problems that lead to the polarity of 'wild' nature and human architecture, or more precisely, the divide between nature and humanity through architecture. Part of the theoretical problem elaborated in the beginning of the chapter is, that landscape and nature are oftentimes conflated if not confused, in particular by architects. Out of my critique of a thematic selection of common architectural theories and within the methodological differentiation (3.2), I will argue for the necessity of research through analyses of landscape spatial composition in architecture. This argument should lead to introduce my application of the a twofold analytical model. One side of the analysis is about the form of the landscape architectural composition (Steenbergen & Reh 2003) with a method of drawing analysis of the formal composition of architectural projects in this thesis. The other side is evaluation of their strategies with the previously explained four attitudes. The introduction the twofold analytical methods will conclude with the research framework for our further investigation into Landscape Design Strategies drawing from the different theories of the conceptual landscape attitudes and the formal landscape composition, our research framework will merge these two theories into a complete picture of the phenomenon. In section 3.3, I will propose what has led to the selection and varied analytical techniques throughout this study and motivated the selection of key cases. I will treat the three cited cases in each individual chapters 4, 5 and 6.