圖書名稱:Reading the Five Dimensions of the Landscape:閱讀地景的五個維度
內容簡介
How a professional understands “landscape” will determine the valuehe/she places on it and the actions he/she will take to intervene. In other words, the view of landscape influences fundamentally how and in what way the landscape profession involves itself in a landscape. The view of landscape gives direction to guide professional performance and also the impetus driving the use of knowledge and technical skills to provide solutions to landscape issues. Indeed, our limited knowledge and understanding of a landscape can limit the creative solutions we can offer.
This book aims to clarify the concept of landscape using the most recent understandings to offer diverse and profound new meanings which can point towards novel creative landscape interventions. In order to build the links between landscape theories and everyday life experience, this book interprets landscape according to five interlayered dimensions.
It was written in two languages, and uses notes, stories, drawings, and photos of the author from the author’s personal experience to make the abstract ideas and theories of landscape easier to understand and communicate to the reader. With this book, the author shares his ideas and aesthetic experiences of the landscape along with notes on landscape reading.
Dr. Kuang-Yu Wang is a professor and director in the Department of Landscape Architecture, Chung
Yuan University where, beside teaching, he activelyparticipates in various public landscape projects and serves on juries for landscape awards. He has a background in economics, landscape architecture, and geography and believes that a landscape professional should think like a philosopher, distinguishing the nature and value of things while acting like an engineer, embodying ideals through valid methods, knowledge, and techniques. And above all, a landscape professional should have the heart of an artist, pursuing creativity and beauty.
1.Reading the Landscape Through its Five Dimensions
The Reading of the Landscape
Landscape has Five Interlayering Dimensions
2.The First Dimension: The Landscape of Physicality and Materiality
The Physical Landscape
Reading the First Dimension of the Landscape
Environmental Elements
Traits and Properties
Composition and Configuration
Modules and Types
Expressing the First Dimension of the Landscape
Map and Plan
Elevation and Section
Physical and Digital Models
Text
Still and Moving Images
Drawing and Painting
3.The Second Dimension: The Landscape of Cultural Meaning
The World We See Through our Cultural Lens
The Internalization of Culture Within a Person
The Tangible and Intangible Cultural Forms and Contents
The Interaction of the Internalized Cultural Perception and the Cultural
Forms and Contents
The Landscape Composed by Stories
The Landscape in Literature, the Literary Landscape
The Landscape of Symbols and Signs
The Cultural Symbols of a “Pastoral Landscape”: Being in the Real
Environment and Trying to Break Through the Limitations of Reality
The Cultural Symbols of a “Natural Landscape”: Primitivity and Danger, or
Purity and Admirability?
4.The Third Dimension: The Landscape of Feelings
Feelings: The Origin of Peoples’ Awareness of the Surroundings
Feelings Fade Away as Knowledge and Technology Prevail
Knowledge cannot Replace Sensation for Our Comprehension of Landscape
Culture: An Asset that can also be a Burden
The Landscape of Sensation
Olive Trees and Cicada Chirping at the Acropolis
Scents of the Pacific Northwest
The Landscape of Memory and Sentiment
The Realistic and Imagined Statue of Liberty
The Landscape of Memories: Traveling with Students
A Landscape Memory in a Small Town in France
Interact with the Environment with Senses Open
5.The Fourth Dimension: The Landscape of Contextuality
The Invisible Landscape
The Invisible Hands Behind Landscapes
The Value of Landscape Lies in Its Context
Preserving the Value of a Landscape: Aiming at the Elements or the
Relationships?
Preserving the Character of a Landscape: Aiming at the Forms or the
Contextual Relationships?
Landscape Enrooted in Locality and Embedded in Context
The Enrooted and Rootless Landscape
The Landscape of Food
The Taste of Wine
The Price and Value of Tofu Soup
Does the Zen Garden of Ryoan-Ji Still Exist?
6.The Fifth Dimension: The Landscape of Dynamism
There are no Bystanders in a Landscape
Landscape as a Theatrical Play
The Sum of the Static Elements will not Add Up to a Dynamic Landscape
Play, and You will Discover New Things
What to Design for a Landscape Design?
7.New Perspectives of Landscape Architecture Through the Five Dimensions
Re-understanding the Meaning and Beauty of Gardens from Multiple
Dimensions
Opening Up a New Perspective for the Landscape Profession
After many years of practice and teaching in landscape architecture, I noticed the attention and effort devoted to practical knowledge and technical skills. However, this book highlights the concept of landscape.
How a professional understands “landscape” will determine the value he/she places on it and actions he/she will take to intervene. In other words, the view of landscape influences fundamentally how and in what way the landscape profession involves itself in a landscape. The view of landscape gives direction guiding the professional performance, and also the impetus driving the use of knowledge and technical skills to provide solutions to landscape issues. Indeed, the limited views of what we see and know about a landscape result in limits to creative solutions to landscape.
This book aims to clarify the concept of landscape by exploring the fundamental questions about the nature of a landscape and its constituents. Since providing direct answers can stifle inquiry, the intention is to retain constantly meaningful questions about what landscape is which can open up fruitful and ever more valuable explorations.
There has been an abundance of research and theories providing the knowledge on which the ideas of landscape are founded; however, these theoretical discourses might be too abstract to fit with people’s personal experience of landscape. On the other hand, landscape is also a common topic where everyone seems to have his or her own ideas and experiences, but finds it difficult to make their ideas clear. To build the links between landscape theories and everyday life experience, this book interprets landscape according to five interlayered dimensions, through my notes, drawings, and photos from my personal experience and stories to make the abstract ideas and theories of landscape easier to understand and to communicate to the reader.
Before the era of digital cameras, a roll of film could only take 24 or 36 photos, so each photo was taken after carefully considering the reason for taking it. Thus, each photo conveyed the specific and strong point of view of the photographer. Today, digital cameras and mobile phones make photography easy and fast. One can press the shutter many times in a scene, but the point of view between one photo and another is not discernible. So, when I travel, I still have the habit of carrying a small sketchbook and pencils (some colored) and fountain pens with me, in addition to a camera. By taking notes, photos and making sketches, I can both represent my observation, understanding, reading and interpretation of the landscape and, very importantly, also note how I feel at the moment. The idea for the five dimensions of landscape arose from these practices, combined with landscape theories.
In order to share with more readers, the book was written in two languages; however, the texts of the two languages are not necessarily expressed in word-for-word or sentence-by-sentence translation, given that the ideas are not delineated and expressed in exactly the same way in each language. Nonetheless, each language can express the ideas of the five dimensions of landscape through thematic chapters and sections.
The book is based on my personal experience and stories of landscape. Through the sketches and photos I made to combine with the texts, I share my notes and ideas and also aesthetic experience of the landscape. Through interpreting landscape using the five interlayered dimensions, I hope to point to new perspectives for landscape architecture and how they can intervene within a landscape.