A Riverside Project

Landscape

Landscape has changed so much in time. In the begging when the term landscape was created, was mostly used for gardens. This gardens where only for the reach people and they needed constant care. Things changed a little bit in the renaissance area, but still having a green space in the city for all the people was not even considered.

A big and an important moment for landscape was during the industrial area. In this time humanity made a big step forward. This change came because of big crises that people dealt with. Trying to find a solution to their crises, they weren’t aware that in fact they were destroying nature in the same time. After knowing the goods coming from nature resources, they only tried to profit from it, not knowing they could never turn back to the nature what they have taken from it. In this period of time the term landscape was not even consider, but it was called simply “Nature”, and nature was something named more likely as an exterior that had no connection with the things around. It was considered a zone that provided only the basic elements of living such as the air, light, water and not appreciating in fact the goods that nature and landscape could provide for them. For example in the architecture field the objects and the nature didn’t have any connection because the buildings were treated just like cubes placed in nature. During this era even though people were using nature resources with no limit and without being sensitive towards it, they understood the need they had for green spaces inside the city. Now greenery was inside the city but it was not connected to it. City functioned according to the rule of zoning which each zone had its main function and couldn’t interfere with the others. So if you wanted to find the greenery the only option was going to its zone otherwise you couldn’t find it anywhere else.

By the time past the concept of considering nature as something exterior that had no connection with its surrounding changed. Now referring to the term of “landscape”, it was considered more as interior and more subjective in contradiction with the nature that was considered more as an exterior and objective. Landscape was defined as something that didn’t even exist but it was our interpretation of how we want to see the world. The term Landscape was more and more connected to the painting. The more you looked at the painting you started to make a critical interpretation in a subjective way and translating it in a self-representation.

Nowadays the concept of landscape has changed due to the connection with information. First of all the rule of zoning and dividing the city in mono-functional areas doesn’t exist anymore. Information has given a new meaning for landscape. Now landscape has become multifunctional and conceded to the city( antizoning). Greenery is not focused only in one zone but in contrary it is found everywhere and is combined with functions that pervious years you could imagine such as putting greenery in industrial places. Information has given us the opportunity to translate , what before remained only in sketches, into real structures and forms for example the structures that Ghery, Zaha etc. designed. Below I have chosen five examples related to what I mention earlier in this writing and for the crucial importance of the information today. How we combine it with landscape in our case in a way of creating flexible and multitasking designs that will be always evolving.