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There are a wide variety of definitions, approaches, professions and languages in relation to landscape. The landscapes of the architect are not the same as those of the landscape architect, the photographer, the art historian, the geographer, the anthropologist, the poet, the ecologist, the engineer, the politician, the administrator or the tourist, the inhabitant, etc., even though there may be communication between them and occasional common ground. This is often observed at public or professional meetings dealing with urban planning or the installation of facilities: not only do we see a divergence of opinions and interests, sometimes it is also the concepts and the languages used that are the main reason for disagreement. People who use the same word landscape may not be thinking about or referring to the same concept.
It is therefore difficult to reconcile these different approaches and to develop an overall vision and a common language. However, I would like to propose a path, or a perspective, that goes in that direction and that
I think it is important to develop, based on the fact that landscape is inhabited. It is an inhabited space, a space that we inhabit – together with others, human and non-human – and consequently it is this experience of inhabiting that must be considered as a starting point.
There is a “metaphysics of landscape”, a typically modern metaphysics, which identifies landscape as a visual spectacle, a theatre or a panorama, presenting it above all as a static picture or image. The landscape would be the view of a country from above, from a window or a vantage point in the distance.
I do not wish to completely invalidate the aesthetic and cognitive dimensions of this “panoramic” conception of landscape, rather it is, above all, a question of placing it in a broader and more comprehensive framework of analysis. Of becoming aware that, for example, seeing the landscape “from above” and “from afar” is also a way of inhabiting it and connecting with it. However, there are also other ways of inhabiting the landscape that do not involve distance: there are landscapes of proximity, of that which is nearby, everyday landscapes, landscapes that we frequent on a daily basis, where we live in some way. It is these ways of being, that is, these ways of being close to the world and its landscapes, that need to be explored.
We are not removed from landscapes – we are within them, we are part of them, even before we look at them, or better said, we contemplate them from the inside. We go to them, we settle down to live in them more or less permanently, we work within them and sometimes on them. In other words, landscape constitutes the everyday space of our individual and collective existence.
To take this idea further, if landscape is a part, or even a condition, of our existence in this world, if it is a defining dimension of ourselves, then it can also be considered an essential element of human development and a condition for the exercise of fundamental rights. There is one point that it is important to stress: a damaged landscape is often a sign of damaged human lives.
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