TOPOPHILIA

PREFACE:
-The sixties and the seventies American landscape was seen as prosperity rather than beauty.

-Topophilia: All the different ways that human beings can develop a love of place.

-In our passion to preserve nature we tend to become misanthropes-to look upon technological progress and large-scale creations, especially the city, with a jaundiced eye.

Since the mid 18th century there has been a constant progression in our (Western) attitudes toward the environment. Mid 18th century was known as a time that was able to reach balance and intimacy between man and earth. Today in our Western society we look at the land as prosperity rather than something to contemplate.

- “The beauty of nature is something I can admire only from the safety of a humanly constructed world.” Tuan

There is an uncertainty and fear of nature imbedded in humankind. We continue to use technology to construct a world of fake comfort. This makes us believe that we are in control, and yet the world would collapse with the absence ants and not with the absence of humans.

CHAPTER ONE:
-The themes- perception, attitude, value- prepare us, to understand ourselves.

-Structured theme of Topophilia:
• #4, Examine the search for environment in the city, suburb, countryside, and wilderness from a dialectical perspective.
• #5, Distinguish different types of environmental experience and describe their character.

-Perception, attitude, value, and worldview are among the key terms of the present work; there meanings overlap.

-Topophilia is the affective bond between people and place or setting.

CHAPTER TWO:
-“No two persons see the same reality.”

-“No two social groups make precisely the same evaluation of the environment.”

-“A human being perceives the world through all his senses simultaneously.”

-“Perception is an activity, a reaching out to the world.”

CHAPTER TEN:
-“Man plays two rolls, the social-profane and the mythical-sacred, the one bound to time, the other transcending it.”

-For subsistence farmers of the middle latitudes life on earth depends on events in the sky.

-“In the last few centuries nature has lost further ground. To speak of nature today is to speak of the country side and the wilderness,”

-“Scenery and landscape are nearly synonymous.”

-“The medieval cathedral was meant to be experienced; it was a dense text to be read with devout attention and not an architectural form to be merely seen.”

Isometric Gardens:
-“Gardens mirror certain cosmic values and environmental attitudes.”

-“Social distinctions are discarded in the garden where man is free to contemplate and commune with nature in neglect of his fellow human beings.”

-“The cloisters and gardens of monasteries were places of contemplation.”

Perspective Gardens:
-“The art of Andre le Notre made a caricature of the belief that man could impose his aesthetic taste on nature. The garden was for show: it glorified man.”

-“Such a show of human will in formal design left no sense of nature or of the divine.”

Premodern Responses:
-“The cosmos of premodern man was multistoried; nature was rich in symbols, its objects could be read at several levels and evoke emotion-laden response.”

Symbolical Depth:
-“Consider the symbolic significance of the garden. At the deepest level, it may stand for the vulva of the earth, expressing humanity’s yearning for ease and the assurance of fertility.”

-“Buddhism contributed to the increasing awareness of nature and to garden design, enriching its symbolic content.”

Sacred Places:
-“The garden is a type of sacred place.”
-“Every effort to define space is an attempt to create order out of disorder.”

FURTHER:

Together we have compiled these quotes that seemed relevant to our thinking and art practice. Since the end of last quarter we have considered the collaboration of a project that addresses local gardening in the public landscape. Through our concern with the privatization of public space, we have decided to deconstruct land that relies on sight rather than the perception of all senses. Our surrounding is made up of multiple un-used static compartments that could be utilized in a way that encompasses a constant change and stimulates the use of multiple sense receptors. We desire to re-create the balance between man and nature that has disappeared in the past two centuries. Going back to Yi-Fu Tuan’s book Topophilia, the Aivilik Eskimo do not perceive space as pictorial or boxed in, but something as always in flux. They understand space as creating its own dimensions moment by moment. In the same manner, our gardens will be designed to involve and to encompass the visitor who is exposed to constantly shifting scenes. We want the gardens to evoke an experience that involves sight, sound, touch, and smell.

Zuzana - Herb