Times Architecture 2002/ 1
Yu kongjian
Peking University landscape planning and design center
Beijing native landscape planning design and research institute
This paper discusses the significance of landscape from four aspects: (1) as the object of visual aesthetics, landscape is separated from people and me in space, which expresses the relationship between people and nature, and people's attitude towards land and city also reflects people's ideals and desires; (2) As the habitat of life, landscape is a space for experience. The positioning of people in space and the identification of places make the landscape integrate with people and me; (3) As a system, landscape completely separates things from me, making landscape a scientific and objective interpretation object; (4) As a symbol, landscape is the imprint of human history and ideals, and it is the interaction and relationship between man and nature and between people on the earth. Therefore, the landscape is aesthetic, experiential, scientific and meaningful.
Keywords: landscape, place, scenery
The meaning of landscape
Yu kongjian
Peking University landscape architecture and planning center
Native designing institute
This paper discusses the meaning of landscape from four aspects: (1) as the visual perception object, (2) as the living place, (3) as the system and (4) as the symbol. Therefore, the landscape is aesthetic, experiential, scientific and meaningful.
Keywords: scenery, scene, location
introduce
Landscape, whether in the west or in China, is a beautiful and hard-to-explain concept. As a scientific term, geographers define landscape as a kind of surface scenery, or a comprehensive natural geographical area, or a kind of unit, such as urban landscape and forest landscape (Cihai,1995); Artists regard landscape as the object of expression and reproduction, which is equivalent to landscape; Architects regard landscape as the landscape or background of the building; Ecologists define landscape as an ecosystem or a system of ecosystems (such as Naveh, 1984, Forman,1995); Tourism experts regard landscape as resources; More commonly, landscapes are equated with street facades, neon lights, landscaping and sketches of cities by urban beautification activists and developers. A more literary and broader definition is "a scene that can be displayed with a picture and viewed from a certain angle" (Webster's English Dictionary, 1996). ) Especially the natural scenery. But even the same scene, different people will have different understandings, just like Meniger said "ten versions of the same scene" (1976).
Starting with the relationship between landscape and people, the artistry, scientificity, location and symbolism of landscape, this paper reveals the aesthetics, experience, scientificity and significance of landscape from the outside to the inside.
1, the meaning of landscape visual beauty: the scene in the external human eye.
1. 1 landscape as urban scene
In the west, the word "scenery" can be traced back to the Old Testament written in BC, and Xibo's essay is "Novo", which is related to the etymology of "Yafei" or "Beauty". In this context, it is used to describe the magnificent scenery of Solomon's Imperial Capital Jerusalem (Naveh, 1984). So the earliest meaning of this landscape is actually an urban scene. As you can imagine, this is a shepherd, standing on a barren hill, with horrible and despicable nature behind him and pavilions and palaces hidden by palm coconuts and olives in front of him in the desert oasis. Therefore, the landscape at this time is an escape from nature by rural people, and a vision for a safe and sheltered city. The city itself is a symbol of civilization. The design and creation of landscape is actually a city building cities and buildings.
As a visual aesthetic object, the meaning of landscape has continued to this day, but the connotation of the word and the aesthetic attitude of human beings conveyed behind it have undergone some subtle changes. The first change comes from the greed for rural land during the Renaissance, that is, the landscape as an extension of the city; Secondly, it comes from the fear and hatred of cities in the middle and late industrial revolution, that is, landscape as a confrontation with industrial cities.
1.2 Landscape as the extension and attachment of the city
The first sight people notice is the city itself. "The vision of landscape then expanded from the city to the countryside, making the countryside a kind of landscape" (Cosgrove, 1998, P70). Before the Renaissance, the feudal lords system in Europe bound people to the monarchy and the land. Nature is full of mystery and terror. It is the mother of human life. Attachment and dependence on the land make people like mothers' babies. The rise of urban capitalism has liberated people from land, and the value of land has changed from the use value necessary for survival and life to the exchangeable goods and resources. People and land separated for the first time and became urban residents. Emerging urban aristocrats outline their ideal city through powerful capital, and at the same time, they continue to expand to the countryside as an accessory to the city. New noble people want to use the ideal city model to organize and direct the ideal rural scenery and realize the new social, economic and political order. Painters (more precisely, the upstarts who sponsor painters) believe that the ideal city society and the "ideal city" where heaven and man are integrated are strictly geometric, commemorative and completely based on perspective. The ideal urban model, like painting in the Renaissance, follows strict proportional relations and aesthetic principles. As an extension of the city, the landscape is also designed and built with the same aesthetic standards, so the baroque garden represented by Van Gogh appeared. 1.3 Landscape as the Escape of the City
As the second change of the meaning of visual beauty, landscape originated from the deterioration of urban environment brought by industrialization. Industrialization itself is the result of the Renaissance, but at least from the second half of the19th century, the urban environment of major cities in Europe and America has deteriorated extremely. As a civilized and elegant image, the city has been completely destroyed. On the contrary, it has become an ugly and horrible place, while the natural Yuan Ye and countryside have become places to escape. Therefore, the landscape as an aesthetic object has changed from appreciating and praising the city to loving and protecting the countryside. So there are landscape architects (not gardeners) represented by olmsted, landscape architecture (not gardening); Therefore, there is the American city park movement that advocates pastoral scenery and the American national park system that protects the original beauty of nature. As a result, Howard's popular garden city and the subsequent rural and suburban movements came into being.
At this point, the attitude of civilized society towards landscape has undergone earth-shaking changes. The trajectory of this transformation is from escaping from the terrible nature and longing for the magnificent city to designing and showing off the ideal city, and taking the countryside as the extension of the city and the vision of future development, and then developing into fear and deviation from the city, taking the countryside and countryside as shelters, thus vaguely revealing the treasure and pity for the natural countryside in the landscape.
This gradual change of landscape aesthetic connotation is also clearly reflected in the attitude of landscape protection, design, creation and management (see table 1).
Table 1 the meaning and evolution of landscape as an aesthetic object
Socio-economic forms Manor and feudal lords ruled the economy. During the Renaissance, the urban economy rose to industrialization, and the urban economy was dominant.
Beautiful scenery (landscape refers to sacred and magnificent buildings, beautiful countryside of the city, as an extension of the city and the resources of the city economy, beautiful countryside and nature, as an escape and confrontation to the city.
Landscape architecture houses and palaces create urbanized and geometric nature (such as baroque gardens) while depicting and reproducing rural scenery, and introduce nature into cities (parks and green space systems) or cities into rural areas (rural cities and rural suburbs).
Landscape, as the perceptual object of visual beauty, is based on the separation of things and me, that is, people as appreciators. However, at the same time, people put their social and environmental ideals in the landscape. Tao Yuanming's Peach Blossom Garden is also a landscape in this sense, and the Peach Blossom Garden in Wu Lingren's eyes is a typical example of China literati's ideal social environment.
However, the landscape in the eyes of Taohuayuan people or "inner people" has another meaning, that is, the meaning of landscape as a habitat.
2. Habitat significance of landscape: the life experience of inner people.
2. 1 Landscape is the imprint of the relationship between people and nature on the earth.
Every landscape is a home where human beings live, or a potential "home". China ancient landscape painting regards livability as the highest standard of painting and artistic conception. Whether painting or appreciating painting is essentially a process of divination (Lin Zhi by Guo and Guo Si). It is also the deep meaning of the concept of place. This will be traced back to the philosopher Heidegger's concept of habitation (Heidegger, 197 1). The process of living is actually a process of interacting with natural forces and processes to achieve harmony. The landscape on the earth is the result of human adaptation, transformation and creation of nature for survival and life. At the same time, the process of living is also the process of establishing harmonious coexistence between people. Therefore, as a habitat, landscape is the brand of the relationship between people and nature on earth.
Longshan in the city, the Feng Shui forest behind the village, the pond in front of the village, the path from the back door of the house to the back of the mountain, terraces, trees on terraced fields, and even poultry, livestock, vegetables and fruits are all the results of the interaction and balance between man and nature for thousands of years. They are people's choice and utilization of the richness of nature, and they are also mean and ruthless avoidance and submission to nature. The harmony between man and nature in the Peach Blossom Garden is not always like this, nor is it always like this. That is, in the process of constant coordination with natural forces, sometimes it is harmonious and sometimes it is not harmonious. In the end, nature taught people how to manage the ecology, including how to save land and water, protect forests, how to choose a site to settle down, how to divert water to build roads, how to plant crops in rotation, and how to know that "it is impossible to use wood in time" (Mencius? Liang); Know that "mid-winter cut poplar, mid-summer cut shady wood" (Zhou Li? Land officials).
Red railings, fences, the height of roofs, the orientation of doors and windows in cities, the ridge boundaries in rural areas, canals and dams, canals and lanes, and the earth's border defense lines are all short-term balanced results of long-term competition, communication and reconciliation among countries, families and people, which is Jackson's so-called political landscape (1984).
2.2 Landscape is the inner life experience of people.
As a place where people live, landscape connects specific people and specific places. Landscape is composed of "places", and the structure of places is expressed through landscape (Norberg-Schultz, 1979, P8). Place, like concepts such as time and space, is ubiquitous and people can't live without it. Place is the foothold of human beings in the earth and the universe. Place turns nothing into existence and abstraction into concreteness, which makes people know and grasp the external space and have a starting point and an end point for their own understanding and positioning. Philosophers raise the place to a philosophical concept to explore the world outlook and life (Kathy,1998; Heidegger,1971); Geographers, architects and landscape theorists have taken it to a deeper level to understand landscape phenomena. To understand the place, we should first understand it from four aspects: the physical attributes of the place, the internal and external relationship between the subject and the place, the activities of people in the place and the ubiquitous time. These four aspects constitute an inseparable whole of the landscape as an experience place.
(1) Physical properties of the site.
Place consists of two parts: space and characteristics, which can also be understood as space and resource characteristics. In the analysis of spatial structure, one is the point-knot-line-surface model, and the most typical models are Lynch's node-sign-path-edge-region model (1969) and "outsider-insider" model. The latter can be analyzed by elements such as bottom surface, top surface, enclosure, gap and boundary, and the sense of space can be strengthened by centripetal, directivity and rhythm. In the landscape cognitive model of China people, the space of place phenomenon is more like a "box in a box". Whether it is the Feng Shui pattern, the spatial composition in Chinese painting, or the cave in religious mythology, there is this spatial pattern, which can be called the gourd pattern (Yu, 1998). Point-line-surface model and gourd model can be combined, which will be more conducive to our grasp of space.
The characteristics of space are determined by the more specific material composition and its state, which specifically describe the elements or components that make up the space, the texture of objects, the color and form of light, and form an atmosphere with local characteristics. For example, the blue sky, white clouds, black soil, dark green forests, mossy roofs, Hani girls in red clothes, the shouts of the old people rushing home with scalpers, and the smell of bamboo rice. All these * * * together create the characteristics and atmosphere of a place. All these have formed the local personality or geographical characteristics of the landscape.
(2) About the internal and external relations of the subject.
People in the scene and outsiders look at the scenery in different ways. The former is the expression of the landscape, and the latter is the impression of the landscape. The latter studies landscape with a sense of distance from the landscape and a separation of subjective and objective, which leads to the artistic view of landscape as a landscape and the scientific view of landscape as a regional concept and a systematic concept of empirical geography. Human geography and phenomenology emphasize that people must be in the landscape, and Jackson (1984) understood the landscape on this basis. He believes that landscape exists in human life, and it is not the object people watch; Landscape is the space of social life and the organic whole of man and environment, which is completely opposite to the view that positivism separates subjectivity from objectivity. The judgment of landscape is as a living and working space, judging and understanding from the standpoint and angle of people living and working in it; All the scenery expresses an ideal, an eternal ideal to create a kingdom of heaven on earth.
⑶ Functions of places or people's activities: location and identification.
Place is the integration of human and natural order, and it is the most direct and concrete center of our experience of the outside world. Places are defined not so much by their location, attributes or communities as by people's experience in specific situations (Relph, P 14 1). The meaning of place in English is related to occurrence. The legends about creation in most nations and cultures in the world regard chaos and no rank as the state before the world. When the sky and the earth are separated, there will be grades, and the sun, the moon and the stars, the mountains and rivers, the birds and animals, and the humanities will have positions. Therefore, places are from scratch, from scratch and from scratch, so the formation of places lies in the organization of the world, dividing the world into unique centers with different properties and structuring them to reflect and guide people's experiences. To get a place and feel the existence of a place depends on human experience, which depends on two aspects: orientation and recognition. The former indicates whether people feel the existence of order centered on a certain place or a certain node, while the latter indicates whether people's own order can be in harmony with the objective order. If both are positive, then this place is meaningful, or has a sense of place. Otherwise, either in space or in the vast universe, people don't know where they are and are at a loss; Either you never feel bad, but you don't know where to go. This is the loss of sense of position (RelPH, 1976).
A. First of all, regarding positioning, it mainly corresponds to the structural characteristics of space. The gourd pattern in the cultural landscape of China, such as the four beasts feng shui pattern centered on acupoints, is a traditional spatial positioning pattern of China people. Based on this model, China has formed a multi-level local system, or national land positioning system. On the largest scale, the positioning structure is looking up at the sky and constellations, dividing the latitude and longitude, with Kunlun as the ancestral mountain, the Yangtze River, the Yellow River and wuyue as the surrounding areas, and the secondary positioning system is divided into Xuanwu Suzaku, Mingming Mountain and Shuikou, with the state capital, county government, Longshan and Long Mai as the surrounding areas, and occasionally marked with. They are all located on different scales, so that residents can understand their position in the world, just like a fetus sitting in its mother's womb, snuggling in the arms of mother nature, and getting a peaceful habitat (Figure 10). The gourd pattern of China people is a life pattern and spatial orientation pattern based on agricultural production mode. Lynch's point, line and plane model provides a spatial positioning system and reference for people moving in the landscape. Through these spatial elements, the impression of the whole city is formed and people's movement in the city is guided. The centripetal nature of nodes, the directionality of roads and the rhythm and change of space all strengthen the sense of order of places.
B. The second aspect of the role of places in people's activities is identity, which corresponds to the local characteristics and personality. Identity means being friends with a specific environment, or belonging to a place and a social group in this place. The recognition of a place is the result of adapting to all natural processes and patterns as well as social processes and structures in this place. It is the harmony between individuals and the order of the land under their feet and the sky above them, and the order of nature and people around them. When the other party tells you that it is Mali Village from Ailao Mountain, he actually brings you the village halfway up Ailao Mountain, the dense Woods above the stockade, the clouds in the Woods and the terraced fields below the stockade. In fact, he also brought you a long, thick bamboo pipe bong, a red turban on a man's head, white embroidery on a girl's black background, the smell of bamboo rice, a mushroom house, a long street banquet, and an altar on a holy tree. Here, people become a part of places, and places become a part of people.
Just as the direction and positioning function of a place depend on the spatial structure of the place, people's recognition of the place corresponds to the material characteristics of the place. Material attributes, human activities and the significance of these activities are the basic elements that constitute the overall personality characteristics of the place.
As a person in the scene, you belong somewhere and identify with it. The deeper you are in the scene, the stronger your sense of identity with this place (Relph, 1976, P49). Only when you become a person in the landscape, belong to local natural processes, natural forces, social processes and local gods, and identify with them, can you get a real sense of place, a conscious sense of local belonging, and a landscape composed of places is meaningful (Figure 1 1, 12, 13).
(4) timeliness
The natural process is time-dependent, and the existence of human beings affects the natural process. Here, human beings have replaced time, so Jackson said that "landscape is a space where people consciously create, promote or hinder natural processes" (1984, p8). The timeliness of landscape also means that the landscape changes with the changes of the times and society. This change depends on the interaction and balance between the following three factors. Namely: human desire, production technology and natural forces. As human habitation, the landscape ranges from harmonious rural areas to unharmonious large industrial cities, to the ideal of garden cities, and finally to garden suburbs and high-tech parks. It is a process in which the balance between "desire-technology-natural force" is broken and then a new balance is established.
Human desire is an endless process from the lowest desire for survival and reproduction to the desire for social communication, from material desire to spiritual desire. Human desire has promoted the transformation of human production technology and natural transformation technology, from wooden sticks and axes to ox-drawn iron plows, to steam engines and automobiles, to computer and network technology, so that human material and spiritual desires are met step by step, and then increased step by step. The relationship between man and natural forces is also from me-you to me-it, and then to me-you. For nature, from fear to plunder, to friendliness. The landscape has also changed from fear and memorial to friendly, humanized and ecological landscape.
3. The significance of landscape as a system: a scientific and objective explanation.
The Peach Blossom Garden seen in Wu Lingren is an organic system, a natural ecosystem and a humanistic ecosystem, in addition to the beautiful and harmonious picture and the habitat of a harmonious community. Any kind of landscape: a forest, a city, in which matter, energy and species flow, is "alive" with function and structure.
In a landscape system, there are at least five levels of ecological relations.
The first is the relationship between landscape and external system. For example, the core ecological flow of Hani villages is water. In Ailao Mountain, the water is as long as the mountain is high. The warm and humid air flow in the South Pacific is cut off as rain at high altitude, and after irrigation, drinking and washing, it flows to the dry and hot red river valley, then evaporates and returns to the atmosphere, and after the rain, it returns to the landscape, so there are enduring Yuanyang terraces and dense jungles on the mountain. According to Lovelock's Gaia theory (1979), the earth itself is a living body: the surface, air, ocean and groundwater systems maintain a living earth through various biological, physical and chemical processes.
The second is the ecological relationship between the elements in the landscape, that is, the horizontal ecological process. Rain and fog from the atmosphere were intercepted and conserved by the jungle in the village, which became a constant trickle all year round and was first introduced to the village for people to drink. Then it flows through the washing pool in front of every household and flows into the pond in and around the village, where cows are washed and fish are raised; Finally, nutrient-rich water is introduced into the terraced fields below the stockade to irrigate their main crops-rice. This horizontal ecological process, including the relationship between water flow, species flow, nutrient flow and landscape spatial pattern, is the main research object of landscape ecology.
The third ecological relationship is the relationship between the structure and function of landscape elements, such as the jungle as a forest ecosystem, the pond as a water ecosystem and the terrace itself as a farmland system, and the relationship between its internal structure and the flow of matter and energy. This is a vertical ecological relationship with clear system boundaries. Its structure is food chain and trophic level, and its function is material circulation and energy flow, which is the research object of ecosystem ecology.
The fourth ecological relationship exists between life and environment, including the competition between plants and individual plants or between groups, and the relationship between life and environment; It is the adaptation of organisms to the environment and the evolution and succession of individuals and groups, and it is the research object of plant ecology, animal ecology, individual ecology and population ecology.
The fifth ecological relationship exists in the material, nutrition and energy relationship between human beings and the environment, which is to be discussed by human ecology. Of course, the complexity of human beings, including their social, cultural, political and psychological factors, makes the relationship between people and nature very complicated. It is far from being solved by human ecology itself, and we must study the landscape with the help of sociology, cultural ecology, psychology, behavior and other disciplines.
As an ecosystem, urban landscape contains almost all the above ecological processes and becomes the research object of urban ecology.
4. The significance of landscape as a symbol: a book of human ideals and history.
Human beings are symbolic animals, and landscape is the medium of symbolic communication (Lynch and hack, 1998, P 173), which is meaningful and records the history of a place, including natural history and social history; Tell touching stories, including beautiful or sad stories; It tells the ownership of land and the relationship between people and land, people and people, and people and society.
This book is written with symbols and language. Landscape has all the features of language, including words and structures in discourse-shape, pattern, structure, material, form and function. All landscapes are composed of these. Just like the meaning of words, the meaning of landscape composition (such as water) is potential and can only be displayed in context (Spirn, 1998, p. 15). Heidegger compared language to a house where people live, "and landscape language is the real place where people live" (Spirn, 1998, p 16). Landscape language is the earliest language of human beings and the source of human characters and digital languages. It is a myth and legend, but it vividly shows that China's characters and characters originated from the landscape in the process of observing and enlightening natural objects and phenomena. Whether it is the white clouds overhead, the earth at the foot, mountains and rivers, animals and plants, birds and insects, Chinese characters are the result of pictographs and abstract objects. From recognizing various footprints to know the information of birds and animals' activities, so as to avoid beasts and hunt for food, to burning turtles and investigating cracks to predict good and bad luck, to looking up at the sky and terrain to judge the good and evil of Feng Shui, and even to modern times, people have predicted earthquakes from the behavior of birds and animals, and judged rain and sunny days from the behavior of insects and fish.
Like written language, landscape language can be spoken, read and written. In order to survive and live-eating, living, walking, courtship and reproduction, human beings invented landscape language. Landscape language, like written language, is the product of society. Landscape language is to exchange information and feelings, but also to avoid protection and isolation. The meaning expressed by landscape language can only be partially understood by outsiders, and a large part can only be enjoyed by people of the same ethnic group, so as to maintain the identity within the ethnic group in communication and effectively resist the attacks of outsiders.
The basic terms in landscape are stone, water, plants, animals and man-made structures. Their shapes, colors, lines and textures are adjectives and adverbials. The different combinations of these elements in space constitute sentences, articles and meaningful books. A book about nature, a book about this place, a book about people in the landscape. Of course, to understand, readers must have corresponding knowledge and culture. People with different social and cultural backgrounds, like the landscape language in the context, have multiple meanings, and the stories they tell may be mysterious, tragic, beautiful, comic or cruel. A tree on a natural hillside, blooming and falling, or flourishing, or flourishing, tells the change of seasons and its adaptation or inadaptability to habitat or soil. The sacred tree at the entrance of the cottage has more meanings. It is the center of the spiritual life of the whole village, and the rise and fall of the tree may indicate the good or bad luck of the whole village. But to outsiders, this tree is just ordinary.
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To sum up, the seemingly simple concept of landscape has a very broad and profound connotation. It contains the meaning of visual scene, but it is far more than the scenery or background of buildings, squares, street scenes and landscaping. From the city to Mu Ye, human ideals and pursuits have been entrusted. Today, the urban beautification movement in China itself reflects the ideology at a specific stage of social development; It also contains the meaning of geographical area, but it is far beyond the analysis and understanding of geographers by natural science methods. More importantly, people's inner life experience is the place where people live in the vast land and noisy society. As a system, landscape is an organic and complex whole. From the back garden to the city, the regional territory and even the whole world, just like the organism of life, there are complex connections between people, people and nature, structure and function, pattern and process. Landscape is a symbol, but it is much more than sculptures and monuments in the square. It is the imprint of nature and the process of human society on the earth, and it is a book about the history of human society and the natural system. Therefore, landscape is not only a vision of the future life world, but also the imprint of historical life scenes, and it is also the space and system of modern life.
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