Reading and Assessing The Landscape As Cultural and Historical Heritage

This article was downloaded by: [University of Sydney] On: 24 July 2011, At: 23:55 Publisher: Routledge Informa
Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Landscape Research
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/clar20
Reading and assessing the landscape as cultural and historical heritage

Lionella Scazzosi Correspondence address: Lionella Scazzosi, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 31, I20133 Milano, Italy. Email: lionella.scazzosi@tiscali.it
a a
Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy
Available online: 23 Jan 2007
To cite this article: Lionella Scazzosi Correspondence address: Lionella Scazzosi, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 31, I20133 Milano, Italy. Email: lionella.scazzosi@tiscali.it (2004): Reading and assessing the landscape as cultural and historical heritage, Landscape Research, 29:4, 335-355 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0142639042000288993
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-andconditions This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
Landscape Research, Vol. 29, No. 4, 335355, October 2004
Reading and Assessing the Landscape as Cultural and Historical Heritage

LIONELLA SCAZZOSI
Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy
Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011
ABSTRACT Drawing upon research undertaken for the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities by a team at the University of Milan, an emerging and converging conception of landscape which is shared by many nations in Europe is identied. It is characterized by the integration of culture, by a shift of emphasis from places of excellence to consideration of the whole territory, by the wish to conserve cultural identity and by a concern for the quality of life of whole populations. In addition to regarding the landscape as an artefact, it can also be regarded as a document, an archive or a palimpsest. Shortcomings in the way that landscapes are currently read are identied, and the range of criteria employed to assess the values of particular landscapes are considered. Finally, there is a plea for a serious exchange of information regarding methodology and operational expertise, in the light of the European Landscape Convention. KEY WORDS: European Landscape Convention, cultural landscapes, heritage, landscape assessment
Landscape Policies and Cultures in Europe: Convergences and Differences The European Landscape Convention brings with it a modern, rich and wideranging approach to landscape. This approach is based on the cultural experiences matured in the various European nations, in international and national legislation, and in active policies. Moreover, the new concept of landscape includes elements that are themselves new, in an attempt to respond adequately to the problems posed by the contemporary situation. In this context must be mentioned a series of research volumes produced by the University of Milan,1 which has been producing them since 1997 for the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activitiesthe authority in charge of landscape. These researches gather, analyse and compare landscape policies and cultures in different European countries (France, Great Britain, Germany, Denmark, Holland, Italy, Spain, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Switzerland) and in the United States.2 They were launched at a time when landscape was an issue of great interest in Italy,3 and the survey was designed to contribute to this debate, looking beyond national borders in search of inspiration, conrmation, operCorrespondence address: Lionella Scazzosi, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 31, I-20133 Milano, Italy. Email: lionella.scazzosi@tiscali.it
0142-6397 Print/1469-9710 Online/04/040335-21 2004 Landscape Research Group Ltd. DOI: 10.1080/0142639042000288993
336 L. Scazzosi ational and institutional solutions, in order to place the whole landscape, not merely a few monuments, at the centre of the efforts to increase the competitiveness of the country and the efciency and coordination of the actions to transform the development hypothesis according to sustainable models, in the post-industrial era.4 The studies examine the instruments used to implement landscape policy in various European countries, focusing on the cultural layout, the methodological apparatus and the analytical and operational instruments, especially within government administration, whether central or local. They provide, for each country, a condensed but accurate description of the legal system, administrative organization, instruments of preservation, planning and management in all their aspects (including economic and technicaloperational aids); they compare the relations between the state and the citizen, with particular attention to the decentralization of competences, the forms of participation in decision-making processes, and the instruments used to raise awareness and educate the population on landscape issues.5 The hypothesis for this research, conrmed by the nal results, stated that, for all the differencessometimes very pronouncedin the legal, institutional and operational systems characterizing the solutions adopted in the various countries,6 and in spite of the differences in the cultural approaches characterizing the history of the landscape issue and still characterizing it in the various national contexts (attention being directed variously towards the naturalistic, ecological, aesthetic, historic and other aspects), there is a signicant mainstream convergence towards a global and unitary vision of landscape, i.e. a tendency to integrate nature and culture, a shift in interest from outstanding places of excellence (natural or anthropic) to the whole territory, an assertion of the right to quality in all the living places of the populations who are invited to participate actively in such a process, to try to nd adequate instruments for the sustainable management of territorial transformations, aiming at civil and political goals to preserve identity and the specicity of people and places. This result was not foreseeable and allowed us to catch a glimpse of the presence, in European countries, of cultural matrices that are historically more unied than those emerging from a comparison based exclusively on contemporary facts.7 Although the single cultural and political realities are structured, there is a clear difference in understanding between the countries of northern Europewhose approach is mainly focused on ecological/environmental problems or problems concerning the preservation of natureand the countries of southern Europe whose approach is rather concerned with the traces of human transformations, the cultural meanings of places, formal and visual characters. The experience of the United States is very signicant as it is unexpectedly similar, from a cultural point of view, to the European one. Indeed, it shows how the preservation of nature in that country, linked to the creation of natural parks, has had from the beginning a strong symbolic objectivethe willingness to build outstanding monuments, as a memento, a document of the history of people and places, to construct a national identity, analogous to the stone monuments of countries that own more diffused and stratied historical human traces, such as Italy, France and Greece. In other words, to construct a landscape. As a matter of fact, the discovery and celebration of the Alpine landscape, in the 19th century, played quite the same role in Switzerland, before the American experience. This cultural view has been progressively obscured, in particular during the period of the birth of the ecological movements, especially in
Reading and Assessing the Landscape
337
northern Europe, for example in Germany, Norway, etc. This has provoked some clear conceptual and administrative divisions between issues about the natureecologyenvironment and those about the historyculture of places. Nevertheless, today, the concept of landscape, further enriched by the ecological experience, tends to appear with a larger and more complex semantic background. In Italy, the First National Conference on Landscape (1999) and the signing of the European Convention of Florence have brought with them new incentives and have led to agreements and legal actions for landscape planning and enhancement,8 at various administrative levels. The acknowledgment of place, as a rst and necessary step towards landscape preservation, is now so signicant as to spur the Ministry to promote new studies, both on the methodologies used in other countries to read and assess places from a landscape point of view9 and on specic methodological approaches.10 These studies (Scazzosi, 2002) have revealed many different approaches and a great involvement, in various countries, in developing and experimenting with methodologies for the reading and assessment of place, that better suit the concept of landscape as it is being acknowledged in Europe and as dened in the European Landscape Convention. They have shown the close relationship existing between the methodologies to read and assess landscape and the instruments and operational goals. But they have also shown the existence of a considerable interest among operators and technicians for an integration of the various approaches, in the framework of mutual exchanges that now characterizes Europe, both on this issue and on others. Some Conceptual Specications The meaning of the term landscape has become broader and richer than that of a view or a panorama, which characterized many national protection laws and policies until the middle of the 20th century, and that of environment or nature, to which it has often been limited during the recent years of environmentalist battles. Landscape is actually a polysemic term, where different disciplinary elaborations meet, collide and compareelaborations of classical geography, or those of a perceptivevisual kind, or of a historiccultural kind, or even those aimed at understanding social and economic dynamics of places.11 The ongoing process of integration among the different cultural approaches to landscape, that modies and enriches each one of them, requires continuous conceptual and terminological specications, in order to reach a mutual understanding. In shrewder cultural elaboration and in policies, we see a growing awareness (although with some contradictions) that landscape, environment, nature do not correspond to different objects, but to different concepts, i.e. different ways of reading, planning and managing (as if we used specic coloured spectacles for each) a single broad objectthe place where people live. As a consequence, any place can be read for its cultural, natural and environmental meanings and values and for the specic problems such viewpoints put, although there may be differences from place to placea hedge dividing elds may be read either as one of the walls which determine spaces, or as a document of an old land division (landscape glasses), or as part of an ecological network (environment and nature glasses), or even as an opportunity to build a new use of soil, such as for example a cycle track in the countryside (territory glasses). Thus it does
338 L. Scazzosi not make sense, theoretically, to distinguish cultural landscapes (but also historic landscapes, anthropic landscapes, etc.) from natural landscapes, as they all can be read for their cultural and natural meaningsthey are all landscapes. Moreover, the term landscape on the one hand expresses our cultural relationship with the world and our gaze12 on the places around us, a gaze loaded with our ancient and recent, and numerous, cultural traditions (to which literary men, painters, travellers, naturalists, historians, geographers, etc. contributed) giving the places a meaning.13 On the other hand, it depicts places in a concrete sense. Places are the result of a centuries-old diffused building activity carried out by farmers and stockbreeders who used them, and also by vast unitary interventions, using natural material such as vegetation, water, soil.14 Then more recent transformations came, which sometimes destruct and distort historic structures and sometimes respect the places identity, the permanencies. Some key words may prove useful. Through the coloured glasses of the concept of landscape, places appear as a large and complex artefact (or manufacts, from the Latin manu-factus, hand made),15 the work of man and nature, in an indissoluble intertwining, in a centuries-long process of construction and transformation according to specic techniques and materials. Simultaneously, places can be interpreted as a work of architecture, in a broad sense16with its specic modes of organizing space17made up of large rooms18. This work is in continuous, inevitable and necessary transformation under the action of nature and man. Human beings intervene by adding, abandoning, cancelling and overlapping elements, but always transforming it (with detailed, diffused and continuous interventions through time as well as with great and outstanding innovations), both physically and through the simple attribution of new meanings to what has come to us, an open work.19 At present, landscape policies and cultures differ noticeably among European countries. The meaning given to the term landscape can itself give rise to signicant difculties in understanding. Actually, the linguistic roots of the term differ between southern and northern European countries.20 Changes of meaning have occurred over the years, even recently,21 and despite the convergences that are gaining ground, a variety of cultural roots have contributed to develop, in each country, different instruments and methodologies to acknowledge and manage and govern places (from the point of view of landscape). These instruments have been developed in keeping with cultural traditions, geographical and historical realities, and more recent territorial transformations of each country, and in accordance with the legislative, administrative and operational solutions that have taken hold, and with the goals of territorial planning followed. Although it may differ according to the specicities and articulations, the visualperceptive approach (particularly in Great Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, etc.) and the naturalenvironmental approach (in Germany and north European countries) are certainly the most widespread and best developed. However, in recent years there has also been a strong interest in reading and assessing the historicalcultural character of places (particularly in Great Britain and Italy, but also in France, Poland, Germany, Holland, Denmark and Norway) whose preservation is seen as fundamental for maintaining and nurturing social identity, both in the local and in the wider population. This concept (identity) is clearly underlined in the European Convention.
Reading and Assessing the Landscape Landscape as Document or Monument
339
This new form of interest has its roots in the 20th century, in the culture of academic and professional gures, among these being historians, geographers, philosophers, environmental psychologists, artists and specialists in the eld of cultural properties. The development of new interests can be traced through the 20th century, in the modication of both the concept and the eld of historical heritage and cultural property. The eld had long included churches, villas and castles as monuments, but it also came to include historic town centres, industrial archaeology, vernacular architecture and peasant culture.22 During the 1970s people became aware of the value of historic gardens and plantings (true vegetal architectures),23 as well as the products of Modernism. Recently, an historical value has been given to the products of the 1960s and 1970s, including buildings, industrial sites and infrastructure.24 The interest was no longer only in high-prole and outstanding elements, but also in the lesser fabric of material culture, gathering in all the testimony of the life of man. It was only one step from this path to a further conception of the entire landscape as an artefact, rich with traces of natural and human history. In this concept the landscape is the result of centuries of small elements of construction and transformation carried out by farmers and peasants, punctuated by single greater eventsdrainage works, works by large landholdersand the construction of new urban settlements. The most recent ICOMOS Charter on the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage (Krakow, 2000) gathers the fruit of the new concept (ICOMOS, 2001). For the rst time the landscape, understood as cultural heritage, took its place as an item of interest, alongside other movable and immovable, material and immaterial cultural heritage. This document acknowledges that the awareness of past evidence, in a physical and/or a symbolic sense, is important for the construction of the collective memory of a population, one of the sources of its identity, and for the preservation of cultural and natural specicity and differences of places. However, to answer the specicities given by landscape, we need to deeply rethink and renew the theoretical basis, criteria, methodologies and instruments for the preservation of historic and cultural heritage, as until now they have been experimented in particular on outstanding properties, or monuments. Working with landscape means potentially involving a large quantity of objects (of different kinds, signicance and state of conservation) as well as operators and users. Places are no longer read only in the visual sense, as simple spaces, or as natural habitats in the ecologicalenvironmental sense, but they are seen as documents. These documents permit growth in the awareness of past human cultures, modes of life and work, agricultural techniques and construction materials, land uses, festivals and the symbolism of various elements, but also of climate, vegetation and habitat. In this sense, landscapes are a huge archive (a living one as it changes continuously), full of material and immaterial traces of the history of men and nature.25 They are a palimpsest (not a mere stratication of historical evidences),26 that is a single text where the remaining traces of all eras have been following each other and have intertwined with the ones gradually left by the present and that continuously modify it. Landscape is a reading of the world in its complexity; landscape is a means to contemplate our own history and to build our future, being fully aware of the past.
340 L. Scazzosi Moreover, past permanencies are to be seen in the present features of the architecture of places under different forms. Permanencies in the land planning of places, such as centuriation, rural land parcelling, settlement location, road tracks, water and channel networks, are most analysed in European studies for landscape planning.27 Other permanencies include: those of physical features, such as terraces where traditional materials and building techniques prevail, a row of century-old trees, an ancient wooded area; permanencies in the way of use, either productive or recreational; permanencies in the ways and techniques of cultivation and of traditional maintenance, as for a trained vine, an olive or fruit grove using a non-mechanical system; permanencies in giving meanings to elements and places, which may be places of memory, places linked to feasts, historic events, local cultural traditions, or celebrated by high culture through past and recent iconography, photography, and texts written by intellectuals and travellers.28 Different types and different eras coexist and intertwine in the present characters of places, in different ways and measures in a self-same area that can be considered, at a larger scale, as homogeneous. Nevertheless, this reading does not only concern areas where the traces of the past are evident and numerous, as to design of the land (morphology, land parcelling, waterways, visual links, etc.), or as to the artefact/manufacts they are made of (terracing, tree rows, forests, canals, roads ) or as to the settlements that were built on it (single buildings, urban centres, etc.).29 Even the areas where recent innovation prevails and is diffused (suburbs, peri-urban areas, linear conurbations, etc.) are full of historic traces, in spite of rst appearances. There are permanencies in the design of historic systems (land parcelling, centuriations, water and road networks, etc.), or simple isolated elements in transformed contexts, which still maintain visual, symbolic, spatial, functional links with other parts of the system to which they pertained. Everywhere, land is a palimpsest, rich with traces of the past intertwining with the present, visible to anyone who is capable of seeing them.
Reading the Landscape: Current Problems and Italian Contributions The reading and assessment of permanencies in urban areas and single architectural manufacts is quite well established in Italy and in other countries. However, landscape reading still demands the clarication of concepts and methodologies, by means of further theoretical and experimental work. Italy has long focused attention on the traces of its own history, both by means of sector legislation for preserving the cultural heritage and by means of historical reading of places during normal urban land-use planning and, to a lesser extent, non-urban regional planning. Italy can also offer useful experience from its introduction of techniques of historical reading into its landscape planning instruments. However, there are still a number of open theoretical and methodological questions under examination and experimentation, both in Italy and abroad. 1. Historical studies (especially those for local and regional land-use planning, in countries where they are generally carried out, such as France and Italy) are often limited to reading landscapes by era and by broad geographical classications, giving an overall outline of the principal temporal changes.
341
They more rarely search for and signal the smaller traces that may be left by the passage of events.30 2. Inventories of historical objects in a given territory are often used as instruments for reading the landscape, in the conviction that a systematic and detailed sum of data can amount to a thorough, or at least sufcient, awareness. These inventories are often quite detailed and may deal both with large- and small-scale items and with many types of landscape feature, extending from churches, castles, villas, historic urban centres and settlements to landscaped gardens, industrial archaeology and vernacular rural architecture, and including the more recent enlargements in the concept of human heritage such as land divisions, roads, canals and terracing.31 3. There has been little experimentation in reading landscapes as systems. The landscapes we inherit are not simply composed of sums of objects, but rather of multiple landscape systems. They are not just a set of points, lines and areas, but rather a system of interconnections, among these being visual, spatial and symbolic relations, as well as functional and environmental relations. These systems must be understood, planned and managed as wholes. For example, as in the cases of Venice and its lagoon, historic villas and their grounds, rural settlements, regions of agricultural lands, or historic routes with their engineering manufacts must be seen together. Systems can also sometimes appear as areas (for example an agricultural settlement with its pertaining elds and lands); at other times systems can be networks of links between non-adjoining elements (for example, systems of major and minor historic military manufacts), and in other cases linear elements (for example roads or historic canals, with all their accompanying historic engineering and functional manufacts, such as enclosures, bridges, resting houses, small religious chapels, fountains, etc.). The systems can at times intermesh and superimpose one with another in the same region, in whole or in part. Likewise, cities and historic town centres cannot be studied, understood or managed simply by means of examining and diagnosing the problems of their single buildings and then summing up their problems. Although this is an important and useful type of knowledge, it is also necessary to have a reading of the relationships between the parts (quarters, blocks of houses, squares and public areas, etc.).32 4. Reading the architecture of placesi.e. the present organization of spaces (like many rooms)also means identifying landscape systems, which may be dened as many formal and functional organizations of space, either historic or recent, characterized by a unitary logic (intent, design) or, in other words, a project of landscape. In this way, masses and voids, walls, characterizing elements, views, visual and symbolic relations, and objectbackground relations carry meaning while determining the landscape historic systems that, from ancient times to today, have structured spaces. These systems, or their remains, are at present more or less well conserved and more or less intertwined, overlapped and integrated one with another. For example, it is possible to nd in a present fringe area south of Milan an urban system (popular neighbourhood dating back to the beginning of the 20th century) built on a 19th-century rural system (farm and its agricultural land), which in turn had been built on a Roman centuriation; it is possible in a pre-alpine valley that a linear system of a historic road to Switzerland passes through an agricultural system based on a mediaeval monastic settlement hosting, intertwiningly, a system of 17th-century fortications and a system of religious
342 L. Scazzosi buildings and tracks on which an industrial settlement of the 1970s was set (or overlapped); in a peripheral urban area it is possible to acknowledge the fragments of a system of a villa with its garden, tree-lined roads, farm roads and few agricultural elds, divided and torn by recent and absolutely dominant building transformations.33 5. The landscapes we have inherited, particularly rural landscapes, are complex constructions realized by minute steps of construction and maintenance, carried out by many single individuals and dispersed through lengthy periods of time. Todays reading and management cannot be limited solely to the general form and character of the landscape. It is also necessary to achieve awareness and management of the materials and building techniques represented by every single terrace, boundary hedge, planting and other element. Rened survey and study of individual landscape components is necessary, examining their design, materials and construction techniques, just as is now conducted for buildings. The potential for management can also be improved by the study of traditional technical and material solutions, which are often rich in forgotten or undervalued knowledge. Traditional know-how can be integrated with contemporary knowledge and adapted to contemporary life and work. Experience has been gathered in this area, but there is as yet no widespread and systematic method.34 6. It is possible, then, to go beyond a landscape reading based on contiguous and homogeneous geographicalcultural units. This reading is certainly valid for a large-scale approach (for example the landscape atlases that are now quite widely available, in France, Slovenia, Spain and Great Britain, or the divisions by area of many Italian regional or provincial landscape plans, in Lombardy, Liguria, Piemonte, etc.).35 But it is insufcient for small-scale landscape description, which is the necessary basis for nding timely indications for the protection of landscape features, compatible innovations and recovery from decay.
Assessing the Landscapes An examination of the methodologies for reading and assessing landscapes in European countries reveals that several criteria of assessment are quite well consolidated in the present culture, although they are not equally diffused in the various countries and, above all, not very much used to plan and manage places. The following notes represent, on the one hand, a synthesis of some issues that seem to be more interesting at present and, on the other hand, traces useful for methodological, theoretical and experimental in-depth analyses that seem to be necessary and could contribute to their concrete application. 1. The value of a document for collective memory, which is acknowledged for historic artefacts/manufacts (buildings, urban centres, parks, etc.), can also be extended to entire landscapes and their material and immaterial components. In the present situation, all evidence of the history of man and nature, even the most recent, is seen as having documentary value, but only places and artefacts that we no longer consider to be part of contemporary life have historical documentary value. In fact, traces of the past survive in the living palimpsest in forms such as design, materials and practices, and these traces
343
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
are found not only in single manufacts but also in the relationships between them, meaning in every single landscape system. Antiquity, which might be described as the immediate readability of the noncontemporaneous nature of the work,36 is awarded valueif to a lesser extent and in a more confused wayby the general public as well as by experts. This value has also been termed historical substance or dened, in some countries, with a word that is much more discussable and bears various specic meanings, e.g. integrity.37 It is primarily understood as the permanence of past materials and techniques that can be seen in artefacts/manufacts, but also as the traces of original planning and uses. However, this kind of assessment is not normally used for the landscape components. Places that serve as social symbols have recently been given unique assessments, even if they do not present specic manufacts (battlegrounds, places that have been depicted in art or literature, places associated with important events or persons, religious traditions or ceremonies and feasts, among other places).38 Studies of places in memory, accurate and diffused, which have a value especially for the local population, are not as frequent nor as systematic as they should be to face the growing role of local populations in identifying landscapes and participating in government designation of places; the methodologies to read such placesnot so often experimentedrequire a scientic research involvement of anthropologists, sociologists and historians. Studies to understand cultural lenses also represent a signicant eld of research. In an unconscious process, these lenses form over time and contribute to dening and assessing places, adding to their fame or notoriety. Intellectuals and historians of art have long studied representations of landscape in ancient and contemporary iconography, such as in prints, paintings, drawings, literary descriptions, tourist guides and accounts of travel. Some studies of landscape planning and management are also beginning to make systematic use of these types of evaluations, as well as evaluations based on recent art forms such as lm and photography.39 Concepts such as authenticity, integrity, completeness and entirety are often used in assessments. Terms such as restoration, rehabilitation, conservation and preservation are also being taken up, adapted from their roots in the eld of building and monument restoration. However, landscapes are products in a state of continual and unavoidable transformation, and it is therefore necessary to give careful consideration to the precise terms and contexts. It is not just a question of denition, of drawing up a glossary and giving adequate translations in the various languages:40 it is above all a matter of theoretical, methodological and experimental work at different levels. The guidelines for landscape reading and assessment that already exist could be useful.41 Concepts such as alteration, continuity, overlapping, contrast, harmony and de-contextualization are seen repeatedly in landscape-management instruments, perhaps more than in theoretical discussions. These terms refer to problems arising from the relationship between new developments and the pre-existing situation. The problem of achieving creative quality and raising the quality of contemporary places is being dened, and is attracting study, criticism, development and experimentation in a wide variety of applications, such as buildings, infrastructure and parks. This may be in part because of the climate that the European Landscape Convention has stimulated, with its
344 L. Scazzosi afrmations of the right to quality in all types of places. Specic international documents and national legislation and norms have appeared, including EU resolutions and laws for architectural quality in France and Italy.42 Retaining or recovering the unique quality of places in order to protect their inhabitants identity means overturning the logic of innovative planningintended as the planning and designing of new elements such as buildings, infrastructures, etc. In this logic, efforts focus on responding to requests for new forms and uses, and the place is seen primarily as a simple support or container, almost a blank page. Instead it is now necessary to begin from careful, precise and minute attention to places, and to their formal and material character. This conceptual and methodological procedure is neither generally accepted nor frequently used by who those who plan territorial transformations, although it is completely obvious among landscapers. The aim is to insert new choices and new forms in a compatibleor, better suitablefashion, with respect for that which has gone before, even if of very recent creation. At the same time, there must also be care to avoid mimicry, false reconstructions of the old, or doomed attempts at halting progress.43 7. The time is right to reect on the themes of indicators and parameters assessing landscapes. Experimentation in recent decades has concentrated on indicators and evaluation methodologies using mathematical tools of awarding points to elements or parts of landscapes, on a scale of absolute values (very good, good, moderate, poor; high, medium, low, etc.).44 These systems have clear limitations. They have attempted to use quantitative principles and parameters analogous to those used in assessing nature and ecologicalenvironmental problems. However, when working with historical and cultural values it is necessary to work with the descriptive elements of pertinent factors, and allow for motivations. Once again, this requirement is not generally accepted, and there are frequent attempts, both theoretical and methodological, to tackle cultural, historical and perceptive aspects as quantiable categories, just as one would measure the quality of the air or of water. Experience has already been gathered from a variety of experiments in progress, analysing places and artefacts/manufacts in terms of their own characteristics (rarity, extension, localization, connection with other systems, state of conservation, historical value, visual impact, etc.), or in terms of their availability, their opportunity and their potential for use, re-use or other development. Assessments have also dealt with the risks of deterioration and loss, described in terms of fragility, external pressure and other factors. Ample, well-articulated, punctual and well-motivated description of places and artefacts/manufacts permits the immediate specication of broad operative limits, including choices for protection and/or innovative development, for planning and programming of works. Such descriptions are needed from the many and diverse points of view that characterize our present culture. These descriptions necessitate effective communication with the population. It should be noted that instruments such as guidelines, manuals and frameworks of directions are becoming ever more common for this type of work.45 Nevertheless, these methodologies should be much further deepened and experimented with. 8. It is always necessary to remain aware that every reading and assessment constitutes a process. As time passes, signicant new attributes are added to landscapes, whether through evolution and elaboration of the cultural con-
345
text, or because time renders once-new objects old and consequently historic, or because we develop new modes of understanding the place, new cognitive sources; new theorists and specialists come to bear and we change our actual forms of awareness and assessment. Landscapes evolve over time and social and economic conditions change too. So society actually comes to change its view of the potential of places and their elements.46 Relationship between Landscape Planning and Land-Use Planning The European (including the Italian) experience foresees two possible relations between landscape planning and town- and land-use planning, at different administrative levels, according to different laws:47 (a) studies and instruments for landscape planning that are independent from land-use planning (for example, in Germany, landscape planning at all levels is a specic instrument completely independent from land-use planning; in France, among the large quantity of instruments for landscape planning and management, many are specic and autonomous); (b) studies and instruments for landscape planning that are part of land-use planning where specic landscape issues are inserted (for example, in France, land-use planning at municipal level must deal, by law (Loi paysage 1993), with landscape aspects too). In Italy both solutions are possible, at the different administrative levels, depending on the regions choice. Experience seems to suggest that: 1. there should be a specic process of identication and assessment of territorial landscape character, through specic studies and with professionals; the studies may be organized, used and implemented inside more general instruments of land-use planning; 2. proposals for landscape studies and plans should not only include legal indications (as in Italy) but also programmes to implement the choices (programmes of interventions for maintenance and innovation; economical and nancial programmes; activities for enhancement, awareness-raising and education, etc.), using instruments such as guidelines, aids, subventions, contracts with farmers, technical and scientic support to private and public administrations, enhancement activities and premiums. This technical instrument can either be part of a Landscape Plan or be autonomous. A useful reference is to be found in the plans for the management of protected areas, such as natural and regional parks, UNESCO48 sites, historic gardens and parks, etc.;49 3. special attention should be givenduring studies on landscape character and dynamics and during the preparation of laws, guidelines and implementation programmesto the relations with other policies (agriculture, ecology, tourism, public works, etc.) that have a marked effect on the landscape. This process should involve from the very beginning, as far as possible, the different administrative bodies responsible at the different levels and sectors that intervene in territorial transformations. The most advanced experiments in both the Italian and the European context are searching for modes of preventive collaboration between institutions, meaning a common understanding at the beginning of the decision-making process.50 The transverse nature of the landscape issue across the policies of various sectors and the necessity to integrate instruments and actions are among the rst and most
346 L. Scazzosi important items to discuss, both at the international level and within many individual European countries; 4. landscape studies and plans should be understood, from the beginning, as an instrument to diffuse knowledge about landscape and to involve, in full consciousness, the populations (both local and concerned) in the process of identifying, assessing and managing the landscape. The signicance of the problems linked to the identication and assessment of landscape, considered in the Convention as a rst and fundamental operational step towards landscape protection, implies a serious exchange of information and methodological and operational know-how among the actors of all the countries involved. That is why organizing events to present, compare and discuss the different experiences matured in the various countries represents a truly fundamental instrument; the workshops at the Council of Europe aiming at promoting and supporting, technically and methodologically, the activity of all adherent countries, both in its main ofces and in the various partner countries, represent a very useful forum for the exchange of experience; the Landscape Observatories, national and regional, actually recommended by the Convention, could be important bodies if they were well organized and managed, in view of an exchange of experiences between the administrative bodies; the trans-national research based on programmes to implement Community policies (Interreg, Leader, Cultura 2000, Euromed Heritage, etc.) that involve local administrations as well as universities and research bodies is a very useful form of methodological elaboration closely linked to the operational necessities; the networks of exchange and collaboration between universities and researchers in the eld (for example, the Le:Notre Network51) are essential to communicate within the eld of research and training, as are the conferences (e.g. International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) conferences), either regular or exceptional; the role of specialized journals seems to be important at present, especially when they are recognized as supranational instruments, giving attention to theoretical, methodological and operational needs; and initiatives like the Landscape Biennale of Barcelona are useful meetings too. Acknowledgement This document is partly meant to follow up and deepen the contribution presented at the Conference on Landscape in European Policies, Rome, 1011 November 2003, organized by the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities, and the Workshop for the implementation of the Landscape European Convention (27 November 2003). Notes
1. Polytechnic of Milan, Department of Architectural Designing, scientic director Lionella Scazzosi. Three volumes have been published. The rst two concern the landscape policies and cultures in various European countries and in the United States (Scazzosi, 1999) and the second one includes the English translation of the rst volume too (Scazzosi, 2001a); the third volume deals with the landscape reading and assessing methodologies, in all the various countries already studied: France, Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, United States, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Norway, Poland, Slovenia (Scazzosi, 2002). 2. The 1999 studies have been considered interesting and useful abroad too; integration of the
347
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
situation of other countries that had not been taken into consideration initially (among them Italy) and translation of the texts was requested (Scazzosi, 2001a). The Minister was assigned a specic Directorate General for landscape that supported Italys strong involvement in the drawing up of the European Landscape Convention (eventually it hosted it for the signature in Florence, in October 2000) and in organizing the National Conference on Landscapethe rst one any Italian Government had ever staged (October 1999). This is how Alessandra Melucco Vaccarofrom the Directorate General for Environmental and Landscape Heritagedescribed the goals of the study, in her introduction to the rst book reporting the results of the research that had been presented and disseminated during the Conference (Scazzosi, 1999, p. 7). The countries taken into account in the study were: France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States. The complexity of the issue and the broadness of the experiences underway impede the authors from dening a systematic or exhaustive cognitive picture that would correspond to the different realities of the various national situations. Nevertheless, the study provides a valid comparison between the different cultural conceptions and operational models although it cannot escape some kind of conditioning dueof course, as in any such researchto the authors cultural viewpoint and to the original goals of the study. Let us just mention the difference between: the rigid geometry of the German Landscape Plans, based on a Law for the Protection of Nature, which considers the whole territory especially from the ecologic and environmental point of view and chooses to apply the preservation laws to natural areas; the broadness and multiplicity of instruments of planning, preservation, enhancement, participation, in France, that come out of a legal matrix that foresees the preservation of outstanding monuments and ends in a specic law for landscape (1993) that adds landscape contents to local land-use planning; the Great Britain system with its recent and mainly perceptive-visual reading methodologies set on a legal system aiming at preserving areas that are outstanding thanks to their natural beauty and their recreational value; the Polish and Danish experimentations that tend to apply to a vaster open territory those reading and preservation methodologies already experimented with in the urban landscape; the long-lasting Italian tradition of preservation of outstanding areas intended as natural beauties and cultural heritage, now applied to the whole territory through landscape planning and subject to a strong decentralization of the competences, although the central role of the State remains; the use, in Switzerland, of federal censuses (of historic roads, protected natural areas, etc.) as an essential instrument for landscape planning at local level; the more recent experiences, such as in Spain, that propose new types of areas to be protected and enhanced (cultural parks) and experiment with many cognitive instruments of planning and management; and the Slovenia experience that aims at building its own and specic operational system. It would be very useful to have a comparative study of the various European countries history of law on landscape, nature and historic heritage and the underlying concepts of landscape; it is already signicant to see, in a rst analysis, that the laws for the preservation of nature and landscape were drawn up and approved mainly during the rst decade of the 20th century and that they all containalthough not all equally nor with the same emphasissome references to the concepts of landscape intended as natural beauties and of nature (Scazzosi, 1999, 2001a, 2002). Testo Unico dei beni culturali (1999), a document guiding the reorganization of the existing rules for the preservation of historic/cultural heritage and landscape; agreement between the State and the regions (Accordo tra Ministero per i Beni e le Attivita ` Culturali e le Regioni e le Province Autonome di Trento e Bolzano sullesercizio dei poteri in materia di paesaggio, Ofcial Bulletin no. 114, 18 May 2001) for a rst application of the contents of the European Landscape Convention although it was not yet ratied; and, nally, the Codice dei Beni Culturali e del Paesaggio, in force from May 2004, that brings together former laws, rules and agreements in order to reorganize them and to introduce new ones in an additional part dedicated to landscape. Here too, the studies (Scazzosi, 2002) have mostly reverted to the reading methodologies used in the administrative and technical bodies, and somehow neglected scientic and university research that is undoubtedly important but has contributed to a lesser extent and less directly to the diffused culture of landscape. These researches have been entrusted to the Polytechnic of Milan, in the framework of the Cadses Interreg IIc programmeLets Care Method (Scazzosi, 2001b), to the Italian Society of Urbanists (Clementi, 2002), to the Univeristy of Genoa, in the framework of the Interreg IIc programmeWestern Mediterranean and Western Alps (Regione Sardegna, 2002).
348 L. Scazzosi
11. Here are some bibliographic references to recent texts that summarize and go through the history of the different disciplinary attitudes (Gambino, 1997, pp. 1642; Guichonnet, 1998; Lange , 1999, pp. 170183; Mangani, 1987, pp. 1942; Olwig, 2002). 12. In-depth analysis about the concept of landscape through history at a glance comes from contributions of philosophers who recently focused on this issue, both in Italy and abroad (Assunto, 1973, 1984; Venturi Ferriolo, 1996, 2002), also recalling fundamental texts (Ritter, 1963; Simmel, 191213). In particular they underline, as we do presently, the notion of landscape as a place to read the world; that is, the space where the world can be read in its complexity or say the place where our history can be gazed at (Venturi Ferriolo, 1996). The contribution is particularly signicant as it tackles the ever-tricky issue of landscape aesthetics, and points out how the aesthetic values that we confer today to placestransforming them in this way into landscapesare closely connected to the possibility to read and observe in them the complexity of the worlds history, as it has been built by the combined action of men and nature. In these values we can single out the social changes, the changes in the ways of production, of dwelling, in urban shapes, in the ways of living, in the working and economic activities and, above all, in the vision of the world and life (Venturi Ferriolo, 1999, p. 59). In some landscapes the material being is the result of a human operational process, while others just confer a mere meaning to places where the aesthetic being is not the result of a productive process but rather of an attribution of meaning adding to the material being, i.e. of the discovery, as we used to say, which transforms into aesthetical objects what was rst considered as mere things (Assunto, 1973, p. 29). Such attribution of meaning may be completely contemporaneous but also a heritage of past cultural elaboration. 13. On this issue, see the contribution of Simon Schama (Schama, 1995) and E. Turri (Turri, 1974, 1979), D. Cosgrove (Cosgrove, 1984). 14. Examples of such buildings may be: the terracings that have structured many hilly regions for the cultivation of grapevines, olive trees, fruit trees, chestnuts, etc; the complex waterway systems to cultivate lowlands; the deforestations and systems of production and exploitation of highlands to allow cattle breeding, including seasonal moving of men and animals, to exploit woods, ora and fauna, to the highest altitudes; the road and track systems that were to guarantee communication for commercial, productive, military, etc. purposes; the network of religious, military, etc. manufacts. 15. The use of the term manufact (artefact) is meant to underline the signicance of building materials and techniques in the character of places and the action of mens hands intervening to shape it: the meanings of the terms manufatto (in Italian) and manufact (in French) still have today a stronger adherence to the etymologic root than the terms artefatto, artifact, artefact (from the Latin arte-factus, art-made). It has a long tradition in disciplines related to historic heritage preservation, in particular in Italy, where its introduction was aimed at underlining the importance of preserving the matter of works. 16. One of the representatives of the wide concept of architecture, which bears a long tradition, is William Morris, according to whom architecture is the ensemble of the changes made on the earths surface to satisfy human necessities, apart from plain desert (Morris, W., Prospects of Architecture in Civilisation, speech made at the London Institution, 10 March 1881). He also uses the term architecture to point out the possibility of reading natural places too, from the point of view of their spatial and material organization. 17. The use of the term architecture is undoubtedly somehow imprecise: it can be understood in a restrictive way in various cultural elds of both northern and southern European countries (meaning only what is built and excluding the natural aspects of places; only what concerns the characters of open spaces and excluding the whole building, the town), or it can be understood as too much related to the single eld of architects. However, it is larger and more comprehensive than other terms such as structure, shape, morphology, invariant and design, because: it includes the idea according to which places own a specic three-dimensional organization, or say they are spaces made of elements that dene them physically; it includes the awareness that spaces are made of building materials and techniques that determine their specicity (a road paving can completely change the character of a landscape); it includes the awareness of the inseparability between matter and shape (the shaped matter: the work is not shaped with matter, but rather matter is shaped) (Pareyson, 1988); it refers to functional organization of places and recalls economic, social, cultural etc. aspects that contribute to build places and imply various disciplines. Moreover, the disciplines tackling landscape are internationally called landscape architecture, although they are articulated in a very wide range of aspects and issues, going from the ecological and naturalistic ones to those concerning historic heritage preservation, or
349
18. 19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
linked to the creation of new landscapes (IFLA, International Federation of Landscape Architects). For the visual perception and the psychological approach to landscape, see: Gibson, 1950; Gombrich et al., 1972; Ittelson, 1973; Lynch, 1960; Norberg-Schulz, 1979. The concept of the room applied to places has a long tradition in the art of making gardens and parks and is also used today for the landscape (Bogdanowsky, 1998). Open work is the reading model drawn up by Umberto Eco for contemporary works of art (Eco, 1962), and whose implications were developed in further publications (Eco, 1990). The reading of what we inherited from the past as unconcluded work still has very old cultural roots. The concept seems to be particularly useful to express the willingness of a fundamental respect for each distinctive characteristic of the inherited places in a historic period characterized by great territorial transformations but, nevertheless, aware of the importance of preserving differences and specicities: places do not belong to us and we are responsible for their transmission to future generations. Simultaneously, the concept expresses the awareness of the impossibility of stopping time (and, even more, going back in time) and helps in dening the meaning of preservation, conservation and restoration as actions only able to guide and manage transformations, based on the full respect and on the transmission to the future of the inherited values. Paesaggio, paysage, paisaje, peisaj, landscape, landschaft, landschap, landscab, krai, taj: these are some terms used in various countries to express the concept of landscape: the rst words (whose etymological root is pagus, village in Latin) mainly recall the presence of man on the territory, playing the double role of colonizer of Nature and observer of his own work; the others (whose terminological root is the German-Anglo-Saxon land) mainly underline the concept of men belonging to a community on a territory from which they extract their resources, and which is also an administrative unit (Franceschi, 1997; Lange , 2000; Schama, 1995, pp. 1012; Venturi Ferriolo, 2002, pp. 2333). However they have both assumedmainly during the 18th and 19th centuriesthe meaning of object of pictorial representation, having an inuence on national laws which were drawn up at the beginning of the 20th century to protect natural beauties, natural monuments or pictorial frames (France 1930, Italy 1939, Great Britain 1949, Germany 1935), according to the differences between one country and another. It is interesting enough to follow such transformations through the encyclopaedias: in Italy, for example, the entry paesaggio in the Enciclopedia Italiana Treccani (1935) acknowledges basically the meaning of view, panorama, and gives much importance to the representation of places (paintings, drawings, photos, etc.) and to pictorial landscapism; the same can be observed in the 1960s in the Enciclopedia Universale dellArte, while, some years later, the Dizionario di Architettura e Urbanistica (1969) also refers to town planning, geographic, socio-economic, perceptive and psychological interpretations. Ashworth and Howard (1999), Gurrieri (1983), UNESCO (1980); the magazine Monuments Historiques has dedicated some monographic numbers to the culture of the preservation of historic heritage in different European countries. It is particularly useful to follow these changes through ofcial documents, such as International Charters and Conventions on restoration, of international bodies like the Council of Europe, the European Union and UNESCO, those drawn up during conferences, research, and international agreements between countries and bodies (An o n Feliu , 2001; Monti, 1995). The denition of vegetal architectures was introduced in Italy through a text of the Lombardy Region (Regione Lombardia, 1987, 1994), to dene various typologies of architectures mainly built with vegetal material, as a widening of the concept of historic park and garden, that until then was mainly linked to buildings such as villas and houses: squares and tree avenues; gardens and public parks; gardens of public buildings like stations, schools, municipalities, hospitals; gardens as memorials of events and personalities of national or local history; extra-urban avenues; monumental trees; urban kitchen gardens; kitchen gardens in residential areas, etc. Since the end of the 1970s other countries have also begun to care about these architectures that became an object of attention, survey and protection (Scazzosi, 1993, pp. 11 25). What is more, the locution architectures ve ge tales had already been used in the treaty of Le Baron Ernouf (1868), to indicate formal parks and gardens that were the core of his research. DOCOMOMO (Documentation and Conservation of Modern Movement), founded in 1995, is an international association dedicated to the documentation and preservation of buildings of the Modern Movement, sites and neighbourhoods of the recent past, broadly dened as 19201970: design objects, buildings, urban planning, landscapes and gardens, bridges, etc. The disciplines of restoration of monuments must intervene ever more on buildings of great modern architects that suffer specic problems of restoration that are very different from those of the older monuments.
350 L. Scazzosi
25. The concept of territory as a document and archive able to give back the knowledge of mans material culture was developed during the 20th century, in particular thanks to historians, geographers and archaeologists (Scazzosi, 1993, p. 16; Lange , 2000). Let us remember the contributions of the historians of the Annales, a review founded in 1929, with scholars such as Bloch, Febvre, Braudel in France; the Polish school with Kula, or Sereni in Italy; the contributions of geographers in France (Vidal de la Beache, Granchard, Claval, Guichonnet) and in Italy (Sestini, Biasutti, Saibene, Gambi, Quaini, Moreno); and the contributions of archaeologists in Italy (Bianchi Bandinelli, Carandini, Mannoni, De Guio) (Bortolotto, in Scazzosi, 2002; Sereno, 1992) and in Great Britain (Perkins, Taylor, Barker, Aston, Rowley). Le Goff, recently, underlined the role of history in the construction of memory and identity (Le Goff, 1977). 26. The concept of palimpsestused for a long time in disciplines such as historic heritage preservation and archaeology and also applied to territory and landscape (Barker, 1977; Corboz, 1983)is here referred to in its etymological sense (from the Greek pal `n newly and psa ` n to scratch out, when antique parchment manuscripts were newly written on, on top of the old writing scratched out) to signal the existence, in the present state of places, of numerous physical traces left over time by the work of man and nature, each time adding to or changing or erasing or overlapping, etc. one another and not necessarily being re-interpreted or re-used. 27. See the archaeological studies in France on land parcelling, the Italian studies on centuriation, the censuses and databases on historic centres carried out in most countries, the studies on historic roads in Switzerland and Great Britain, etc. (Scazzosi, 2002). 28. The division into material and immaterial permanencies comes from the self-same concept of landscape (i.e. attribution of meanings to places, but also identication of material traces as a document of the past), while the attribution to the whole inherited territory of the value of document and, in addition to that, of an historic document (Scazzosi, 2002, pp. 3336 (Italian), pp. 5355 (English translation), requires a systemization of the types of permanencies. From this point of view, let us mention the signicant UNESCO division of the cultural landscapes (Fowler, 2003) into different categories: clearly dened landscape, organically evolved landscape (which can be: relict or fossil-landscape and continuing landscape) and associative cultural landscape. 29. Europe hosts many initiatives aimed at preserving the landscapes which own much historic evidence, generally rural evidence. Let us cite, for example, the Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscape (PECSRL), an international network of landscape researchers, focused on the past, present and future of European rural landscapes; or RURALIA, an Italian association for the preservation of rural buildings and places, that is part of a big network of similar associations in other European countries. 30. The main contributions to a systematic reading of the historic traces left in the current state of the landscape at a quite detailed scale are: the Historic Landscape Assessment (HLA) in Great Britain (Breda & Vasey, in Scazzosi, 2002), different experimentations carried out by local bodies in Italy (Breda & De Bernardi, in Scazzosi, 2001a, 2002), the methodology built up by Bogdanowsky in Poland (Bossi, in Scazzosi, 2002), and the research and experimentations of landscape archaeology in Great Britain and Italy (Bortolotto, in Scazzosi, 2002) and in France (Breda, in Scazzosi, 2002). 31. In Italy, the inventory of the historic, architectural and landscape heritage is a very diffuse instrument at any level of administration (national, regional, provincial, municipal), but there is lacking a unitary system of collection and networking of data, so that it is impossible to have a complete vision of the knowledge gathered to date. At a national level, the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione (ICCD)s main task is only to carry out the inventory and ling of monumental heritage (and to dene the concerning methodology), while local bodies (in particular the regions and provinces) build up databanks that include major and minor properties and a complex division into types, particularly useful as basic knowledge for the protection of heritage and for territorial and landscape planning. For example, the regions of northern Italy (Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna) have studied, among other things, the traces of Roman centuriation that still strongly structure the agricultural territory; the Lombardy Region has also worked on the knowledge (and protection) of historic routes, together with Switzerland, which is the country that obtained the best results in Europe (Cazzani, in Scazzosi, 2002); the Province of Milan, for its Territorial Plan, has built a databank that also includes cultural propertiesboth major and minorwhich, generally, are not systematically inventoried along the whole territory: gardens and vegetal architectures, rural centres, industrial archaeology, etc. (Breda & De Bernardi, in Scazzosi, 2002, p. 186). Other countries present recent innovative experiences: for example, Germany and Norway also register some particular
351
32.
33. 34.
35.
36. 37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
elements (traces of antique methods of cultivations, antique clay banks, historic parcelling, old phone lines, etc.) that can be considered as minor in front of well-acknowledged properties (religious buildings, villas, castles, archaeological ndings, etc.) (Bossi, in Scazzosi, 2002; Branduini, in Scazzosi, 2002; Mazzoli, in Scazzosi, 1999). Some examples of reading the historic systems of landscape on the whole territory are to be found in the project Times Landscape Strategy in Great Britain (De Donno, in Scazzosi, 1999, pp. 120123) and in the research Lets Care Method carried out by the Politecnico di Milano for the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities (Breda & De Bernardi, in Scazzosi, 2002, pp. 192, 197200). In Switzerland the study of historic roads, carried out at national level by the IVS (the Institute for Historic Roads) for the Federal Government, is an example of how to read a linear landscape system, as it examines both roads and all technical and service manufacturers that are linked to them either functionally or symbolically (Cazzani in: Scazzosi 1999 and 2002); in the USA the same goes for historic roads and trails. To date, there has not been any study or interpretation of the kind that would support instruments of territorial and landscape planning; there have only been theoretical elaborations. For example, the Territorial Plan of the Province of Florence does include an accurate study of the terracings on the hills of Chianti aimed at preserving them (with geometric surveys of the building materials and techniques at a scale of 1:25) (Breda & De Bernardi, in Scazzosi, 2002, pp. 188, 193196), and similarly, Switzerland surveyed the historic routes to make a census (Cazzani, in Scazzosi, 2002). Great Britain used to be famous for its production of technical handbooks, some of which include the description of building materials and techniques, and guidelines for the correct maintenance and restoration of historic buildings and their components (roofs, oors, fastenings, fences, etc.), but also of territorial elements such as small walls, hedges, etc. through bodies like the Countryside Agency, English Heritage, English Nature, local bodies, trusts, and historical associations like the SPAB (Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings), etc. For example, in France, the campaign to draw up the Atlas de paysages, promoted by the Ministe `re de lAme nagement du Territoire, de lEquipement et des Transports, whose working methodology is explained by Yves Luginbu l (Luginbu l, 1994). The ECOVAST International Association (European Council for the Village and Small Towns), founded in Germany in 1984, carries out initiatives in order that each European country develops a list and a map of all the landscape units of its whole territory (www.ecovast.org). In Riegl (1903). In particular, the expression historic substance is used in Switzerland for historic roads and in Germany for historic gardens. And although the term integrity is diffused in the documents and handbooks of the National Park Service of the United States and in the documents of UNESCO, it seems inadequate as it supposes that there could be a conclusion, a completeness, in places process of transformation while, on the contrary, it is an ever-evolving process. This criterion is used for the protection of sites in the USA, Great Britain, etc. and by UNESCO, and is one of the reasons to maintain national laws on the preservation of monuments (Italy). In the case of landscape, it is important to obtain a detailed and diffused identication of the values and sites: for example, in Italy, both the Lombardy Region and, recently, the Province of Milan, have carried out studies and set up a databank of the places of historic memory (places, itineraries and events of popular worship and devotion, places of military events, places celebrated in literature, iconography, literature of travels and tourism, places of industry and work) on their territories (Breda & De Bernardi, in Scazzosi, 2002, pp. 187, 190). In France, the Institut dame nagement et durbanisme de la Re gion dIle-de-France (IAURIF) has developed studies and surveys to identify the places that have been reproduced in paintings or used in movies (Breda, in Scazzosi, 2002, p. 84); the above-mentioned research Lets Care Method for the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities has recurred to many different sources to identify the iconems (Turri, 1979), built by literature, literature of travels, travel guides and representations in paintings, photos, postcards, etc., that we have inherited now; it also identies accurately the places on the map (the island of Torcello and lagoon hinterland of Altino, near Venice) (Scazzosi, 2001b) . The problem of dening a glossary or, at least, a comparative terminology in the main European languages on the themes related to landscape is very much needed, especially among international research groups and in the experiences of international co-operation (for example, Interreg programmes, etc.); we know that some partial attempts are under development. Among others: the handbooks of the National Park Service, in the USA; of the Ministe ` re de lAme nagement du Territoire, de lEquipement et des Transport, in France; of the Countryside
352 L. Scazzosi
Agency and English Heritage in England for the Landscape Character Assessment and the Historic Landscape Character Assessment; and of the Countryside Council for Wales in Wales for the Landmap. UNESCO is preparing the Management Guidelines for Cultural Landscapes. Resolution of the Council of Europe on architectural quality in the urban and rural environment (Brussels, 12 January 2001); Law on the architectural quality (France 1997); Bill on architectural quality (Italy); and Law of the Emilia-Romagna Region, Italy (L.R. 15 July 2002, no.16, Standards for the protection of historic and artistic buildings and the promotion of the architectural and landscape quality on the territory). The Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities, General Directorate for Architecture and Contemporary Art (DARC), organized an international conference Quality of contemporary architecture in European towns and territories (2123 November 2003) in which institutions of European countries that have tackled such issues in the last 10 years (France, Spain, Finland, Belgium, Holland, Germany) participated (DARC 2003a, b, c). The different attitudes towards the material inheritance of the past, of monuments, were explored at the beginning of the 20th century by Alois Riegl in his particularly clear presentation of one of the rst bills of law for the preservation of monuments in Austria (Riegl, 1903): he would describe the contrasts and convergences between the different values stated by the cultural and social groups (value of memory or commemoration, historic value, value of antiquity, value of use, value of innovation, artistic value, etc.) that are still alive today in the contemporary culture, maybe with a different emphasis. Moreover, such attitudes reect the theoretical, methodological and operational positions at stake among the disciplines of restoration of monuments, which have beenfor many centurieseither in favour of keeping the traces of transformations undergone over time and the authenticity of materials and constitutive shapes, or in favour of a replacement, rebuilding or reconstruction of those parts that have become old, that have disappeared, or even that were never nished. All the components of landscape are faced with problems of a similar nature.The problem of the preference of people and expert/non expert technicians for mimetism, or for keeping the characters of antiquity of historic heritage, or for a strong formal innovation, is presently very complex and different according to the different European cultural areas. It also produces strong contradictions between the various cultural and geographical areas, between different urban situations either inside or outside the town centre, between the different perspectives of economic development and land use. For example, large conurbations are generally intolerant towards the inheritance of the past and prefer innovations as a symbol of modernity, well being, progress; the respect for the values of antiquity and authenticity of the historical building heritage is often linked to a willingness to support the cultural identity on the one hand, and to enhance the touristic value of places on the other hand, while mimetism is rather chosen in some particular areas which arefor some reasonlinked to others (in Italy, for example, especially in the Alpine areas at the border with Austria and Germany with whom they nurture a cultural resemblance). The phenomenon of fac adism, i.e. the demolition of the whole building except for its fac ade, in countries like Belgium, Holland, France and Switzerland, especially during the 1980s, is a compromise between the willingness to renew the building heritage and the needs of conservation, limiting the latter to a mere preservation of the image of ancient public spaces; a similar logic was followed in reading and assessing the historic building heritage in its relation with landscape, as developed in Denmark with the SAVE and INTERSAVE method (Scazzosi, 2002): the interest goes to buildings that dene the scene of public spaces, and not the internal part of the lots, that in other countries such as Italy are equally considered. The famous procedure of the overlay mapping of I.L. McHarg (McHarg, 1969) was until the 1980s an essential reference in many countries (France, Italy, Great Britain). The willingness to nd a quantitative assessment has guided the procedures developed for landscapesome years ago, on the basis of Anglo-Saxon experiencesin Spain for the Ministry of Environment, but currently almost unused (Ottone, in Scazzosi, 2002), or in Poland, but complementary to other kinds of analysis and assessments (Bossi, in Scazzosi, 2002). The methodologies for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), at least in Italy, usually try to nd unitary modalities to measure and assign a value to the characters of environment and landscape. The methodologies of Landmaps in Wales and of LCA in England use both synthetic assessments (for example, good, medium, bad) and descriptions including images and texts about the characters and values of places and their constitutive elements, from a cultural, visual, historic or other point of view (Breda & Vesey, in Scazzosi, 2002). In developing handbooks and guidelines, the experience of Great Britain is undoubtedly the wider and the more experimented: agencies and local bodies recur to specic categories, for
42.
43.
44.
45.
353
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
example farmers (the guidelines are often linked to possible aids), the inhabitants of small centres, involved even in the formulation of the choices (in particular with an instrument called the Village Design Statement), or of rural areas having specic features (for example, dry-stone walls, hedges dividing the elds, etc.). France too is very familiar with the guidelines to preserve or transform the landscape quality: many documents are addressed to technicians and landowners and provide them with indications about, for example, the shapes, colours, materials and external furniture for industrial or residential areas, etc., or the botanic species and the equipment modalities for plantations, especially conceived for specic landscape areas; the Charte paysage ` re also includes many representations and synthetic descriptions aiming at encouraging the widest social participation. Many studies on landscape planning have analysed the dynamics of places, both from the naturalistic and environmental point of view, and from the point of view of the soil, settlements, and social, economic and productive changes that take account of both the past and possible future developments. In contrast, only a few studies have tended to identify and map concretely and systematically (not just running through them again historically in the culture) the changes over time of mens perception of a specic place, of the cultural lens through which places have been observed and assessed, either by the higher and international culture or by the more local and popular one. The above-mentioned experiences of France (IAURIF) and of the Lombardy Region and Province of Milan (see endnotes 38 and 39), are an indispensable cognitive reference. The research Lets Care Method, already mentioned (see endnote 39), has also produced a critical reading of the changes over time of the attributions of meaning, with which the analysed areas have been considered by the expert culture. Another interesting source is the legal constraints for the preservation of places in countries like Italy and France, which use this kind of instrument. The problem of the relationship between landscape planning and town and land-use planning has been tackled during the meeting of the Workshops for the promotion of the European Landscape Convention, at the Council of Europe. See in particular the text of F. Zoido Naranjo (2004). United Nations Educational, Scientic and Cultural Organization. For UNESCO policies on landscape, see UNESCO, 2003, 1980; Ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali, 1998; Droste et al., 1995. For some years now, before acknowledging any site as World Heritage, UNESCO has asked for a Management Plan. There exist various examples of such plans (one of the rst was in Great Britain for the large linear site of Adrian Valley, or for the archaeological site of Stonehenge). Moreover, a guideline document is under preparation that will help draw up such a technical instrument. The protected areas, such as national or regional natural parks, generally have an administrative body and a management plan and programme (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc.). Another useful source is to be found in the management plans of historic gardens and parks, diffused in particular in Great Britain and Germany, that happen to involve territories of large dimensions. German landscape plans sometimes foresee some kind of organization in the management of general activities. In France, the various instruments for landscape planning and management include various management modalities, such as the involvement of local bodies, institutions, public and private bodies, associations, the drawing up of guidelines and technical handbooks, etc. In Italy, the recent Codice per i Beni Culturali e il Paesaggio proposes a collaboration between the decentralized ofces of the State in charge of the preservation of historic heritage and landscape (Superintendencies) and the local bodies, to choose the landscape contents that must be included in land-use planning or landscape planning; some regions, such as Umbria and Liguria, are experimenting with collaboration agreements between different sectors of the regional administrations and other local bodies. In Great Britain, the experience of the Thames Landscape Strategy, which involved local bodies, public and private bodies and associations from the diverse elds in charge of the transformation management and land use of the Thames, is another signicant model (De Donno, in Scazzosi, 1999, pp. 120123). www.le-notre.org
References
An o n Feliu , C. (2001) Cultura y naturaleza. Textos internacionales (Torrelavega: Asociacio n cultural Plaza Porticada). Ashworth, G. & Howard, P. (Eds) (1999) European Heritage, Planning and Management (Exeter: Intellect Books).
354 L. Scazzosi
Assunto R. (1973) Il paesaggio e lestetica (Naples: Giannini). Assunto R. (1984) Il parterre e i ghiacciai (Palermo, Novecento). Barker, P. (1977) Tecniche dello scavo archeologico (Milan: Longanesi) Bloch, M. (1952) Les Caracte `res originaux de lhistoire rurale franc aise (Paris). Italian transl. (1973) I caratteri originali della storia rurale francese (Turin: Einaudi). Bogdanowsky, J. (1998) Konserwacja i ohcrona krajobrazu kulturowego (evolucja metody), in: Teki Krakowski, VI (Krakow: Regionalny Osrodek Studiow) (with parallel English translation). Clementi, A. (Ed.) (2002) Interpretazioni di paesaggio (Rome: Meltemi). Corboz, A. (1983) Il territorio come palinsesto, Dioge `ne, 121(JanuaryMarch), pp. 1435. Italian translation in: Casabella (1985), 516, pp. 2227. Cosgrove, D. (1984) Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (London: Croom Helm). Italian transl. (1990) Realta ` sociali e paesaggio simbolico (Milan: UNICOPLI). DARC (Ministero per i beni e le attivita ` culturali, Direzione Generale per larchitettura e larte contemporanea) (2003a) Quality of Contemporary Architecture in European Towns and Territories, 2123 November 2003, Bologna. DARC (Ministero per i beni e le attivita ` culturali, Direzione Generale per larchitettura e larte contemporanea) (2003b) Quality of Contemporary Architecture in European Towns and Territories. Buyers, Contexts and Diffused Quality. Proceeding of 1st Preparatory Workshop, 15 May, Rome (including Italian and French versions). DARC (Ministero per i beni e le attivita ` culturali, Direzione Generale per larchitettura e larte contemporanea) (2003c) Quality of Contemporary Architecture in European Towns and Territories. Design of the Infrastructure and Project Quality. Proceeding of 2nd preparatory workshop, 22 September, Milan (including Italian and French versions). Droste von, B., Plachter, H. & Ro ssler, M. (1995) Cultural Landscapes of Universal Value (New York: G. Fischer). Eco, U. (1962) Opera Aperta. Forma e indeterminazione nelle poetiche contemporanee (Milan: Bompiani). Eco, U. (1990) I limiti dellinterpretazione (Milan: Bompiani). Fowler, P. J. (2003) World Heritage Cultural Landscapes 19922002. UNESCO World Heritage Papers no. 6 (Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientic and Cultural Organization). Franceschi, C. (1997) Du mot paysage et de ses e quivalents dans cinq langues europe ennes, in: M. Collot (Ed.) Les enjeux du paysage, pp. 75111 (Brussels: Ousia). Gambi, L. (1972) I valori storici dei quadri ambientali, in: Storia dItalia, vol. I, pp. 560 (Turin: Einaudi). Gambino, R. (1997) Conservare innovare. Paesaggio, ambiente, territorio (Turin: Utet). Gibson, J. J. (1950) The Perception of the Visual World (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin). Gombrich, E., Hochberg, J. & Black, M. (1972) Art, Perception, and Reality (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press). Italian transl. (1978) Arte, percezione e realta ` . Come pensiamo le immagini (Turin: Einaudi). (Eds) Il paesaggio lombardo, pp. 1522 Guichonnet, P. (1998) Il paesaggio, in: D. Benetti & S. Lange (Sondrio: Regione Lombardia). Gurrieri, F. (1983) Dal restauro dei monumenti al restauro del territorio (Florence: Sansoni). ICOMOS (2001) Carta di Cracovia 2000 Principi per la conservazione e il restauro del patrimonio costruito, Il Giornale dellArte, no. 195 (January). Ittelson, W. H. (Ed.) (1973) Environment and Cognition (New York: Academic Press). Italian transl. (1978) La psicologia dellambiente (Milan: Franco Angeli). Lange , S. (1999) Soggetti. Storia. Paesaggio (Milan: Mursia). Lange , S. (2000) Scuole e correnti dellanalisi storica del paesaggio. Il Novecento, in: Proceeding of the Lets Care Method Workshop, Paesaggio, Venice, 23 June, available on CD, Regione Veneto (2000), Interreg II C-CADSESLets care method. Le Goff, J. (1977) Storia e memoria (Turin: Einaudi). Luginbu l, I. (1994) Methode pour des Atlas de Paysages. Identication et qualication (Paris: Ministe ` re de lAme nagement du Territoire, de lEquipement et des Transports). Lynch, K. (1960) The Image of the City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Italian transl. (1964) Limmagine della citta ` (Venice: Marsilio). Mangani, G. (1987) Verso un nuovo concetto di paesaggio, in: M. Boriani & L. Scazzosi (Eds) Natura e architettura. La conservazione del patrimonio paesistico, pp. 1942 (Milan: Citta ` studi). McHarg, I. L. (1969) Design with Nature (New York: Doubleday/Natural History Press). Ministero per i Beni Culturali e Ambientali (Eds) (1998) Il paesaggio culturale nelle strategie europee. Proceedings of the meeting, Turin, 1617 May 1996 (Naples: Electa).
355
Monti, G. (1995) La conservazione dei beni culturali nei documenti italiani e internazionali. 19311991 (Rome: Istituto Poligraco e Zecca dello Stato). Norberg-Schulz, C. (1979) Genius Loci. Paesaggio ambiente architettura (Milan: Electa) (Italian transl.). Olwig, K. (2002) Landscape, Nature, and the Body Politic: From Britains Renaissance to Americas New World (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press). Pareyson, L. (1988) Estetica (Milan: Bompiani). Regione Lombardia (1987) Ecologia, Ambiente, Ricerche, no. 1, pp. 9295. Regione Lombardia (1994) Indirizzi per la tutela, conservazione e gestione di parchi, giardini e alter architetture vegetali, Deliberazione della Giunta regionale, 18 maggio 1994, no. 5/52777, Bollettino Ufciale della Regione Lombardia, 30, 29 July 1994, 3rd extra number. Regione Sardegna (2002) Paesaggi mediterranei e alpini, Progetto Interreg II C Med-Occ (Cagliari: Doglio). Riegl, A. (1903) Der moderne Denkmalkultus, sein Wesen, seine Entstehung (Einleitung zum Denkmalschutzgesetz) (Wien: Braunmu ller). Italian transl. (1982) Il moderno culto dei monumenti. La sua essenza, il suo sviluppo. Introduzione alla legge sulla protezione dei monumenti, in: G. La Monica (Ed.) Alois Riegl. Scritti sulla tutela e il restauro, pp. 2782 (Palermo: Ila Palma). Ritter, J. (1963) Landscaft (Mu nster: Verlag Aschendorff). Scazzosi, L. (1993) Il giardino opera aperta. La conservazione delle architetture vegetali (Florence: Alinea). Scazzosi, L. (1999) (Ed.) Politiche e culture del paesaggio. Esperienze internazionali a confronto (Landscape Policies and Culture. A Comparison of International Experiences) (Rome: Gangemi). Scazzosi, L. (2001a) (Ed.) Politiche e culture del paesaggio. Nuovi confronti (Landscape Policies and Culture. New Comparisons) (Rome: Gangemi). Scazzosi, L. (2001b) (Ed.) The Landscape Heritage: Study Methods and Indicators for Landscape Planning and Governance. The Torcello and Altino case-study, Programma Interreg II C- CADSES Lets care method (Milan: Politecnico di Milano). Scazzosi, L. (2002) (Ed.) Leggere il paesaggio. Confronti internazionali (Reading the Landscape. International Comparisons) (Rome: Gangemi). Schama, S. (1995) Landscape and Memory (London: Harper Collins). Sereno P. (1992) Larcheologia del paesaggio agrario: una nuova frontiera di ricerca, in: M. Boriani & L. Scazzosi (Eds) (1992) Natura e Architettura, pp. 5172 (Milan: Citta ` Studi). Simmel, G. (191213) Filosoa del paesaggio, in: G. Simmel (1985) Il volto e il ritratto. Saggi sullarte, pp. 7183 (Bologna: Il Mulino) (Italian transl.). Turri, E. (1974) Antropologia del paesaggio (Milan: Ed. di Comunita ` ). Turri, E. (1979) Semiologia del paesaggio italiano (Milan: Longanesi). United Nations Educational, Scientic and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (Ed.) (2003) Cultural Landscapes: The Challenges of Conservation, Proceedings of the Workshop, 1112 November 2002, Ferrara. UNESCO World Heritage Papers, no. 7 (Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientic and Cultural Organization). United Nations Educational, Scientic and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) German Commission (1980) Protection and Cultural Animation of Monuments, Sites and Historic Towns in Europe (Melsungen-Bonn: Bernecker). Venturi Ferriolo, M. (1996) Leggere il mondo. Il paesaggio documento della natura e della storia, in: A-Letheia. Giardino e paesaggio. Conoscenza, conservazione, progetto, no. 7, pp. 130131 (Florence: Alinea). Venturi Ferriolo, M. (1999) Lineamenti di estetica del paesaggio, in: M. Venturi Ferriolo, M. Giacomini & L. Pesci, E. (Eds) Estetica del paesaggio, Antologia (Milan: Guerini). Venturi Ferriolo, M. (2002) Etiche del paesaggio (Rome: Editori Riuniti). Zoido Naranjo, F. (2004) Landscape and Spatial Planning, T-FLOR 4, available at www.coe.int/EuropeanLandscapeConvention

Reading and Assessing The Landscape As Cultural and Historical Heritage

Transféré par

Informations du document

Titre original

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Reading and Assessing The Landscape As Cultural and Historical Heritage

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

This article was downloaded by: [University of Sydney] On: 24 July 2011, At: 23:55 Publisher: Routledge Informa

Reading and assessing the landscape as cultural and historical heritage

Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy

Available online: 23 Jan 2007

Landscape Research, Vol. 29, No. 4, 335355, October 2004

Reading and Assessing the Landscape as Cultural and Historical Heritage

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Reading and Assessing the Landscape

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Reading and Assessing the Landscape Landscape as Document or Monument

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Reading and Assessing the Landscape

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Reading and Assessing the Landscape

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Reading and Assessing the Landscape

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Reading and Assessing the Landscape

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Reading and Assessing the Landscape

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Reading and Assessing the Landscape

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Reading and Assessing the Landscape

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Reading and Assessing the Landscape

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Downloaded by [University of Sydney] at 23:55 24 July 2011

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi