{"id":10397,"date":"2014-02-21T06:47:39","date_gmt":"2014-02-21T06:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/?p=10397"},"modified":"2014-02-21T06:47:39","modified_gmt":"2014-02-21T06:47:39","slug":"a-landscape-manifesto-by-diana-balmori","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/a-landscape-manifesto-by-diana-balmori\/","title":{"rendered":"A Landscape Manifesto, by Diana Balmori"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"775\" height=\"560\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hdaO1Ku0y6k\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\nStill working on a landscape architecture manifesto, I was pleased to find Diana Balmori&#8217;s book <em>A Landscape Manifesto<\/em> (Yale University Press, 2010). She comes across in the above video as a thoughtful and likeable person. I also support the principles of her manifesto (see below) while thinking they could be shorter and clearer &#8211; her drawings and design work are strong in these respects (see, for example, Balmori&#8217;s<a href=\"http:\/\/landscapea.blogspot.co.uk\/2012\/06\/bustler-diana-balmoris-bilbao-jardin.html\"> Garden Climbs the Steps in Bilbao<\/a>). The word &#8216;manifesto&#8217; derives from the Latin <em>manifestum<\/em>, meaning clear or conspicuous. It came into English during the seventeenth century and the practice of issuing art and design manifestos became widespread in the 20th century. Let&#8217;s hope landscape architecture manifestos become widespread in the 21st century. Heidi Hohmann and Joern Langhorst got us off to a good start in 2004, with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/27\/manifesto-is-the-postmodern-condition-of-landscape-architecture-its-extinction-or-is-it-landscape-urbanism\/\">Landscape architecture: an apocalyptic manifesto<\/a>, though its strength is in making the case for manifestos.<\/p>\n<h2>25 points: Diana Balmori&#8217;s Landscape Architecture Manifesto<\/h2>\n<p>1. Nostalgia for the past and utopian dreams for the future prevent us from looking at our present.<br \/>\n2. Nature is the flow of change within which humans exist.\u00a0 Evolution is its history. Ecology is our understanding of its present phase.<br \/>\n3.\u00a0 All things in nature are constantly changing.\u00a0 Landscape artists need to\u00a0 design to allow for change, while seeking a new course that enhances the coexistence of humans with the rest of nature.<br \/>\n4.\u00a0 Landscape forms encapsulate unseen assumptions. To expose them is to enter the economic and aesthetic struggles of our times.<br \/>\n5.\u00a0 Historical precedents do not support the common prejudice that human intervention is always harmful to the rest of nature.<br \/>\n6.\u00a0 Shifts are taking place before our eyes. Landscape artists and architects need to give them a name and make them visible.\u00a0 Aesthetic expertise is needed to enable the transforming relations between humans and the rest of nature to break through into public spaces.<br \/>\n7.\u00a0 High visibility, multiple alliances, and public support are critical to new landscape genres that portray our present.<br \/>\n8.\u00a0 Landscape\u2014through new landscapes\u2014enters the city and modifies our way of being in it.<br \/>\n9.\u00a0 New landscapes can become niches for species forced out of their original environment.<br \/>\n10. The new view of plants as groups of interrelated species modifying each other, rather than as separate and fixed, exemplifies fluidity\u2014a main motif of landscape form.<br \/>\n11. Nostalgic images of nature are readily accepted, but they are like stage scenery for the wrong play.<br \/>\n12. In his History of the Modern Taste in Gardening (l780), Horace Walpole says William Kent \u201cwas the first to leap the fence and show that the whole of nature was a garden.\u201d Today landscape \u201chas leapt the fence\u201d in the opposite direction, to the city, making it part of nature.<br \/>\n13. Existing urban spaces can be rescued from their current damaging interaction with nature.<br \/>\n14. Landscape artists can reveal the forces of nature underlying cities, creating a new urban identity from them.<br \/>\n15. Landscape can create meeting places where people can delight in unexpected forms\u00a0 and spaces, inventing why and how they are to be appreciated.<br \/>\n16. A landscape, like a moment, never happens twice. This lack of fixity is landscape\u2019s asset.<br \/>\n17.\u00a0 We can heighten the desire for new interactions between humans and nature where it is least expected: in derelict spaces.<br \/>\n18. Emerging landscapes are becoming brand new actors on the political stage.<br \/>\n19. Landscape renders the city as constantly evolving in response to climate, geography, and history.<br \/>\n20. Landscape can show artistic intention without imposing a predetermined meaning.<br \/>\n21. Landscape can bridge the line between ourselves and other parts of nature\u2014between ourselves and a river.<br \/>\n22. Landscape is becoming the main actor of the urban stage, not just a destination.<br \/>\n23. The edge between architecture and landscape can be porous.<br \/>\n24. Landscape can be like poetry, highly suggestive and open to multiple interpretations.<br \/>\n25. We must put the twenty-first century city in nature rather than put nature in the city. To put a city in nature will mean using engineered systems that function as those in nature and deriving form from them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Still working on a landscape architecture manifesto, I was pleased to find Diana Balmori&#8217;s book A Landscape Manifesto (Yale University Press, 2010). She comes across in the above video as a thoughtful and likeable person. I also support the principles of her manifesto (see below) while thinking they could be shorter and clearer &#8211; her [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,16,28],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10397"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}