THE VALUE OF LANDSCAPE
SAO PAULO CORPORATE TOWERS - BALMORI ASSOCIATES
The landscape is a concept created by the men, we developed this concept to explain the image of what surrounds us; It has a certain similitude with the concept of the environment. However, it is a different concept, because environment defines all the complex of physical, chemical, and biotic factors that surround us, not just the image or idea of what is around us. In other words, the landscape exists only because we as humans are there to define it. The environment is a concept that does not need us to exist.
Having said this, we can now dive in why the value of the landscape is important for us. In the history of humanity, we build cities when we found enough resources and space to settle. The way in which cities were build was a pure response to the needs people had. Having this in mind, people kept building and developing cities, without thinking much about how it should look or work in the future. As a result, we had the medieval cities, huge labyrinths fill with small little streets, passages that go nowhere, hundreds of residual spaces and useless spaces. With the arrival of modernity and urban design, it recognized the importance of cities and the huge impact these ones have on the lives of their inhabitants. Thanks to urbanism cities started to grow with a specific set of rules to them more efficient and organized.
However, these “modern” cities were built thinking about how to make them more efficient for industries, factories, cars and not really thinking about the people. As a result, the cities are really aggressive with their own inhabitants. Therefore, architects and urban planners started thinking on a concept that was around us since the XV century, and that was born from the Dutch golden age of painting, which is the concept of landscape. But why is this concept important? Well, this concept makes reference to the image and the idea of how it looks like a specific place. We could go deeper on what is exactly landscape and what defines a landscape, but to make this article easier to understand, we will work with the idea of the image or the look that a place has. Moreover, the concept of landscape derives from the concept of the urban landscape, which is the concept that we are going to focus on.
First of all, as it was mentioned before, our modern cities were not designed having people in mind and even less how they will look. In other words, the urban landscape of our cities is almost accidental. In the last decades, urban planners started to look at the idea of the urban landscape and how the image of a city has an impact on the people. Therefore, if the city looks less aggressive and provides more spaces that were carefully thought for the people to make them feel good. Not only the perception and the image of the city will change but the quality of life of the inhabitants will change too. This new perspective on how we should design and build cities has evolved and turned in a separate discipline. Moreover, it had had a huge impact on architecture and urban planning because now we are aware of the impact that the landscape has on the people, and the importance that this one has, for it is able to create places and spaces that make people feel more comfortable.
At present, more cities are starting to develop and design cities, having in mind the landscape and how the perception of the space and the city can affect people. At the same time, the landscape is starting to have a bigger role thanks to the awareness of climate change and the development of sustainable design. Therefore, the importance of the landscape and how it can improve the quality of life, making the cities greener, friendlier, with more public spaces and less space focusing on cars and industries. Additionally, the idea of integrating the cities with their surrounding landscape, without denying the landscape make the urban landscape stronger. As it was suggested in the last article, the dissolution of boundaries and the integration between inside and outside, private and public space is a trend that hopefully will continue to evolve.
