Talk:Assignment 4: Landscape Concepts in comparison

Dear participants,

Please use this page as a forum if you have general questions concerning this assignment. Thank you!

Hi Everybody!

I'm a little bit stuck with this literature looking, maybe you could help me. My questions are:

1. What type of literature exactly, should I look for?

I have already a poem what describes the "ideal" landscape of the era, it is idillic and romantic , but only describes a small segment of the country. It rather deals with the past, then with the future.

Then I have the definition of the landscape by the hungarian landscape architect profession. But that reflects only the bigger part of the landscape architect's opinion, other professions which also "constructing" the landscape don't agree with this definition. However that definition can be related to the concepts of future landscapes, because even today it is the "starting point" in the hungarian l.a. profession, education.

2. Should the literature be academic kind, or could I choose from other areas (for example as the poem mentioned above)?

Should I cite from Hungary's regional development concept? That exactly deals with the future of the hungarian landscape, but I think it's too large for the purpose, both in quantity and scale.

Or should I look for regulations?

3. Hungary is a small country, but even so it consist from many, totally different landscapes, so we can't tell it is just like this or that.

Therefore each landscape is treated uniquely, and must be treated uniquely, and (I suppose, not yet sure) there are different literature for the different places... But of course, there are general regulations, for example in the regional development concept, and as I mentioned, maybe too large. So which landscape should I choose? Maybe that in which I'm living?

Well, as I wrote it down helped me to think already, but I post it, maybe there are some constructive ideas... :)

Balázs Dukai

Literature and Dictionaries

Dear Balasz, I think it might be interesting to look at the lexical definition in Hungarian because this shall give a good summary of the common understanding (which is usually more or less different from the professional understanding). So a look at some bigger Hungarian encyclopaedia should help, I would say. I think we should not look into different regional landscape types as this would lead to a very broad discussion. So keep it broad and general- the lexical definition + the poem is good for the common understanding, a short summary of the regional plan's definition should be enough for the professional perspective (plus some aspect of the landscape architects' view if you wish) Ellen

Hello Balasz, (hello Ellen) what a nice surprise to find you in the discussion page!

I wanted to thank you for the bicycle trip through the Serbian city, Magyarkanizsa (paahh!) with You Tube! What a good idea! Hello everybody! I wanted also to thank Beate Scharbach for the trip through Freiburg, what a beautiful German city! And I will never forgive Kun and Wei for that perfect movie from Kassel, good work! I felt like a little fly!

Balasz, we have also problems to find the right concepts for “landscape” in our cultural background (Uruguay). And I must confess, that the way landscape concepts are managed in this forum brings me to a bit of confusion. Can we really think of a desirable future landscape? Or should we all work for a future better world with eco friendly materials, sustainable, 0 energy costs, without cars and planes, with more justice and so on? I think that a concept of landscape is something more complex, more fragile, not standard, a social construct which depends of every human being. Of course we should all work for projects like Eva Lanxmeer in the Netherlands, like that of Buffalo Bayou in United States, like that for the coast of the city of Tallinn in Estonia! Or for a cultural approach, like that of the Independence Square of Tallinn, or the square in Las Piedras, Uruguay. And let us hope that this project “Greeting to the Sun” in Zadar, Croatia, will have also over time a low ecological footprint. And that, when we will not need the factories anymore, that here will be a political will to transform a zone like the Ruhr Gebiet in an Emscher Park, Germany. But what happens to places where factories are working? Automobile industries, high technology industries. Installations for our resources of energy. How shall we manage the territory where they are installed? How will we perceive them, aren´t they part of what we think is our landscape? What does Uruguay have to say to foreign investors, when they install their industrial plant in our country, because in Europe they don´t want them? Shall we believe them, when they tell us, that the factory is built with eco friendly materials, that they are sustainable, and have 0 energy costs? What sense has it to waste our time with landscape concepts, if tomorrow the Shenyang Architectural University Campus in China will tell us, that, or we plant everywhere a rice paddy or we will starve? Just some comments to some of these great efforts for this wonderful Landscape Forum! Thank you Ellen, thank you Heike and those who are on behalf of this forum and make us think together! Greetings From Babi (María Teresa Hampe) from Montevideo, Uruguay.