Nature and Place

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Nature and Place
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Peter Grimesopera by Benjamin Britten and
Montagu Slater, 1945BalstrodeGrimes, since
youre a lonely soulBorn to blocks and spars and
ropesWhy not try the wider seaWith merchantman
or privateer?Peter I am a native, rooted
here.Balstrode Rooted by what?Peter By
familiar fields,Marsh and sand,Ordinary
streets,Prevailing wind
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Bill Brandt, Aldeburgh Beach I am firmly
rooted in this glorious country. And I proved
this to myself when I once tried to live
somewhere else. Benjamin Britten
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1975
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Alexander Pope, An Epistle to Lord Burlington,
1731
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Joseph Wright of Derby, Sir Brooke Boothby,
1780Tate
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1979
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Christian Norberg-Schultz, Groves
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Christian Norberg-Schultz, Dwelling in the Nordic
landscape
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Today man is mainly educated in pseudo-analytic
thinking, and his knowledge consists of so-called
facts. His life, however, is becoming ever more
meaningless, and ever more he understands that
his merits do not count If he is not able to
dwell poetically. Education through Art is
therefore more needed than ever before, and the
work of art which above all ought to serve as the
basis for our education is the place which gives
us our identity. Only when understanding our
place, we may be able to participate creatively
and contribute to its history.Christian
Norberg-Schultz, conclusion to Genius Loci
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Northmens thing made southfolks placeJames
Joyce, Finnegans Wake, 1939Architecture need
do no more, nor should it ever do less, than
assist mans homecoming.Aldo van Eyck
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Critical RegionalismHow to become modern and
return to sources how to revive an old, dormant
civilization and take part in universal
civilization. Paul RicoeurThe fundamental
strategy of Critical Regionalism is to mediate
the impact of universal civilization with
elements derived indirectly from the
peculiarities of a particular place. It is clear
from the above that Critical Regionalism depends
upon maintaining a high level of critical
self-consciousness. It may find its governing
inspiration in such things as the range and
quality of the local light, or in a tectonic
derived from a peculiar structural mode, or in
the topography of a given site.Kenneth
Frampton, Towards a Critical Regionalism Six
points for an architecture of resistance. 1985
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Exhibition just opened at Barbican Art Gallery
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Alvar Aalto, Villa Mairea, 1938
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Alvar and Elissa Aalto, summer house at
Muratsalo, 1952-53
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2005
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Pallasmaa, chapter titles
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Pallasmaa, From Metaphorical to Ecological
Functionalism
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Today I cannot imagine any other desirable view
of the future than an ecologically adapted form
of life where architecture returns o its early,
biologically-derived Functionalist ideals. This
architecture must again take root in its cultural
and regional soil it could be called Ecological
Functionalism. My understanding of this view
implies a paradoxical task for architecture to
become more primitive and more refined at the
same time more primitive in terms of meeting the
most fundamental human needs with an economy of
expression and mediating mans relation to the
world in an equally fundamental and literal way
and more sophisticated, in terms of adapting to
the cyclic systems of nature, both in terms of
matter and energy. Ecological architecture also
implies a view of building more as a process than
a product. It suggests a new awareness of time
architectural time and human time in terms of
recycling and responsibility exceeding the scope
of individual life. p.189
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2003
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Essays 1984-1994
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J. B. Jackson,A Sense of Time, a Sense of
Place (title essay)
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Critical Studies approach to place1993Cultural
geography
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Constable said he had deliberately given The
Cornfield more eye-salve than was usual with
his Suffolk pictures, to make it appeal to public
taste for the Picturesque. Various features which
would have irritated local countrymen a dead
tree, a broken gate, a neglected flock of sheep
were designed to soothe urban tourist tastes.
Stephen Daniels
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Patrick Keiller, Robinson in Space, 1999 book of
1997 filmThe provincial feel of England belies
the UKs status as one of the most
internationalised, deregulated economies in the
developed world.
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There are people who do not like a place because
it is associated with some ominous moment in
their lives others attribute an auspicious
character to a place. All these experiences,
their sum, constitute the city. It is in this
sense that we must judge the quality of a space
a notion that may be extremely difficult for our
modern sensibility. This was the sense in which
the ancients consecrated a place, and it
presupposes a type of analysis far more profound
than the simplistic sort offered by certain
psychological interpretations that rely only on
the legibility of form. Aldo Rossi, The
Architecture of the City, 1966
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1997
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Ecocriticism, 2000For the first time it is
possible to see both the continuity and the
variety of the traditions in which green
thinking has emerged within literary culture.
Jonathan BateIt isnt language that has a hole
in its ozone layer Kate Soper
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Peter Barry, Beginning Theory, 1995 (2002)
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Architectures ecocriticism?1996/1999Out of
these views, of sympathy, of awe, of the
usefulness of nature, comes slowly the attitude
that we now call green or ecologically aware.
Present in thoughts and deeds a hundred or more
years ago, it has only in the last few years
assumed centre stage. Many have contributed to
it, some of whom in architecure at least have
long been seen as irrelevant and backward
looking.
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Terry Anderson in Idaho, from Farmer, Green Shift
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1999
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2001In recent times, the architecture/nature
discussion has encouraged a dual response
architects have built in the image of nature a
token environmentalism while environmentalists
have focussed too narrowly on the technologies of
ecology and sustainability, invariably without
paying sufficient attention to spatial and visual
issues. In this book, Hagan argues for a new
relationship between architecture and nature, a
contract that renegotiates the tension between
environmental processes and their formal
consequences.Mohsen Mostafavi