Makescape: my diary of landscape
Late October 2004 Mid January 2005: As an architect engaged in postgraduate research in a department of geography where I am surrounded by physical geographers, historical geographers and cultural geographers, I have spent a large portion of the past few months submerged in various writings on the term 'landscape'. Covering as broad a scope as possible, my reading has led me into many fields of exploration. From art critics to academic geographers, from historians to landscape architects, it appears that each group has a different take on the meaning, position, and approach to landscape. The deeper and deeper I have gone into these areas, the more muddied my understandings have become. It feels as though my own once-clear understandings of what landscape is, or could be, are becoming lost in a mire amongst these competing meanings. Landscape: A cultural construction? A social process? A physical thing?