A Discourse on Theory I: "Sounding the Depths" Origins, Theory, and RepresentationJames Corner

James Corner is an Assistant Professorin Landscape Architecture, GraduateSchool of Fine Arts, University ofPennsylvania. He holds a B.A. withhonors from Manchester Polytechnic,England, and an M.L.A. and anUrban Design diploma from the Uni-versity of Pennsylvania. His interestsfocus on landscape design theory andcriticism, landscape representation,phenomenology, and hermeneutics.

Abstract: This essay addresses the idea of theory and representation in landscape architecture. Itasks: what is theory, or what might it be, and why should we need it.) The essay begins bysuggesting that theory is something more enigmatic and elusive than would first appear, and its" usetoday is riddled with misconception and difficulty. By tracing the ancient origins of theory back toits basis within cultural cosmology, the essay explains how this understanding was profoundlyaltered during the scientific revolution, through the Enlightenment, up to the present day. Here, itsuggests that contemporary aesthetics, historicism, and theory are in fact disembodied constructs--autonomous and self-@rential. Some of the major shifts in 18th- and 19th-century landscapearchitecture are used to illustrate the evolution of this trend. The author argues that the contemporarycrisis of meaning and existence is actually an outcome of the epistemological break with traditionduring the 18th century. It concludes that modern technological thinking works to perpetuate anexcessively "hard" world in which culture can no longer figure or recollect itself Landscapearchitecture stands" poised within the arts to address this crisis, and its theory needs to reflect that.

Specialists without spirit, sensualists with-out heart. This nullity imagines that it hasattained a level of civilisation never beforeachieved.

--Max WeberThe Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

The modern concern for symbols implies anew contact with the sacred, a movementbeyond the forgetfulness of Being mani-fested today in the arbitrary manipulationof empty signs and formalized languages.

--Paul RicouerThe Conflict of Interpretations

IntroductionThere has been a recent plea by

practitioners and academics alike forthe creation of a vibrant, all-encom-passing body of landscape architecturaltheory. It is interesting and timely toask why. What is theory, or what mightit be, and why should we need it? Whatdo we expect from theory?

Perhaps, concerned about therelative youth of the profession (cer-tainly not the art itself) or the sparsedistribution of work in space and time,we look for theory to provide a founda-tion, a shared basis and purpose for thepractice and performance of the disci-pline. In this way, theory might beexpected to provide a responsible struc-ture, with attendant principles andaxioms from which prescriptions foraction may be drawn.

Alternatively, perhaps we lookto theory not so much for stability andcoherence, as for breakout and rup-ture. Theory might act as a sort ofdisruptive catalyst, an inventiveprompt, fostering new thought andinquiry within the discipline.

Theory may therefore be soughtafter, on the one hand, to stabilize andprovide a set of codified principles ofproduction or, on the other, to resist thestatus quo, maintaining heterogeneityand prompting change. In the formercase, theory is a stabilizer, while in thelatter, it is a disruptive mechanism.This is neither a dichotomy nor a para-dox, but remains a poorly understoodrelation, riddled with misconceptionand difficulty. To ask what theory is, ormight be, and why landscape architec-ture should need it is to pose questionsthat escape easy answer. It may be dis-covered that theory is in fact a muchmore elusive and enigmatic phenome-non than would first appear. I

We might begin our inquiry byasking why bother, why theory? Thereare those who would argue with convic-tion that there is no need or time for

theory today: "What good is it?" Somemight say that we have too much of italready, too much talk, just intellectualgames. Others might remind us thatlandscape architecture is primarily acraft profession, an artisanal practicerequiring multiple skills and talents.Such people may tell us of the lifetimecommitment necessary to learn andmaster such skills, in which case theorywould just get in the way. This may betrue. In much of contemporary dis-course, there is considerably divergentrhetoric having very little to do with aprofession that is primarily a skill-oriented endeavor, striving toward agreater artfulness and grace in its at-tendant skills.

However, there is a distinctionbetween craft and motivation, betweenthe skill of making and the purpose thatmotivates the skill: Craft may often winprofessional competitions. It can berepeated and, to a degree, taught. Itsskills can be deployed without any ref-erence to feelings, history, or ideas.Motivation, however, necessitates thedefinition of a particular stance to-wards life--some idea of a culture’srelationship toward the world and exis-tential problems. It employs the feelingfound in cultural memory and personalexperience to generate meaning, won-der, and expression. Motivation engen-ders a heightened sense of purpose. At

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its greatest, it is an epiphany, a revela-tion, a new way of seeing the world.Motivation establishes a vital alertness,a sensitive curiosity, and an insatiablesense of marvel. A built landscape maywell survive blemishes of craft, but willvery rarely survive a creative stillbirth.

This relation between craft andmotivation, the how and the why, is ~heforgotten role of theory. Originally, artand architecture were understood as aunity between techne and poiesis.2 Here,techne was the dimension of revelatoryknowledge about the world, and poiesiswas the dimension of creative, sym-bolic representation. Techne made nodistinction between the theoretical andthe practical. Making was understoodas the embodiment of knowledge andideas; we could say that craft was moti-vated. This unity fell apart in the 17thand 18th centuries. Techne became aseparate body of instrumental or pro-ductive knowledge, and poiesis becamean autonomous creation of subjectiveand aesthetic reality. This separationcoincided with the origin of modernscience (technology) and modern aes-thetics (art). It also involved an irre-trievable alteration of the role of theoryin architectural production.

In this essay, I hope to trace thenature of this shift and explain the var-ious transformations in the use oftheory. I argue that the contemporarycrisis of meaning is due in large part tothe epistemological break with tradi-tion during the 18th century, and con-clude that modern technological think-ing works merely to perpetuate anexcessively "hard" world in whichculture simply cannot figure or recol-lect itself.

Theoria and CosmologyThe concept of mathesis emerged

around the 7th century B.c. in pre-classical Greece. It was an early formof mathematics that employed a numer-ical symbol system representative ofthe lebenswelt. Lebenswelt is an old Ger-man word that means the world-as-lived, the prereflective sphere of livedand subjective relations.3 This implies

that we come to know the world as welive in it, through our senses andinstincts. It acknowledges humanperception as the primary form ofknowing, involving direct engagementand participation with the world. Thesymbols used in mathesis were neverseen to be separate from the materialand finite world given to perception.Instead, they were considered to beinvariable entities that enabled thecommunication and transmission ofknowledge. To engage these ideas wasto tamper with the world itself, a verypowerful form of magic.

Mathesis was the first step towardstheoria. Theoria provided the first co-herent conceptual system throughwhich the life-world could be com-prehended at a higher level. It enabledhumans to disengage themselves fromthe ordinariness of the immediate worldand enter into an independent universeof discourse.

Later, in the development ofGreek philosphy, theoria was extendedto astronomical and religious thinking,enabling a reconciliation betweenevents in the immediate world and thedivine order of the cosmos. From theterm theoria came theology (the scienceof being), theophany (literally god-appearance), and theater. The theatronwas a stage upon which the deitieswould appear; the cosmos was mademanifest, and a spectacle enacted in .which the audience would transcendthe banalities of everyday life (Figure1). The theoriai were ancient Greekenvoys who would visit distant theatersand festivals to observe and under-stand the "measured movements" ofthe "visible Gods." Through worldlyobservation, they looked forward to akind of revelatory seeing that wouldmomentarily clarify their being in thecosmos. The practice and explicationof theoria was therefore limited to par-ticular groups of theoreticians. Archi-tects and gardeners, for example, weremerely those who possessed technicalskill, not theoretical knowledge. Theancient rites of site selection and orien-tation were governed by a special groupof theoreticians within the priesthood4.

Another sense of the term theoriarefers to the continual anticipation of

something unexpected, something pre-viously unforeseen, and something thatwould change one’s life thereafter, likea revelation or vision. Leatherbarrow(1989) has written: "The experiencesof longing, sighting something divineor true, and the onset of a new time orkind of life, are the necessary parts ofancient theoretical experience." Theclassical understanding of theory,therefore, was a means by which aculture comprehended the lebenswelt;the way in which they could escapeeveryday life and marvel in wonder atthe cosmos; and the way in which theyawaited revelatory understanding toenact change of some sort in their lives.

In antiquity, and later in classicalphilosophy, artifacts and gardens wereunderstood as figurative representa-tions of the theoretical world. Greektheoria permitted the beginnings of anarchitectural theory, a logos of architec-ture. Architects became aware of theirability to transform the physical world,understood as a privileged form ofmetaphysics. The sacred world couldbe engaged and embodied. The Aristo-telian notion ofpoiesis was the creativeact by which raw matter, hyle, wasgiven shape. It was figured accordingto an idea, eidos, to appear as a mean-ing-laden icon.5 Early artifacts, espe-cially temples, and gardens were thusvisible embodiments of invisibleideas--they were idealizations under-stood under a variety of terms such assymbol, typos, emblem, andfigura. Inthe Aristotelian world there was no sep-aration between theory and practice;theory elucidated and justified prac-tice, while practice retained its pri-mordial meaning as poiesis (Figure 2).

It is important to recall that theorigins of what we now call landscapearchitecture were buried deep withinthis symbolic ontology of myth andreligion and that, as a profoundly tra-ditional activity, its primary ideologicalrole was as a representational art. AlanColquhoun (1981) has described theaim of all such art as being the creationof "figurative and hierarchically orga-nized form, to establish a sense ofcultural centering and give the impres-sion that the problems of modern lifecan be resolved at a transcendentallevel" (p. 13). In earlier cultures, artwas a revelation of the "truth" of real-ity preserved in a hierarchy of sym-bolic representations, assuring that

62 Landscape ffournal

Figure 2. An image of the world by Cesare di Lorenzo Cesariano in his edition of Vitruvius’sTen Books, 1521. The image depicts the Aristotelian cosmos, holistic and complete, making noseparation between heaven and earth, theory and practice.

everything had its place in a culturallyspecific cosmology. The essential ideain traditional representation lies latentin the verb "to edify," meaning to buildto instruct or improve spiritually. Forexample, the enchanted gardens ofEden or Hesperides were mythicallyembodied places of both bodily andspiritual restoration, providing culturewith some of the most consoling andenduring myths.

As a different kind of example,one might consider the archaic acts of

earth-marking at Avebury, Stonehenge,and C arnac as being theoretically moti-vated constructs, sophisticated embod-iments of ritual and astronomy. Thebasic displacement of material disclosesa primordial need of humans to edify--to mark, celebrate, and acknowledgephenomena considered to be invariantand eternal.

One might also recall the ancientMesopotamian culture as being a the-oretically developed and cosmicallyembodied society.6 Here, earth, air,fire, water, celestial movements, andseasonal patterns all possessed a pro-foundly sacred significance. For thisculture, the totality of earth and sky,gods and humans, was only assuredthrough direct discourse with thedeities. This was given through anorderly re-enactment of celestial andterrestial cycles, hierarchically embod-ied from house to temple. The templewas always built on the highest hill,vertically central and focal to the city.The Ziggurat was symbolic of the hillitself. It was both celestial because ittouched the heavens, each tier coloredafter one of the planets, and terrestialbecause it mediated the undergroundtomb of God. Centrality and Symmetrywere understood as symbolic gesturesthat represented the unity of the cos-mos. In this society, culture and naturewere indivisible--they were one, em-bodied, and whole.

The same depth of symbolic con-tent, though of a completely differentsort, can be seen in the Persian para-dise gardens and later in the enclosedMoorish gardens of Granada: theAlhambra and the Generalife. Here,the sensual qualities of sight, sound,taste, and touch were controlled insuch a way to give bodily pleasure andpoetic delight, but they were still pri-marily understood as a representa-tional iconography of a greater Islamiccosmos, idealized and embodied. Therich sensuality of these beautiful gar-dens was understood to be Allahhimself--celestial paradise on earth. 7

Later, inspired by the paradisegardens, the delicate sensuality of theEuropean medieval gardens evolved,enclosed safely away from the wilds ofuntamed nature. While such gardenswere a source of great sensual comfortand delight, they also gave testimony toheavenly joy through religious symbolsand figuration. In Dante’s Divine Com-edy, the garden as microtheos was whereGod resided, and was therefore a much

more divine and gentle place than themenacing world outside.

In all of these works, art was amimesis of the primary reality given toperception--the primary reality beingall that is tangible and mutable in theworld. However, this mimesis wasnever just a mere reproduction, butrather a figurative representation of aneternal idea, something theoretical.Through the immediacy of plants,weather, seasons, and other physicalelements, access to the eternal wasfound. Art provided the mediationbetween the human and the divinethrough a symbolic transfiguration ofthe real. Beauty was seen in things thatwere beheld theoretically and was in-separable from mathematics, music,and laws of nature.8

For example, the symbols bywhich early medieval painters depictednature bore little relation to actualappearance. Instead, nature was repre-sented in the form of icons symbolizinggodlike ideas and episodes in sacredhistory. Nature’s elements were alwaysshown as decorative forms yieldinggenerous gifts of fruit and blossom(Figure 3). These paintings and gar-dens were understood as symbols ofdivine perfection; idealized nature,eternal and godlike, as distinct fromeveryday life.

Many of the built landscapesbefore the Enlightenment were con-ceived and understood as figurativeembodiments of divine order. Theywere manifestations of theoreticalknowledge. Gardens during this timeprovided a kind of cosmic "quarry,"gravid with histories and myth. Theywere a lens through which culturecould view itself and share in a collec-tive comprehension of the cosmos.Theoria remained very much a unifyingconcept of cosmic order. As a repre-sentational art, early landscape archi-tecture was a device of embodied com-munication, creating symbolic settingswherein a culture could communalizeand comprehend its history and fu-ture-the very basis of community. Abuilt landscape provided an embodiedmap, a way of knowing one’s place inthe world.

This cultural sharing of the-oretical knowledge through idealizedmimesis, iconographic embodiment,and the use of primordial archetypes

Figure 3. Manuscript illustration from Tacuinum Sanitatis. The picture is an iconography ofsymbols depicting God’s generosity toward fruit and bloom. Austrian National Library,Vienna.

continued through the late Renaissanceand Baroque eras. For example, theiconography of many villas, such as theVilla Lante or the Villa Aldobrandini,was rich with classical figures, sym-bolic fountains, and hidden grottosexpressing aspects of classical my-thology and Neoplatonic notions. 9Here, fortn, geometry, and pattern pos-sessed a profound symbolic content,embodying, communicating, and map-ping ideas.

The Scientific RevolutionThe traditional symbolic system

of theory and representation was radi-cally altered during the late 17th andearly 18th centuries, largely because of

the revolution in scientific thinking.Previously, the medieval and Renais-sance cosmologies asserted thatnumber and geometry were a universalscience, the link between the humanand the divine. Even as late as 1598,Johannes Kepler, in his HarmonicesMundi (Figure 4), wrote:

The Christians know that the mathe-matical principles according to whichthe corporeal world was to be createdare co-eternal with God, that God isthe soul and mind in the most super-nally true sense of the word. ~0

And elsewhere:

God, from the very beginning, andpurposefully, has selected the curvedand the straight for stamping theworld with the divinity of thecreator, r l

During the early 17th century,Galileo first brought this relation intoquestion as he began to suggest that

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not only ideal but also empirical realitywas mathematical in nature. Galileoopened the way for objectivism bymaking mathematized nature an "in-itself," a pure construct. Mathematicsdetached from the lived world, was tobecome the object. The increased useof mathematics as an instrument forobjective reasoning eventually super-seded its use as an idealized represen-tation. This transition occurred duringthe 17th and 18th centuries, during aperiod that Dalibor Veseley (1984) hascalled a time of "divided representa-tion" (p. 22). That is, there was aperiod when mathematics was still partof traditional cosmology, endowed withdivine properties, while at the sametime emerging as the basis for a newkind of representation: the instrumen-tality of modern science.

This time of transition was sus-tained during the 18th century in largepart because of the myth of divinenature, grounded in Newtonian natu-ral philosophy. Although Newton’s(1803) empirica! work was agreed uponand accepted during this time andwould later evolve as the basis of 19th-century positivism, there remained apotent Neoplatonic cosmology in whichgeometry and mathematics still heldtranscendental value for many people.Newton and others still believed thatGod had composed the great masses inthe universe and had set them intomotion. The creation of matter frompure space was a notion that appearedin Plato’s Timaeus.

The final transformation oc-curred around 1800, when geometry,mathematics, and other symbol sys-tems became purely formal disciplines,shedding any last vestiges of meta-physical content. 12 The advocates ofmodern instrumentality assumed thatmathematical precision and empiricalclarity were radically superior to theambiguous indeterminancy of sym-bolic, cosmological representation. It isat this point where the phenomenolo-gist Husserl (1970) positioned the"crisis" of modern science and theory.He argued that the displacement ofknowledge from the world as lived, oras sensibly perceived, created a dis-

tance between human life and nature.The freeing of science from its basis inthe lebenswelt and its founding subjec-tive nature was undoubtedly a neces-sary condition for all of its conquests,but Husserl argued that this freeingalso carried the threat of an alienation,an objectivist occultation that makesthe world inaccessible to us as humanbeings. For Husserl, the autonomousinstrumentality of modern science"reduced nature to a mathematicalmanifold." 13

Alongside this transformationoccurred a similar shift in religiousorder. The religious metaphors beganto lose their compelling force in the faceof new, fresh ones. There followed adiminishment in the church’s influenceover huinan imagination, and religionlost much of its secular and moralpower for several centuries after this.Therefore, the break with traditionduring the 17th and 18th centuries wasnot solely due to advances in reasonand science, but also to a deterioration

Figure 4. Engraving froxn Mysterium Cosmographicum, Johannes Kepler, 1596. Kepler usedEuclidean geometry and numerical orders to theoretically chart the profoundly divine,harmonic movements of the universe.

Figure 5. Frontispiece fromJ.N.L. D ’ ’ "urand s Recued et ParalMe.

in religious unity and sacred values.Much later, during the 19th cen-

tury, Nietzsche (1967) announced the"death of God." His declaration statedthat Christianity had exhausted itsdominance as a spiritual force in West-ern culture. Also, Feuerbach was toinvert the relatior~ between humansand God, positioning humans at thecenter of the universe (another fallacysimply replaced an old one!). Later,Heidegger (1970) announced the endof metaphysics, signaling the dissolu-tion of timeless and mythical truths.Thereafter, theory and representationbecame something other than theiroriginal antecedents. The demythiza-tion of theory was complete. Eversince, humans have been peculiarlyalone--the sole generators of our ownbeing, meaning, and truth.

A significant outcome of thesechanges was the splintering of the pre-vious traditional cosmology, onceholistic and complete, into separatecategories. During the 18th and 19thcenturies, art, science, language,religion, and myth were each differ-entiated and packaged neatly intocontained bodies of knowledge. Haber-mas (1983) has written that:

The project of modernity, formulatedin the 18th century by the philoso-phers of the Enlightenment, con-sisted in their efforts to developobjective science, universal moralityand law, and autonomous art accord-ing to their inner logic. At the sametime, the project intended to releasethe cognitive potentials of each ofthese domains from their esotericforms; The Enlightenment philoso-phers wanted to utilize this accumu-lation of specialized culture for theenrichment of everyday life--that isto say, for the rational organization ofeveryday life. (p. 16)

These separate spheres of knowl-edge were to move increasingly apartas each divergent specializationbecame more autonomous and self-referential, isolated in great institu-tions away from public life. Foucault(1972) has related this phenomenon tothat of a panopticon. Knowledgebecame trapped in a spherical prisonwall. On the one hand, it could be sur-veyed and closely studied while, on theother hand, it could not escape. Es-tranged from the larger world of shareddiscourse, the possibility of creativeexchange was severed, constituting aradical discontinuity with history andthe essential human condition.

Throughout the 18th and 19thcenturies, institutions and academies

were formed for specialists to engagein the project of reason. For example,the French Royal Academy of Sciencewas founded in 1666. This academy,together with the Royal Society ofLondon, regarded itself as contributingto Francis Bacon’s (1905) "utopia."Looking toward an enlightened world,the academies embraced the ideals of apositivistic science, building their theo-ries and practice around reason andcertainty. The problem here was thatspecialized instrumentality itselfbecame the object; the process of rea-son became the product. Less and lesscould the arts be based on mimesis,since the material world was reduced toa cortege of facts, drained or neu-tralized of any divine content.

During this time, schools ofarchitecture and the associated artswere also changing. In 1671, the RoyalAcademy of Architecture was foundedin Paris. The traditional appren-ticeship provided by the masonic guildswas superseded by an unprecedentedemphasis on rational theory. The EcolePolytechnique was formed in Paris duringthe late years of the 18th century. It wasa progressive institution, which taughtfor the first time architecture as a sci-ence, emphasizing logic and rationalmethod. Principles of Euclidean geom-etry, algebraic analysis, order, andstyle were classified into varioustypologies and systems, which werethen put forth as universal methods oftechnique and design.

The professor of architecturaltheory in the school was Jacques-Nicolas-Louis Durand, who in 1801published the Recueil et Parall~le des Edi-

fices de Tout Genre, Anciens et Modernes(Figure 5). This work is used by Perez-Gomez (1983) to exemplify, in architec-ture, the complete deterioration oftheoria into a self-referential instrumentused solely for the control ofpraxis.That is, Durand successfully laid thefoundation for an architectural orderthat was based neither in tradition norinlife-experience, but referred insteadto an architectural autonomy. Durandstressed the irrelevance oftranscenden-

66 Landscape Journal

methodically and practically to thedescription of lines and layout in gar-dening, drawing plans for labyrinths,groves, cities, and estates, and even"wildernesses" (Figures 6 and 7). ForLangley, geometry was a scientific tool,"the basis of any layout," and heseemed unable to comprehend the sym-bolic implications of a geometry thatimposed its form on nature in the sty-listic manner of Baroque gardens.

Durand, Langley, and others,

following on from Descartes (reprint,1974), increasingly discredited thehumanities by showing thein to bematters of subjective caprice andambiguity. Artifacts made as a result ofthe application of mathematical laws ofphysical science and reasor~ed logicwere considered to be of a higher valuethan those made as a result of mimesisand intuition. Beauty and aestheticdelight, once integral with mathemat-ics, music, and knowledge, now

Figure 6. Introduction to the operations ofEuclidean geometry. Taken from BattyLangley’s Practical Geometry Applied to theUseful Arts of Building, 1726.

tal justification in architecture, reject-ing outright the powers of intuition andmetaphor. For Durand, architectureneeded only to validate itself as some-thing useful and rational in a materialworld governed by pragmatic values.

From Durand and the Ecole Poly-technique emerged an architecturaltheory grounded in pure methodologyand technique. Theory was reduced toa set of technical operations, promotingan architectural discipline suspicious ofintuition and sensible perception. Ves-eley (1984) states that architecturebecame "an instrumental discipline,with a formal purpose but with noexplicit meaning, making it an instru-ment of pure ars inveniendi." (p. 24)

Another example of the reductionof theory to rules and method is BattyLangley’s Practical Geometry as Applied toBuilding, Surveying, Gardening and Men-suration, published in 1726, and NewPrinciples of Gardening, published in1727. These works provided all thenecessary principles and theorems ofEuclidean geometry as a basis for allthe building crafts. Langley applied it

Figure 7. Design for an English garden based on the new geometry. Taken from Langley’s NewPrinciples of Garden Design, 1727.

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became separated. Ambiguous andsubjective, art presented modern peo-ple of reason with something untidyand illogical. Descartes and the laterEnlightenment philosophers asked thatart and beauty somehow be reorga-nized in a manner that was clear anddistinct.

In 1750, Alexander Baumgartenpublished Aesthetica. This was the firstreasoned discourse on the philosophyand theory of art, especially regardingbeauty and taste. Baumgarten assertedthat precise and distinct cognitionachieves its clarity by abstracting fromthe confusions of the concrete, that is,by focusing in and discarding the irrel-evant. But he also went on to discussanother mode of cognition, that of sub-jective sensibility. This, said Baum-garten, was not necessarily clear anddistinct, but possessed a richness thatdid not sacrifice the sensual complexityof the concrete.

For Baumgarten, scientific think-ing caused an inevitable devaluation ofthe sensual. He therefore favored sub-jective sensibility as a superior mode oflooking at the world. He argued thatart, which reveals the richness of theworld, was a necessary complement tothe sciences, which reveal the under-lying structure of the world. Themid-18th century therefore oscillatedbetween these two poles of aestheticand scientific thought. AlthoughBaumgarten conceived their originalrelationship to be complementary, theywere later :to move farther apart withincreasing antagonism.

Part of the reason for this was theevolution of "taste." Taste, as formu-lated by Baumgarten, was that bywhich an educated person intuitivelydeems something to be true, withoutany need, or ability, to explain why.Taste was to aesthetics what reason wasto science. The people who possessedsuch innate good taste were free to dis-cover their own sensibilities toward theworld. However, this presented a prob-lem for those concerned about peoplewho lack taste: How could a standardbe made by which to guide and controltaste? In an attempt to provide sometangible criteria for beauty, the Earl of

Shaftesbury wrote extensively aboutthe importance of rules and examples.In addition, David Hume later postu-lated that most people actually agree onwhat is beautiful, or right, and that onemay easily discover what is tasteful bylooking to what the educated believe.

Thereafter developed the notionof "good taste," with the academiesbecoming the educational arbiters.They provided their scholars with prin-ciples and standards that would assuregood and reasoned taste. Ironically, thefreedom granted the artist by Baum-garten’s original conception of subjec-tive taste now deteriorated into a kindof standard, governed by the elitemembers of an academic club. 14

The pseudo-ideal replaced theideal, a substitute that was not positedby individuals themselves, but wasreceived from a higher authority. Here,the artist’s own interpretive free willwas obscured by the dissemination ofreasoned standards. During the 18thcentury, the Italian Renaissanceformed yhe basis of many of these stan-dards, providing the diletantes,patrons, and aspiring artists of theEuropean Grand Tour with the foun-dations of a new aestheticism.

The point here is to show that thetraditional symbolic system of repre-sentation, of which lheoria was anintegral part, was replaced not only bythe autonomy of instrumental repre-sentation grounded in scientism, butalso by an aesthetic representationgrounded in the fallacies of taste.

Contemporary with this evolu-tion emerged the practice of histor-icism. This is too complex a topic tocover here, 15 but it should be notedthat the Enlightenment philosophers,in their quest for reason, also sought anobjective account of history and tradi-tion. In order to limit any recourse torepetition or reversibility, the past waschronicled into a linear succession.Historicism was therefore an objectivepursuit and had nothing to do withnostalgia or revivalism as it may, incor-rectly, be understood today.

Durand and others wanted tobelieve that historical time could bearrested and encapsulated in a theorythat would have permanent validity. Aresult of this practice was the treatmentof history as a rational evolution of

periods, factual occurrences, and for-mal styles. As with the sensual world,the realm of history was largelyreduced and objectified. Landscapeand architectural traditions were com-pounded into an ensemble of formsand types, all classified and measured.This project was another reason thatthe original meanings previouslyattached to architectural orders andforms began to degenerate during the18th century. The underlying culturalfoundation of thought and meaning dif-fused into a kind of vague memory. Itwas with this mind-set that the Euro-pean Grand Tour not only provided anaesthetic acquisition of Classical taste,but also presented historical styles andforms as emblematic icons of the idealsof previous "higher" cultures.

This skeletal account of thedevelopment of Enlightenment aesthet-ics and historicism serves to set theground for the way theory was to evolveduring the past two centuries. Whenone traces the development of land-scape architectural work since the late17th century, the excessive aestheticiza-tion of the landscape, the increasedborrowing of emblematic forms fromhistory, and the altered nature of theoryand practice become clear.

The Aestheticization of LandscapeArchitectural Representalion

Versailles may be used as anexample to represent the beginning ofsecularization during the 17th centuryand the increased influence of Car-tesian reasoning (Figure 8). Here’,humans were repositioned quite radi-cally in relation to God and nature. Nolonger clustered around churches, theplan of Versailles centers around theking’s palace. The centrality of the pal-ace is reinforced by the Baroque park,attended by infinite vistas and limitlessdomain. Everything receives its placein relation to the royal point of view.This is truly secular in that only thepoint of view of the ruler is admitted--a kind of "divine kingship." Althoughit is idealized, it is no longer a media-tion between humans and God.Karsten Harries (1968) has written:

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Figure 8. Plan of Versailles. From a plan made by the Abbe Delagrive, 1746.

An art such as that presented at Ver-sailles is born out of an awareness ofman’s metaphysical loneliness. Man’ssearch for a measure finds an answer,if only an aesthetic answer.... Thework of art provides man with anillusion of completeness; but now theprice to be paid for this illusion isman’s autonomy. Man himselfbecomes part of such a work. (p. 26)

However, the geometry at Ver-sailles still held symbolic power for thepeople at that time. Although this wasnot directly related to God, it wasclearly a symbolic operation thatevoked ideal truth and excellence.Baroque perspectivism was not in anyway equivalent to that of the 19th cen-tury. One cannot compare the vistas atVersailles to Haussmann’s boulevards.As Perez-Gomez (1983) writes:

In 17th-century Versailles, color,smell, light, water games, fireworks,and indeed the full richness ofmythology played a major role. The

meaning of the place as the seat ofgovernment and the dwelling of theSun King derived from a synthesis ofthe power of geometry and its poten-tial to enhance sensuality.

It is not insignificant that, in1657, Andre Mollet published LeJardinde Plaisirs, the first work to stressaspects of bodily and aesthetic pleasureas exemplified through the formal ge-ometries of French formalism. In hisbook, Mollet offered some practicaladvice, but most of the text is spent inan Aristotelian discourse. Praxis forMollet was inextricably linked to theconception of an animistic cosmos. Thegardener’s life was supposed to be apart of the rhythms of cosmic time.Similarly, J. Boyceau’s Traite duJardinage(1638) postulated that the gardener

should have some practical knowledge,but that ultimately the traditional poesisof gardening, connecting humans tothe earth, was the primary objective.The object of gardening was never sim-ply the production of crops or thedomination of nature.

In 1709, Dezallier d’Argenvillepublished La Th~orie et la Pratique duJardinage, the first work to codify thepractice of an art form through prac-tical rules and axioms. A muchadapted translation to English, by JohnJames, appeared in 1712. This workstood in contrast to that of Mollet andBoyceau. There was no metaphysicaldimension in d’Argenville’s work,merely practical guidelines, rules, andmethods applied to site construction,plant propagation, and planting tech-niques. The geometry of the Baroquegarden was now identified with thepractical geometry of the surveyor.

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Figure 9. Examples illustrating techniques of plant propagation. Taken from Dezallierd’Argenville’s La Th[orie et la Pratique du Jardinage, 1709.

This work, as with Durand’s, con-stituted the emergence of a newconcept of "theory" : theory as arsfabricandi, mere method and tech-nique (Figures 9 and 10).

Increased travel across Europeand into the Americas and China laterprovided the impetus for a reactionagainst the harsh formalism of theFrench garden. As early as 1685, SirWilliam Temple had written about the"natural" and irregular gardens ofChina, noting extensively the pleasur-able "aesthetic" experiences of grottosand wild places. Later, Chambers(1772) wrote a dissertation on Orientalgardening, citing formal principles ofvariety and contrast. In England,between 1700 and 1720, there was ashift from the French and Dutch formalmodels to the love of unbridled, pas-toral landscape. Alexander Pope, withAddison, Switzer, and Batty Langley,articulated the principles of the naturalaesthetic, and the English LandscapeSchool emerged. 16 All of these writingswere considered to be theory, articulat-ing the necessary technical know-howfor a particular aesthetic to be enacted.

The Oriental influence, togetherwith the pastoral paintings of ClaudeLorrain, Titian, and Poussin, inspireda landscape aesthetic based on irreg-ularity, contrast, variety, and distant

views. However, the European Touralso influenced a romantic interest inthe classical literary genre and theArcadian-agricultural landscapes ofItaly. Moreover, it inspired the eclecticborrowing of both foreign and histor-ical styles. A landscape based on newpicturesque principles, informed by apictorial and literary genre, and strewnwith figural fragments of history, was

further permeated by a fourth influ-ence, theater and stage design. 17

Stowe may be used as an excel-lent example of this new movement.These early gardens were a kind ofbri-colage of figural fragments, literaryallegories, and theatrical scenography.Historic styles were mixed and setalongside one another, as when onefinds a classical temple next to Gothicruins (Figure 11). Hence, the earlypastoral landscape gardens wereembodiments of educated and "good"taste, informed a great deal by Italianart and landscape. This was no longera superimposition of reason uponnature, but a celebration of nature asboth the great metaphor and arena ofall art. Here, from Enlightenment aes-thetics emerged the manipulation of thelandscape for sensory and imaginarystimulation, while from the Enlighten-ment project of origins and historyemerged the eclectic distribution ofruins and figural fragments--emblemsof historical time arranged along alle-gorical narratives.

This intellectual basis of the En-.glish Landscape School was slowly tobe forgotten, and degenerated over theremainder of the 18th century. Thescholarly, pictorial tradition became

Figure 10. Techniques of levelling and terrace construction. Taken from John James’s Englishadaptation of d’Argenville’s original, 1712.

70 Landscape Journal

illusory and unarticulated. Part of thereason was that the configuration ofthese great pastoral landscapes not onlygave the landowners a sense of beauty,but also had practical economic value.The land could be let to tenants andfarmed for profit. The ha-hala permit-ted the illusion of boundless views andnatural landscape. As landowner-financiers settled into the landscapeduring the 18th century, a new phys-iocracy emerged, less interested in theliterary tradition, asking only that theland be made primarily useful and,only secondarily, "beautiful."

The nature of theory during thelate 18th-century was largely centeredon the debate about landscape aesthet-ics and taste. Sir Uvedale Price pub-lished An Essay on the Picturesque, as com-pared to the Sublime and the Beautiful in1874. Gilpin also published Essays inPicturesque Beauty in the same year.Richard Payne-Knight was a rhetoricalmember of the group, taking an adver-sarial stance toward Gilpin and Price.Herein ensued a war of aesthetic taste;the "roughness of the Picturesque"being preferred over the "smoothnessof the Beautiful"--the latter castigatedfor its lack of natural drama and ele-mental melancholy (Figure 12). Pricelabeled Capability Brown "the geniusof the bare and bald." He wrote: "Theworst is that Brown fixes and stampssuch a character of monotony on allthat he does." 19 In Price’s writing,there emerged a striking and radicalimportance attached to purely visualcriteria. With Gilpin, too, there was avisual aesthetic that he clearly favored,a quality that was singular in his un-derstanding of landscape.

Citing paintings by SalvatorRosa and John Constable, the pro-tagonists of the Picturesque developeda new formal syntax emphasizingthings such as "foregrounds and side-screens," "roughness and variety,""contrast and chiaroscuro,~’ "grada-tion and effect." The landscape wasto be contrived as a picture. Eventhough Kent had worked in a pictorialmanner 75 years earlier, there was somuch more to Kent’s landscape, eachscene possessing some literary or alle-gorical content. With the rusticizedPicturesque, however, the landscape

Figure 11. Temple of Ancient Virtue at Stowe. Taken from English Gardens and Landscapes1700-1750 by Christopher Hussey, 1967.

was pure image, reduced to a singularrepresentation of a picture. 20 Theresult was an aestheticized landscape,where form and picture became the pri-mary content or meaning.

The Picturesque "formula"-or perhaps we might call it, in a nowmuch depreciated sense of the word,"theory"--caught the imagination ofRepton, who synthesized it in 1794,when he wrote Sketches and Hints onLandscape Gardening, and later in 1805,Observations on the Theory and Practice ofLandscape Gardening. Repton, whosework certainly played a preliminaryrole in the beginning of an aesthet-icized 19th-century eclecticism, wrote:

I do not profess to follow either LeNotre or Brown, but selecting beau-ties from the style of each, to adopt somuch of the grandeur of the formeras tnay accord with a palace, and somuch of the grace of the latter as maycall forth the charms of natural land-scape. Each has its proper situation;and good taste will make fashionsubservient to common-sense. 2 a

Here, Repton suggests that anynumber of aesthetic approaches andcodified styles may be mixed andmatched, once again all in the nameof "good taste." However, if we removethe superficial and stylistic from Rep-

ton’s treatise, we can see that he isintimating at an understanding oflandscape as something somehow pos-sessed with primordial content andmeaning. He writes:

I confess that the great object of myambition is not merely to produce abook of pictures, but to furnish somehints for establishing the fact thattrue taste in landscape gardening, aswell as in the other polite arts, is notan accidental effect, operating on theoutward senses, but an appeal to theunderstanding, which is to compare,to separate and to combine the vari-ous sources of pleasure derived fromexterna! objects and to trace them tosome pre-existing causes in thehuman mind.22

Repton seemed to be aware thatart still primarily belonged to humanideas and the creative mind. His writ-ing and theory inspired his friendL.0udon to compile, edit, and dissemi-nate the work after his death. In 1843,Paxton, a colleague of Loudon, de-signed Birkenhead Park, which ulti-mately caught the imagination of

Olmsted and Downing. In 1841,Downing published A Treatise on the The-ory and Practice of Landscape Gardening.

From Durand to Repton,Dezallier d’Argenville to Downing,theory was clearly something differentfrom that of the pre-Enlightenmentperiod. Slowly, over the course of acentury, theory’s very form and pur-pose were altered. Theory had degen-erated into a kind of technical knowl-edge, a methodology with attendantstandards and principles. It became apractical "language," something thatenabled production and repetition. Yetbefore 1800, art was primarily under-stood to be an embodiment of ideasand knowledge, imaginatively expres-sive of a culture and more analogous toa system of gestures and figures than toarticulated language. However, it is thealtered view of theory and representa-tion that has persisted and had its mostpotent impact during the emergence ofthe early Modern movement.

The 20th CenturyKenneth Clark23 uses Cfizanne to

represent the pivotal shift from a tradi-tional, mimetic representation based innature to the nonfigurative work of theModern artists. Clark acknowledgesthat Cfizanne himself was not at all try-ing to work outside of nature and theprimary realm. To the contrary,Cfizanne was inspired to such an exentby nature that he wanted to discover amore profound way of expressing hi.s"feeling" for a scene. Whether impulseor inspiration, his method of splittingup planes into facets and regularshapes was a departure from the 500-year tradition of imitating naturalappearances. He felt it more appropri-ate to override the direct opticalappearance of nature in favor of tem-perament. The same could also apply toMondrian’s early tree studies (Figure13), which show a progressive transfor-mation from appearance to puregssence. 24

Figure 12. The garden undressed (top) and the garden dressed (bottom), or the picturesqueand the beautiful. In The Landscape by Richard Payne-Knight, 1794.

72 Landscape Journal

Figure 13. Piet Mondrian. Flowering Apple Tree, 1912. Here Mondrian has eliminated the visibly concrete, the optical image, in favor ofcapturing the essence, the essential idea behind a thing. Collection Haags, Gemeentemuseum, The Hague. Copyright Piet Mondrian/VAGANew York 1990.

Also, in the work of Paul Klee,nature as image was displaced for amore profound look at its mythologicaland spiritual content. Kandinsky andSchlemmer were also particularlyinterested in the spiritual content ofcolor and form. Others were to replacevisible nature altogether, as in theabstract, formal inquiries of Malevichor Mondrian. Here, the aesthetic objectwas solely the medium of expressionand its specific technique of produc-tion. The new autonomy of theaesthetic sphere gave it license tobecome its own project.

The ascendancy of formalist aes-thetics developed during the early 20thcentury. Retinal and sensory beauty

were increasingly espoused as the pri-mary role of art in the writings of thisperiod. From Konrad Fiedler’s theoryof "pure visibility" and "opacity," tothe writings of Benedetto Croce orHeinrich Wolfflin, developed the non-figurative movement in art. AugustEndell, a member of the German ArtNouveau, proclaimed:

We are not only at the beginning of anew stylistic phase, but at the sametime on the threshold of the develop-ment of a completely new art. An artwith forms which signify nothing. 25

Jeanneret and Ozenfant werelater to assert that the plastic arts wereorganized according to a primary qual-ity defined by the "elementary,geometrical solids.’’~6 Only in a sec-ondary sense did meaning and associ-ation emerge, the primary forms liftingor elevating the spirit. In the early 20thcentury it was no longer required thatart be imitative of nature or symbolicin its mediation between the mutableand the eternal. Instead, autonomousand self-referential form emerged assomething "pure" that could be articu-lated within the limits of its own me-dium. If the specific realm of musicwas tone and rhythm, then that of theplastic arts was primarily form andcolor (Figures 14 and 15).

Figure 14. Piet Mondrian. Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow, 1930. The imagerepresents a high point of formal purity and sobriety. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Armand RBartos, New York. Copyright Piet Mondrian/VAGA New York 1990.

The power of this autonomousaestheticism has worked to pervade allart ever since. Modern art and modernlandscape architecture were to evolvean aesthetic where form alone couldmotivate the content. No longer didform have to express or convey an idea,as an icon or figure. It was now possi-ble for form itself to be the content.Whereas traditional art, understood asmimesis, represented an idea outsideitself, pure form referred only to itself,thereby severing any mimetic relations.Pure form, orgestaltung, was thereforeautonomous; self-referential, and self-generated.

Of course, this is not to say thatsuch works had no meaning. The

ground of meaning is in perception;and thus such works, once perceived,could be interpreted and could affectthe way one sees the world thereafter.This was, and still is, the power ofautonomous and abstract art.

All of this new spirit had a pro-found effect on architecture. When theBauhaus was formed, new inquirieswere launched into the nature of pureform and geometrical space. Symbolicrepresentation and even the notion of"essence" were radically displaced. Agarden, or an artifact, no longer had toembody any values: it did not have tolook like anything. It no longer had todirectly express, signify, or recall anyaspect of nature, tradition, or idea.Mimetically and symbolically it couldbe empty.27

"Space" became the supremeconcept--space as autonomous setsof Cartesian coordinates, floatinginfinitely, without context or place."Space," crystalline product of theEnlightenment, was put forth as anethereal substitute for the continuity oflived experience. Imagine the audacity,or simple suspension of belief, neces-sary to reduce the complexity of livinglandscape to the sheer placelessness of"pure form." However, the fascinationwith this new syntax of movement, spa-tial planes, volumes, geometries, andnew materials prevailed and developedin the formalist experiments of the time(Figure 16). In landscape, this for-malism was explored in gardens byGabriel Guevrekian, or to a lesserextent in the art-nouveau of FletcherSteele. This abstract method of workwas later developed in various ways bylandscape architects such as Eckbo(Figure 17), Kiley, Burle-Marx, Bar-ragan, and Halprin. Perhaps Halprinwas to be the sole practitioner in thegroup to continue a derivational refer-ence to nature itself through formalstructures that both evoke and abstractnatural forms and processes, especiallythose of water courses and fluvial set-tings.

Early Modernism was, in partic-ular ways noted above, an outcome ofthe Enlightenment project. Traditionand continuity were radically replacedby doctrines of "purism," originality,and novelty. Rationalization, aesthet-icization, and historicism evolved ina way that formed the basis for how aspecialized subculture of "experts"determined what was tasteful andbeautiful and what was to be built.Theory today is merely an extrapola-tion of this. Whether it is used toexplain why something exists or shouldbe (positivism) or is used to provide thenecessary know-how for the productionof desirable work (normative meth-odology), theory today is clearly notthat of theory in the classical sense.While theory was originally recon-ciliatory and afforded a collectiveparticipation in cosmic meaning, todayit is aggressive, serving only as aninstrument of autonomy, control,authority, and legitimacy.9a

74 Landscape Journal

Figure !5. Moholy Nagy. Composition QVIII, 1922. The composition shows the primacy_offormal inquiry. Shape, color, transparency, visual balance, and optical dynamics form theprimary "idea content." Museum des XX. Jahrhunderts, Vienna. Reproduced withpermission.

Landscape and Theory Today--A CritiqueFrom 18th-century landscape

aesthetics to the social pragmatism andeclecticism of the 19th century, throughthe purist aesthetics of the early mod-ern movement to the excessivepositivism of the post-war era, thetheoretical foundations of ourcontemporary profession have evolveddirectly from the fallacies of modernscientific thinking. They are simply

one-sided, and contradictory doctrinewith which we still live. On the onehand, there is an excessive techno-logical school, based either in positivistproblem-solving or in ecologicalmechanics and management. On theother hand, there is an equally exces-sive aesthetic school, based on personal

extrapolated from a narrowly focused,

combinations of historicist and for-malist doctrines. Herein existsa. separated and ambiguous relationbetween art, aesthetics, ecology, andhistory.

With this division, is it really sostrange when one refers to landscapearchitecture as aesthetic land-engineer-ing, a mere service commodity triv-ialized to entertaiment? This ap-proach has produced landscapes thatare efficient, practical for the user,and aesthetically pleasing, yet oftenstrangely empty, without depth, mys-tery, or qualities of anything other.Such landscapes reek of immediacyand immanence, projecting the nullityof objective reasoning as truth and con-tent. In contemporary theory, a techno-logical "ecology" replaces poetic dwell-ing; an overly aestheticized attitudedisplaces the power of symbolic con-tent; parodic historicism replaces his-tory and tradition; nostalgic regional-ism opposes contemporary modernity;a fundamentalist "nature" movementdisplaces art and cultural representa-tion; and the uncritical dogmatism ofdifferent camps replaces criticaldialogue.

Theory’s original mediatory rolebetween the human and the divine, theimmediate and the eternal, appears tohave ended.29 Theory today has beenfunctionalized into a set of operationalrules and procedures of primarily tech-nological character: design methodol-ogies, typologies, linguistic rules of for-malism, functionalism, behavioralism,and so on.

Figure 16. Mies Van Der Rohe. Brick VillaProject. 1923.

Figure 17. Garrett Eckbo. Los Angeles Garden. Landscape Architecture Magazine, February1990. Photo by Garrett Eckbo. Reproduced with permission.

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Figure 18. Paul Klee. Flight from Oneself, 1931. Klee Foundation, Museum Berne. Copyright 1990 COSMOPRESS, Geneva/ARS, New York.

The result is that, for us ashuman beings, the mythical, meta-phoric depth of the natural and culturalworlds has been neutralized, subjectnow to instrumentation and control.Our culture has been anaesthetized,unable to share any common ontology.Still believing humans and their tech-nologies to be at the center of the world,we go on to perpetuate this immanenceby naively projecting everything inimmediate relation to ourselves. InNietzsche’s interpretation, these are thevery grounds of nihilism and aredirectly linked to the fact that the"highest values devaluate themselves."Nietzsche (1967) goes on to say that"what we find here is still the hyper-bolic naivetd of man: positing himselfas the meaning and measure of thevalue of things."3°

In this radical solitude, we chooseonly to account for that which is sus-ceptible to rationalization, mistakenlyproclaiming such biased objectivity as"truth." Multiple representations, pri-vate and solitary, stand alone withoutany common-grounding within the dis-course of culture and continuity. AsDalibor Veseley (1984) has observed:"The fact that nihilism is a criticaldimension of modern culture is mostoften recognized only indirectly,through secondary phenomena such asalienation, meaninglessness, and inau-thenticity" (p: 36).

At the beginning of this essay, Imade a distinction between technique

and motivation and stated that a land-scape may well survive blemishes ofcraft, but that it will very rarely survivea creative stillbirth. Today, stillbornlandscapes are produced en massearound the globe. We seem unable torecall landscapes of seduction, wherethe elusivity of incompletion and mys-tery engages the poetic imagination;landscapes that breathe with emotionalcontent, unlike those corpselike con-structs of such obscene explicitude thatnothing is left to imagination. In suchclosed and final networks, nature,memory, myth, and theory come to anend. In the topography of pure reason,homogenous and without hiding places,the enigmatic encounter with thingsand places is flattened, without depth

76 Landscape Journal

or horizon. Here, humanity is reduced to a corpus of automatons, alonc in a world where bodies exist only in satu- rated states of purc presence, without even the faintest glimmer of a possible absence (Fipre 18).

Cmc/usion Originally, artistic and architec-

tural intentionality was transcendental, necessarily symbolic. Symbols effec- tively relate the finite and mutable to the immutable and eternal, lived real- ity to ideas. Symbolization is thus the most FundamentaI operation constitut- ing meanins for human existence. As an operation, it belongs primarily to the realm of metaphor and poetics, not to objective reasoning and algebraic cquations. Thc difficulty is that sym- bolic and poetic intentions are too often trivialized or rendered naive in a prosaic world where pragmatic valucs of efficiency and usefulness arc pre- dominant. Yet if humans were truly in accord with the world, with nature, and did not look ar things as mere phe- nomena to bc measurcd and manip- ulated, then the current cmlogical and existential crises, focusing on an aggressive technology and supported by an excessively rational thinking, would not arise.

Landscape architecture has always stood in a privilcgcd position in society, creating symbolic settings for cultural ritual and discourse. As the .great mediator between nature and culture, landscape architecture has a profound role to play in the reconstitu- tion of meaning and value in our relations with the Earth. The poetics of human dwelling, the very con- sciousness of humanity, might once again become the central focus of atten- tion for landscape architectural theory, Ry its nature, this insight is primarily grounded in percepzion and cannot exist outside the a priori of the human body and its engagement with the world. Landscape architectural theory ought therefore to find its basis in tht realm of perception and the phenome- nological, the essential origins of exis- tential meaning.

What is the role of landscape architectural theory in returning culture to unveil once again the full mysteries of the Iife-world? To find

answers, we need first to dispel three mistaken doctrines in contemporary theory. These three approachcs- positivism, the paradigmatic, and thc avant-garde-are each derived in dif- ferent wavs from the disembodied carcass of modern knowledge and wilI be discusscd in the second part of this essay, entitled "The Tyrannies of Con- temporary Theory and the Alternative of Hermene~t ics . "~~

Eternally rhaincd tn only one single frag- ment of the wholc, man himself grew to be only a fragment. . . . Instead of imprinting humanity upon his nature, he becomes merely the imprint of his occupation.

-Friedrich Schiller On !he Acsthttic Education ?{!fan

Notes

1 . This essay is closely aIliec1 to thc work of oth- ers, to whom E am indebted. Slrnilar ar,guments and discunqion can hc found in Onlibor Vcrrlcy (T981), Alberto Pewz-Gom~z (1983), and Hans- Gmrg Gadiimer (198 1). I am particularly grate-

ful for rrrrrcncrs and lengthy rliscussion pmvided by David Leathcrbarrnw and Laurie Olin. I am also grateful to Susan b y , Mohsen Mostafavi, Dan Rose, and Anne Spirn. 2. St.? Grassi (1 9571, E1Iul(1964), an J VcscIcy (1 981). Technolog has become an increasingly domlnating fircc w c r thc past twoccnturics. Its purpocr has bten to conlrot exrcrnal rcallty in the interests of efficiency and usefulness Tradi- tional knuwlcdgc and technique. In contrast, werr always motivated by ~ h c most Fundamental existential problems. 3. See Merleau-Ponty 1971), Introduction; Hus- wr1(1970), and Shutz (1973). 4. I am indebtcd to David Leatherharrow For this account. Also sec Perez-Gomee ( 1983). 5 In this way, matter was "inCormedm by idea. and the artirt thus performed a rolc analogous to that of G d in creatlng the univ~rse. See Pan- orsky (19741, p. 40; and Witlkower(I962). 6. See Carl (1 983). 7. See Schimmel(1976) 8. Ser Wittkower(1Sli2). 9 See Coffin (1972). 10. In Kepier, Iiarmonices Mundi, IV I. Quoted hy W Pauli, "The Influence oiArchetypa1 Ideas on the Scicniific Thcor ic~ of Kcpler." In Jung and Pauli (1955). 1 1. In Kepler, Myrfm'um ~ o ~ m o ~ u p h ~ r u m (Tubinqcn, 1956). Quoted by Htisenberg (1 958) in 7be fJI?ys!cis!,i ' Coaceptron ~$~Vu/urr. 12 See Perez-Gomc? ( 1983). 13. En Husserl (l970), "The Crisis," pp. 21-60. 14. SCC Harncs (1968), p. 24. 15. For a discussion on historicism, the reader iq referwd to wrltingr; of Alan CoIquhoun, rspecially " M d r r n Arch~tecture and Hiqtor- icity," in Essays in Archl~ctuml Cri&-ism. (1981);

and "Three Kinds of Historicism," in M u h i @ and rht CIasstcal7inditim ( 1983). 16. See Dixon-Hunt and Willis (1975), 7 % ~

Cmiw 4 t h ~ I'iace 17. For an account of how stage design pcrmc- ated ~ h p early Englrsh Landscape School, see S. Lang, "The Genesis or the English Landscape G a d c n , " in The Padurerque Gordm and Its I?/rumce

Outsade tlreBrilish I s h , Fdired by Pcvsncr (1 974). Also scc Hunt (1 979), Corden and Craw. 1 R. The ha-ha was a hidden, depressed ernhank- rnent in the landscape, des lped to pcrmit un~nterrupted views while kcepinq stray cattle out of the garden areas. Its invcnrion is oftcn attrihurcd to Rridacman and Kent. but it waq

actually a 17th-century French invention. 19. Quoted hy Marcia AIlcntuck, "Sir Uvedale Bricc and the Pirtur~sque Garrlen: The Evidence oC the Coleonon Papers," in The Pic[uresquc GUT- den and I r r PnfFmce O~srdP lhr British Isler, Ed~ted by Pevsner (1974). 20. For an intcrcsting discusqion on this rev~rsal of picture and copy scc Krauss (1.986). 21. Quoted in Loudon (1840). 22. Ib~d. p. 161 23. See Clark (1984), "The Return to Order" and "Epilogue." in /,anhrcapern~oAr/ 24 Essence, according to Mantk C n r t q ~ ~ f A r r Rwsa, published in 1781, rcfcrs to somct hing cxistcnt, hut as i t exists outside our k n o ~ l c d g e ~ that which a thing rs when there is no direct human pcrccptlon of i t , that is, what i t is in evvcncc as appoqed to appearance 25. In August Endell, "The Beauty of Wrm and Decorative An," in T. Benton and C . Benton (1975). 26. C. E. Jeannerrt-Srirr and Ametlee Ozenfant, "Purism." Quoted by Colquhoun (1981) in "Form and Fiwrc." 27. 'I'hat i s to say, that such a work could be pmpty of externat references according to the

lntentlnnz of the makrr, hut that in fact i t rnigh:ht posscss meaning and association for others. How- ever, such areading" was rarely intentional or collectively understood. The "readins" was per- sonal and tcft to thc individttal. 28. See Note 2 on trchnc and powsis The eman- cipation of technr Frorn pote~is coincided with thc origin oCmodrrn science (technology) and mod- em aesthetics. Whereas techne was once subordinate ttoporcsts, used only to inrorm the symbolic representation, thcy are now wparatc. l'hc contemporary dominance of terhnolngy over the poetic works to perpetuate the primacy of the immanent and the matcrial owr transccndcncc atid imagination. 29. See "The End of Theory," an unpublished manuscript by David Leatherbarrow. 30. See Nietzsche (19671, Preface; Sections 2 and 12. 3 1. Forthcoming in r specid issuc of lmndscupt

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