[This review was originally published in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 1993, 83, (3), 523-525].
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The Aesthetics of Landscape, Stephen C. Bourassa, 1991 New York: Belhaven Press, 1991. |
In this book, urban and regional planner Stephen C. Bourassa seeks to develop "a paradigm for research in landscape aesthetics" (p. xiv). Dissatisfied with conventional quantitative studies of landscape preferences, Bourassa attempts to provide a more sophisticated theoretical framework for explaining environmental aesthetic experience. He establishes his theory by drawing on conceptual clarification from two considerably different sources: first, the three-phased theory of human development proposed by Russian psychologist L. S. Vygotsky; second, the "critical regionalism" of Marxist architectural theorist Kenneth Frampton.
Bourassa builds his theoretical model in a clear and straightforward way. In chapter 1, he deals with landscape as it can have aesthetic significance. He examines the changing historical and academic meanings of the words "landscape," "environment," and "place." He chooses "landscape" over the other two terms because the word implies some conscious awareness and, thus, perception in regard to the aesthetic object, whereas "environment" and "place" infer qualities "that are not perceived" (p. 9).
In chapter 2, Bourassa provides a useful review of changing philosophical perspectives on the nature of aesthetic experience. Drawing on philosopher George Santayana's conception of aesthetics, Bourassa first discusses sensory, formal, and symbolic qualities, which he argues must all be considered in a complete theory of landscape aesthetics. Next, he examines the long-running philosophical debate as to whether aesthetic experience presupposes either disinterestedness or engagement in regard to the aesthetic object.
Finally, he reviews various subjectivist and objectivist theories of aesthetics. In chapter 3, Bourassa outlines his "paradigm for landscape aesthetics," derived largely from the ideas of philosopher John Dewey, Santayana and, especially, Vygotsky. Bourassa's model is three-tiered and incorporates biological and cultural constraints as well as personal idiosyncracies. The need, claims Bourassa, is a conceptual structure that admits "the importance of biological motivation while respecting not only the uniqueness of culture but also the significance of personal creativity and idiosyncracy" (p. 49).
In chapters 4-6, Bourassa examines research dealing with the biological, cultural, and personal dimensions of landscape preference and aesthetics. Chapter 4 is valuable because it convincingly demonstrates the many weaknesses of geographer Jay Appleton's habitat theory and its various off-shoots, all of which argue that environments that facilitate individual and group survival also provide aesthetic satisfaction.
In chapter 5, Bourassa argues for the crucial significance of cultural meaning in landscape preference. He emphasizes that "once a landscape acquires meaning for a cultural group, that group will seek to perpetuate that symbolic landscape as a means of self-preservation" (p. 109). In chapter 6, Bourassa examines the individual's contribution to landscape aesthetics. Especially important for environmental policy and design is the fact that individual creativity goes beyond "the constraints of biological laws and cultural rules" (p. 110).
In chapter 7, Bourassa uses his model to illustrate the weaknesses of quantitative approaches to landscape preferences. He suggests that these methods have merit in their identifying public preferences and group variations among these preferences.
On the other hand, he also argues that sole reliance on public preferences as a guide for environmental policy and design can lead to aesthetic standardization. He therefore emphasizes the crucial importance of the third part of his model‑-innovative personal strategies.
Practically, he calls for landscape critics‑-creative environmental professionals who have "both an in-depth understanding of landscape processes and a sensibility that allows [them] to see in unconventional ways" (p. 132).
This possibility of landscape critics leads Bourassa to an interest in Frampton's critical regionalism, which aims for an architecture and planning that restore a sense of place and region through contextual awareness and the appropriation of modern technologies and practices in a way that respects local conditions (p. 137).
In his last chapter, Bourassa presents critical regionalism as one facet of a "critical postmodernism of resistance" (p. 135). He contrasts this style of postmodernism with modernism and with another form of postmodernism (e.g., the postmodern designs of architects Robert Venturi and Michael Graves) that he describes as reactionary and as "an abdication to market forces of control" (p. 137). Bourassa illustrates how considering the biological, cultural, and personal dimensions of landscape aesthetics would clarify the conceptual and practical possibilities of critical regionalism.
Bourassa's book has several strengths: its valuable overview of competing aesthetic theories; constructive critiques of habitat theories and quantitative studies of landscape preferences; the author's laudable attempt to marry his threefold structural (and, thus, modernist) theory of landscape aesthetics with the Marxist-poststructural perspective of critical regionalism.
There are, however, several weaknesses that undermine Bourassa's argument. One problem is his choice of the term "landscape" and the incomplete way in which he presents its contents as an object of aesthetic attention. As he himself recognizes, "landscape" suggests a thing separate from the person and, thus, implies a subject-object dichotomy. This division between person and world is troublesome conceptually because, as Bourassa repeatedly emphasizes, environment and aesthetic experience always presuppose and require an intimate mutual relationship that is immediately eroded through an objectivist term like "landscape."
Even if one accepts this term as an acceptable label for the object toward which aesthetic experience is directed, there is another problem in that Bourassa uses "landscape" in a generic way that destroys its potential for playing an autonomous role in the person-world relationship.
Because of a bias against a formalist approach to landscape, Bourassa claims that, other than the presence of parklike environments and water emphasized in the various habitat theories, there can be no inherent physical or geographical qualities of environments themselves that might contribute to a particular kind of aesthetic experience. Bourassa declares: "It makes no sense to judge a landscape by the success with which it expresses emotion or infects perceivers with that emotion because expression of emotion is not an intrinsic quality of landscape" (p. 44).
In fact, phenomenological research on this issue demonstrates the crucial autonomous role of the environment itself in contributing to the aesthetic experience. Bourassa appears to be unaware of the many phenomenological and similar qualitative studies that demonstrate how geographical, spatial, and architectural qualities like weight, motion, substance, light, expansiveness, enclosure, verticality, horizontality, weather, topographical surface and shape, and so forth play an active role in contributing to the environmental meaning encountered by the human experiencer (e.g., Alexander 1977, Chaffin 1989, Harries 1983, Nogue i Font 1993, Norberg-Schulz 1985, Thiis-Evensen 1987).
A similar problem relates to Bourassa's conception of aesthetic experience, which he reduces to the three rather standard (and modernist-structural) dimensions of biology, culture, and individual. Early on, he claims that "landscape, like architecture, demands an aesthetics of everyday experience" (p. xiv)‑-a topic that is also best explored phenomenologically.
Unfortunately, Borassa makes the inaccurate claim that the phenomenological approach is "overly subjective" (p. 39). As a result, he rejects the one conceptual and methodological possibility that would most thoroughly allow him to explore the kinds of aesthetic experiences that human beings know in regard to landscape, place, environment, and nature. Nor does he have a means to consider the extraordinary phenomenon whereby taken-for-granted or seemingly inconsequential elements in the geographical world can suddenly evoke wonderment, reverence, joy‑-in short, "natural things... intensifying, purifying, prolonging, and deepening the satisfactions," as John Dewey so striking described the situation (p. 37).
Bourassa's three-part model may help identify why individuals and groups prefer particular landscapes, but it says little about how environmental qualities or the sensibilities of individuals and groups can be worked with and changed to provide places and worlds that are more beautiful and humane. In this regard, Bourassa's turn to Frampton's work is also suspect, since the actual architects that, according to Frampton (1983), express critical regionalism (e.g., Luis Barragan, Mario Botta, and Tadao Ando) could just as readily be said to ignore local and regional concerns and, instead, to create arbitrary designs the main purpose of which is to garner international attention and awards.
A potentially better source for planning and architecture in tune with locality and place is the growing body of phenomenological work on place (e.g., Relph 1981, Seamon and Mugerauer 1985) and the qualitatively-inspired work of designers like Alexander (1977, 1987), Dorward (1990), Hester (1993), and Wilkes (Riegner and Wilkes 1989).
Bourassa's theory of landscape aesthetics may have some value for humanizing positivist studies of environmental preferences, but it provides little understanding of the powerful feelings that landscape, place, and environment can evoke and how these feelings might be strengthened so that we could see the geographical world more deeply and, thus, plan, design, and make policy more compassionately and wisely.
References
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Alexander, C. 1987. A new theory of urban design. New York: Oxford University Press.
Chaffin, V. F. 1989. Dwelling and rhythm: The Isle Brevelle as a landscape of home. Landscape Journal, 7:96-106.
Dorward, S. 1990. Design for mountain communities. New York: Van Nostrand Rinehold.
Frampton, K. 1983. Prospects for a critical regionalism. Perspecta, 20:147-162.
Harries, K. 1983. Thoughts on a non‑arbitrary architecture. Perspecta, 20:9‑20.
Hester, Jr., R. 1993. Sacred structures and everyday life: A return to Manteo, North Carolina. In Dwelling, seeing, and designing, ed. D. Seamon, pp. 271-297. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Nogue i Font, J. 1993. Toward a phenomenology of landscape and landscape experience: An example from Catalonia. In Dwelling, seeing, and designing, ed. D. Seamon, pp. 159-179. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Norberg‑Schulz, C. 1980. Genius loci: Toward a phenomenology of architecture. New York: Rizzoli.
Relph, E. 1981. Rational landscapes and humanisitic geography. London: Croom Helm.
Riegner, Mark, and Wilkes, John (1989). Art in the service of nature: The story of flowforms. Orion Nature Quarterly, 7 (1):50-57.
Seamon, D. and Mugerauer, R. 1985. Dwelling, place and environment. New York: Columbia University Press.
Thiis-Evensen, Thomas, 1987. Archetypes in architecture. New York: Oxford University Press.