Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

My purpose with this thesis has been to
study the intersection between Landscape
architecture and Land Art. They both relate
to the landscape in some way whether
it is to the urban landscape or the
natural landscape.
What tangent points are there between
these two subjects, and can you learn
something of the artists approach to the
landscape?

Land Art is an art movement that began in
the late 60’s, what links are there to the
current landscape?

Last summer, I travelled around the U.S.
for a month and visited the three classic
Land Art projects. Lightning Field in New
Mexico, by Walter De Maria, Sun Tunnels in
Utah, by Nancy Holt and the Spiral Jetty,
also in Utah, by Robert Smithson.
The sites where visited from half a day up
to 24 hours and was described and analyzed
with text and photographs.

To visit these sites has been crucial for
my thesis and will affect my future work
as a landscape architect. The use of the
method has been a thought of mine for a
long time, particularly to analyze or
describe a landscape with images. But it
is only in this work that I started to
test it for real.

I use photography as a way to describe or
analyze the landscape and it’s in one way
it’s my Claude glass, my way to catch the
essence of the landscape in images.
Photography is interesting because we are
used to read pictures in our daily lives
and work.

My texts are written in a simple way but
somehow they have been an important tool
as they have preserved things that are
otherwise easy to forget.
Colour, sound, smell, time and temperature,
but above all, my impressions are
important.

It is also a way to remember and reflect of
ones experience months later when you read
the text.

They feel even more relevant when I later
read De Maria, Holt and Smithsons texts.
They are linking the landscape and sculpture
together in their texts and make the
experience for the spectator stronger with
that knowledge.

The interviews with Jonas, Anders, Thorbjörn
and Cecilia has been very interesting
and opened for other inputs to the
subject than I originally thought. It was
important for me to be able to land an art
movement from the late 60’s in my landscape
architecture world 2009 and to see
that it is still important now in many
ways.

We are still people who experience the
landscapes.

In some way landscape and Land Art has the
same basic elements, but does not relate
to the landscape in the same way.
I think there are things to learn from
Land Art. How the artists expanded their
own discipline and found a personal input
in how to relate to the landscape and also
a curiosity and presence in the landscape.
To create a tension between the subtle,
time-bound and the large-scale landscape.
A Tension between the city and the
isolated landscape.

Landscape architecture has often a social
aspect to the landscape, interactions
between people. By creating a relationship
and presence to the surrounding landscape,
you make the landscape more colourful.
There is always a landscape to relate to
whether it’s a cityscape or landscape.
We need a landscapearchitecture that creates
presence, experiences with our body’s
senses. Too much of the city is calling
for our attention, which affects our presence
in a negative way.

It is an even greater challenge to create
presence in the city.