Accueil
https://tclf.org/category/designed-landscape-style/postmodernist?page=2
"Beginning in the 1960s, Postmodernist design emerged as a departure from Modernism's ideological belief in a singular purpose and focus on form and function, seeking a more pluralistic approach that embraced multiple uses and contexts on a given site. Rather than a complete rejection of Modernist principles, Postmodernism is often seen as a fracturing of Modernist ideas to accommodate a diversity of viewpoints and histories.
Postmodernism's desire for plurality was influenced by the environmental and historic preservation movements and a change in the way project work was conceived, utilizing multidisciplinary teams of consultants and often engaging local citizens and constituents in the design process. Whereas Modernism's core philosophy sought to create the perfect form on an empty or open site with a fixed program, Postmodernism embraced wide-ranging social, economic, cultural and ecological histories of a site and the equally diverse needs of potential users. Instead of erasing the evidence of past uses in industrial or urban landscapes, Postmodernist landscape designs often maintained fragments of the past or recycled particular materials to evoke or reference a prior use. Postmodernist design is also distinct in its frequent integration of architecture, landscape and public art – often sculpture. In appearance, some Postmodernist landscapes are not radically different from Modernist ones, but broader programming and uses can reflect an underlying shift in their design intent." -The Cultural Landscapes foundation.
"Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Jencks studied English at Harvard before completing a degree at the university’s Graduate School of Design in 1965, and a doctorate from University College, London, in 1970. Undertaken with the mentorship of critic Reyner Banham, Jencks’s academic work was the foundation for 1973’s influential Modern Movements in Architecture.
The book offered a close reading of modernist aesthetics, one that would shape an understanding of the movement for decades to come. Emphasizing diversity as a core characteristic, Jencks railed against the reductive notion of a “true” and singular style. To Jencks, modernism lived and breathed – a fact made all the more alluring for its continuing evolution.
But it wouldn’t live long. According to Jencks, the death knell of modernism sounded on “July 15, 1972 at 3:32 PM (or thereabouts),” when Minoru Yamasaki’s maligned Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex in St. Louis collapsed in a dynamited heap. The famous post-mortem was written five years later, in 1977’s The Language of Post-Modern Architecture. The instantly popular book diagnosed the demise of misplaced idealism and the rise of a more playful, uncertain, expressive and culturally responsive mode of thinking: Postmodernism. (Jencks was insistent on capitalizing the P)." -Stefan Novakovic, "Charles Jencks, 1939-2019: Postmodernism With a Capital P", 16 Octobre 2019:
https://www.azuremagazine.com/article/charles-jencks-obituary-postmodernism/
"There is one other important concept that underlies that seems to underlie the theory of landscape instrumentalism; that of radical difference. This is built on a foundation of Deleuzian philosophy and the idea of an affirmative definition of difference:
Negation is difference, but difference seen from its underside, seen from below. Seen the right way up, from top to bottom, difference is affirmation. This proposition, however, means many things: that difference is an objects of affirmation, that affirmation itself is multiple… It is not the negative which is the motor. Rather, there are positive differential elements which determine the genesis of both the affirmation and the difference affirmed. It is precisely the fact that there is a genesis as such which escapes us every time we leave affirmation in the undetermined, or put determination in the negative. [p 67]
General applications of Deleuzian philosophy have been explored in landscape practice for a least two decades, although the concept of positive difference has remained relatively unexplored. Levi Bryant, a Deleuzian object-oriented philosopher, writes at length about an idea called the ontic principle. This principle makes clear that objects have an effect on the world, and this effect supersedes any intention from another object that they may carry with them. No mere vehicle for the mep engineer that specified its installation, a silt fence may be installed around a perimeter to reduce off-site sedimentation, but it will always have more effects than intended. And it is this fact that landscape instrumentalism is attempting to wrestle with.
By theorizing every object in the landscape as an instrument- including people, rats, tennis shoes, silt fences, plane trees, and building facades- landscape instrumentalism works to grapple specifically with the forms and effects of every single specific instrument through the development and application of techniques and conceptual tools. As a for instance, if a particular textile is imagined as a tensile device for guiding rainwater and stormwater and this textile-instrument is considered in terms of the conceptual triad (form-effect-assemblage), then the actual textile might actually be a range of different materials. However, the same material applied in a different way- perhaps as a shading device- would be considered a radically different instrument because its effects are radically different. (Admittedly, this is not a new realization, but theorizing it opens up new possibilities in the design process, and ultimately the creation of new types of landscapes).
The theory must be further elaborated (at some point) but if for a moment it can be accepted, then the work of the designer is left to two areas: (1) determining which instruments are actionable, accessible, or otherwise important to model, trace, map, and develop possibilities with, and (2) understanding at which point changes in the assembly of instruments introduces a radical change in the landscape and fundamentally alters the type of landscape itself (the form, the effects, or the assemblage it takes part in). This brings up the necessity of the concept of radical difference; deciding it, and recognizing when something else decides it. This concept is something which shall be further explored in the future, but for now it is useful to take the example that is the object of this study- the Riachuelo.
The Riachuelo was originally a sinuous river, then remade as an ad-hoc industrial thru-way, later fashioned into a full-fledged industrial shipping canal and port facility, then taking the form of a sanitation canal, and finally becoming a remediated site that generates new port economies and park ecologies throughout the river basin. At what point does it stop becoming the Riachuelo landscape? This is contingent, based on the project. Ultimately one could argue that it always persists- the Riachuelo is the riachuelo landscape. But what if the water course is diverted? The low part of the city floods? Or the river dries up completely?
Ultimately this seems to be a topological question, one concerned with processes of continual change over time. It calls for a reckoning in landscape practice with the fact that all of the various conceptual forms might be actually the same, or relatively irrelevant, but simple changes in maintenance practices, municipal funding, or erosion control regimes can summon an entirely new landscape. This understanding requires a position, a politics of design, and a realization of the statement by Graham Harman that “you can never go back in space, but you can always go back in time.” The specificity required by this realization is attempted in this landscape instrumentalism project through the instrument table and the correlation wheel in particular. In the future I imagine many more and better techniques might be developed.
The ethical implications of this theory that says everything, even humans, in a landscape is to be understood as an instrument must be addressed, and for this the concept of radical difference must be addressed. Through the theory of instruments it is possible to understand that an instrument is not a dumb receiver of intentions but rather an object with its own agency, that can only be partially perceived at any moment. Landscape instrumentalism is a theory that valorizes the singular. It is a queer theory that pursues difference instead of seeking normalcy or totalizing concepts. Landscape instrumentalism is a materialist theory, one that places execution on equal footing with conceptualization."
-Brian Davis, "Radical Difference", Landscapes and instruments, 24 juin 2012: https://instrumentalism.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/radical-difference/
"Since 1980 a great deal has been written on postmodernity and postmodern cities. The literature is so large and diffuse that it is far from easy to encapsulate but in this chapter we will build on our discussion of modern city scapes by giving an out line of the postmodern condition and its urban forms at the turn of the millennium.
It may be helpful to start with a distinction between postmodernism and postmodernity. Postmodernism is usually thought of as a style, particularly of architecture but also in art, design, literature and philosophy that has come to prominence since the 1970s. Its roots lie firmly inmodernist experimentation with collage and montage in the 1920s, and the style is therefore aneclectic and fragmentary one which no longer adheres to the rules of modernist utility, simplicity and standardization, and which often juxtaposes incompatible designs in neighbouring buildings or districts (sometimes called heterotopias). Postmodern architecture is very concerned with the façade of a building, and for that reason it has sometimes been accused of superficiality, but thev is ual impression is often very interesting and entertaining due to the variety of shapes and brightcolours that are used to enliven even the dullest of office blocks (Harvey 1989, 66-98; Gottdiener1995, 119-37). The borrowing of ideas and visual tricks has provoked another common criticism, that postmodern architecture is pastiche. It is occasionally said to be hyper-real (Eco1986), having meanings that stretch beyond the familiar realm of modernist symbolism. The Lloyd’s building in London (Figure 17.1) has its lifts and ducting visible to passers-by on thestreet, giving the impression that it has been turned inside-out, while the Gateshead Metro Centrehas shops arranged around a Roman forum to amuse and attract customers. Neither seeks to merge into an established context but rather they create their own blend of fiction and reality.
Postmodernity is the playing out of a new set of conditions in society and economy. These are complex but for our present purpose we can begin with a brief summary. The first point is that there has been a breakdown in the authority of the major theoretical and ideological underpinnings of much twentieth century life. The monolithic voices of modernist socialism and capitalism are crumbling, along with the world view of objective science. Knowledge is now said to be more fragmented into separate units that have no overarching theories (metatheories) drawing them together, and which can no longer claim superiority over each other in their searchfor some elusive, absolute truth. This new relativism most encouragingly means that voices can be heard other than that of the white, male, western, middle class, English-speaking protestant ofthe traditional stereotype of power. Feminism, multiculturalism and a post-colonial view of theworld are all struggling to be heard.
Second, postmodern consumers can choose the place and the time they wish to experience. Television is the main vehicle for delivering a vast increase in the range of culture and entertainment into the living room but the design of buildings and other urban spaces has recently performed the same function by simulating exotic and historical styles, what has been called elsewhereness.
Third, there are significant shifts in what were once the secure social underpinnings of modernity. The glue that bound the family together for centuries, for instance, is now dissolving as a majority of marriages break up and traditional gender roles are no longer taken for granted. Lifestyles have greater flexibility and variety as advances in technology allow rapid communications and a range of consumption alternatives that could only have been dreamt off fifty years ago. Even individual identities, class, sexual and cultural, are negotiable as never before in the modern era. Ironically, such is the speed of change in the postmodern era that the future is now less predictable than it has ever been: this is a further destabilizing element in whathas become a disturbing and confusing experience for many people.
Fourth, what appeared to be the immutable foundation of the economy, a manufacturing sector based in large assembly line factories and producing standardized products for a mass market, has been questioned. Cracks have begun to appear in the highly successful but somewhat rigid Fordist (named after Henry Ford the car manufacturer) version of capitalism, and a more flexible mode of production has been born in agglomerations of smaller plants where vertical integration and scale economies, traditional concerns of Fordism, have been replaced by new financial arrangements, new types of sourcing of components, the recruitment of labour in new industrial regions, and a release of innovative energy to create new products. The resulting industrial landscapes (Chapter 15) are filled with relatively small factories and science parks rather thanlarge plants common up to the 1970s.
Fifth, the innate fragmentation of postmodernity has geographical implications in a tessellation of cultural and political space. The nation state, so characteristic of the centralizing tendencies of modernity, is losing credibility and not a little power to local formations of identity. The Soviet Union has split into its component parts, and even the unity of Federal Russia is threatened by secessionist tendencies in Chechnya."
"Sixth, Jameson (1991) has argued that postmodernism is the cultural logic of late capitalism. By this he means that culture has become like any other commodity that is packaged, sold andconsumed. It is increasingly bound up with the money economy and no longer a separate dimension of life. A good example of this is the heritage industry which has mushroomed inEurope and North America recent years, with historical experiences such as Yorvik, are construction of Viking York, complete with smells of pigsties and recordings of children’s songs in ancient Norse. In a sense this might be said to be fake history (Hewison 1987) but it appeals to the postmodern eclectic demand for small bites of cultural experience from any timeor space. Tourists encourage the provision of such recreations and distillations of history by their wish to see and move on, but they are merely mirroring the habits of the television viewer who switches channels or the internet surfer who moves from one web site to another. All are postmodern consumers whose desire for variety and stimulation is greater than their attention span."
-Peter Atkins, "Postmodern landscapes", chapitre 17 in Atkins, P.J., Simmons, I.G. and Roberts, B.K., People, Land and Time, Londres, 1998:
https://www.academia.edu/10972296/Postmodern_landscapes
https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1120&context=br_rev
"Beginning in the 1960s, Postmodernist design emerged as a departure from Modernism's ideological belief in a singular purpose and focus on form and function, seeking a more pluralistic approach that embraced multiple uses and contexts on a given site. Rather than a complete rejection of Modernist principles, Postmodernism is often seen as a fracturing of Modernist ideas to accommodate a diversity of viewpoints and histories.
Postmodernism's desire for plurality was influenced by the environmental and historic preservation movements and a change in the way project work was conceived, utilizing multidisciplinary teams of consultants and often engaging local citizens and constituents in the design process. Whereas Modernism's core philosophy sought to create the perfect form on an empty or open site with a fixed program, Postmodernism embraced wide-ranging social, economic, cultural and ecological histories of a site and the equally diverse needs of potential users. Instead of erasing the evidence of past uses in industrial or urban landscapes, Postmodernist landscape designs often maintained fragments of the past or recycled particular materials to evoke or reference a prior use. Postmodernist design is also distinct in its frequent integration of architecture, landscape and public art – often sculpture. In appearance, some Postmodernist landscapes are not radically different from Modernist ones, but broader programming and uses can reflect an underlying shift in their design intent." -The Cultural Landscapes foundation.
"Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Jencks studied English at Harvard before completing a degree at the university’s Graduate School of Design in 1965, and a doctorate from University College, London, in 1970. Undertaken with the mentorship of critic Reyner Banham, Jencks’s academic work was the foundation for 1973’s influential Modern Movements in Architecture.
The book offered a close reading of modernist aesthetics, one that would shape an understanding of the movement for decades to come. Emphasizing diversity as a core characteristic, Jencks railed against the reductive notion of a “true” and singular style. To Jencks, modernism lived and breathed – a fact made all the more alluring for its continuing evolution.
But it wouldn’t live long. According to Jencks, the death knell of modernism sounded on “July 15, 1972 at 3:32 PM (or thereabouts),” when Minoru Yamasaki’s maligned Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex in St. Louis collapsed in a dynamited heap. The famous post-mortem was written five years later, in 1977’s The Language of Post-Modern Architecture. The instantly popular book diagnosed the demise of misplaced idealism and the rise of a more playful, uncertain, expressive and culturally responsive mode of thinking: Postmodernism. (Jencks was insistent on capitalizing the P)." -Stefan Novakovic, "Charles Jencks, 1939-2019: Postmodernism With a Capital P", 16 Octobre 2019:
https://www.azuremagazine.com/article/charles-jencks-obituary-postmodernism/
"There is one other important concept that underlies that seems to underlie the theory of landscape instrumentalism; that of radical difference. This is built on a foundation of Deleuzian philosophy and the idea of an affirmative definition of difference:
Negation is difference, but difference seen from its underside, seen from below. Seen the right way up, from top to bottom, difference is affirmation. This proposition, however, means many things: that difference is an objects of affirmation, that affirmation itself is multiple… It is not the negative which is the motor. Rather, there are positive differential elements which determine the genesis of both the affirmation and the difference affirmed. It is precisely the fact that there is a genesis as such which escapes us every time we leave affirmation in the undetermined, or put determination in the negative. [p 67]
General applications of Deleuzian philosophy have been explored in landscape practice for a least two decades, although the concept of positive difference has remained relatively unexplored. Levi Bryant, a Deleuzian object-oriented philosopher, writes at length about an idea called the ontic principle. This principle makes clear that objects have an effect on the world, and this effect supersedes any intention from another object that they may carry with them. No mere vehicle for the mep engineer that specified its installation, a silt fence may be installed around a perimeter to reduce off-site sedimentation, but it will always have more effects than intended. And it is this fact that landscape instrumentalism is attempting to wrestle with.
By theorizing every object in the landscape as an instrument- including people, rats, tennis shoes, silt fences, plane trees, and building facades- landscape instrumentalism works to grapple specifically with the forms and effects of every single specific instrument through the development and application of techniques and conceptual tools. As a for instance, if a particular textile is imagined as a tensile device for guiding rainwater and stormwater and this textile-instrument is considered in terms of the conceptual triad (form-effect-assemblage), then the actual textile might actually be a range of different materials. However, the same material applied in a different way- perhaps as a shading device- would be considered a radically different instrument because its effects are radically different. (Admittedly, this is not a new realization, but theorizing it opens up new possibilities in the design process, and ultimately the creation of new types of landscapes).
The theory must be further elaborated (at some point) but if for a moment it can be accepted, then the work of the designer is left to two areas: (1) determining which instruments are actionable, accessible, or otherwise important to model, trace, map, and develop possibilities with, and (2) understanding at which point changes in the assembly of instruments introduces a radical change in the landscape and fundamentally alters the type of landscape itself (the form, the effects, or the assemblage it takes part in). This brings up the necessity of the concept of radical difference; deciding it, and recognizing when something else decides it. This concept is something which shall be further explored in the future, but for now it is useful to take the example that is the object of this study- the Riachuelo.
The Riachuelo was originally a sinuous river, then remade as an ad-hoc industrial thru-way, later fashioned into a full-fledged industrial shipping canal and port facility, then taking the form of a sanitation canal, and finally becoming a remediated site that generates new port economies and park ecologies throughout the river basin. At what point does it stop becoming the Riachuelo landscape? This is contingent, based on the project. Ultimately one could argue that it always persists- the Riachuelo is the riachuelo landscape. But what if the water course is diverted? The low part of the city floods? Or the river dries up completely?
Ultimately this seems to be a topological question, one concerned with processes of continual change over time. It calls for a reckoning in landscape practice with the fact that all of the various conceptual forms might be actually the same, or relatively irrelevant, but simple changes in maintenance practices, municipal funding, or erosion control regimes can summon an entirely new landscape. This understanding requires a position, a politics of design, and a realization of the statement by Graham Harman that “you can never go back in space, but you can always go back in time.” The specificity required by this realization is attempted in this landscape instrumentalism project through the instrument table and the correlation wheel in particular. In the future I imagine many more and better techniques might be developed.
The ethical implications of this theory that says everything, even humans, in a landscape is to be understood as an instrument must be addressed, and for this the concept of radical difference must be addressed. Through the theory of instruments it is possible to understand that an instrument is not a dumb receiver of intentions but rather an object with its own agency, that can only be partially perceived at any moment. Landscape instrumentalism is a theory that valorizes the singular. It is a queer theory that pursues difference instead of seeking normalcy or totalizing concepts. Landscape instrumentalism is a materialist theory, one that places execution on equal footing with conceptualization."
-Brian Davis, "Radical Difference", Landscapes and instruments, 24 juin 2012: https://instrumentalism.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/radical-difference/
"Since 1980 a great deal has been written on postmodernity and postmodern cities. The literature is so large and diffuse that it is far from easy to encapsulate but in this chapter we will build on our discussion of modern city scapes by giving an out line of the postmodern condition and its urban forms at the turn of the millennium.
It may be helpful to start with a distinction between postmodernism and postmodernity. Postmodernism is usually thought of as a style, particularly of architecture but also in art, design, literature and philosophy that has come to prominence since the 1970s. Its roots lie firmly inmodernist experimentation with collage and montage in the 1920s, and the style is therefore aneclectic and fragmentary one which no longer adheres to the rules of modernist utility, simplicity and standardization, and which often juxtaposes incompatible designs in neighbouring buildings or districts (sometimes called heterotopias). Postmodern architecture is very concerned with the façade of a building, and for that reason it has sometimes been accused of superficiality, but thev is ual impression is often very interesting and entertaining due to the variety of shapes and brightcolours that are used to enliven even the dullest of office blocks (Harvey 1989, 66-98; Gottdiener1995, 119-37). The borrowing of ideas and visual tricks has provoked another common criticism, that postmodern architecture is pastiche. It is occasionally said to be hyper-real (Eco1986), having meanings that stretch beyond the familiar realm of modernist symbolism. The Lloyd’s building in London (Figure 17.1) has its lifts and ducting visible to passers-by on thestreet, giving the impression that it has been turned inside-out, while the Gateshead Metro Centrehas shops arranged around a Roman forum to amuse and attract customers. Neither seeks to merge into an established context but rather they create their own blend of fiction and reality.
Postmodernity is the playing out of a new set of conditions in society and economy. These are complex but for our present purpose we can begin with a brief summary. The first point is that there has been a breakdown in the authority of the major theoretical and ideological underpinnings of much twentieth century life. The monolithic voices of modernist socialism and capitalism are crumbling, along with the world view of objective science. Knowledge is now said to be more fragmented into separate units that have no overarching theories (metatheories) drawing them together, and which can no longer claim superiority over each other in their searchfor some elusive, absolute truth. This new relativism most encouragingly means that voices can be heard other than that of the white, male, western, middle class, English-speaking protestant ofthe traditional stereotype of power. Feminism, multiculturalism and a post-colonial view of theworld are all struggling to be heard.
Second, postmodern consumers can choose the place and the time they wish to experience. Television is the main vehicle for delivering a vast increase in the range of culture and entertainment into the living room but the design of buildings and other urban spaces has recently performed the same function by simulating exotic and historical styles, what has been called elsewhereness.
Third, there are significant shifts in what were once the secure social underpinnings of modernity. The glue that bound the family together for centuries, for instance, is now dissolving as a majority of marriages break up and traditional gender roles are no longer taken for granted. Lifestyles have greater flexibility and variety as advances in technology allow rapid communications and a range of consumption alternatives that could only have been dreamt off fifty years ago. Even individual identities, class, sexual and cultural, are negotiable as never before in the modern era. Ironically, such is the speed of change in the postmodern era that the future is now less predictable than it has ever been: this is a further destabilizing element in whathas become a disturbing and confusing experience for many people.
Fourth, what appeared to be the immutable foundation of the economy, a manufacturing sector based in large assembly line factories and producing standardized products for a mass market, has been questioned. Cracks have begun to appear in the highly successful but somewhat rigid Fordist (named after Henry Ford the car manufacturer) version of capitalism, and a more flexible mode of production has been born in agglomerations of smaller plants where vertical integration and scale economies, traditional concerns of Fordism, have been replaced by new financial arrangements, new types of sourcing of components, the recruitment of labour in new industrial regions, and a release of innovative energy to create new products. The resulting industrial landscapes (Chapter 15) are filled with relatively small factories and science parks rather thanlarge plants common up to the 1970s.
Fifth, the innate fragmentation of postmodernity has geographical implications in a tessellation of cultural and political space. The nation state, so characteristic of the centralizing tendencies of modernity, is losing credibility and not a little power to local formations of identity. The Soviet Union has split into its component parts, and even the unity of Federal Russia is threatened by secessionist tendencies in Chechnya."
"Sixth, Jameson (1991) has argued that postmodernism is the cultural logic of late capitalism. By this he means that culture has become like any other commodity that is packaged, sold andconsumed. It is increasingly bound up with the money economy and no longer a separate dimension of life. A good example of this is the heritage industry which has mushroomed inEurope and North America recent years, with historical experiences such as Yorvik, are construction of Viking York, complete with smells of pigsties and recordings of children’s songs in ancient Norse. In a sense this might be said to be fake history (Hewison 1987) but it appeals to the postmodern eclectic demand for small bites of cultural experience from any timeor space. Tourists encourage the provision of such recreations and distillations of history by their wish to see and move on, but they are merely mirroring the habits of the television viewer who switches channels or the internet surfer who moves from one web site to another. All are postmodern consumers whose desire for variety and stimulation is greater than their attention span."
-Peter Atkins, "Postmodern landscapes", chapitre 17 in Atkins, P.J., Simmons, I.G. and Roberts, B.K., People, Land and Time, Londres, 1998:
https://www.academia.edu/10972296/Postmodern_landscapes
https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1120&context=br_rev
