Christophe Girot – författare

In many ways the history of civilization is a history of our relationship with nature and landscape. Christophe Girot sets out to chronicle this intimate connection, drawing on all aspects of mankind’s creativity and ingenuity, and bringing together the key stories that have shaped our manmade landscapes. Starting from the dual inclination to clear land for cultivation and to enclose space for protection there emerges a vital and multifaceted narrative that describes our cultural relationship to, and dependence on, the landscape, right up to the present day. Organized chronologically, the chapters consist of a thematic essay that ties together the central developments, as well as a case study illustrated with specially commissioned photographs and meticulously detailed 3D re-creations showing the featured site in its original context. The result of over two decades of teaching experience and academic research at the world’s leading landscape institutes and universities, this masterful and hugely ambitious new interpretation of human intervention in the landscape will be essential reading for students and professionals worldwide.

Landscript 1: Landscape Vision Motion explores the change of visual thinking that has occurred through film and video setting new spatial dynamics in motion. Professionals from various disciplines comment on the impact of film and video in contemporary landscape thinking. What objectives can be achieved in the theoretical exchange between visual studies, digital media, film, space and motion? With the digital revolution dawning upon us, one can definitely say that a different visual culture pertaining to Landscape Architecture is born.

How can an abstract term like “Topology” become pertinent and effective to landscape thinking today? There is a schism between the way landscape is understood scientifically, either as a normative network or an environmental system, and the way the same place exists emotionally for people. This disparity which prevails in today’s landscape calls for a change of approach, both in terms of action and perception. Topology, in this instance, is not confined to the science of continuous surfaces in mathematics, it can pay greater attention to deeper spatial, physical, poetic and philosophical values embedded in a long tradition of designed nature. The strength of landscape topology is that it can weave together and integrate heterogeneous fields of action into a single meaningful whole. It brings disciplines together on a common topological “vellum” capable of improving our understanding of landscape as a cultural construct with all its inherent beauty and strength.

How can an abstract term like “Topology” become pertinent and effective to landscape thinking today? There is a schism between the way landscape is understood scientifically, either as a normative network or an environmental system, and the way the same place exists emotionally for people. This disparity which prevails in today’s landscape calls for a change of approach, both in terms of action and perception. Topology, in this instance, is not confined to the science of continuous surfaces in mathematics, it can pay greater attention to deeper spatial, physical, poetic and philosophical values embedded in a long tradition of designed nature. The strength of landscape topology is that it can weave together and integrate heterogeneous fields of action into a single meaningful whole. It brings disciplines together on a common topological “vellum” capable of improving our understanding of landscape as a cultural construct with all its inherent beauty and strength.