Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Amalgamating the Identity of the Landscape


Sinatra Murphy strives on working with rural and remote indigenous communities. Developed from working throughout the continent surrounded by inspiring landscapes and indigenous people, they enlighten people with an attitude that aims to capture the spirit of a landscape’s identity, focusing purely on social and cultural sustainability. The Australian continent imposes a way of thinking and acting upon its human inhabitants by virtue, is of its combination of climate, landscapes, animals, ecology and colonization.

The British Empire was the most prominent example of colonialism. It transformed nature, creating new landscapes, new ecologies and new relationships between humans and non-human nature. If wilderness was understood in a traditional way, then to call Australia wilderness is to imply that no human influence has formed its development. To recognise that both nature and indigenous peoples have been colonised, we need to rethink, reposition and redefine our protective notions for nature within a larger anti colonial critique.

But is the foundation to understanding culture and landscape truly about human involvement? Why is there a division between ecology and the urban environment? And how can we rethink the way landscape architecture works to allow for integration of humans and animals? To speak environment, means to acquire a deeper understanding of principle, the elements which together make up an identity, for “we could not exist as people if it were not for the fact of community”. Philip Steadman.

Reminiscent of Andreas Vesalius’s works, to imagine the landscape as limb is an example of a landscapes ‘identity’. Visualizing a leg usually triggers to envisage movement. However, on closer inspection it's comprised of many components, hairs, epidermis, muscles, bones, all working together, to generate movement. Every part has importance, it should, ‘play its part’. Akin to a landscape, design needs to take in these considerations in order for it to function, thus encompassing elements such as animals and ecology.

In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed”, - Charles Darwin.


Emmaline Bowman

Key words: identity, function, redefine.

Bibliography:

Landscape for Health: Jim Sinatra & Phin Murphy, Melbourne; RMIT OutReach Australia Program; 1997

http://www.sinatramurphy.com/

www.aila.org.au/projects/tas/Riawunna/Riawunna3.htm

Silverstein, M. (1993a). Mind and the world: The interplay of theory and practice. Architecture California, 15, 2, 20-28.

Steadman, P. (1979, 2008) The Evolution of Design: Biological analogy in architecture and the applied arts. Routledge, London and New York

William M Adams & Martin Mulligan,(2003), Decolonizing Nature. Earthscan Publications

Images

Image 1: http://www.sinatramurphy.com/

Image 2: © The Natural History Museum, London/ http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://piclib.nhm.ac.uk/piclib/webimages

Image 3: Andreas Vesalius, 1514-1564. http://www.leeds.ac.uk/library/adopt-a-book/vesalius.htm



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