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Of Places and Landscapes

Jorge D. Goldfarb


This Essay was originally published on Place Network , September 2011


Foreword.

That landscape and place are closely interconnected notions seems
obvious to most, an almost self-evident relation. Yet, in spite of this
obviousness, answers to the central question of the way in (or by) which
the character of a landscape is determined by the places that constitute it
have proved somewhat elusive.

In this Essay I intend to explore some promising answers to that
question. That I have titled it 'Places and Landscape' and not 'Place and
Landscape' stems from examining how those places that happen to be
embedded in a portion of our life-world that we choose to call a
landscape determine its character, thus Places and Landscape and not
Place and Landscape.

In my opinion the most promising serious attempt to formulate
concrete answers has been one proposed by C. Norberg-Schulz who,
about 20 years ago, proposed a typology of 'natural' landscapes based
largely on the idea that different types of landscapes are the result of the
different ways in which the multiplicity of places that compose it are
perceived.

In his book Genius Loci, Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture
[1] he proposed a system of categorization for what he terms 'natural'
landscapes[2] His proposal represents a highly ambitious attempt to
introduce order into an otherwise chaotic collection of landscape
exemplars, which in the literature have been variously grouped as kinds,
types, classes, etc., using ad-hoc criteria. I call it ambitious because it
attempts to encase or encompass a near infinitude of 'natural' landscapes






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into just four categories. I have proposed elsewhere [3] to reduce the
number from four to three and to change his categories from what he calls
'types' to 'genres". For each category Norberg-Schulz listed a number of
characteristics, so that, if all of the characteristics are shown in a given
exemplar of a 'natural' landscape it could be considered an archetype or
prime example of that class. The categories were designated by Norberg-
Schulz as the 'classic', 'romantic' and the 'cosmic' landscape [4]. I have
reproduced elsewhere his original texts for each category and I refer the
reader to those pages for a complete account of each.[3a]

Out of the various characteristics for each category, the ones that N-S
stresses more refer to the constituent places [5], thus:


The romantic landscape is characterized by an indefinite multitude of
different places.

The 'classical' landscape "may be described as a meaningful order of
distinct, individual places".

The 'cosmic' landscape "does not contain individual places, but forms a
continuous neutral ground".

(quotes from [1]; italics in the original)

What we have then is a categorization system purporting that all
landscapes may be ascribed to one (or more) of these three basic
categories [6] largely on the basis of how the constituent places compose a
given landscape [7].

Given the paramount role that places plays in the characterization of
the three categories, a more in-depth exploration of the notions of place
that are relevant to landscapes seems indicated. The meanings of those
sentences are obviously dependent on the meanings of places in their
contexts. Jeff Malpas book Place and Experience [8] contains such an in-
depth exploration and I thought worthwhile to look for a better
understanding of Norberg-Schulz landscape categories through the lens of
the relevant notions of Place expounded in Malpas book.







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I cannot but agree with Malpas when he writes: "only through an
exploration of the notion of place will the significance of place itself
come to light"; to which I would only add: 'and through an exploration of
the notion of place will the significance of landscape also come to light'.

As to the why of Norberg-Schulz Genius Loci interpreted through
Malpas Place and Experience: - Heidegger's thinking underlies both
books. The role that Heidegger plays in this and other related Malpas
works is well known; for Norberg-Schulz Genius Loci represents in
many ways a turning point of his ideas on place; as he writes in the
Introduction : "The philosophy of Heidegger has been the catalyst which
has made the present book possible and determined its approach" [9]. I am
confident that Norberg-Schulz (of blessed memory) would have been
quite at ease with being interpreted through Malpas views on place and
space.

I have chosen some selected landscape paintings from Pieter
Brueghel the Elder to examine some of the ideas of place and of space. In
my humble opinion[10] many Brueghel's paintings have as a motif his
grasp of place and space and his awareness of the tension between them,
a tension he attempted to represent through the use of ingenious pictorial
tricks in his, pre-perspective, times [10a].

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Of the 'Classical" Landscape and The Fall of I carus


What does it mean to say that landscapes in which we recognize --"a
meaningful order of distinct, individual places"-- are typical examples
of the category of "classical' landscapes? Looking for possible (and
plausible) answers we'd have to explore the various meanings of 'place'
and, within the context of relevant meanings, to examine what of place
makes it appears in our eyes as 'distinct, individual' (as contrasted with
diffuse or poorly defined). As for the former:

In broad terms one could treat the noun form of 'place' as






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having five main senses:




i. a definite but open space, particularly, a bounded, open space
within a city or a town.
ii. A more generalized sense of space, extension, dimensionality or
'room'.
iii. Location or position within some order (whether it be a spatial
or some other kind of ordering, hierarchical or not).
iv. A particular locale or environment that has a character of its
own; and
v. An abode or that within which something exists or within which
something dwells. {21}

Clearly the items on this list do not (Note: Since I'll be profusely quoting Malpas Place
and Experience, to keep repeating 'Malpas said in his book', or 'Malpas writes in his book' or 'in
Malpas views', etc. may make the text a bit boring. To avoid that I'll just use a brown color for
quotes from Place and Experience and point out the page number for the quote as a number
between { } brackets, whilst numbers within [ ] are reserved for notes and refs.)

Clearly the terms in the above list do not capture all the shades of
meanings that place can carry but they may be taken as a satisfactory
outline of the main senses. With this in mind let's start with The Fall of
Icarus:








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Brueghel, The Fall of Icarus, ca. 1560
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Bruxelles


Of The Fall of Icarus it may be said, in our context, that the painting is
outstanding as an image by which those various shades of meaning that
place can carry, may be illustrated. As a landscape painting it is rather
contrived, certainly not one of Brueghel's best landscapes [10b] but as a
representation of places it is a superb piece (If I ever were called to give a
lecture on Place, I'd choose this painting to illustrate the various points)

The foreground is dominated by a rocky promontory where three
characters are located: a farmer tilling the soil, a shepherd, and an angler.
What Brueghel may be thought to have wanted to stress in this portion of
the painting is the notion of an intimate connection between person and
place, and so also between self and environing world [13]. Each of these
three characters configures three distinct places, places which appear
clearly differentiated from each other mostly because of the delineation of
levels in the terraced ground.

Which of the five senses of place given in the list above apply for those
three places? I'd say first and foremost sense v), (with dwelling taken as






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an existential foothold) and, of course, i) and iv); if the order is taken as
spatial rather than hierarchical point iii) also holds; perhaps ii) as the
lesser one since their spaces appear to be somewhat constricted. But, no
doubt, grasping those places as illustrations of a concept, they are all
quite admirable illustrations of:

The concept of place is essentially the concept of a bounded but open
region within which a set of interconnected elements can be located [16]
(a sentence which I have underlined because it will be used repeatedly in the following; a sort of
backbone of the arguments about boundaries, openness and interconnection of elements)

There are a fair number of other places that could be distinguished [11]:
the ships are places in which their sailors dwell, the ruins of the castle
(left of center) battled by the sea waves, the buildings of the town (in the
upper left) with each of them a place, the island near the line of the
horizon, the mountains that face it, and also the tip of land covered by
trees on the right, close to the line where the picture abruptly ceases to be
a picture and becomes frame. But there are far more: the whole bay must
surely be a place for the sailors in the ships, and the whole town a place
for its dwellers and even the cloudy sky on the right a place, but not the
same place as the bright golden sky of the center-top. In short, as many
places as our fancy leads us to distinguish. [12]
What differentiates the places in the last paragraph from those in the
promontory has to do with closeness to the viewer of the image. It is a
painting ploy often used by Brueghel in his landscapes (see the Rabbit Hunter
below) to accentuate the extension of space by emphasizing the contrast
between places close to the viewer with distant ones. But also distant
places are somehow de-humanized, the human presence left to our
imagination as contrasted with the ones nearest to us; in these we feel the
presence of creatures that can engage with a world (and, more particularly, with
the objects and events within it) that can think about that world and that can find
itself in the world. [16]

Of the Boundaries of Places.

Of the boundaries of places it may be said, among other things, that
they are crucial for the understanding of theoretical treatments of places;






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as crucial as, in Science, the system's boundaries are for the
understanding of System Theory. Even when the boundaries are
imagined, as is often the case when working with systems, their location
determines their way of functioning. [13]
The relation between 'within and without' as well as the associated
notion of 'boundary' to which Strauss gives special attention both of
which can be seen as also implicated with a general notion of
'containment' is of special importance in relation to the investigation
into place. [17]

For Strauss "boundaries are relative to the action system of the bound
person" In the case of the places of the promontory in the foreground we
could say that the farmer as a bound person is bounded by the limits of
his meager field, a field that conforms his 'action system'. The shepherd
(and his flock) is bounded by the limits of the grazing field, which
conforms his action system (as well as that of the sheep). The 'within' is
then for them the areas of their respective plots, 'within which' their
respective sets of interconnected elements are located. In the case of the
angler, Strauss 'action system' comes handy because there is no actual
boundary in front of him; we could set this boundary according to the
maximum distance that he can throw his fishing line since he doesn't
seem to care about anything else; Brueghel depicts him so absorbed in his
actions that he even fails to be perturbed by the splash made, only a short
distance away from him, by poor Icarus plunging into the water.
We all seem to have a tendency (probably imbued in us by our Cartesian-influenced
system of education) to think that 'within and without' are objective spatial
relations. It may be counter-argued that the relation between within and
without is not a spatial phenomenon, it is a phenomenon of the scope of
action {169}. It does happen in many cases that the scope of action entails
only elements that are inside the place boundaries, so that the spatial and
the action perspectives coincide; regarding those outside the boundary the
person has no control over them, from which stems the pervasive
distinction between system and environment [13]. This is well illustrated,
for instance, by the sailing ship as place for its sailors; in the nearest of
them we see a sailor working up on the masts, his 'scope of action'
includes the sails but he has no control over the wind that impacts them
(hence the wind as element of the environment)






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Let me recall again that: ---- The concept of place is essentially the
concept of a bounded but open region within which a set of
interconnected elements can be located. {16}

The idea of place as a 'bounded but open' region may be puzzling at first
sight because of a certain tension between the ideas of 'open' and of
'bounded'. (On the other hand, it seems to raise no eyebrows in the context of Physics [14]). As
for the set of interconnected elements which may be located within a
place, let's return to The Fall of Icarus:

The closest place in the foreground, that of the farmer includes, among
others, the peasant himself, his plough, the horse, the tilled soil and the
portion yet to be tilled; these are obviously interconnected elements
located within a 'bounded but open region' delimited by the place
boundaries (the curved lines formed by the low plants that encircle it).
There is no obvious boundary in the vertical direction but, because of the
posture of the peasant looking downwards, the impression is conveyed
that the top boundary is not situated much higher than his head. (It is mostly
in the upwards direction, with usually imagined boundaries that the notion of 'scope of action' comes
handy)
The shepherd, grass, soil, sheep, etc. are the main interconnected
elements of the second place in the foreground, which may be said to be
bounded in the horizontal plane by the edges of the promontory. Here, as
opposed to the place of the farmer, the top boundary must be situated
much higher since the shepherd is looking (some would say gaping)
upwards and his scope of action must include whatever he is experiencing
from the view.
The distant town at the left may be of interest in the present context. It
has clear boundaries in the horizontal plane (perhaps a city wall?) and, as
for the vertical, we have the tall church towers, which are built tall in an
effort to bridge between earth and sky, or rather Earth and Heaven. Here
the number of interconnected elements must for sure be pretty large, but
the town (particularly medieval towns) also conforms an integrated
whole. As such, it represents just another interconnected element in the
landscape, as significant as the uninhabited island facing it from the right
side. In this resides one of the more weighty differences between
'landscape' and 'place'; a difference worthy of being reflected upon.






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Of the nesting of places:

Places also open up to sets of other places through being nested,
along with those places, within a larger spatial structure or framework of
activityIn being acquainted with a single place, then, one is also
acquainted with a large network of places. {105}

In The Fall of Icarus we may discern several ways by which the
above could be effected; in the following I will proceed through what
appears to me to be the most obvious way:
The water area in the bay may be considered as being nested in the
surrounding land; but the water area may also be considered as an
extended place that allows for the nesting of a number of smaller places
(the ships, the islands, the castle ruins, etc.,) The distant town with the
mountains on its back appears also to be nested in the sea, as well as the
cone-shaped mountain at the horizon line in the middle of the picture.
Actually, most of the places appear to be nested in the water expanse,
even though we reckon that many of them must have continuity with the
land area; such is the case also of the promontory in the foreground to
which our attention is artfully drawn by Brueghel.

In the promontory itself, the terraced area in which the soil is being
cultivated may be said to be clearly nested on the lower grazing place,
where the shepherd and most of the sheep are located; this place in turn
being nested on a lower land basis at the water level. Here the spatial
structure is clearly defined for us mainly on account of the neat
delineation of boundaries.
Neatly delineated boundaries is a characteristic of landscapes that may
be classed into the Norberg-Schulz category of 'classical' landscapes, so
that it may be said that the 'classical' landscape affords a clear, net,






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juxtaposition of the constituent places, resulting in unambiguous ways of
their nesting.
Juxtaposition does not replace one thing with another but places one
thing besides another. {160}
This placement of one place besides another may be effected in a
number of ways: in some cases two or more adjoining places share a
common neat boundary, without them loosing their individuality or
identity. In other cases the boundaries of adjoining places are not line-like
but diffuse, blurred, difficult to ascertain; not so much that places cannot
be distinguished but one has difficulty in deciding where one place ends
and another begins; as a consequence the nesting of places appears
ambiguous and many possibilities may be discerned. Of course, between
typical examples of those two extreme cases there are many in-between
situations; we can always find numerous examples to illustrate a gradual
transition.


Of the 'romantic' landscape and of Ruisdael:


It is quite difficult to find a Brueghel or a painting of any of his
contemporaries to illustrate this category and the nearest I could get is
around a hundred years later with landscapes of Ruisdael such as this one:








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Jacob I.van Ruisdael: Rivuleat in a Forest; (ca. 1660) [16]

Of the 'romantic' landscapes, writes Norberg-Schulz, that
they are characterized by an indefinite multitude of different
places. We may also discern a multitude of places in some
examples of the 'classical' landscape so that the difference lies
not so much in numbers but in the quality of 'definite' versus
'indefinite', the latter may be taken to mean undefined, open-
ended, unspecified, vague, indistinct and other words of the
same sort, all of which convey the idea of how places compose
these sorts of landscapes. The poet, as usual, conveys the idea
better and paraphrasing Campbell: places ...that the mind's eye
sees melt and glow. [16a]

The Nordic forests present us with the most fitting images of that






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indistinctedness of places. Of them as landscape Norberg-Schulz writes:

" Deep and inscrutable, it is without direction or movement. Its
space is tight but nonetheless boundless, its mood the passage of dawn to
dusk." [16b]

It is not easy and besides, undesirable, to separate this aspect of lack
of definition of the constituent places in the horizontal plane from what
happens above them:
"The sky is hardly experienced as a total hemisphere, but it is
narrowed in between the contours of trees and rocks, and is moreover
continuously modified by clouds." "The sun is relatively low and creates
a varied play of spots of light and shadow, with clouds and vegetation
acting as enriching "filters". [1]:42
Here, to gain a foothold, man has to create for himself space that is
a clearing in the forest: "an aperture that humans have created in the
unserveyable. As such, this space becomes a home, in that home is
precisely a known place of dwelling in an unknown world"[16]:9 . Such one
is the clearing by the sides of the rivulet in the painting above; a place
embedded in the forest and not apart but a part of it. The two human
figures in the center are barely visible; they might have gone unnoticed
had they been located in other places and not within the clearing.

In those places it is not humans that play the leading role but trees;
human figures, if at all visible within the whole scene, are secondary
characters; it is the trees which convey the drama, the pathos. What has
been said of Ruisdael's trees fits well to those in the forests of the
'romantic' landscape: "they are the protagonists of a natural drama, living,
flourishing, dying and decaying." "It is not human history, but its
poignant analogy in nature" [10a]:167
We could say that: the concept of a bounded but open region within
which a set of interconnected elements can be located, {16} still holds in
the 'romantic' landscape, only that the bounded has a different
significance. In the absence of obvious, unambiguous, boundaries, we are
free to discern all sorts of place relations within broader places; places are






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still juxtaposed, only that the "one place besides another" is effected
through drawing imaginary convoluted lines around what we may decide,
quite arbitrarily, to call an individual place. Regarding nesting of places,
there are no clear guidelines or cues as in the 'classical' landscape; it is
then left to our fancy to decide how are places nested in each other.


Of the 'romantic' landscape it may be said also that, conceptually, it
is the farthest removed from notions of Newtonian, absolute,
spacequite the opposite to the 'cosmic' landscape, to which we now
turn our attention.

Of the 'cosmic' landscape:

Place plays a peculiar role in the character of what Norberg-Schulz
calls 'cosmic' landscape, a landscape that "does not contain individual
places, but forms a continuous neutral ground" [1]:43. Here we find, as far
as our vision can reach, just one place with no boundaries and hence un-
nested.

We found such landscapes in the sandy deserts of Africa, in the vast
expanses of water in the oceans, in the extended prairies (like those of the
Argentinean pampas), the Asian deserts, in the polar extensions of ice and other
regions [18]. But in the sandy deserts we find sometimes dunes; in the
oceans, waves; in the pampas, wind-made ripples and in the ice
extensions, cracks; all of which can somehow break the uniformity, the
monotony of the sameness. In the two images below we don't have even
distractions like those; as such, it may be taken to represent an
archetypical 'cosmic' landscape.







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Gobi Desert Landscape, photo by H. Doron (2007) [17]









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Mabuim Hill, photo by S. Ohanna (2012)


Of the cosmic landscape, as epitomized by the desert, writes Norberg-
Schulz: "In the desert the complexities of our concrete life-world are
reduced to a few, simple phenomena. The infinite extension of the
monotonous barren ground; the immense embracing vault of the
cloudless sky (which is rarely experienced as a sector between rocks and trees); the
burning sun which gives an almost shadowless light; the dry warm air,
which tell us how important breathing is for the experience of place."
the concept of bounded and open region, within which a set of
interconnected elements can be located, does not seem relevant for such
places. We might say that Place turns into absolute space, perhaps the
closest we can experience on earth of space as void, the kenon of the
Greeks.
The concept of void brings with it the idea of a homogeneous and
undifferentiated realm of pure extensionso what is left is nothing but an
empty but open 'space' and it is precisely this idea that lies at the heart
of thinking about space in the work of Descartes and Newton.{26}
We can say then that here, what is left of Place, is nothing but a nearly
continuous, isotropic, plane turned into space by the clear atmosphere; as
said, the closest we can get on Earth to experience space according to the
notions of Newton's absolute space. For the humans that dare to face this
immensities, the space is traveled, not settled, distances are measured in
terms of the time it takes to go from one resting point to the next.

Of Place, Space and Landscape:

Let us turn now to the question of places that compose space and
landscape. To exemplify some of the notions to be discussed here I have
chosen one of Brueghel's works which, not unique among his landscape
drawings, seems quite appropriate to illustrate the main points.








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Pieter Brueghel The Rabbit Hunt [19]


Consider first the foreground at the right side of the picture: again, as
in The Fall of Icarus, human figures around which a definite place is
conformed and a promontory accentuating proximity to the viewer. This
promontory may be considered as one individual place to which the artist
thought to attract our attention by placing it just behind the scene of
action that gives the picture its name. The boundaries of this place are
again quite neat and result from it being higher than the surrounding
ground. [20]

The place that conforms the (right) foreground may be thought as being
nested into a vast expanse conformed by the sky vault, the farther
mountains, the land and the water areas. Although we could call this vast
expanse a huge place, the word space seems more indicated because it
agrees with our common intuitive connotation of space as vastness. A
multitude of places may be distinguished in this space and one of the






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issues issue to be explored here is how these places relate to the space and
space to the landscape.

I have proposed elsewhere [21] that landscape is, basically, "unbounded
space as experienced"; here I'll deal only succinctly with what this basic
landscape meaning entails.

[22Landscape is differentiated from Place on the basis of just one
feature: place as a "open and bounded" region of the world and landscape
as "open and unbounded region" (since unbounded, the open can be
omitted in the latter) The elevation on the foreground right, being
bounded, is designated as a place and the whole of the picture, being
unbounded space, is designated as a landscape.[20]. . As Ingold [10a] aptly
notes: "The landscape is not space". For an unbounded space to be
considered a landscape another basic condition should be fulfilled: the
space must be experienced as such. For mere 'unbounded space' I would
reserve the words view or vista or sight. [23]

For our present purpose the use of 'experience' in a non-empiricist
fashion might be ample; the term may be taken to refer to human
existence as it comprises capacities to think, to feel, to grasp, to act and
so on {16}. Thus, unbounded space' may be considered as a particular
frame within which experience is to be understood.

A relevant question within the context of the basic meaning [24] of
landscape as "experienced unbounded space" is: should the 'space'
pertinent to landscape be understood as 'subjective' or 'objective' space?
An answer to that question may be found through:

understanding the way in which living creatures find themselves in
space, both in relation to their bodies and to one another, requires more
than just a concept of space as articulated within physical theory {44}

The idea of subjective space is tied up to the idea of an experiencing
creature around which such space is organized. For a creature that has a
grasp of the concept of subjective space and a grasp of the concept of
subjective space is necessary, as was seen earlier, to the grasp of the
concept of objective space- the grasp of that concept must also be tied up






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to the creature's grasp of its own self-identity and more specifically to the
creature's grasp of the concept of itself. {172}

The idea of space that is at issue could thus be said to be an idea of
subjective or egocentric space, just in so far as it is a space which is tied
up to some feature of the creature's own awareness or experiencewe
may even talk of the space at issue here as an experiential space. {50}

Because of the nature of the landscape experience, the concept of
landscape cannot be grasped merely in terms of the concept of objective
space [25]; we might appeal occasionally to the concept of objective space
(the Newtonian (absolute) space and also non-Euclidean versions) [26] but
rather as a secondary ingredient of the notion of landscape.

Now, as Malpas cautions, for a creature to have a grasp of space, to
have a grasp of the concept of space is not a necessary condition. This is
much the same as regards to Art; a person can enjoy, admire or
contemplate a painting but these activities do not require a grasp of the
concept of Art. But, to appreciate a painting as a work of Art certainly
requires a grasp of the concept as much as to appreciate a landscape
requires a grasp of the concept of landscape.

Within the meaning of landscape as an experienced unbounded space,
whatever applies to objective space rebounds on objective landscape and
whatever applies to subjective space rebounds on subjective landscape;
since a landscape experience is essentially subjective, to consider a
landscape objectively (however attractive the idea may appear to some)appears
like a contradiction in terms.

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it is an interest, not so much in place as experienced but rather in the
way in the way in which place can be viewed as a structure within which
experience is possible. {71}

If we were to focus our interest in 'unbounded space' in line with such
an interest in place that is, in space as an structure within which
experience is possible, two main question arise: a)What could possibly be
the structure of space pertinent to landscape? and b) What are the






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particularities, if any, that differentiate the experiences possible within
unbounded space from those within the open and bounded region which
is place? (or, in short what differentiates the landscape experience from
place experience?)

In order to explore possible answers to those questions let us return to
Brueghel's Landscape with Rabbit Hunters:
The fellow who is shown just at the moment of sending an arrow
towards the rabbits appears to be concerned only with Place; first, place
as 'a bounded region' that happens to contain desirable rabbits; second,
place as 'an open region' (the rabbits can escape to adjoining places and leave him empty-
handed);last but not least, place as a region within which a set of
interconnected elements can be located (among others: the rabbits, the dog, the trees,
the grass, the hunter himself, the fellow lurking behind the tree who is obviously not after rabbits). It
may be said that at that instant in time the hunter has a strong sense of
place but no sense of landscape at all, that is, he is not experiencing the
space outside his particular place.

Quite a different state of mind could be expected from the person who
is represented as the small, enigmatic, figure standing on the small terrace
to the left and down of the castle. What he is doing there we don't really
know and can only guess, but since he's not engaged in any physical
action we may safely imagine that he is contemplating the landscape as it
unfolds to him from his place. What appears to me remarkable in this
engraving is how Brueghel managed to convey the impression of vastness
of the landscape. From the vantage point of the figure on the small terrace
the landscape may indeed be seen in all its vastness; from the distant
mountains in the background (right)and the far away town close to the
horizon line, to the undulating river with the sailing boats and to the
houses close to him, not to mention the sky vault with the black cloud and
birds. All these regions, and many others within his field of vision,
conform individual places each with its own identity and its particular
boundaries. However, to the contemplating figure, those places are not so
much regions within which a set of interconnected elements can be
located but rather figures, shapes, forms or outlines which, through their
juxtaposition in space configure the whole of the space visible to him.

Considered this way (and there are undoubtedly many other ways of considering it!)






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the space pertinent to this landscape appears as a loose structure
composed by the display of individual places; but, individual places that
are present in a way that form is more significant than content. It is not a
mere collection of the places included in the particular space, nor an
ordered array, but a display configured through their largely haphazard
spatial placement. Configured seems the proper word because the result is
a configuration in its sense in Gestalt psychology, that is a configuration
which forms an unified whole and that cannot be predicted from its
individual elements.


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Of things that should be said lest I might be
misinterpreted:

The above exposition might lead the reader to the opinion that I am
siding with a purely spectatorial conception of landscapes. I may have
given that impression because of the emphasis placed here on the
typology of Norberg-Schulz which in many ways conforms to such a
conception. But, as I have proposed elsewhere [27] his typology may be
said to categorize landscapes as primary landscape genres as contrasted
with secondary landscape genres like the mythical, poetical or power-
contested landscapes. There is no contradiction between primary and
secondary ones; the secondary ones result from juxtaposing and
sometimes superimposing other conceptual frames upon the primary
ones.

Some examples taken from Brueghel's landscapes may perhaps help
to clarify the relation between both types of conceptual classes. The Fall
of Icarus was here considered as a representation of a classical landscape
according to Norberg-Schulz typology. Should we give preeminence in
our attention to the depicted event of Icarus plunging into the water, the
picture may be said to represent a mythical landscape. Here we have an
interesting example of a relatively minor place (the place of Icarus entering into the
sea) imposing its character to the whole landscape. But, it should be






21
emphasized that, to label it 'a mythical landscape' does not entail at all
that it ceases to be a classical landscape.

Much the same could be said for other Brueghel landscapes [28]
where the presence in-place of Spanish soldiers brings forth to mind the
military occupation and subjection of Flanders of the time, thus making it
the representation of a 'Landscape of Power or Conflict'. That the Rabbit
Hunter looks as about to be attacked by the fellow with the spear, if taken
as symbolizing a humble poacher being chased by a guard paid by the
landowner, would re-represent the picture in the light of class-struggle,
(which may have been what Brueghel had in mind). But, if landscapes are
our primary field of interest, all these various perspectives should be
treated, in my opinion, as superimposed on a primary spectatorial
perspective.


===================================
======================

Notes and References:


Please recall that in the above text numbers between { } brackets refer to page
numbers of J. Malpas book Place and Experience. of

[1]Norberg-Schulz, Christian: Genius Loci, Towards a Phenomenology of
Architecture, Rizzoli Publishers (1991) (for long out of print)
[2] 'Natural' is too vague a term when applied to landscapes. In my reading of
Norberg-Schulz his intended meaning was 'non-designed landscapes', a term which
includes landscapes that may be the result of human intervention, but excludes those
that have been purposely altered (designed) to achieve a aesthetic or functional effect.
[3] Goldfarb, J.D. Landscape Genres. As discussed in there the treatment of the
categories through prototype theory makes the forth type, what N-S calls 'complex'
landscapes unnecessary.
[3a] To navigate use the Site Map in [3]; Norberg-Schulz typology on the site map's
left.
[4] As I have said elsewhere: "at the risk of being irreverent" (because I have great
respect and admiration for Norberg- Schulz writings) I'd venture to say that his
naming of said categories of landscape is unfortunate. The terms Classical, Romantic
and Cosmic have default meanings in common usage which have little connection, if
at all, with Norberg-Schulz intended meanings of the terms. Had he called the






22
landscape categories simply "types A,B and C", a lot of misunderstandings and
misreadings of his typology would have been averted.
[5] Places are to be here understood as including what Norberg-Schulz [1]:10 refers to
as "the vertical dimension (earth-sky)" which he tends to treat somewhat separately
throughout from the horizontal dimension, his "outside-inside". Hence when I talk of
character of the landscape being the result of arrangement of places, I take into
account the relation earth-sky. Since space is treated by Norberg-Schulz "not
primarily as a mathematical concept but as an existential dimension", it goes without
saying that the vertical dimension alluded above is not so much a metric but an
existential dimension. This point is further developed in the following when
considering places in The Fall of Icarus.
[6] If the categories are conceived as landscape genres, since genres are not mutually
exclusive, a given landscape may be ascribed to more than one genre. Within the
context of prototype theory a given landscape may be a good exemplar of one genre
and a weak example of another.
[7] I will be using the terms 'compose' and 'composition' in a sense similar to that
accepted for Music. As Hofstadter aptly writes regarding primary and tertiary
structure: "Music is not a mere linear sequence of notes. Our mind perceives music on
a level far higher than that. We chunk notes into phrases, phrases into melodies,
melodies into movements and movements into full pieces." (Hofsdtadter D.R.: Godel,
Escher, Bach, Basic Books Inc., 1980:525). Metaphorically speaking, the constituent
places 'compose' a landscape in the way melodies or themes compose a movement or
a full musical piece. But we perceive music and landscape on a level much higher
than their syntax.
[8] Malpas J.E. : Place and Experience, A Philosophical Topography, Cambridge
Univ. Press, (1999); page numbers refer to the digital edition of 2007.
[9] I call it a turning point because of what he writes in Genius Loci (p. 5) : "In
Intentions in Architecture art and architecture were analyzed 'scientifically' today I
think other methods more illuminating. When we treat architecture analytically we
miss the very quality which is the object of man's identification, and which may give
him a sense of existential foothold. First of all I owe to Heidegger the concept of
dwelling. Existential foothold and dwelling are synonymous and dwelling in an
existential sense is the purpose of architecture"
[10] As for the humble opinion, I must make mine as well what Tim Ingold wrote
preceding his observations on another of Brueghel's landscapes: "I am not an art
historian or critic, and my purpose is not to analyze the painting in terms of style,
composition or aesthetic effect". Ingold T.: The Temporality of the Landscape, World
Archeology, Vol. 25, No. 2, (1993), pp. 152-174
[10a] For some of these pictorial tricks and for learned insights on Brueghel's work
see:
Gibson W.S.: Pleasant Places, The Rustic Landscape from Brueghel to Ruisdael;
California Univ. Press (2000)
[10b] Recently some experts, using sophisticated IR techniques, concluded that this
painting was not painted by Brueghel but by some disciples that copied from a now






23
lost original. Till the matter is finally settled I'll keep calling it a Brueghel.
[11] I'll be using frequently here the expressions 'to distinguish', 'distinction' and
'components'; I take them in their sense within cognitive science and notably, in the
writings of H. Maturana.
The following excerpts, from his Ontology of Observing might make clear those
senses:
"In the operation of distinction an observer brings forth a unity (an entity, a whole) as
well as the medium in which it is distinguished, and entails on this all the operational
coherences that make the distinction of the unity possible" (pp12)
"Unities may be distinguished as simple or composite ones. A simple unity arises
defined and characterized by a collection of properties as a matter of distinction in the
praxis of living of the observer. A composite unity is one distinguished as a simple
unity that, through further operations of distinction is decomposed by the observer
into components that through their composition would constitute the original simple
unity."
"Accordingly, there is no such a thing as the distinction of a component
independently of the unity that it integrates Indeed there is no such a thing as a free
component floating around independently of the composite unity that it integrates."
The literature in which these concepts are further discussed and applied is too large
to be listed here. For the interested reader I recommend to start with a recent
publication and go backwards in the Refs. See for instance: Maturana H.: The origin
and conservation of self-consciousness, Kibernetes, 34, pp. 54-88 (2005).
Another useful source to start with is :
Von Glasersfeld E.: Distinguishing the Observer: An Attempt to interpreting
Maturana.

Using Maturana's terminology, Places are considered in the present Essay both as
simple and composite unities. As simple unities when they are distinguished as mere
components composing a landscape (medium) and as composite unities when
distinguishing the interconnected elements (components in Maturana's terms) that are
located in-place.
[12] A question that may be found in the Quiz section of a popular magazine: "How
many places are there in this picture?" It is an interesting question, rhetorically
speaking, because there is no way to give a definite answer unless someone is armed
with a clear-cut, truth-conditional, definition of place. Such a definition, although
admittedly, far less mind-disquieting than a multiplicity of meanings, would
impoverish the notion of landscape to the point of barrenness. As I hope it will be
clear in the present exposition, I'll be doing my best to stand clear off definitions, be
them of place, landscapeand of almost everything else.
[13] For an outline see "What is Systems Theory?" in the Principia Cybernetica
website.
I cannot resist the temptation of drawing, at least as a footnote, an analogy between
some concepts of Place and those of System, although I intend to deal with it more in-
depth in a future contribution.






24
Place (as opposed to Space) appears to have little importance in Physical Sciences (except
as location in Cartesian coordinates). I think that this may largely be due because System
seems quite adequate there instead of Place (which is then largely confined to the Human
Sciences).
System (not to be confused with system in Philosophy) is usually thought of as set of
interacting components forming an integrated whole; also place is an integrated whole
and within Place a set of interconnected elements can be located; (as for 'open and
unbounded region see [14]). A system is delimited as any region of space which we
choose to select for the purposes of study. In doing this we create imaginary
boundaries so that there is a 'within' and an 'outside'. What is 'within' or 'inside' is
'contained' and the 'outside' constitutes the system's surroundings. "We scope a system
by defining its boundary; this means choosing which entities are inside the system and
which are outside - part of the environment. "
System may be said to have 'structure', 'interconnectivity' and 'behaviour' and the
same may be said of Place. Admittedly the 'behaviour' of systems is far less
sophisticated than that which can be ascribed to Place, so, there the analogy ends (for
the 20
th
century, but probably not for the 22
nd
)
[14] Within Thermodynamics an 'open system' is defined as one which continuously
Interacts with its environment (as contrasted with the concept of 'isolated' system,
which doesn't). The interaction can take the form of information, energy, or material
transfers into or out of the system boundary, depending on the discipline which
defines the concept.
The sailing ship in the painting is bounded by thick planks of wood, but it is open
because it is rocked by the sea waves and is moved by the wind. The place of the
farmer in the foreground, although clearly bounded, whatever is planted on it will be
affected by rain water and sun rays entering it from the outside, that is, the
environment.
[15] Art critics traditionally refer to this character as a simpleton on account of the
somewhat vacant expression of his face. I humbly disagree; I'd say he's quite the
opposite; it may well be that the shepherd has, a moment ago, seen a man falling from
the sky; quite a logical reaction would be to look around the sky to see if more men
are falling down. Sort of a scientific approach: if something odd happens, to look
around for similar phenomena.
[16] The painting is at the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. An interactive
reproduction, allowing sector zooming, may be viewed at: arthermitage.org
[16a] The lines are actually: "painting in sound the forms of joy, and woe/ Until the
mind's eye sees them melt and glow" from Thomas Campbell: Theodric (1815?)
[16b] Norberg-Schulz C.: Nightlands, MIT press, (1996):6
[17] Gobi desert Landscape, Omnogovi, Mongolia; Image from Wikipedia Commons,
reference file:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OmnogoviLandscape.jpg#globalusage
[18] I stand clear of mentioning in this context 'interplanetary space' which may be
thought as the 'cosmic' landscape par excellence; although, personally, I don't find
objectionable to consider the firmament as landscape, many people do.






25
[19] Reproduced from Klein A.H.: Graphic Worlds of Peter Bruegel The Elder;
Dover Publ. (1963)
[20]. Boundaries of places may be established not only through lines on a plane. They
may result also from a place being an elevation or a depression relative to the
surrounding found; the cliff-like, almost vertical appearance of the promontory in this
case, make up for a neat, clear cut boundary.
[21] Goldfarb J.D.: About Definitions of Landscape. There the basic meaning was
treated as a stipulative definition; the former sense is more appropriate, see [24]
[22]. Of course the picture is bounded by the frame, however, the picture is only a
representation of a landscape and the above basic meaning is intended for actual
landscapes; a landscape painting or photo may or may not convey to us the impression
that there is a natural continuation outside the frame.
[23] A view or vista would thus connote a visual image as "immediately perceived"
(if there is such a thing as non mediated perception, which is open to question) or,
perhaps better, casually perceived without receiving more than a casual glance; a
region that though 'looked at' stays largely unnoticed.
[24] Although being 'unbounded space' and 'being experienced' are necessary
conditions, the above meaning falls short of a truth-conditional definition (at the most
one of those lexical defs. found in dictionaries) because of the difficulty of finding a
consensual definition of 'experience'.
Even without a definition, the notion of a landscape experience, as a type of
experience that can be sufficiently differentiated from other types may be
satisfactorily substantiated.- P. Haezrahi in The Contemplative Activity, Allen and
Unwin Publ. (1954),pp.10, states the conditions that must be fulfilled for an 'aesthetic
experience' in order to state: "The aesthetic experience exists". I maintain that they are
fulfilled also in the case of 'a landscape experience', especially for having "a certain
distinct and circumscribed meaning of its own"
[25] I am well aware that if I were asked -- what the 'concept of landscape is? -- I'd be
hard pressed for a satisfactory answer. Landscape as a notion is so opaque and diffuse
that it is questionable whether it may be stated as a single concept.
[26]Heelan P.A. in Space Perception and The Philosophy of Science, California
Univ. Press, (1988) presents a non-Euclidean Space which he calls "Hyperbolic
Visual Space"; his treatment of it is largely that of an objective space, but hyperbolic
space seems to me quite promising as a bridge between objective and subjective
space; in particular through the notions of his Part II: "Toward a Philosophy of
Science based on the Primacy of Perception".
[27] See for instance: Goldfarb J.D.: Landscape Genres and Cognitive Linguistics
(2010)
My differentiation between primary and secondary landscape genres is an adaptation
from the primary and secondary speech genres proposed by Bakhtin in: The Problem
of Speech Genres (see: Bakhtin M.M. Speech Genres and other Late Essays, edited
by Emerson and Holquist, Texas Univ. Press (1986) pp.61-62) Primary genres take
form in unmediated communication (perception) while secondary ones arise in more
complex and comparatively highly developed cultural communication.






26
[28] See for instance Brueghel's: Ascent of Christ to Mount Calvary or The Massacre
of the Innocents.