Single agreed law of landscape design

The “Single agreed law of landscape design,” according to Tom Turner, is to “consult the
genius of the place.”97 I believe, however, that this notion is based on an outdated
philosophical position which Rorty suggests has outlived its usefulness?98 Relying on the
genius loci mystifies the design process—which is not only discouraging for students of
design, but also responsible at least in part for a lingering conservatism within the
landscape profession, leading inevitably to limited design ambition. It also reinforces
suspicion of the visual dimension of design and contributes to the continuing disassociation
of practice from theory. In short, it is damaging any attempts to construct places
of meaning and significance.
The concept of the genius loci emerges from the philosophical tradition of the
“peculiarly metaphysical dualisms” inherited from the Greeks.99 This “whole nest and brood
of dualisms” is endemic, leading to separations and distinctions being made between
“reality and appearance, pure radiance and diffuse reflection, intellectual rigour and
sensual sloppiness, orderly semiotics and rambling semiosis”100 as well as those between
subject and object, body and mind, absolute and relative, nature and convention.
Underlying all these distinctions is a set of beliefs and practices based on the notion that
there are different kinds of truth, different types of reasoning, independent logic and
determinate facts. This rationalist tradition has been consistently undermined over the
last century, but has proved “remarkably resilient and resourceful,”101 mainly because these
distinctions are so deeply embedded in our culture, they have become part of Western
common sense.102 But this alone is a good enough argument for retaining them.
It is now widely recognised that if we remove the assumption that there are
different types of truth, it dismantles the idea that there are different types of reasoning,
or separate modes of thinking. There is not a particular kind of thinking that is intuitive,
compared with one that is more logical, or one that is subjective (usually associated with
emotion and art) as opposed to objective (usually associated with language and science),
divergent or convergent, masculine or feminine. The way we think is the same. All thinking,
whether in the arts or sciences is shown to be interpretative and metaphorical; none of
these disciplines use a special kind of reasoning. Understanding ideas, feelings, emotions
or artistic responses uses the one and only kind of reasoning we have to make sense of
anything. We interpret, judge, try to understand our feelings and make sense of what we
see.
One of the main philosophical traditions exploring this line of inquiry is pragmatism.
From a pragmatic perspective, the problem is not how we think, but how we think
we think?103 Challenging the metaphysical basis of disciplines, pragmatism sets itself
apart from, and against, the tradition of analytical philosophy and evolutionary psychology.
It does so by questioning the utility of the vocabulary inherited from Plato and
Aristotle.104
Drawing on the work of the early American pragmatists and more recently the work
of Rorty105 and Putnam,106 I would argue that if a pragmatic line of inquiry is followed, it
is also possible to dispense with the duality between visual and verbal thinking. This
dichotomy has particular significance for design education, theory and philosophy.
Allegedly fundamental to the debate, it has until recently more or less escaped the antidualist
focus, so powerful is the belief that only numbers and words can have any logic
or intellectual significance. The visual/verbal dichotomy is integral to the concept of the
genius loci.
WHAT IS THE GENIUS LOCI?
The qualitative, phenomenological analyses of a sense of place, implying that “a landscape
holds hidden spirits or qualities waiting to be discovered”107 were a welcome relief from
the mechanical abstractions dominating design theory in the 60s and early 70s. With
seductive descriptions of how and what makes a place tick, they also legitimised the role
of intuition and subjectivity in the design process. Loosely defined as the spirit of place,
sense of place or genius of place, the genius loci, which is acknowledged as “less tangible
than other components or dialectics of place” is thought potentially to “to link and embrace
them.”108 The concept may have become less significant in architecture in recent years,
however the genius loci remains an important part of landscape architectural theory and
practice.109It has, for example, recently been cited in government research as one of the
key concerns of urban design.110 Its prevalence is such, that quite often, if a design does
not have its quotient of “subjective discourse” with the site, and ideas are brought from
“outside” the site to generate form, it is dismissed as artificial or superficial, a meaningless
imposition.
A PRAGMATIC PERSPECTIVE
It is the metaphysical nature of the genius loci that causes problems. Adopting a pragmatic
approach gives us the opportunity to reconceptualise many issues traditionally thought
to be within its domain in a way that facilitates a more straightforward artistic and
conceptual discussion about constructing place.
Pragmatism is anti-foundational. Foundational theories attempt “to ground inquiry
and communication in something more firm and stable than mere beliefs or unexamined
practice. This ground must be invariant across cultures and even contexts; it must stand
apart from political, partisan and “subjective” concerns, in relation to which it must act as
a constraint, and it must provide a reference point or checkpoint against which claims to
knowledge and success can be measured and adjudicated.”111 Various candidates include
“God, the material or ‘brute act’ world, rationality in general, or logic in particular” and
“the set of eternal values.”112 Within design, “objective” contenders include universal laws
sought by modernists, based on pure reason, or the “objective neutrality” sought by the
design methodologists of the 60s and 70s whose ambition was to capture design expertise
in a diagram, so that the process was rationalised and would “not be held back ever again
by individual opinions or personal creativity.”113 From the subjective perspective, the usual
suspects include subconscious responses, essences of place, archetypes, nature and
ecology and more recently, the concept of sustainability. Each of these apparently provides
some kind of framework which underlies and provides some kind of stability in the
complexity of our individual subjective worlds. Each is thought to have the potential to
ground practice in something more genuine and important than the everyday.
The desire to identify these kinds of grand theories is the sort of thing Dewey hoped
we might cease to feel because from a pragmatic perspective there is nothing down there
to refer to, no true reality or “the world as it really is” to be found, no universal truth or
framework underlying our culture.114 Instead, everything is seen as a social construction.
“Discursive practices,” as Rorty says, “Go all the way down.”115
IMPLIED MEANING BENEATH THE SURFACE
But the genius loci is the idea that there is something beyond our culture to be sensed,
intuited, or perceived (verbs that became fashionable in the 1940s to set themselves apart
from commonplace verbs such as observe, see or understand).116 To commune with the
genius loci, we are supposed to sense underneath, behind, beyond, below what we have
in front of our eyes, to find the true spirit of place.
Derrida calls the sense that there is a “full presence beyond the reach of play” the
metaphysics of presence.117 In “consulting the genius loci” many landscape architects find
themselves trying to do just what Rortysatirises scholars as doing: cracking codes, peeling
away accidents to reveal essence, stripping away veils of appearance to reveal reality.118
Robin Evans accuses architectural critics of the same offence. They are not lacking
circumspection, he assures us, as they work to “delve, uncover, disclose, reveal, divulge,
discover, unfold and show to the reader what lies hidden or unseen, to get to the bottom
of things, to plumb the depths, to see beneath the surface, behind the curtain, forced by
the conviction that drawings have hidden meanings.” What they end up doing, he adds,
is to “to fabricate virtual meanings for the drawing to represent in place of what they know
they cannot find.” His admiration is laced with irony when he adds, “and remarkably
inventive about it they are.”119 The impetus for this labour, Rorty suggests, is the excitement
of finding “deep meanings hidden from the vulgar, meanings which only those lucky
enough to have cracked a very difficult code can know.”120
Educationally, this is dubious and dangerous. The notion that there is “knowledge
of something not merely human” needed in order to achieve a design, loads the dice
against the student. From a pragmatic perspective it sets up a whole series of impossible
tasks which are bewildering and undemocratic.121
STEPPING OUTSIDE OUR CULTURE
Take the problem of “sensing” the genius loci. The story goes that, “the more open and
honest such experiences are, and the less constrained by theoretical or intellectual
preconceptions, the greater the degree of authenticity.” The idea is that an authentic
attitude to place should not be “mediated and distorted through series of quite arbitrary
social and intellectual fashions about how that experience should be, nor following
stereotyped conventions.”122 Is it really possible to step outside what we know to understand
a place as it really is without the encumbrances of our culture, so as to glimpse
things as they really are? Can intelligence and experience cloud the issue? Is it really
possible to deliberately forget what we know?
The search for a “residing invisible spirit and an underlying order that must be
revealed, searched for, listened to, felt or understood by careful observation” is also a bit
strange.123It implies that it is necessary to use the senses or emotions to perceive, without
contaminating the process by thinking conceptually. The hazy intuitions picked up by
this process are supposedly distilled, structured and formalised, before being passed on
to serve intelligence. The senses are thought to act as a filter or a censor, sorting out the
differences between what is real and what is apparent.
As far as the pragmatic argument is concerned, these propositions make no sense
at all. Pragmatism, summed up by the slogan “all awareness is a linguistic affair” is based
on the tenet that “we shall never be able to step outside of language never be able to
grasp reality unmediated by a linguistic description.”124 There is no sensory language
separate from the verbal language, and no way of knowing that is not linguistic. We do
not need, as Hilary Putnam has pointed out, to “conceive of our sensory experiences as
intermediaries between us and the world.”125
In terms of understanding the significance of a place, the implications of this
paradigmatic shift are deceptively simple. Rather than thinking a place can “speak” to
you, reveal what it “wants to be” by imposing on your thoughts in a particular way, a
place can be seen as simply “providing some sort of stimuli which you can respond to.”126
It is not a quest for truth, objectivity or underlying essences. There is no need to ask,
“Am I describing it as it really is?” The value of what you see is in the sense you make of
it. This is an analytical and critical skill that requires an understanding of the problems
and possibilities of the site, given a particular brief or potential concept. Inspirational
interpretations of the site will be inventive, imaginative and artistic. They are still utilitarian
and purposeful—they give a clue as to how to proceed. Judgement, confidence and
expertise are needed to discern whether one way or another of interpreting the site might
be the more productive, a richer vein to mine.
Also from this perspective, intuition, rather than being the window to a universal
truth or the essence of place, can be understood as a preconception that is culturally
formed and shaped. As educationalists, we spend time trying to encourage students not
to rely on their intuitions, because for novice students of design, these habits of thought
are so limited by inexperience or unfamiliarity within a particular discipline. Old habits
die hard—as Bryson points out (quoting Kubler): “The cage of routine binds [the individual]
so closely that it is almost impossible for him to stumble into an inventive act: he is like a
tightrope walker whom vast forces so bind to the cable that he cannot fall, even if he
wishes, into the unknown.”127 The problem with the concept of the genius loci is that it
seems to give credibility to these preconceptions, rather than challenge or provoke a more
imaginative response.
LIMITS DISCOURSE
As mysterious and elusive as any other metaphysical concept, reliance on the genius loci
also limits imaginative and intelligent debate. If the genius loci has been consulted, when
it speaks to you, is it always right? Must we defer to its authority in order to establish the
true essence of the site, or instructions on which to base the form of the design?
If it is presented as self evident and abundantly clear, with no need of further
explanation, there is an assumption that you are “in the know”—and who would be brave
enough to admit they are not? This is the meaning of peer pressure. To question the genius
loci implies ignorance or—worse—a lack of sensitivity or awareness. Even those with the
gall to say, “I do not understand this” are hamstrung, because on what basis can there be
any disagreement? The concept by its very nature has no substance; it is indefinable. As a
consequence, by stealth, this convenient spirit absolves us from taking responsibility for
why things look the way they do. The genius loci becomes an integral part of what Johnson
describes as the “false consciousness” architects and landscape architects often project,
used to “justify the correctness of what they design, mostly without external verification.”128
Fish suggests that “whenever a so-called outside or external or independent constraint is
invoked, what is really being invoked is an interested agenda.”129 So when for example we
are convinced and excited by a landscape or architecture apparently inspired by the genius
loci, what excites and convinces us is a function of our needs and purposes, rather than
the recognition that a design accurately captures and expresses the essence of place.130
The problem in both landscape and architecture is that this agenda has, over the
last few decades and for a number of reasons, been dominated by the desire to return to
traditional practices and traditional solutions. Invocation of the genius loci has been
therefore primarily used as a way of referring “longingly to spirits of the past animated
by legend”131 or “an old way of seeing.”132
This inherently conservative agenda has also been used to justify creating places
which “possess both internal harmony and which fit in their context.” In many respects
this is a fine ambition, especially when the context is worth fitting in with. But given the
backward gaze of many designers, it sets the scene for heritage, restoration and
conservation projects, irrespective of the situation and stifles the ambition to create
something new, to mix old and new, to find contemporary solutions to old problems.
Responding to the genius loci is also characterised as a kind of “unselfconscious
place making,” having a “lack of theoretical or aesthetic pretension,” as though the
designer plays no role in designing, just does as told by the amenable spirit, without
thinking too much about it.133 In this way the genius loci is responsible for the “naturalistic
fallacy” Johnson identifies, “of projecting what ought to be from what is.”134 A variation
onMcHarg’s ecological determinism, it has also led, as Thompson has pointed out, to a
desire for places that fit in, are unobtrusive, or invisible, merging in, integrating, blending,
being “absent.”135 And we wonder why landscape architecture has a low profile!
Typically this low-key approach is seen as being a preferable alternative to designs
identified pejoratively as egotistical, airy-fairy, or having pretensions to be works of art.
However, rather than falling back on the old philosophical dichotomy between aesthetics
and function, art and design, from a pragmatic point of view it is possible to think about
the extent to which any design has been artistically conceived and executed. The truly
expressive act according to Dewey, requires the “primitive and raw material of experience
to be reworked.” This transformation is not only of the physical materials, but also of
“images, memories, observations and emotions” and the “work is artistic in the degree in
which the two functions of transformation are effected by a single operation.”136 The
medium of work, he suggests, is relatively unimportant. Discussions about the merits of
one design against another can therefore more productively centre on how well this
transformation has been achieved, how intelligently and artistically ideas have been
investigated and applied within a design, rather than the visibility or invisibility of the
product or to what extent a design is egotistical or otherwise.
OVERLOOKING THE VISUAL DIMENSION
The concept of the genius loci fuels the prejudice existing against the visual dimension
in design; this prejudice is its oxygen. But there is a growing philosophical, psychological
and cultural interest in the visual, in response to the belief that we are living in an
increasingly visual world. Broadly, there are two views. On the one hand, there is the
realisation that the visual may have been overlooked due to the emphasis on language
and numbers. On the other, there is the view that an over-reliance on the “cool and distant
realm of vision” may be responsible for the lack of sensuality or experience of “being in
the world.” In either case, the argument is founded on the assumption that visual
understanding, aesthetic perception or creativity is dependent on a visual, sensory mode
of thinking. Typically this is characterised as being innate, primitive, subjective and
unrelated to intelligence and therefore impossible to teach. This characterization
insinuates itself into the way we think we think about visual phenomena such as pictures,
landscape and architecture. Considering the generation of form or the visual appearance
of a design is therefore also thought to be devoid of intellectual content, to some indulgent
and unnecessary to others, an impossibly subjective task that does not bear close examination,
137 is even suggested that the invisible essence of architecture is so important, that
time spent articulating “a building’s corporeal presence” might compromise the “allusive
poetics of its form” or “diminish architecture’s capacity for representational values.”138
Being diverted by the earthy tectonics and the physicality of what we see might sidetrack
us into missing the real picture. And so, what a landscape signifies, symbolises or represents
is thought to be far more significant than the way it looks; its embodied meaning is there
to be sensed, not seen, its invisible essence of more value than its visible presence. As an
eminent design historian declared defiantly at a recent conference, “We are not interested
in what the landscape looks like but what it means.” This is the problem. The visual, physical
form of the landscape is systematically overlooked in the quest for embodied (invisible)
meaning.
It has become very chic to use various philosophical and cultural theories to
embellish the rhetoric of design criticism and practice, in the hope that making design
more “theoretical” will improve its quality and status as a discipline. But without investigating
or making explicit the visual, spatial implications of these ideas, the continuing
disassociation between practice and theory are simply exacerbated. The gap between
what is said and what it is supposed to look like becomes ever wider. To resolve this
disjunction, we need to make distinctions, as Dewey suggests, “Not between practice (craft
based, sensory, earthy) and theory (conceptual, representation and symbolic) but between
those modes of practice that are not intelligent, not inherent and immediately enjoyable
and those which are full of enjoyed meanings.”139 How well informed are the designs
that we see? Why do things specifically look the way they do? What do they make us feel
and why?
THE VALUE OF LOOKING GOOD
Redefining the relationship between the senses and intelligence makes it clear that
meaning is not embodied in the landscape, but is entirely dependent on the sense we
make of what we see in front of us. There is no need to try and commune with residing
spirits or sense essences of place lurking beneath the surface to fathom out what we are
looking at. Waiting expectantly to have “three or four dimensional pure ‘perceptions’” is
rather like waiting for Godot.140 To understand what we see in the landscape is more
straightforward. It requires a strong feeling for our culture and traditions. It requires critical,
analytical skill and knowledge of the visual and conceptual medium of our practice—an
intellectual understanding and appreciation of why things look like they do, given the
time, place and context. This kind of understanding is not something just reserved for
the critic. It is what we need in order to design places of meaning and significance.
Dispensing with the concept of the genius loci gives us the opportunity to clarify many
aspects of the design process in a sensible, intelligent way. The significance of why things
look like they do can be made explicit. The manner in which ideas have been followed
through from the inspiration, concept and principles to design detail can be explained in
pictures and in words, spatially and conceptually. The process can be systematic,
methodical and have a clear educational rationale without losing the poetry or artistry
of good design.
There is also an important political and social dimension to the argument. From
this perspective, the value of good looking environments can be clearly articulated, freed
of the idea that it is simply a matter of taste, too subjective to be of significance or self
evident because the genius loci has worked its arcane magic. This puts an onus on us as
landscape architects. If we value the landscape, we need to be far more rigorous in the
way we describe it and the uses we identify for it. The language we use needs to be more
precise and differentiated. And we need to be far more ambitious in our aspirations for
the landscape, its construction and care.
It is a political issue. We need to know, clearly and unambiguously, what the landscape
has to offer, be it urban, urban fringe, rural, post-industrial, coastal, or whatever.
We need to know how to recognise its potential and how it can be transformed. It is crucial
that we create places that have a unique visual identity, which will not only promote and
develop culture and tradition but also instill a sense of pride and optimism. This is a vital
component of sustainable economic growth.
The concept of the genius loci is part of a philosophical paradigm that prevents
us from having informed discussions about the value and significance of the way things
look or even beginning to understand how this might contribute to the social and economic
viability of a place. This is no longer sustainable. We need to drop the dualist vocabulary
and begin to imaginatively “re-describe the familiar in unfamiliar terms.”141 We need to
make clear the political value of the public realm and the social benefit of good quality
places.
The genius loci, bless it, is like any old hat. No matter how much you cherish it, there
comes a time to put it on one side and buy another. For the future of landscape
architecture, for the sake of our profession, it is time to move on.

For a custom paper on the above topic, place your order now!

• High Quality custom-written paper