Andscapes: Concepts of nature and culture for landscape architecture in the ‘Anthropocene’

Abstract

The effects of human activity have reached every square metre of the earth and beyond, such as through carbon or nitrogen emissions, which has led Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen to propose a new geological age, the ‘Anthropocene’. In parallel to many contemporary philosophers and scientists, this notion declares that the traditional, dualistic Western understanding of nature as something independent from human influence is obsolete. The ‘Anthropocene’ needs new, unitary concepts of nature and culture. This article discusses two inspiring unitary concepts from Japan; Imanishi's seibutsu no sekei (world of living things) and Watsuji's fudo (milieu). In a reflection on two landscape architecture projects, this article comes to the conclusion that the profession is already capable of designing in a unitary mode, beyond simple dichotomies of nature and culture. This asset should be cultivated, and for this the correct usage of terms is quite important. However, this is difficult due to the fact that the traditional meaning of nature is still very influential in professional communication, and that the terms of the inspiring Japanese concepts are either too complicated or too abstract. Inspired by Kandinsky's idea of ‘and’, the unitary concept of ‘andscape’ is proposed to integrate the ideas of both Imanishi and Watsuji. By using the term ‘andscape’, a dualistic, divisive understanding of nature and culture becomes impossible—instead, the focus is on the dynamic relations between humans, animals, plants, stones, water, and all other elements in the world. This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Journal of landscape architecture, © Taylor & Francis, available online at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/18626033.2014.898819