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INSCRIBING SPACES Words 'CK' Wong
Image references ISSUU Bnieuws
Land sculpture has arguably existed for thousands of years, in which case studies such as Nazca lines (see photo) and Indian burial mounds were identified as one. These ancient augmentations of the land surface could be ceremonial, or symbolic in nature. Nevertheless, these sculptures exhibited spatial qualities inherent in architecture and landscape design, and inform us about the increasingly ambiguous distinction between them.
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Contemporary land sculptors like Richard Long and Michael Heizer, whose notable works included similar inscription of the land (see a Line made by Walking by Long, and Double Negative by Heizer), had shown us various artwork through sometimes dramatic gestures in scale, which is effectively spatial design.
voids on faces of stones, or within the earth enclosure formed with the very mud displaced from under their feet. Various aboriginal vernacular housing types have shown us the inherent link between construction methods, with the material extracted from the environment in its proximity.
In many discourses today, especially in the realm of “sustainable passive design”, the integration of landscape features was deemed functional and supplementary, as in some cases, “biophilic”. The limited understanding of landscape as simply “greening”, or providing the premise of bringing nature closer to home, somewhat dilutes the potential of landscape design within the architectural practice. In the Five points of Architecture, Le Corbusier introduced the concept of a roof garden, as a physical replacement of the land the building has displaced. His proposal reveals the inherent relationship of spatial design with the environment, attempting to even account for a fragment of ecology displaced (vegetation in this case), which is different from viewing the architecture as an isolated object in the environment. In essence, architecture is the environment.
The premise of spatial design is built upon the fact that the environment is organized and altered to accommodate programmes, regardless of functions, and this could be accomplished without “architecture”. The land sculpture mentioned above by Michael Heizer, appropriately titled Double Negative (see photo), explores the notion of manmade and nature. A 15metre deep ditch was excavated on a site located on Moapa Valley, Nevada, which extended across the natural curvature of the cliff, to form a linear incision in the landscape. The first negative (man-made ditch), was superimposed on the second negative (the natural void of the valley), resulting in the juxtaposition of space in the two realms. It also brings us to the point that spatiality is the common denominator in the entirety of these discussions, and there is much to share when it comes to how these spaces are manipulated and ordered.
This is not a farfetched argument. Humankind and its predecessors were known to inhabit crevices and
There are various contemporaries displaying attempts in disintegrating the boundaries of
