On the undefined landscape a visual narration by N. R. Lastrico and C. Lo Sterzo
«If someone stops looking at the landscape as the object of human activity, one discovers a quantity of undecided spaces, devoid of function and on which it is difficult to place a name. This ensemble belongs neither to the territory of shadow nor to that of light. It is located on the margins. Where the woodland fringes, along roads and rivers, in the recesses forgotten by cultivation, where cars do not pass. It covers areas of modest, dispersed dimensions, like the lost corners of a field; vast and unitary, like peat bogs, moors and certain areas abandoned following a recent resignation. Among these landscape fragments, no similarity of form. Only one point in common: they all constitute a territory of refuge for diversity. Everywhere else diversity is driven out. This makes it justifiable to gather them into a single term. I propose Third Landscape» The excerpt from Gilles Clement’s Manifeste du Tiers paysage describes one of the most main themes of Precotto neighbourhood, area located in the north-eastern outskirts of Milan and characterised by the coexistence of very different identities from different historical moments, today distinct in their scale and use. Residential areas of different scales represented by both small villas and bigger residential buildings, productive areas and areas undergoing transformation are the main protagonists of the heterogeneous pattern of the neighbourhood. What holds these very different identities together is the characteristic of undefined, manifested mainly in two ways: through the changing landscape, linked to uncultivated areas and land currently undergoing transformation, with active construction site dynamics, and through the unchanged, generic landscape that characterizes public and private gardens. It is evident how these areas, although very different, contaminate each other, bringing with them an underlying undefined character. They cause a paradox: on one hand they give these places to the possibility of becoming something, but on the other they don’t define themselves with a unique function or definition. The aspect of the undefined, as in Gilles Clement’s text, is therefore considered a positive character, which generates unique spatial and perceptive characteristics, which do not want to denounce a still situation, but to enhance its ambition of being nothing.
Quote on cover: Gilles Clément, Manifeste du Tiers Paysage, Sense et Tonka, Paris, 2014.
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On the undefined landscape