A Note on the Use of the Feminine in Landscape Theory
“Landscape architectural theory, constructed by and for practitioners who revel in their roles as spatial translators of cultural values, can be a vital agent in construing new forms of consciousness through the design.”
Elizabeth Meyer (1992) "Situating Modern Landscape Architecture"
Good landscape design is inevitably filled with meaning; however, we must ensure that the meaning we employ is of the highest quality and at the vanguard of our times. Elizabeth Meyer brilliantly criticized modern landscape architecture for treating the landscape as other and called out planners for their inadequate use of meaning in regards to the feminine.
Today, I will explore this idea using quotes from her 1992 essay "Situating Modern Landscape Architecture". Here, she challenges the taken-for-granted 'errors of thought' that result in landscapes being used as a passive ground instead of as "an autonomous design practice expressing its own language of space and form".
She writes: “I am haunted by the ease with which many modern theories conflate landscape, nature, the irrational, and the irregular with the feminine, while architecture, culture, the rational, and the ordered are aligned with the masculine.”
“To view the relationship between the human and non-human natural world through the lens of binary categories—nature and culture, man and nature, formal and informal, figure and ground—fails to accommodate the in-between quality of landscape.”
This in-between isn't a formless regression but rather a reconciling "making consistent or compatible" or "joining evenly with another":
“Theories of the object or thing must give way to theories about the relationship between things.”
I agree, the feminine and the masculine elements in landscapes both need to be applied in a more subtle, comprehensive manner in design. Anything less isn't caught up to our present ethos.
Today, I will explore this idea using quotes from her 1992 essay "Situating Modern Landscape Architecture". Here, she challenges the taken-for-granted 'errors of thought' that result in landscapes being used as a passive ground instead of as "an autonomous design practice expressing its own language of space and form".
She writes: “I am haunted by the ease with which many modern theories conflate landscape, nature, the irrational, and the irregular with the feminine, while architecture, culture, the rational, and the ordered are aligned with the masculine.”
“To view the relationship between the human and non-human natural world through the lens of binary categories—nature and culture, man and nature, formal and informal, figure and ground—fails to accommodate the in-between quality of landscape.”
This in-between isn't a formless regression but rather a reconciling "making consistent or compatible" or "joining evenly with another":
“Theories of the object or thing must give way to theories about the relationship between things.”
I agree, the feminine and the masculine elements in landscapes both need to be applied in a more subtle, comprehensive manner in design. Anything less isn't caught up to our present ethos.
References: Swaffield, S. ed., 2002. Theory in landscape architecture: A reader. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Images: 1) martinox17 2) jovibingelyte - Pixabay
Images: 1) martinox17 2) jovibingelyte - Pixabay