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Interpretazioni di paesaggio
Convenzione Europea e innovazioni di metodo
edited by Alberto Clementi
Meltemi editore, 2002
pp. 336, € 25,00
ISBN 88-8353-173-6
Size 16,5x23,5
Web: http://www.meltemieditore.it/
Buying information
http://www.meltemieditore.it/nuovo/promo/promo.asp?codice=37
Book review
by Patrizia Gabellini
Landscape is one of today's most widely discussed themes. For some
years now there have been books, conferences, doctoral theses, schools
and advanced courses, competitions and job-offers all centring on
the landscape, so demonstrating and stimulating interest and a new
expertise around the various activities bound up with its conservation,
reclamation and enhancement. For this reason the title of the book
edited by Alberto Clementi, Interpretazioni di paesaggio, seems
to be particularly appropriate for various reasons: the interpretation
of landscape is a problem; it is reasonable to accept a "qualified
pluralism"; intervening in the landscape entails responsibility
of an interpretation. I feel that the title succeeds in suggesting
this breadth and complexity and effectively represents the book's
approach.
In 335 pages of densely written texts with a set of illustrations
at the end, it embodies the research conduct by the SIU-Società
Italiana Urbanisti, the work of a large body of lecturers and researchers
from eight Italian universities (there are 20 contributors) led
in 2001 to a commission by the Ministry for the Heritage and Cultural
Activities, with the purpose of "developing operatively and
experimenting preliminary guidelines for a method of landscape planning
introduced implicitly by the European landscape Convention and adapted
to the Italian context by the State-Regions Agreement."
The book consists of three parts that have complementary functions.
The first part explores the themes considered fundamental by the
research team (methods of interpreting the landscape, legal instruments,
the protection/concertation relationship, changes to the territory,
methods of design, professions and training profiles). The second
deals with the "approaches to method" (the method is divided
into 4 phases: A "identify landscapes", B "evaluate
landscapes", C "foresee changes and risks", D "upgrade/regulate
the transformations"). The third part presents experimentation
of the method in the territory of Cermino in the Marches, for which
it proposes, with reference to the 4 phases, 8 representations called
"charts" - perhaps in the hope they will acquire a statutory
value - (A1 "chart of the sources of identity", A2 "chart
of the functioning of the landscape", A3 "chart of the
landscape heritage", B "chart of values", C1 "chart
of processes", C2 "chart of plans", C3 "chart
of risks", D "chart of the quality objectives").
The full introduction by the editor, coordinator and director of
the research project gives a clear picture of the work and underlines
its innovative connotations, forming, together with the case study,
a compendium of the whole, but without taking space from the in-depth
studies, some of which have clearly left their mark on the research
and open up further areas for reflection and work.
Between the need to mark a cultural position and to configure a
praxis of the project by translating the principles adopted into
technical terms, the research measures its significance and its
difficulties. There is no doubt, in fact, that demanding conditions
are created by the transverse nature of the disciplines, the scale
of intervention characteristic of the interpretation of the landscape
and intervention in it, the attention focused on it at the institutional
level, and the cultural environment in which the work is set (In
Italy, the approach to landscape still embodies the concept of the
"natural" and "beautiful" features reflected
in the state laws nos. 1497 of 1939 and 431 of 1985). So this research
deserves particular attention, both the points it develops (clarifying
issues usually that are usually confused), and also the areas that
it systematizes (a technical translation of principles that, by
their nature, are ambiguous).
A "qualified pluralism" is the fundamental option enabling
us to understand the research and even the plural composition of
the academic team, which unites the collaboration of researchers
of appreciably different backgrounds, ages and experiences. The
outcome is evident in the theoretical framework and the exemplificative
applications, which recognise the attempt to cope with the most
significant disciplines and professions, those that use "objectifiable
analytical instruments" and those that bring into play "intricate
processes of symbolic signification", a spectrum that ranges
from the natural sciences to hermeneutics. The research, driven
by the operative objectives and linked to the texts of legislation,
constructs a careful path to the transmissibility of the judgments
it formulates and their verifiability, aiming to strip away the
vague and unexpressed from the descriptive and evaluative process
that supports projects and policies. In addition it makes choices
instead of placing the disciplinary fields on which it draws all
on a single plane: "It effortlessly presents the definitional
prospects that rest on the value of historicity and testimony 'possessing
a value of civilization' of which our cultural landscapes are an
extraordinary embodiment. It assumes without particular emphasis
the prospects presented by the sciences of landscape ecology that
have emerged above all in those countries richest in both naturalistic
and historical values abut not particularly convincing as totalising
paradigms of a new vision of the Italian landscape. Finally struggles
to cope with the complex questions of the hermeneutics and aesthetics
of landscapes, which do not lend themselves easily to an operative
definition of methods of intervention." (p.24) From this follows
what the authors define as "a patrimonial vision of the landscape",
an idea of the landscape as a "patrimony of identity resources,
whose conservation requires in-depth understanding of the processes
of selective accumulation that have acted in time and above all
in-depth understanding of the incessant interactions between environmental,
dynamic, developmental, practical frames of life and work of local
societies and the cultural and symbolic values of the age."
(p. 18)
This dynamic definition of the landscape as a "patrimony"
(in opposition to the static definition of it as a "deposit"),
as well as the assumption of contemporary thought centred on the
differences and the irreducible subjectivity of the people who use
and inhabit the landscapes, has some outstanding consequences, which
can hardly be shared unquestioningly:
- the line of demarcation between outstanding landscapes (what is
popularly meant by "landscape") and other cultural landscapes
is eliminated, while recognising the existence of different degrees
of integrity and significance. As the European Convention requires,
it defines "integrity" as "a condition of the patrimony
that takes into account the level of the completeness of the transformations
undergone in time", the clarity of the historico-landscape
relationships, the intelligibility of the systems of permanences,
of the degree of conservation of the cultural assets", and
its "significance" "in relation to the presence of
elements and patrimonial systems recognised on the national or international
level and/or recognised in specialised disciplinary elaborations
and in relation to the judgments expressed by the local society."
(p. 312. But it also notes that the two terms "should be a
starting point for the process of knowledge and evaluation articulated,
precise and commensurate with the specific nature of each site,
rather than understood as a simplistic, synthetic and constrictive
point of arrival." (p. 238);
- It affirms an active conception of protection and an interdependent
relationship with the process of improvement: "a policy for
the landscape that, while recognising the specificity and the significance
of certain territorial environments needing rigid conservative protection,
adopts a transverse approach over the whole territory, both natural
and anthropised, urban and agricultural, designating differentiated
practices of protection, but also of enhancement and promotion,
in relation to objective strategies and differentiated problems".
(p. 86) The break with dichotomic approaches is made evident by
the seven strategies for qualifying/regulating the transformations:
landscape as a "historico-natural document to be protected",
the "ruin to be cohabited with", the "spectacular
scene of global tourism (and the global economy)", the "resource
to be activated for a different model of development", the
"new inhabitable territory", the "network as the
fabric of a structurally fragmented territory", and the "sphere
that enfolds everyday life". (from p. 263);
- the hegemony of expert and elitist knowledge is no longer undisputed;
instead it is forced to confront the "diversity of interpreters,
namely of the individuals and populations involved" (p.28);
it is no longer an oxymoron to speak of cosnervation and concertation
("conservation and concertation: a possible combination?"
is the eloquent title of a chapter of the book), because without
recognising its value there can be no cure, the only antidote to
the proven inefficacy of many constraints.
The consequences prepared by the European Landscape Convention,
whose "threefold innovation" lies in: a) the comprehensive
significance (economic, political and cultural, as well as ecological
and aesthetic) to be attributed to the landscape, with reference
to the whole territory, not to single areas of excellence, which
entails a drastic shift in attention, from objects to systems, from
events to the context … and from the separate conservation
policies to all the policies in different ways capable of affecting
the conditions and development of the landscape; b) the innovative
significance to be attributed to the action of conservation, in
the transition from recognition of value to collective projects
by means of which the approach to landscape interrupted by the processes
of degradation can be resumed…; c) the centrality of the governance
of the territory, on all scales… not only because the control
of uses and of the organization of the territory is decisive for
the purpose of conservation and innovation of the landscape, but
also because the final political and cultural purpose of upgrading
the landscape can only consist in the beauty and quality of "inhabiting
the earth". (p.56)
At this point a careful study of the captions and keys of the charts,
as well as the methods of representation chosen becomes indispensable
to grasp in depth the range of the research.
The charts relative to identifications are the most convincing,
in part because of the range of forms of representation and the
integration of images with words. Those that deal with the evaluations
are probably constrained by the laconic scale of values deduced
from the European Convention and the Italian agreement. In fact,
another part of the book offers the caution that "in the assessment
charts … it is important to give not synthetic and graduated
judgments … so much as articulated and detailed motivations
that can then permit the adoption of plan and program choices that
are more fully aware and more easily shared by the public…;
not for broad areas…, but wherever possible, for every single
element… and spatial and functional system." ( p. 237)
The charts of changes and risks, updates and critical re-elaborations
of the tried and tested "mosaics of planning", in the
concern to go beyond the limits of zoning remain perhaps too abstract
and uncertain. The charts of upgrading, also faithful to the State-Regions
accord that identifies objectives of "active conservation",
"compatible development", and "re-enhancement",
need to be interpreted together with the entries relating to the
single contexts (not published in the book) to reveal their pregnancy.
What remains important is the synthesis that the assembly of the
charts presents with clarity, the outline of a path that can be
repeated and adapted. For this reason the work seems to fully satisfy
the need to lay down guidelines.
Contents
9 Premessa. Maurizio Galletti
11 Presentazione. Roberto Manuel Guido
13 Introduzione. Revisioni di paesaggio Alberto Clementi
Impostazioni: temi
54 Maniere d'intendere il paesaggio Roberto Gambino
73 Strurnenti giuridici per il paesaggio Paolo Urbani
80 Tutela e concertazione Piercarlo Palermo, Giovanni Pasqui,
Paolo Savoldi
96 Mutarnenti del territorlo Stefano Boeri, Giovanni Lavarra
106 Progettare per il paesaggio Cesare Macchi Cassia
119 Mestieri del paesaggio e profili formativi Salvatore Dierna
Impostazioni: indirizzi di metodo
Identificare i paesaggi
138 1. Risorse storico-culturali Anna Palazzo
161 2. Ecologie Rita Colantonio, Gioa M.Gibelli
179 3. Società locali e senso del paesaggio Paolo Castelnovi
198 4. Razionalità di funzionamento Lucina Caravaggi
217 Valutare i paesaggi Lionella Scazzosi
242 Prevedere mutamenti e rischi Mosé Ricci
Qualificare/Regolare le trasformazioni
262 1. Sette strategie per il paesaggio. Arturo Lanzani
292 2. Paesaggi e partecipazione. Edoardo Zanchini
Un esperimento di metodo
312 Il caso Camerino. Otto carte di paesaggio Lucina Caravaggi
AI. Carta delle risorse identitarie Lucina Caravaggi, Massimo
Angrilli,
Cristina Imbroglini
AI. Carta del funzionamento del paesaggio Lucina Caravaggi,
Cristina Imbroglini
A3. Carta del patrimonio paesaggistico Lucina Caravaggi,
Massimo Angrilli, Cristina Imbroglini
B. Carta dei valori Massimo Angrilli, Lucina Caravaggi
C1.Carta dei processi Massimo Angrilli
C2.Carta dei piani Massimo Angrilli
C3.Carta dei rischi Mosè Ricci, Massimo Angrilli
D. Carta degli obiettivi di qualità Massimo Angrilli,
Lucina Caravaggi
325 Fotografie per il paesaggio Paolo De Stefano
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