Il cosmo, il luogo. Le molteplici dimensioni del progetto di paesaggio

The article investigates Alexan-der von Humboldt’s role in con-temporary thinking about the conceptual categories and opera-tional tools of landscape design. Humboldt’s work contains two basic insights that anticipate some of the themes characterizing the contemporary idea of landscape. The first can be traced back to the concept of multi-dimensional geographic space, which cannot be all mapped but should be stud-ied through a multi-scalar and multi-disciplinary approach. The second lies entirely in the dual sig-nificance of geographical inquiry, which must be carried out simul-taneously on the conceptual level and on the sensitive-visual level, through the direct experience of field survey. For Humboldt, as well as for landscape design, different phenomena coexist in the whole of the transformation processes of a place, which are the always unstable result of the relationships between visible and invisible, macroscopic and micro-scopic elements. The space of the landscape is inhabited, traversed, modified, cultivated, constructed and devastated not only by hu mans, but also by animals and plants: multiple events and trajec-tories imprint on terrestrial envi-ronments the traces of different living beings. In this interweaving of dynamics, time plays an essen-tial role, as a measure of spatial relations and transformations that always raises the question of sur-vival and erasure of living things, of the inertia and transformation of the elements that constitute physical space. Issues central to discussing – today – the posi-tioning of landscape architecture within the processes that, between nature and culture, make life on Earth possible or impossible. The text also focuses on the represen-tational techniques used by Hum-boldt, outlining similarities and differences with mapping disci-pline, as defined by James Corner a few years ago and now widely used in the most advanced land-scape design experiences.