Designing Nature as Energy Infrastructure. Envisioning new Aesthetics through Landscape Design

The main goals of this contribution are twofold. Firstly, it explores the hypothesis of considering landscape as a pervasive energy infrastructure both in action (in esse) and in potentia (in posse). Secondly, this fundamental hypothesis is developed with regard to the emergence of new aesthetics related to the notion of nature as a production and supply system of different forms of energy (endosomatic and exosomatic) and of energy or matter transformation processes (photosynthesis, composting, evapotranspiration, etc.). Our argumentation is developed in three main steps. In the first part, we assess the potential for landscape as an energy infrastructure, with regard to speculation during the last decade on the notion of “infrastructure” (as a concept and an object) in North-American landscape urbanism, and the consequent development of the landscape infrastructure approach. Our hypothesis of considering landscape as an energy infrastructure is then explored by taking into account the contribution of ecology as the study of nature in terms of matter, energy, and organization. In the second part, we analyze the role of landscape architecture practice in establishing a new agency and new scales and scopes for the design of landscape infrastructure. If we consider nature in terms of an energy infrastructure, both in esse and in posse, new strategies based on landscape architecture savoir-faire, specific tools, and techniques may emerge with the purpose of capitalizing on the energy potential embedded in the heterogeneous forms of nature. In the final part, we develop critical considerations of the aesthetic values related to the energetic dimension of landscape as infrastructure. This consideration entails the search for new representations and aesthetic codes of nature, developed at the intersection of the fields of environmental art and natural science, and where nature is intended as a production and supply system of different forms of energy.