Landscape, memory and

contemporary design
Panita Karamanea

Abstract Simon Schama in Landscape and Memory says, ‘Before it can ever be a
repose for the senses, landscape is the work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as
much from the strata of memory as from layers of rock’ (1995: 6–7).

Landscape and memory are concepts that are strongly interwoven in the identity of
a place and its inhabitants. For the teaching and practice of landscape architecture,
‘landscape identity’ is regarded as an important issue of special conceptual value.

This essay explores the way that landscape, identity of a place and memory interact
through design and design’s visual form. It is divided into two parts. The first explains
conceptual approaches to landscape as a palimpsest of actions on territory, as a
dynamic ‘archive’, and as a tangible link between what we are and what we have
become. The second part is focused on a review of three examples of design from
professional and educational case studies. The rationale for presenting the particular
projects is that each one explores the relationship between identity, memory
and landscape design to address three questions: How can we activate latent
characteristics of a landscape that are connected and refer to past times? How can
contemporary landscape design rethink the past and reveal the subtle traces left at
an historical or archaeological place? How does memory, as a mind process, inflect
our perception of landscape and influence our interventions and thoughts about it?

In order to conceive integrated proposals that are not imposed on or do not alter
the site radically, all three projects try to activate the inherent qualities of each place.
They propose spaces that host a resilient coexistence of architectural and natural
elements using subtle gestures and ecology as the main design tools. They are
landscape projects that try to awaken, to reveal, to underline by subtraction the
strongest elements that form the identity of a place and to achieve these aims within
a biological framework.

Introduction
Paysage est ou le ciel et la tierre se touchent
—Michel Corajoud

Landscape architecture can be considered as a lens for understanding a site

and enriching spatial creations. It is a broad field that refers to the parameters,
tensions and dynamics that create space in an ever-changing system

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of relationships. This essay explores the way that landscape as a subject of

research, the identity of a place and memory interact through design and its
visual and material form.

Divided into two parts, the first explains conceptual approaches to landscape
as linked to place, identity and memory, and examines concepts of genius loci
and collective memory. If we consider designs as hypotheses made about sites,
can collective memory and genius loci form an opportunity for intervening?
The second part of the essay is focused on a review of three design examples
from professional and educational case studies. The rationale for presenting
these projects is that each one of them responds to the above question of how
to interrelate identity and memory with landscape design.

The first example, located in the historical centre of the city of Thessaloniki,
refers to the redesign of an urban square that witnessed dramatic events during
the Second World War. The second example has to do with the redesign of
the surroundings of a protected monument in the same city. The third example
presents a diploma student project that focused on enhancing through design
the archaeological site of a sacred necropolis in Crete.

An urban landscape in the centre of an historical city, a landscape surrounding a

monument in the suburbs, an archaeological landscape in the countryside of an
island—three completely different landscapes that provoke the same questions:
How can we activate latent characteristics of a landscape that are connected
and refer to past times? How can contemporary landscape design rethink the
past and reveal the subtle traces left at an historical or archaeological place?
How does memory, as a mind process, inflect our perception of landscape and
influence our interventions and thoughts about it?

Each project engages with the relationship of landscape design to memory

using an array of different design tools.

Landscape, place and identity—The genius loci

landscape is a repository of memory both individual and collective … [and]
is a site of and for identity
—W.J.T. Mitchell

Landscape architecture, when understood as a means to culturally define

place, is a vast interdisciplinary field that addresses the relationship between
the built and natural environment. As a common ground between urbanism,
architecture and ecology, landscape architecture tries to respond to current
issues of sustainability and environmental decline, but is equally concerned with
questions concerning culture, identity and aesthetics.

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The crucial difference between landscape architecture and scientific fields that
investigate aspects of landscape is that the former focuses on the processes
of space formation in relationship to scale, time and topos. It is concerned
with the cultural and spatial organisation of place as a dynamic continuum
that, according to functional programs and natural ecosystems, is constantly
changing. Landscape architecture is the intermediate layer of transformation
between nature and culture. When we look at a landscape, we are looking at
something that is forever changing both physically and visually. The interaction
between human action and the natural characteristics of a site create landscape,
which is understood in this context as the cultural expression of a civilisation.

Theorist Christian Norberg-Shulz, when discussing the concept of genius loci,

speaks of architecture as making concrete the nature of a place. He says that
human-made places relate to nature in three evolutionary ways: first, human
beings visualise an understanding of nature; second, humankind symbolises
this understanding; and, finally, humankind uses this understanding to create
a micro-cosmos. In Elements of Visual design in the Landscape, landscape
architect Simon Bell writes:

Genius loci, or the spirit of the place, is that quality or characteristic

which makes one location or landscape different from any other, and
that is unique and individual to it. The concept is somewhat abstract and
intangible and tends to be more commonly understood on an emotional
and subconscious level. It is, however, a most important attribute in a
place and may be fragile and vulnerable when changes occur in or around
the particular location. (1993: 119)

In ‘Being and time’, philosopher Martin Heidegger discusses the concept

of dasein, which he describes as being in space. The world is experienced
through our bodies; the physical world is an integral part of our existence and
the basis of our perceptions. He adds that humankind is part of a fourfold
continuum of earth, sky, mortals and divinities. In his essay ‘Building dwelling
thinking’, he argues that, through dwelling, human beings place themselves in
this fourfold continuum. He refers to the Greek word techne, which means to
make something appear. For example, ancient Greek open-air amphitheatres
are places where human creation and site form one landscaped whole through
techne, one cultural entity below sky.

Simon Bell also says that place is important to us and our lives because our
sense of identity may be bound up with a particular place and we may refer to
ourselves by reference to particular places. Place itself consists of the totality
of the natural and constructed elements, assembled in a unique manner that
includes the history and associations attached to the place by the people who
relate to it.

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For landscape architecture, education and practice, attention to ‘landscape

identity’ is seen as part of a professional ethos; it has a special value. Landscape
identity has two aspects: one has to do with the physical features of a site that
give it a special spatial character and the other refers to the relationship of human
beings to a specific landscape and what it means to them. Derk Stobbelaar
and Bas Pedroli define landscape identity as ‘the unique psychosociological
perception of a place defined in spatial-cultural space’ (2011). They explain that
‘social-cultural meanings that are linked with places, features or events in the
landscape, play a role in the collective living world and confirm the “we-feeling”
of a group’. Landscape identity is a key issue for them and they add that the
‘characteristic features of a landscape, rooted in time, visible and recognisable,
distinguish the landscape from other landscapes and play a role in the collective
living environment’. Without people connected to them, landscapes are no
longer living places.

A landscape may be a physical space for living, but it is also a place with
social meaning. ‘Place’, anthropologist Marc Augé asserts, ‘can be defined as
relational, historical and concerned with identity’. Accordingly, the specificity
of a place makes it a reference point and source of identification for citizens.
Augé’s concept of place is clearly charged with emotion and memory. Opposed
to a place is the concept of a non-place. This is described by Augé, as a ‘space
which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity’
and is consequently devoid of emotion and memory. In it, social interactions
and emotional attachment fail and give way to individualism. An example is a
supermarket, which is devoid of local identity and might be constructed in any
place of the world. As he notes, the ‘space of non-place creates neither singular
identity nor relations; only solitude’.

At the 2010 Conference of the International Federation of Landscape

Architects in Santiago, Chile, it was claimed that ‘landscape architecture is
a discipline cherishing and protecting the geographical identity of a place’
(Howard, Thompson and Waterton 2013: 274). Furthermore, the European
Landscape Convention states that landscape ‘contributes to the formation of
local cultures and … is a basic component of the European natural and cultural
heritage, contributing to human well-being and consolidation of the European
identity’. It is not only that landscape represents cultural identity, but that it also
serves as an identity builder.

The need for research into the places where individuals might interact and
create a common feeling of belonging is more crucial than ever. In Sentimental
Topography, the visionary Greek landscape architect Dimitris Pikionis explains:

We rejoice in the progress of our body across the uneven surface of the
earth. And our spirit is gladdened by the endless interplay of the three
dimensions that we encounter in every step … You compose the diagrams
of this landscape. You are the landscape. You are the Temple that is to

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crown the precipitous rocks of your own Acropolis. For what else does
the Temple do but enact the same twofold law which you serve? … Is
it not because of this concordance, because the same laws are at work
in both nature and art, that we are able to see forms of life, forms of
nature transformed before our very eyes into forms of art and vice versa?
(1989: 68)

Pikionis eloquently describes the close sensorial relationship between human

beings and the landscape that is walked and experienced: topos and person
becoming one entity.

Memory and its relationship to topos

The American Nobel prize-winning neuropsychiatrist Eric Kandel has claimed
that knowledge and memory are the centres of gravity of our personal identity,
they make us what we are:

In a larger sense, memory provides our lives with continuity. It gives

us a coherent picture of the past that puts current experience in
perspective. We are who we are because of what we learn and what we
remember … Memory is essential not only for the continuity of individual
identity, but also for the transmission of culture and for the evolution and
continuity of societies over centuries … loss of memory destroys our
sense of self. It severs the connection with the past and with other people.
(2006: 10)

In Europe, the concept of memory is always located in an historical context and

is strongly linked to a sense of place. Landscape architect Christophe Girot
says that the landscape precedes the landscape architect, yet architecture can
never precede the architect. As landscapes contain the palimpsest of human
actions over time, they are also carriers of the past. Finding a way of keeping a
memory ‘alive’ is an act of resistance to losing our identity. The same stands for
landscapes of memory. Landscape design in this sense should be the stabiliser
of meaning, an intermediary keeping memory in a continuous recall. A well-
preserved or designed landscape provides a psychological anchor between us
and the world. Without this connection with the landscape, the individual can
feel rootless. Landscape can provide a tangible link between what we are and
what we have become.

Landscape and memory are concepts that are strongly interwoven with the
identity of a place and its inhabitants. Local myths, associations, habits and
rituals, shared fears, collective memory and common feelings are all intangible
elements of a place that give it a certain allure and atmosphere, its sense of
place, its genius loci. It is not only how a place is but also how it makes us feel,
how we live and perform in it.

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In On Collective Memory, the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs suggests

that a social group’s identity is constructed out of narratives and traditions that
are created to give its members a sense of continuity, a sense of belonging.
The term collective memory includes the myths, traditions and beliefs that tie
people together. Individual memory refers to personal events, while collective
memory contains events that were transmitted to the individual by other
members of the society, it is a mutual memory that concerns us all, which is why
it is so important. Halbwachs also says that individual memory is personal, while
collective memory is a framework on which we can relate and contextualise
our memories. He suggests that our memories gain significance only in relation
to collective memory; that is, a kind of memory living beyond the individual.
He adds, however, ‘While the collective memory endures and draws strength
from its base in a coherent body of people, it is individuals as group members
who remember’ (1992: 48).

French historian Pierre Nora says:

We speak so much of memory because so little is left … Our interest in lieux

de mémoire, where memory crystallises and secretes itself, has occurred
at a particular historical moment, a turning point where consciousness of
a break with the past is bound up with the sense that memory has been
torn—but torn in such a way as to pose the problem of the embodiment
of memory in certain sites where a sense of historical continuity persists.
There are lieux de mémoire, sites of memory, because there are no longer
milieux de mémoire, real environments of memory. (1989)

Nora observes that there has been a shift from ‘a natural, collective memory’—
milieux de mémoire—to a more ‘conscious way of maintaining memory’ that
has to do with intervention on specific sites—lieux de mémoire. The fact that in
lieux de mémoire memory serves as a spectacle for the modern city could lead
to a kind of contemporary loss of memory. This observation on the one hand
emphasises the importance of designing memory spaces but, on the other hand,
implies that the role of natural memory could be unintentionally minimised.

The lack of a dynamic active memory creates our interest in sites where memory
recurs, places that give us a sense of continuity. Memorial sites are needed
because of the lack of a spontaneous automatic and genuine memory. Places
that are designed as memory archives, as memory landscapes, have to exist in
order to be the spatial testimonies of our lost collective memory.

English writer Margaret Drabble declared, ‘This is one of the reasons why we
feel such a profound and apparently disproportionate anguish when a loved
landscape is altered out of recognition; we lose not only a place, but ourselves,
the continuity between the shifting phases of our life’. Landscapes of memory
are not functional places but places that express ideals that carry meanings.
The tangible and intangible aspects of collective memory can subconsciously
inflect the landscape design process. As historian Simon Schama writes in

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Landscape and Memory, ‘Before it can ever be the repose for the senses,
landscape is the work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much from the strata
of memory as from layers of rock’.

Landscape design as a lens for reinterpreting the

past—On designing landscapes
How can we activate latent characteristics of a landscape that are connected
and refer to past times? How may memory, as a mind process, inflect our
perception of landscape and influence our interventions on it? The interesting
issue is not only to respond to the question of what landscape is as a concept,
but also to explore how to design landscapes and invent ways of revitalising
and transforming them through reference to the past.

‘Landscape’ is not merely a philosophical term or a spectacular view of nature,

it can also be a design product, an intervention on a large scale, or a project
with biological infrastructure. It seems that landscape design is a cultural act
of incorporation and compositional weaving together of all the parameters that
characterise a site: morphology, hydrology, ecology, scale, vulnerabilities and
latent dynamics, as well as local myths, beliefs and atmospheres—in totality,
the genius loci. The landscape designer usually works with these aspects of a
place in order to reinterpret it. Simon Bell explains:

… genius loci is an elusive quality which tends to be easier to conserve

than to create. It is certainly vulnerable to damage or destruction if not
recognized or valued and treated with sufficient sensitivity. People tend to
be more attached to a landscape with a strong sense of place and so are
more likely to be sensitive to and wary of landscape change. An essential
part of the analysis of any landscape should be to try to identify the genius
loci. (1993: 122)

If we assume that landscape design can translate these complexities and

different layers of meaning, then we could claim that in order for a project to
belong to an historical place it must respect and reinterpret the history and past
memories recorded there. Monuments and an historical built environment help
people to remember, or not to forget. Preservation of place ensures that it is
possible to associate it with past events and to maintain historical continuity
across time.

The next section explores the way in which landscape, identity of a place and
memory interact through design and design’s visual and material form, using
examples from professional and educational projects.

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The projects selected vary in scale, context, situation and historicity, but share
concern for the issue of how contemporary landscape design can rethink the
past and reveal the subtle traces of the past that remain at an historical or
archaeological site.

Example A: Redesigning Eleftherias Square, Thessaloniki—

‘The time tissue’

Competition entry: 12th shortlisted selection among 145 entries

Design Team: Katerina Andritsou, architect/landscape architect;

Panita Karamanea, architect/landscape architect;
Athanasios Polizoidis, architect/landscape architect

Collaborators: Errikos David, lighting expert;

Elias Kaboukos, installations expert

Students: Xenia Papatriantafillou, Marintina Kardarakou

April 2013

Time is rather a boundless landscape and what moves is the observer’s eye.
—Thornton Wilder

Eleftherias (freedom) Square is a unique place of collective memory for the

city of Thessaloniki. Urbanity, history and memory are strongly attached to
this place, giving it deep symbolic meaning. At the beginning of the twentieth
century, the square was an urban space of leisure. It was burnt in the great fire
of 1917 (which destroyed much of the city) and was witness to many historical
events that occurred between the two world wars. One of the darkest historical
events took place during the Second World War when German soldiers forced
local people into the square before transporting them to concentration camps.
This dramatic event stigmatised the square and, eventually, collective memory
came to regard it as a ‘cursed place’. The cruel historical events became a burden
for the site, which ended up a leftover space, a terrain vague that functioned
as open-air parking. The square, however, situated as it is in the centre of the
historical old city and in front of the waterfront, is extremely beautiful.

In the spring of 2013, the municipality of the city announced an architectural

competition to redesign the square in order to reclaim this ambiguous terrain as
an active urban space.

This is an example of when a place, although it possesses a strong collective

memory, has lost its physical form as well as its capacity to engage people in
thinking about its past functions and associations. It seems that it requires the

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activation of the qualities that are inherent in the site in order to unlock the latent
genius loci. How can landscape design reinvent a particular place within a city;
how can a place of the past come alive for the present and the future?

The sense of loss forms an opportunity for urban revival and spatial cohesion;
this ambiguous and awkward terrain needs to be rethought with consideration
for the relationship between this landscape and memory. The intervention sought
to create a contemporary European urban space that revealed the genius loci.
The particular memories associated with the site and its temporal relationships
gave birth to the main idea.

Time was the starting point: time as an ephemeral instant, as a continuing

sequence of metropolitan events, as an historical moment. Temporality, fluidity,
intertemporal facts. Time here is understood according to three modalities: as
history and its relation to collective memory; as ecology, including the cyclical
time of nature and the four seasons; and as urbanity, the ephemeral leisure time
of the contemporary metropolitan inhabitant. Time was acted on as a unifying
tissue, a time tissue.

Figure 1. Masterplan
Source: Panita Karamanea

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The main spatial tool of the design proposal was the surface of the square
and its sections; horizontal planes constructed from different local stones in
longitudinal layers that weave from side to side, giving a sense of fluidity to the
site through flowing lines that stretch and divide the square into three functional
zones while, at the same time, creating a unified space.

Figure 2. Diagrams and sections

Source: Panita Karamanea

The dominant compositional element was the void left in the centre of the
square, symbolising loss. On the edges of the square, tall existing trees form
an urban forest in the middle of which is a clearing. It is an open space from
which the sea, the horizon and the surrounding built landscape of the old city
are visible: a free and open space in which to just be. The surface of the square
runs up against a sculptural memorial wall, an anti-monument, that seems to
draw the ground into it.

The intervention has a strong Mediterranean aspect. Proposed plantings are

local species that demand little irrigation, thereby helping to rejuvenate the
existing ecology. The existing trees, which are the main focus of the square,
are maintained, while secondary trees are proposed to emphasise the project’s
spatial structure. Vegetal borders form mild filters for the surroundings, and
a series of small-scale Mediterranean garden habitats complement the project.

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Figure 3. Photomontages
Source: Panita Karamanea

Example B: Eptapirgion area, Thessaloniki—

‘Ecological histories’

Competition entry: 4th prize

Design Team: Panita Karamanea, architect/landscape architect;

Athanasios Polizoidis, architect/landscape architect;
Elena Kouri, architect

Collaborators: Errikos David, lighting expert

Student: Xenia Papatriantafillou

November 2012

In wilderness is the preservation of the world.

—Henri David Thoreau, 1862

Eptapirgion is a medieval castle acropolis on the north-east border of

Thessaloniki. It is situated on a small hill, surrounded by parts of the medieval
wall that once protected the city. In the medieval era, the castle defended the
city but, in recent times, it functioned as a political prison. Collective memory
has categorised it as a frightening and wild site, a place of imprisonment for
the condemned that is beyond the scope of normal life and joy. The site of
Eptapirgion, however, has a special identity and atmosphere, abundant natural
beauty and astonishing views. Today, the site is wild, a protected cultural
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landscape where history meets the contemporary urban profile; it is a place that
holds the city’s heritage, waiting to be revealed. The castle stands at the top of
a hill amidst patches of vegetation and meandering paths.

In November 2012, the municipality announced an architectural competition for

the rehabilitation of the site. The project presented below won 4th prize.

Eptapirgion is an example of a site where the genius loci is very strong.

The potent presence of the monument as well as the natural beauty of the
terrain demands minimum interference. Any intervention should be discrete
but legible. If this territory, which is so full of symbolism, is our materia prima,
how can we maintain the sense of place and, at the same time, bring out the
latent meanings of the site and create a contemporary urban space? The main
inspirational concept was to maintain the site’s genius loci as well as the existing
vegetal wilderness.

Figure 4. Masterplan and photomontages

Source: Panita Karamanea

The goal was to create a mild green cosmos, a buffer zone between the city and
the monument. The concept was derived from the defensive character of the
existing walls and proposes a soft, planted mantle of protection and emergence;
a filter between the city and an enclosed landscape. The intervention has a
strong ecological–bioclimatic aspect and uses few elements to organise the
place. The design concept is based on using natural processes, designing with
nature and restoring wilderness. The design process focused upon:

1. Harnessing movements, flows and pauses in relation to the topography.

The main compositional gesture is a network of dirt paths that enable an
experiential narration of the landscape and the monument. The paths follow

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the topography and are connected with rest areas at key viewpoints near
the walls, revealing the urban fabric, the mountain and the sea.

Figure 5. Diagrams Figure 6. Diagrams

Source: Panita Karamanea Source: Panita Karamanea

2. Creating a smooth vegetated mantle–filter that reveals and will gradually

protect the monument and its surroundings. Local Mediterranean dry-
climate species are used as they demand little irrigation and emphasise the
site’s austerity and symbolism. The design highlights the existing meadows,
which are considered as free fields for natural regeneration. On the site’s
boundaries a filter of low evergreen trees is created for sound insulation and
wind protection.

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3. The distinct spatial identities within the site are identified and emphasised:
the meadow, the zigzag path, the viewpoints, the enclosed gardens,
the linear park, the hidden amphitheatres, the path by the walls.

Example C: Landscape design as an educational process—

On teaching landscape
Landscape design as a methodological tool in education is more and more
useful for architectural studies. Landscape architecture as an interdisciplinary
subject of research is particularly important for understanding the construction
of culture and place, identities and space, environmental issues and habitats.
Landscape architecture offers a holistic perspective on integrating environment
with culture.

In his essay ‘Nine rules for students of landscape architecture’, French

landscaper and educator Michel Corajoud advises that it is very important when
visiting a site to sharpen personal observation. He insists that all information
and answers are there, a priori. The only task for the landscaper is to pose
the right question. A landscape project should try to awaken, to reveal and to
underline by subtraction the strongest elements that form the identity of a place
and to achieve these aims within a biological framework. Landscape architect
Christophe Girot explains that the four steps necessary when approaching a
site are: i) landing; ii) grounding; iii) finding; and iv) founding.

In recent years, landscape architecture has come to be of central importance

for archaeologists in the European context. Archaeology, after all, is basically
about three elements: material evidence, sites, and what can be understood
from them. Landscape archaeology is the study of a terrain through the material
remains of the past. The next example is about a sacred landscape in the
countryside of Crete and the effort to decode the site through a diploma project.

Diploma project: The case of the Minoan Necropolis in Armeni, Crete—

‘Time shortcuts’

School of Architecture, Technical University of Crete, Chania

Students: Hrisa Panagiotopoulou, Hristianna Fotou

Supervisors: Panita Karamanea, architect/landscape architect,

lecturer in architectural and landscape design;
Fani Tuffano-Mallouhou, archaeologist, associate
professor of restoration

October 2013

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The quality of an artist depends upon the quantity of past he bears

within him.
—Jean Gris

The project is an intervention in the late Minoan necropolis in Armeni–Rethymno,

a protected archaeological site that is situated in a protected natural landscape
in the countryside of Crete.

The extremely beautiful and vulnerable site is an ancient cemetery interwoven

within a virgin landscape of oaks. The place is far from human settlement and
the highway and it seems to have been forgotten among the quiet surroundings.
The cemetery extends along a smooth slope where the ancient graves are
present as holes in the ground; they are a series of perpendicular gaps in
the landscape, burial cuts that have marked the site indelibly for centuries.
In combination with the dense shadows from the old oaks, the place emits a
sense of uncanny. It is a landscape intact since antiquity and collective memory
regards it as an unusual site in the midst of the Cretan countryside, far from
civilisation. The components of the site are minimal, potted with holes in the
earth and planted with oaks, the question to be answered is how to intervene
without damaging the atmosphere, in such a way as to be almost invisible.
Using the language of landscape architecture, this diploma project researched
how the spirit and identity of this site, where time seems to stand still, could be
heightened while enabling it to remain relatively untouched. This is an example
where the genius loci is symbolic and spiritual and the natural landscape
exceptional and rare. It is a cultural landscape that requires small gestures:
here, less physical alteration will achieve greater results.

The intent of the project was to heighten the qualities of the landscape by way
of a subtle and reversible intervention, thus allowing visitors to understand and
enjoy the special atmosphere of the place through the emergence of the natural
landscape.

Each cultural landscape is a dynamic system, where space and time constitute
an integral whole. The gradual decay of monuments over time leads us to
consider time as linear rather than cyclic, while time in nature is experienced
through the temporal cycles of the four seasons. This dual aspect of time and
how it can be experienced through human movement became the basic tool
underpinning the design intervention.

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Figure 7. Masterplan
Source: Panita Karamanea

The basic structural element is a new path that introduces the visitor to the
archaeological landscape by using the natural surroundings as elements of the
project. The most humble elements of the landscape—twigs, clay, tree trunks,
fallen leaves and rocks—are used with the same simplicity that prehistoric
humans built their dwellings. Starting with the materials found at the site,
delicate and reversible interventions are proposed that will disintegrate over
time. The entrance to the archaeological site, formed by a cut into the ground,
is a reminder of access to the graves, the old war pit (a hole in the ground
used for defence) is converted into an amphitheatre that is sheltered by a
wooden structure made from the existing trees, ancient deposition pits become
spiral open-air museums for objects found at the site, light cloth double shell
canopies that support climbing plants are proposed for the two largest tombs,
and new viewing and sitting areas are designed to facilitate contemplation of
the landscape. Simple archetypal forms from an ancient landscape, fragments
of a whole, create a contemporary path that passes through the elements that
evoke the history of the site, creating a contemporary landscape narration.

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Figure 8. Diagrams and photomontages

Source: Panita Karamanea

Anthropologist Tim Ingold, in his essay ‘The temporality of landscape’, says:

For both archaeologist and the native dweller, the landscape tells—or
rather is—a story. It enfolds the lives and times of predecessors who,
over the generations have moved around in it and played their part in its
formation. To perceive the landscape is therefore to carry out an act of

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remembrance and remembering that is not so much a matter of calling up

an internal image, stored in the mind, as of engaging perceptually with an
environment that is itself pregnant with the past. (2000: 189)

In having to deal with an archaeological landscape—an archaeo-scape—this

project based its design process on walking and the natural potentialities of
the site. Walking as a commemorative practice is used in order to awaken the
relationship between visitor and place. Movement as a device for understanding
landscape offers a varying conception of place, one which is continually shifting.
A temporal landscape is being created, one that is best understood not from
one point of view but when in motion. It is a spatial system to be experienced
and revealed dynamically.

Conclusions—Epilogue
Landscape is the result of tension and equilibrium, it is dynamism, capable
of transmitting emotion that goes beyond the visual.
—Manuel de Solà-Morales

Landscape design tries to balance dynamics in a constantly changing system

where the sum of the parts is more important than the parts on their own. As a
spatial syntax tool, it creates synergies and diagonal relationships between
concept, context and ecology. But most of all, it is an open process of design
related to time. Landscapes are always changing; they are in a constant state of
becoming. Interventions in landscapes concern not only the creation of forms
but organising the processes that give birth to them.

The examples presented in this essay show how topos, collective memory
and genius loci influence projects in a creative way. Landscape design as a
structural system organises, articulates, reveals, explains, reinterprets, protects
and underlines the qualities of a site. A series of intangible concepts, such as
collective memory and genius loci, as well as a series of tangible characteristics
like topography, movement and plantation were addressed to varying degrees
in each example.

In order to pay homage to collective memory and create an emotional landscape

for Thessaloniki, the first example used a cut section to create a void within
urban density. While the surrounding urban network is continuous, leaving an
open space allows the project to evolve. Because of the scale of the site it
is possible to maintain the existing void as a clearing in the city fabric. In the
meantime, the design of the square’s surface gives a new layer of meaning.
By shaping the terrain and creating sections at different levels, the space,
although empty, becomes sculptural. The eyes are directed downwards, paying
homage to an allegoric immersion in the earth and the past: a section in space,

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a metaphorical section in time, a ‘chrono-spatial fissure’. The project design

proposes an architectural hardscaped version of landscape design in a central
urban environment, using minimal symbolic elements.

The potential of ecology to act as a catalyst to rejuvenate a site on the city’s edge
is the design tool used in the second example. The existing wilderness means
that the site has a compelling existing identity. The project in this instance was
designed to modulate the unique qualities of the site in order to reveal and
enhance it. Thus, landscape interventions function as a kind of ‘acupuncture’
that activates the a priori features, which means that a softer vegetated scheme
is sufficient intervention. Ecological design and a network of paths is the missing
agent that enables the existing poetic wilderness of this landscape to emerge.
This is a softscaped approach that, by reactivating natural conditions, proposes
the restoration of the site.

In the last example, walking as a narrative practice is the sensorial device that
enables a visitor to experience a sensitive cultural landscape in the countryside.
The ancient necropolis of Armeni is a vulnerable site; the past is still present here
as the site has remained intact since antiquity. In this case, subtle and sensitive
gestures are appropriate. The project allows for the dissolution of material forms
while introducing subtle elements that are in tune with the natural environment
and made from humble local materials.

All three projects use the surface of the earth as a basic tool: a solid ground that
is gradually submerged, a vegetated soft ground that invites contemplation,
an earthy excavated ground to be traversed. ‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes,
dust to dust’ says the Christian burial service, reminding us of the close bond
that we have with the earth. It may be this strong subconscious relationship to
the earth that leads us to sculpt the ground in a poetic way in projects having
to do with the past. These projects also emphasise vegetation as a structural
three-dimensional element. Plants, trees and soil are all parts of a narrative that
creates spatial variety. Linear plantings or massed vegetation create spatial
filters, visual borders and places to sit. Using perennial and deciduous species,
a poetic effect is achieved as space dramatically changes with the seasons.
Vegetation serves as a soft system for organising space, a living eco-material
that varies through time. A third element in common is the use of movement in
space: the act of walking. Walking becomes a narrative device that illuminates
the site and its intrinsic qualities in a new way. The itinerary acts as an initiation
to space, provokes emotions, presents different perspectives and views and
leads the visitor through various spatial qualities. In this way, by engaging with
the site through the sensory abilities of the human body, the interaction between
the visitor and the landscape becomes a somatic experience.

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In The Eyes of the Skin, architect Juhani Pallasmaa says:

Sensory experiences become integrated through the body, or rather, in the

very constitution of the body and the human mode of being. Psychoanalytic
theory has introduced the notion of body image or body schema as the
centre of integration …

The body is not a mere physical entity; it is enriched by both memory and
dream, past and future. Edward S Casey even argues that our capacity of
memory would be impossible without a body memory … We remember
through our bodies as much as through our nervous system and brain.
(2005: 40, 45)

Through walking and exploring, the human body gives life to a place, making it
no longer a mute territory frozen in time but an animated landscape. Tim Ingold
refers to bodily memory as an aspect of human memory that can evoke another
kind of remembrance. He proposes the adoption of ‘a dwelling perspective when
thinking about landscape, according to which the landscape is constituted as an
enduring record of—and testimony to—the lives and works of past generations
who have dwelt within it and in so doing have left there something of themselves’
(2000: 189). The past reaches into the present through bodily memory and
human experience: looking, walking, listening, touching and smelling activate
these memorial spaces and bring them to life again. Space and movement
function as a catalyst.

Landscape architect Ian Mac Harg says that natural phenomena manifest
dynamically and depend upon physical laws and processes, we have to learn
how all these phenomena function before deciding to intervene in a site.
The  interesting issue for a landscape architect is to find ways to incorporate
into the design process the dynamic conditions of temporality and biological
materiality that are found in it.

In order to reveal the genius loci, each project used a process of subtraction
to reveal the strongest elements that formed the identity of each place. These
integrated proposals are not imposed on or do not radically alter each site, they
try to activate inherent qualities of each place but within a biological framework.
In order to activate latent characteristics that are connected and refer to past
times, all three projects try to create spaces that host a resilient coexistence of
architectural and natural elements. Depending on the context and the necessities
of each of these public spaces, the relation of hardscape to softscape varies.
From city to countryside, the physical interventions required to bring out the
hidden meanings of the site become less and less: an urban vegetated piazza
in Thessaloniki, a monument’s meadow in Eptapirgion, a natural architecture
in Crete. Minimal elements, subtle sensitive gestures, the use of ecology as a
mild living mantle, the ground as a relief of physical materiality, movement as a
device of interaction with the site, are all landscape tools that try not to impose
on these existing memory-scapes.

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By maintaining a landscape as untouched as possible, we leave room for

individual and collective memory. The landscape designer rethinks the past
and reveals the subtle traces left in an historical or archaeological place in
order to enable the visitor to access the past through these traces. Landscape
architecture, by using discrete design and ecology as a construction technique,
is able to leave a soft footprint at a site and can organise space without
burdening it by establishing designs that do not impose prevailing forms and
propose without aggression. The integrated result can help us understand and
perceive a vulnerable and precious landscape and be more likely to associate
it with its past.

Landscape is equally a construction of the mind, a cultural archive, and an

ecological warehouse. By linking landscape design research with practice and
education, this essay has presented a range of design tools and results that
activate the inherent qualities of each site.

Perhaps in the current era of environmental and economic crisis, hybrid

landscape design practices that pay attention to intangible qualities like
genius loci and memory are the only possible recourse to create culturally and
ecologically sustainable environments.

Panita Karamanea was born and studied architecture in Athens and then continued
her landscape studies in Barcelona. Her research interests are related to the
relationships between landscape and built environment in order to find interactive
tools of design integration. She has been teaching and practicing landscape
architecture in Athens, Barcelona and Crete. She has participated in and won
international and Hellenic competitions and shown in international exhibitions. She
is currently lecturer of architectural and landscape design at Technical University of
Crete, Greece.

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This text is taken from Craft + Design Enquiry, Issue 7, 2015,
edited by Kay Lawrence, published 2015 by ANU Press,
The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.