辩证的过程性景观设计

Rethinking a Landscape Project in the Discourse of Dialectical Process

关键词:  风景园林  运动  变化  动态  时间  日内瓦艾尔河

Key words:  landscape architecture  movement  transformation  dynamics  time  River Aire in Geneva

摘要:

过程性是风景园林理论的关键话语，既与自然人文科学挂钩，又与景观设计及其理论衔接，更与学科自主性关联，因此探讨过程性之于风景园林是必 要的理论关键词。瑞士风景园林师乔治·德贡布设计的日内瓦艾尔河景观项目则能充分彰显当代景观设计中蕴含的过程性话语。简述德贡布及其作品的基本信 息，从设计策略和营造美学2个维度入手，深入剖析艾尔河景观设计的辩证过程性。设计策略关注4个层面的空间性过程：1)“新”与“旧”的位移；2)“显”与 “隐”的摆置；3)“几何网格”与“水流力量”的叠加；4)大自然的全面胜利。设计美学聚焦2个层面的时间性过程：1)循环性时间体验；2)绵延性时间体验。 旨在一方面从艾尔河景观项目中揭示过程性话语的辩证内涵，另一方面丰富风景园林理论的过程性话语。

Abstract:

Process is a key discourse in landscape architectural theory, which is not only linked to natural and human science but also related to disciplinary autonomy, and therefore, process is an essential theoretical discourse in landscape architecture. The project of River Aire in Geneva designed by Swiss designer Georges Descombes is an exemplary case embodied by profound discourses of process in contemporary landscape design. To elucidate the essence of process discourse in this designed landscape project, other relative concepts will be included, more precisely, spatial movement, formal transformation, fluvial dynamics, and temporary changes are all necessary factors to manifest the landscape process. Georges Descombes is famous for his creative approaches and ideas to deal with landscape, which could be briefly summed up as dualism contradictions between different materials and elements. Those invisible potentialities underneath the site acquired their own chances to be found by their visitors. It is the idea of superposition that had become the main weight for Georges Descombes to win the final competition. This paper will engage in various design strategies and aesthetics to analyze the dialectical processes in consideration of its ample charisma of superposition. Those strategies will focus on four aspects of spatial processes: 1) The displacement between "new" and "old", which means Georges Descombes did not employ the obsolete way to remold the previous river, but instead of excavating a brand-new river beside it. The configurational changes between the new and old river produce the effect of process. 2) The juxtaposition between "visible" and "hidden", which refers to another type of changes that emerged through sticking bold structures in the original river with silence. 3) The overlaying between "geometric form" and "natural force", in which processes are implied by the ceaseless battles and fictions between those. On the one hand, Georges Descombes created a rhomboid geometric grid at the bottom of the river with a large excavator, and on the other hand, he also let river water flow to a free degree. It is neither a total top-down design approach, nor a bottom-up one, but a dialectical gesture between presupposed form and laissez-faire natural forces. 4) The ultimate victory by natural forces, which means that nature will take over everything over time. In this process, the river finally dispels any vestige of the artificial morphology in the new river, and in the meantime, this river will also spontaneously emerge as an abundant ecosystem with the charming atmosphere of urban wilderness. Again, the aesthetics enticed by Descombes' imaginative interferences could also emit the traces of process, of which parts pay close attention to the temporal dimension. The first one is about cyclical time experience. When the project is finished, there are at least two kinds of natural systems that consist of classic notions of Three Nature in Western culture, which could deliver an endlessly recurrent experience about time. The second one is about durational experience. It indicates that the immobile and interval temporality among past, now, and future are collapsed into an instant moment, which is an innovative concept of time that transforms the linear sequences into a simultaneous time. In sum, on the one hand, this article aims to reveal the dialectical connotations of process discourse in River Aire landscape design, and on the other hand, it could also contribute to a further grasp on the process discourse in the field of landscape architecture theory