风景园林自主性理论的现状、困局与前提

Speculating the Status Quo, Dilemma, and Presupposition of Autonomy in Landscape Architectural Theory

关键词:  风景园林  学科  行业  文化  自主性

Key words:  landscape architecture  discipline  profession  culture  autonomy

摘要:

自主性理论的自觉是重建风景园林学科地位的关键举措。尽管国内外学界展开了相关研究，也呈现出几条隐匿的智识脉络，然而，由于还原主义、关联主义、本质主义三股力量的障隔，使得自主性议题始终未能真正登上风景园林理论研究的学术舞台。在简练勾勒其历史图景后，进一步指出8个认知可能是重启风景园林自主性理论研究的重要前提。研究结果有三方面价值：1)指认风景园林自主性理论的若干现状；2)剖析自主性理论困境的内在原因；3)澄清未来从事自主性思辨的学理基础。

Abstract:

The disciplinary crisis of landscape architecture is largely linked to the conditions of autonomous theory. The theory of autonomy in landscape architecture refers to a meta-concept that could distinguish this knowledge assemblage from other related disciplines, based on which theoretical discourse would establish the foundation of disciplinary legitimacy for landscape architecture. Over the past decades, researchers all over the world have explored the potential autonomous theories of landscape architecture by engaging with different terminologies, such as spatial-temporary integration, Shan shui, Jing, being in love takes time, pleasure, biological growth, plant materials, dynamic process, place-making, spirit of place, uselessness, vitality, and so on. Although this academic undercurrent about autonomous concerns has indeed existed, it is not appropriate to look over this situation in an optimistic perspective; in other words, the discussion on autonomous theory has never gained its own crucial role in the center of the academic arena in the field of landscape architecture. Three main reasons are outlined to provisionally explain the undeveloped status of autonomous theory in this paper. The first vein is called for reductionism paradox, which means landscape research have given up exploring the issues of "what is landscape", instead, more attentions have been paid on topics of "how does landscape effect", and this transformation of academic trend has merely reduced landscape itself into the tool, therefore landscape can never make its own legitimacy and dissolve the exististial root for its autonomy. The second vein refers to the correlationism trap, which indicates that the discourse of landscape architecture, especially in terms of landscape design, is consistently drawn from theories of art, painting, and literature; to a large degree, it has prevented landscape architecture from creating its own original insights. The third vein is coined as the essentialism illusion, which refers to the predicament that landscape architecture often treats temporality, spirit of place, or process as its core attributes, yet those terms are also shared with the architectural discipline, which tells us that those keywords just camouflage themselves as the essential qualities of landscape architecture. In order to set up some intellectual foundations for future speculation on autonomous theories, the following will propose nine promises in this paper: 1) Distinguishing three kinds of cultural, disciplinary and professional categories of autonomy in landscape architecture; 2) Identifing both self-independence and self-referentiality as the indispensable content of landscape architectural autonomy; 3) Illuminating the similarities and differences between ontology and autonomy is key recognition for autonomous research; 4) Maintaining the dialectical relationship between interdisciplinary research and autonomous study; 5) Keeping balance between humanism and positivism in terms of research methodology; 6) Taking into account the universal and unique characteristic of landscape architectural theories; 7) Probing their ontological meanings of both landscape and Feng Jing; 8) Recovering its ontological and autonomous connotation of garden-making as the stepping stone; 9) Reseting the theoretical coordinates of autonomy within a five-layer concentric, radial structural model of landscape architecture theory.