landscape

What emerges, for me, from the readings this week is the interrelation of spatiality with information and policy. Indeed SIDL suggests that these forces exist in a cyclical feedback scenario. In the case of Morrish’s description of landscapes Delta and SIDL’s rethinking of prisons as exostructures, there is the position that very way that we view the landscape can shape the way we interact with it. There are some important differences, however.
Morrish, in our excerpt, concludes by saying that we should design in relation to the systems that the landscape has established for itself, and in doing so we might rekindle a previous reverence of the landscape.
SIDL seems to suggest that through the project of mapping, we might uncover an otherwise hidden landscape that socially responsible design must respond to.
As these discussions relate to our explorations of Venice, I can start to conceptualize the challenge of responding to the ecologically sensitive area that is the lagoon, while also taking into account the as yet unrevealed landscape that arises from the intersection of Venice’s history as a land largely formed / informed by tourists with the physical boundaries that relate to Venice’s ecology. What are, if any, the exostructures formed by people trafficking in and out of Venice? What are the images that those people carry with them, and how does that now relate to construction of Venice?

Here (click the title of the post) is a satellite image from the causeway that connects Sacramento to the areas westward (The Bay, ect…) I saw this area flood last year during the record rainfall that the central valley experienced. In certain places only treetops and roof tops were visible. It always struck me as a weird place, swampy, but one can make out roadways that disappear into the marsh.