Vol. 19 No. 1 (2021): Landscape design & COVID-19. Progettare per la natura
Segregazione: silenzio, parla la natura

Urban Landscape and Horror Vacui, spectacularity of a distorted perception

Giorgio Verdiani
Dipartimento di Architettura, DIDA
Stéphane Giraudeau
Dipartimento di Architettura, Università degli Studi di Firenze

Published 2021-07-26

Keywords

  • Pandemic,
  • Photography,
  • Emptiness,
  • Cities,
  • New Coronavirus

How to Cite

Verdiani, G., & Giraudeau, S. . (2021). Urban Landscape and Horror Vacui, spectacularity of a distorted perception. Ri-Vista. Research for Landscape Architecture, 19(1), 100–121. https://doi.org/10.36253/rv-10299

Abstract

In this paper, the very original urban landscape perception caused by the emergency after the 2020’ New CoronaVirus Pandemic event will be discussed and analyzed. Most of the approaches conducted on social media and on the newspaper have pointed to putting in evidence the spectacular empty cities “as never seen before”, which thing is absolutely correct and underlines a unique condition otherwise almost impossible to experience. In fact, the total lock-down caused by the emergency made it impossible to move from a view of the urban landscape to another, where most of the people were able to see such an emptiness only for their own town, maybe just for their own neighbourhood and maybe just from some lucky windows. The global condition will be watched only composing together the pictures exhibited online and in the newspaper. But … … … A specific set of images, created in the days of the emergency will comment and describe the content of the paper.