Un volto che non ci somiglia. Piante e alterità nel progetto di paesaggio

Abstract

We attribute to plants roles and capabilities from which we take inspiration to improve various aspects of the human condition, especially in landscape design. At the same time, we consider the plant world a distant, wild, sometimes frightening ‘elsewhere’. This dual sentiment underlies the belief that a marked divide exists between plants and people, nature and humans. It is a separation that many feel limits our understanding of the system of which we are a part. Through the investigation of unusual cultural experiences, such as that of pre-Aristotelian Greece or pre-Westernised Japan, during which plants had a different recognisability, contemporary landscape architecture can draw stimuli and suggestions to orient cultural imaginaries that can reabsorb the distance.