Vol. 23 No. 1 (2025): Aperto. Per un ritratto dello spazio aperto / Open. For a portrait of open space
Memoria / Memory

Entangled openness. Revisiting Open Space through Landscape and Design Agency

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  • Duarte Santo,
  • Maria Goula
Duarte Santo
Architect, Landscape and Urban Designer, Portugal
Bio
Maria Goula
Department of Landscape Architecture, Cornell University, USA
Bio
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/rv-17990

Published 2025-10-28

Keywords

  • Open space,
  • Landscape-based epistemology,
  • Relational spatiality,
  • Socio-ecological subjectivities,
  • Design agency

How to Cite

Santo, D., & Goula, M. (2025). Entangled openness. Revisiting Open Space through Landscape and Design Agency. Ri-Vista. Research for Landscape Architecture, 23(1), 74–89. https://doi.org/10.36253/rv-17990

Copyright (c) 2025 Duarte Santo, Maria Goula

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Abstract

This article reclaims open space as a critical category for landscape architecture, challenging its reduction to a void to be programmed amid socioecological crisis. It theorises open space as a contested dynamic assemblage where ecological processes, colonial histories and more-than-human agencies intersect with design’s technocratic impulses. Drawing on relational spatiality, we argue for a pluriversal theoretical framework that is attentive to overlaps, tensions, and entanglements, interrogating how this construct supports design agency amid complexity and inequality. Using the Puente Hills Landfill as a case study and boundary object, we examine how openness manifests across temporal, material and social registers, predicating open space as a generative, open-ended system and performative terrain where ecological subjectivities, cultural inscriptions, and socio-political claims converge, demanding a radical reorientation of design agency and landscape architecture’s epistemic boundaries.

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