Turning aside from this diversionary question, "Is it beautiful?" wt arc free to accept artist James Turrell's imperative that "the media of art arc perception" Small wonder that Robert Smithson, carl Andre, Chrislo, Michael Heier, Dennis Oppenheim, and other artists turned to the landscape as their Jorum and/or medium. The landscape teems with factors which heighten one’s perceptual awareness and one’s artistic experience precisely because it overflows with latent present, is subject to relatively few metaphorical associations, and is largely lacking in museum pretension.
However, because of the landscape architect s bent for practicality (i.e., the client's needs), the application of these windfall advantages presents a problem. If we agree that the subject of art is aesthetic perception itself, and if we wish to claim for landscape architecture a seat among the other fine arts, then we ultimately must confront the messy dilemma of whether the profession’s works are to be a service to society or a commentary on society.
Most designers would define their professional role with one of these two terms. Most landscape architects and/or site planners could be expected to choose “service” over “commentary.” I he recognition of one’s own orientation is crucial, since it establishes and regulates the actual physical forms and, therefore, impact of the resulting landscapes, available to the artist/designer.
Over the past two decades, many leading characters have taken note of the findings in the field of semiotics and tried to apply them to the design of buildings, so they can serve more successfully as the cultural symbols their designers claim them to be. If the public is to “read” a building as a house, school, church, or whatever, the design should include those signs the public are most likely to interpret as indicating house, school, or church.
So here we finally arrive at the critical fork in the landscape architect’s road—whether to try to design a cultural symbol by molding signal-laden forms and materials, and thereby provide a valuable service to society, or to mold those or other forms and materials so that they are assigned new meanings evoking rich, fundamental thoughts and images, and thereby comment constructively upon society’s ideas and visions. Both are mighty endeavors, both are potentially artful, and both employ the insights of semiotics. Because it necessarily relies upon known, communicative signs, I would define designing cultural symbols as an inventive task; whereas assigning new meanings is creative.
In spite of herculean efforts by semioticians, however, architecture and the physical environment steadfastly prove not to be a language. There does not yet exist a comprehensive, recognizable system of object-meaning relationships which would allow designers merely to choose from a vocabulary of forms and be sure they are successfully communicating.
Neither do 1 suggest that one orientation is “better” for society. Nonetheless, it is apparent that the “creative” aim to heighten perceptual awareness often stands in opposition to the “inventive” task of designing cultural symbols by instilling metaphorical traits in a new project through the skillful use of culturally accepted meanings. That is, to design what is recognized as “a church,” the designer must give it characteristics which make it appear “like” the culturally accepted equivalent of a church. The same can be said for a park, a parking lot, or a street mall. Anyone working to change the workaday environment must succeed in managing these familiar symbols. You cannot design a communicable—and therefore truly habitable—environment without this skill. And one is surely not condemned to repeat available and familiar forms. As Widdowson has observed,
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