Landscape - visual resource: the concept of landscape, analysis of 6 New Zealand assessment studies

Abstract

People are mainly visual animals. For the sighted person, vision provides the key to synthesis of experience, although sensory data from other sources are used to ‘correct’ and ‘enrich’ what data the eye receives. That landscape which is defined by our vision and interpreted by our mind, thus, is a potential resource both materially and non-materially. Material values are related to tourism resource, and real estate, for example. Non-material values are derived from cultural, educational, inspirational and recreational uses of land and resources and their contribution to meeting psychological and social needs.

Landscape architects, as one of the principal pressure groups charged with management of the visual landscape, will necessarily be involved with assessment at all levels of planning. The goals of my study are to extend my appreciation of the visual quality of the landscape; and to extend competence in the practice of landscape architecture,

The concepts of landscape, and visual quality are elusive. The problems are due to the varied usage of the word landscape; the historical philosophical debate over whether visual quality or beauty is a property of the object, is in the mind of the beholder, or the product of the relation between both; and the dispute between psychologists over the relevance of regarding the environment merely as a physical source of sensory stimulus producing predictable sensory response, independent of the content of the environment as experienced by persons participating in it.

Part I of this study, thus, briefly looks at some concepts of landscape, and their place in the context of landscape assessment. This is desirable in providing a frame of reference in the appreciation of landscape; and necessary, if only to become 'self-consciously aware of our preconceptions and of the influence that they may have on the outcome of any study'.

Part II of this study, is concerned with the realities of the landscape architect in the real world where theory and practice must be integrated, 6 landscape assessment studies on New Zealand landscapes, by landscape architects are analysed, and with reference to criterias which international experts, such as Fabos, propose that assessment studies should aim for, to increase reliability and usefulness.