Landscape taste: a globalised-vernacular oxymoron

Abstract

While vernacular refers to locality and native context, landscape tastes and preferences for forms or styles of landscapes have historically been influenced by outside forces. Aesthetic attitudes towards particular landscapes are underpinned by cultural and symbolic drivers. Evolving over time in response to need, function and availability of materials, farming landscapes are by definition vernacular; they hold design integrity and their creators appreciate them. In the reality of a globalised economy where a market demand influences accelerated landscape dynamics, the resulting landscape is still vernacular but the pace of change might affect the way the landscape is appreciated. One such example of the impact of a globalised economy on landscape tastes is highlighted in the case of the introduction of organic farming to Canterbury, New Zealand, when in the context of Corporate-Greening farmers received incentives to convert their practices to organic agriculture. Such practices have management and visual implications on farm appearance. The discourse of local farmers about their farm landscapes revealed that this new "globalised-vernacular" landscape aesthetic language was problematic, and reaffirmed the notion that landscape aesthetic preferences, embody local social symbolic meanings.