Cities are not landscapes

The destruction of the landscape by the ferocious invasion of cities, settlements and infrastructures mostly designed for traffic, but also by the excessive proliferation of stand-alone buildings, has assumed devastating proportions in recent decades. Italy is currently consuming roughly ten square metres of land per second for construction purposes. The natural landscape we love, value and need for our nourishment and recreation is at risk of being annihilated.

- Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani

I have used the term natural landscape but have been imprecise. Nearly all of Europe’s landscape has been shaped by mankind in one way or another: from the countrysides composed of fields, roads and irrigation canals to woods, often artificially planted such as the Black Forest. Even the high-mountain pastures have been moulded over time by farmers, herdsmen and their cows. Those landscapes have been designed in the course of centuries but are still portions of nature.

Our architecture and our cities contrast them sharply: as artificial environments that provide people with shelter, community life and identity. These environments go against nature, where humans, if unprotected, would not survive. The conflict is unbridgeable and cannot be eluded – but it can be made productive.

If we want to respect and preserve nature, we must not confuse it or mix it up with the city. The city must remain a compact artefact, a geometrical device for human and social life that cultivates and maintains a clear contrast with the landscape. The city must withdraw into its own space, develop distinct boundaries and concentrate on itself, becoming dense, solid and as hard as stone. This seemingly hostile attitude to nature is actually the most honest and effective way of showing respect to it.