Casabella 956

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The volume which Daniela Sá and João Carmo Simões (also responsible, the latter, for the fine portfolio of photographs) have produced on the work of João Gomes da Silva fills a major gap in a crucial sector of our discipline. This is because the work of João Gomes da Silva represents a significant fragment of Portuguese contemporary architecture, ever since he had the opportunity to work on the open spaces of the Bairro da Malagueira (Alvaro Siza Vieira, Evora, 1987-91). The field of landscape architecture is not so easy to define, because its boundaries change from epoch to epoch, depending on the cultures and sensibilities of the practitioners. According to Gomes da Silva: “Landscape is a spatial phenomenon created by man's transformation of nature in accordance with the distribution of resources, cultural standards and symbolic purposes.” Furthermore, since this is a construction of a cultural character: “Landscape can and should be understood as an architectural concept of order, based on manipulation of resources available in the space.” This is an indispensable definition to classify landscape as a form of architecture, not due to its artistic component or accompanying aesthetic, but instead to state that landscape exists from the moment in which the human being starts to interact with the natural world. The representation of the landscape is a fascinating topic, because in history it has implied the development of techniques capable of suggesting the visual and perceptive complexity of outdoor spaces. […]

in Casabella 956, 2024