Caption Need here please provide a caption thanks. The Postwar Historical Moment Just as Versailles was the product of the social and political structure of absolutism, the modern movement is the product of the two major wars of the century. During World War I an incubation period began. Painters, poets, and composers launched the avant-garde in a new quest that would become the modern move- ment. After World War II the creative avant-garde included architects and landscape architects who became both actors and tools expressing the new concerns, collective knowledge, and emotions of this new society they called modern. Painters best illustrate the links between art and the social moment. The linkages of the first period, during World War I, were clearly expressed by Paul Klee early in 1915, when he recorded in his diary these significant words: “The more horrifying this world becomes the more art becomes abstract.” 1 In 1931 Klee went on to teach at the Bauhaus and his work became an influential theoretical formulation of modern art, best expressed by his phrase, “the thinking eye.” In the second period, following World War II, landscape architects were at work as a new profession. Not only was art becoming more abstract, but social and ecological concerns were becoming inseparable from architectur- al input, a development noted by other artists and intellectuals. For example, referring to Cliveden, Jellicoe writes, “This little garden illustrates the change in man’s attitude to environment that has taken place this centu- ry—from the nineteenth-century academic outlook to the ecological approach of the twentieth century.” 2 Portugal in the 1950s In her biography of Caldeira Cabral, Theresa Andresen empha- sizes the war’s direct influence on the PRESERVING LANDSCAPE ARCHCHITECTURE VOLUME 2 15 The Origin of the Landscape Architecture Profession in Portugal during the Modern Movement Cristina Castel-Branco The title of this conference announces a proactive and ambitious intent. It not only advises us to study modern landscape expressions, it also chal- lenges us to make them more visible and preserve them. We are asked to analyze the essence of the modern expression in the landscape and defend it relentlessly. Two books in a series of biographies of eminent modern European landscape architects edited by Ken Fieldhouse and published by the Landscape Design Trust, were instrumental to my research for this paper: one, on Francisco Caldeira Cabral; the other, on Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe. To understand the spaces designed forty years ago, I also toured modern gar- dens and parks in Portugal, observing them at different times of the day and carefully noting their maturing character, their use, and the design solutions that created them. During my research I came to appreciate the value of the modern her- itage in Portugal and its strong link with painting and sculpture and the new sciences of ecology and sociology. But I have to admit that the method for selecting and preserving the best is still an open question for me. In my previous academic experience with gardens from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, time was the best judge for selecting the mas- terpieces. A succession of judges through the generations attributed value to the best, to the ones considered real jewels by their owners or the public. As for modern landscape architecture, not enough time has passed to filter the many works of the postwar period. What processes, what criteria should be used to choose the ones deserving preservation? Or should they all be preserved? Should the selection be made by the critics, perhaps assisted by the designers of the modern works them- selves? Although professionals have considered the selection process, for me the question remains without a clear answer. But for the works of previ- ous centuries the attribution of value has been directly linked to the qualities of a place and the strength of its design meaning. Frequently the designer left this meaning subtle or even hidden. It nags at the visitor with bits and pieces of a message that can be decoded only after careful- ly putting together a puzzle made up of pieces of art, nature, and time. I have become more and more convinced that to preserve the modern her- itage it is essential to understand its time and, even more important, the meaning of the new created space, the hidden meaning, the message effected by the outpouring of the designer’s creative process. One might say that this approach would be appropriate for all centuries and for any work of art, but let us try to use it in examining the design of the modern movement. Caption Need here please provide a caption thanks. 15_PRESMODLS_CASTEL.QXD 10/31/03 3:07 PM Page 14