ZARCH No.1 | 2013 Paisajes Landscapes MIRIAM GARCÍA GARCÍA Written at the place. The intangible values of the landscape 36 Miriam García García (Asturias, 1971). Architect (ETSAM 1998), Technical planner (INAP 2005), PhD-DEA (ETSAM 2005), Thesis in progress (ET- SAM 2013) and member of the Spanish Association of Landscape Architects, National Association of the International Federation for Landscape Architecture_Europe (AEP-IFLA 2013). After several years of activity on the Government of Cantabria (1999-2003) and after one term as General Director of Urban and Regional Planning (2003-2007) leaves the office to found her Land Lab, landscapes laboratory. She has received several national and international awards such as the recent First Prize of the Spanish XII Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (2013), for the Galician Coastal Management Plan. She is currently Associate Professor in the School of Architecture and Engineering at Zaragoza University, in the Master of Landscape Architecture CEU San Pablo de Madrid and author of several publications in books and magazines alike. Written at the place. The intangible values of the landscape Escrito en el lugar. Los valores intangibles del paisaje MIRIAM GARCÍA GARCÍA Abstract / Resumen Beyond the boundaries of a physical space, places, as a means where it is registered the way in which man relates to the world, contain multiple spatiotemporal realities. Its reading requires, therefore, a look that can decipher the universe of ecological, historical, perceptual and cultural relationships that characterize them. However, at the present time, technique and reason seem to have tipped the balance on the tangible values against the intangible ones, banishing to oblivion its cultural, perceptual, emotional and phenomenological components. This article takes a brief look at a range of experiences that, from different disciplines involved with space, allow us to approach a collective and timeless readability of the place. These looks fruit of memory, the experience and creativity, show a very clear direction to serve the project from its identity. In this context, to visualize the information and bring out elements and relations forgotten or unknown, is in itself a creative act that builds again the landscape we inhabit revealing its potential. Thus, the task of uncovering the traces of the place blurs the boundaries of duality between the tangible and the intangible to serve the project at all levels. Más allá de los límites de un espacio físico, los lugares, como medio donde se registra el modo en el que el hombre se relaciona con el mundo, contienen múltiples realidades espacio-temporales. Su lectura requiere, por lo tanto, de una mirada capaz de descifrar el universo de relaciones ecológicas, históricas, perceptivas y culturales que los caracterizan. No obstante, en la época actual, la técnica y la razón parecen haber inclinado la balanza sobre los valores tangibles frente a los intangibles, desterrando al olvido sus componentes culturales, perceptivos, emocionales y fenomenológicos. Este artículo realiza un breve recorrido por una serie de experiencias que, desde distintas disciplinas comprometidas con el espacio, nos aproximan a una legibilidad colectiva e intemporal del lugar. Estas miradas fruto de la memoria, la experiencia y la creatividad, evidencian un camino con el que atender al proyecto desde su identidad. En este contexto, visualizar la información y hacer aflorar elementos y relaciones olvidados o desconocidos, constituye en sí mismo un acto creativo que construye nuevamente el paisaje en el que habitamos revelando su potencial. Así, la tarea de desvelar las trazas del lugar desdibuja los límites de la dualidad entre lo tangible y lo intangible al servicio del proyecto a todas las escalas. Keywords / Palabras clave Mapping, identity, intangibles, landscape, perception. Cartografía, identidad, intangibles, paisaje, percepción. “The work is not placed in a place; it is that place.” Robert Smithson 1 Site traces It’s the chosen subject matter for the first issue of the magazine Zarch and it actua- lly seems to claim a new agenda for the project at all levels, especially in the current period of economic, political, cultural, urban and, why not say, also architectural crisis. These traces evoke the set of elements and relationships that uniquely arran- ged in a territory make it different from others. In this context, the concept of place is analogous to the landscape one and actually wider than the one of territory, since the timeless print of the bond between man and nature is inscribed in it. The Norwegian architect and historian Christian Norberg-Schulz in the pursuit of genius loci 2 or the spirit of the place indicated that when man identifies himself with his environment, when he experiences it, he turns it into a place with its own identity. Therefore, studies based on the recognition of its physical qualities, including his- torical, aren’t enough to understand places because these ones are open to other dimensions. At the same time, any single action on the territory (physical or cultural) builds landscape, an issue that explains quite clearly the words of the artist of Land Art Robert Smithson that head this article: “The work is not placed in a place; it is that place.” We can then say that architecture is also landscape [Fig. 1]. It is precisely this holistic conception of the landscape that inspires its definition in the European Convention (Florence, 2000), which designates it as “any part of the territory, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the actions of natural factors and /or human ones and their interrelationships (Art. 1).” 3 Because as noted by the geographer Joan Nogué 4 the landscape is, “at the same time a physical reality and the representation that we make culturally of it; the external and visible appearance of a certain portion of the land and the individual and social perception that generates; a geographical tangible and its intangible interpretation (...) but they are also historical legacies, continuities, continuances, the overlapping strata of the remains of ancient landscapes.” 5 From this point of view, all the places have this identity mark registered: the site traces, as personal and collective me- mory, as intangible heritage, even though it may be sometimes invisible to our eyes. According to the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Herita- ge 6 , this is the root of our cultural diversity and a guarantee of creativity. It is defined and not precisely in vain in its second article as “the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge and techniques –along with the instruments, objects, ar- [Fig. 1] Outside-inside, on the ground under the sky. Hildebrant: Göllersdorf, Chapel. Source: Christian Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci. Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture. USA, Rizzoli International Publications, INC, 1980, p. 9. 1 “Discussions with Heizer, Oppenheim, Smithson”, 1970, The Writings of Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, ed. Nueva York, New York University Press, 1979. 2 Christian Norberg-Schulz. Genius Loci. Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture. USA, Rizzoli International Publications, INC, 1980. 3 Ministry of Environment and European Council, Convenio Europeo del Paisaje. Textos y comenta- rios. Madrid, Publications Centre General Technical Department of Environment, 2007. 4 Joan Nogué is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Gerona, director of the landscape observatory in Catalonia and an internationally re- cognized authority in relation to the implementation of the European Convention of the Landscape. 5 Joan Nogué. “Introduction. The landscape as a social construct”, in The social construction of landscape, Joan Nogué ed. Madrid, Biblioteca Nueva, 2007, pp. 19-20. 6 Text of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage adopted in October 2003 by UNESCO at its 32nd meeting in Paris. http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/es/convencion