“In an unfamiliar place, senses sharpen, a survival instinct; in familiar territory, senses dull, and it takes and effort to refresh them. In trying to read a foreign landscape you may not understand everything but you get the gist. Significant details stand out – these help you frame questions”.
source: The Language of Landscape by Anne Whiston Spirn (1998)
“We travel in order to get away from “our” place and occupy new places that belong to others. Not long ago people traveled in order to discover and explain their discovery; today we know beforehand, with great exactness, the physiognomy that awaits us at our destinations. Thus it is the people that live there and the language of their landscape that interest us. The journey has gone from being a discovery of the land to being a discovery of the people, their materials use – what is different and similar about them, how they look at and understand the world”.
source: Place (2004)
source: The Language of Landscape by Anne Whiston Spirn (1998)
“We travel in order to get away from “our” place and occupy new places that belong to others. Not long ago people traveled in order to discover and explain their discovery; today we know beforehand, with great exactness, the physiognomy that awaits us at our destinations. Thus it is the people that live there and the language of their landscape that interest us. The journey has gone from being a discovery of the land to being a discovery of the people, their materials use – what is different and similar about them, how they look at and understand the world”.
source: Place (2004)
Explorations on Design for Play (Ithaca + Boston)