Det naturskønnes genkomst? - om relationelle metamorfoser

Abstract

In the 1990ies landscape architecture after a long time of attempt undergoes remarkable changes, which indicates a shift of paradigm. New projects breakes up syntaxes within the landscape discourse at that time and opens a discussion of the notion of landscape. The dismantling of central dichotomies like natural/unnatural, culture/nature, new/old inherent in the projects questions the values, praxis and aesthetics of landscape architecture. This situation provides the background for this article seeking to uncover changes in meaning and content of central notions and to outline the perspectives.

The notion of landscape as an aesthetic category can be seen as either exhausted or as a point of departure for reformulating the aesthetics. Whether this provides the basis for a rediscovering of the specific aesthetic category natural beauty, which for a long time has been displaced from modern aesthetics, is the main concern of this article. Drawing on philosophers as Adorno, Ritter, Seel and both Hartmut and Gernot Böhme a discussion on the relation between the whole nature and the nature as a whole; between subject and object and the notion of atmosphere is carried out pointing at the nescessity of the reestablishment of a new aesthetic of nature. Based on the inner relation between the good and the beautiful, ethics and aesthetics, the antique notion of kalokagathia is reintroduced. This idea of an aesthetics of nature is to a higher extent linked to the working nature, to the dynamics of nature, to the natura naturata than to natura naturens.