Landscape Installations: Enhancing the Experience of Nature through Art and Architecture

Abstract

This paper investigates the concepts of site-specificity, place and experience as they have been interpreted in a number of projects with a strong emphasis on the characteristics of the site, in the form of small architectural or artistic interventions in the open landscape in Norway and Denmark. The Nordic examples are part of a global tendency. The idea of site-specificity is re- emerging in contemporary architectural discourse in a series of projects that aim to enhance or frame the quality of the site and also aim at being a mediating element between man and nature.

As the interventions have the experience of the site at their core, this paper investigates two aspects of the projects: Firstly, a broader theoretical framework for the concept site-specificity will be introduced in order to discuss the selection of sites and artistic strategy chosen for enhancing the experience of the sites. The theoretical framework draws on seminal texts about site- specificity, space and place, from cultural geo graphy, art and architectural theory. Secondly, selected projects will be analyzed in terms of how they interpret or intervene with the site, and the experiential potential that this interpretation holds will be included in the analysis.

The paper discusses how the small architectural interventions operate with a narrow concept of site, and that the large variety of artistic strateg ies and types of site-specificity found in contemporary art could serve as inspiration to open up and broaden the concept of site-specificity in the small architectural interventions, as well.