This study aims to interpret aesthetically a trend in landscape design, which is post-industrial parks that have left some industrial structures such as abandoned factories and places that have special memories such as the 9.11 memorial. This emerging...
This study aims to interpret aesthetically a trend in landscape design, which is post-industrial parks that have left some industrial structures such as abandoned factories and places that have special memories such as the 9.11 memorial. This emerging place of memory is not only partly attributed to the function which reminds visitors of a memory of the place, or a tendency of landscape design that regards a process of the site and site-specificity, but also to the aesthetic preference and experience of memory and the aging appearance. It considers how this place and the landscape of memory raise the aesthetic experience of visitors.
The objects of this study are large parks and open spaces that have some collective memories shared by a number of visitors. This study explains the aesthetic experience in the place and landscape of memory as a medium of memory with the aesthetic notions of sublime, nostalgia and melancholy.
This study pays attention to how the place and landscape of memory functions as a medium of memory which enables visitors to have an aesthetic experience. The place and landscape as an external medium of memory, storing a special memory in another medium out of body, has a realistic and physical distance. By this distance, visitors are able to experience aesthetically the place and landscape of a memory that is at risk of invoking trauma.
In landscape architectural history, there are ways to experience the place and landscape of memory aesthetically. The two most representative cases are ruins in 18c Romantic Picturesque and post-industrial parks with a perspective of the sublime. The reason for examining these places and aesthetics is that these interpretations of the picturesque and sublime focus on the materiality of place, and therefore are prone to neglect the aesthetic appreciation of memory in place and landscape. These interpretations focusing on the materiality of place lead to results which neglect the memory of a place, and do not give attention to the role of visitors' memory even though the memory of place is considered in the design process. The problem is that the trend of designing an aging appearance draws the place except for the memory and produces superficial copies. So there is a need to contemplate a memory of place and visitors' memory when a place of memory is designed.
Aesthetic experience with memory might be interpreted as a notion of temporality. The temporality is contrasted against a notion of materiality, and temporality and materiality construct the aesthetic experience in the place and landscape of memory. This temporal experience is based on the irreversibility of time which is presented by sublime, nostalgia and melancholy.
From this perspective, this study suggests a framework for more abundant interpretation by considering memory or temporality as well as materiality in the place and landscape. It also reinterprets the place of memory designed like a copy with an aging appearance in the perspective of memory and temporality, and suggests a design consideration of memory in place and visitors' memory in the design process.