Consideration of time in landscape and building

Architectural discourses in Western cultures tend to focus more on form than on process. Even when accepting that landscapes are in constant flux, many descriptions focus on their form rather than the process they become. This attitude becomes even more noticeable when describing buildings. The bias in question may be explained through distinct dichotomies: between nature and artifice; between building and dwelling; and between insertion and integration. Deliberately leaving the first out of this discussion—for its complexity necessarily falls beyond the scope of this essay—this paper shall focus on the latter two. Both landscape and building can be conceived of as objects prepared in advance for people to inhabit; they are finished when they adjust to a shared cultural image. Tim Ingold, for example, refutes this vision when he claims that neither nature nor human agency pre-prepare form for life. Those who conceive of landscape and building as artefacts also tend to admit that their creation is made through a series of insertions on a pre-existing template, whether natural or cultural. A vision of the world that privileges process over form accepts that landscape and building—and especially the nature of the relationship between the two—are formed through a process of integration, rather than insertion.Yet, the existence of these forms in the process of dwelling implies its constituency in time as much as in space. By accepting their temporal dimension, landscape and building are not only constant works-in-progress but also part of a process that incorporates them in life. Some buildings and landscapes are unique because they were conceived with a strong consideration of their temporal evolution, for example the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark and Museuminsel Hombroich in Germany. These settings were not developed as simple acts of constructing buildings on the pre-existing landscape but rather as a deliberate succession of smaller acts considering landscape and programme. The differences as well as similarities between the two projects help us understand the potential for new relations between landscape and building.