Against the ecological prejudice: The specific experience of the built landscape

Abstract

Ecological consciousness has seen enormous growth in recent decades and prejudiced ways of understanding the relationship between architecture and nature have emerged. The urgent need for preserving the natural environment has led to general and inflexible regulations that, far from regarding the specific experience, prevent the appearance of the extraordinary built landscape. Fortunately, this has not always been so: we might wonder, for example, whether it is preferable the eastern rock face of the Arabah Valley (Jordan) preserved in its natural state, to the experience of Petra built landscape, whose transformation of the original scene gives it a new identity, full of beauty and meaning. A thought on this topic invites us to take a glance to the recent past and look at the utopian proposal of a Spanish architect, internationally recognized in its time and today almost forgotten: the project of a hotel in the Maltese rock of Gozo (1967), made by Julio Lafuente. A modern example whose poetic sensitivity and expressive power show that exceeding prevention to human intervention in nature is not always convenient.