Landscape and memory in contemporary city development

Abstract

This text proposes a landscape idea in contemporary city development obtained by an overlap of time and events. A display of experiences of the memory of a place that configures a broad notion of landscape and the heritage significance of the different elements that it is made up of. The contemporary city landscape is fragile and it seems to be contaminated by different types of relationships and exchanges that influence the construction of a memory of the places. These landscapes are defined by the artist Robert Smithson as archaeological and “dialectic landscape”. This article presents a series of contemporary landscapes that highlight this historic and vital condition of a territory from the memory and subjective and emotional experience of its inhabitants. A series of interventions in which the architects show their interest in the memory of the land and the pre-existing elements going beyond environmental concerns, in an union of heritage and territory with a broader idea of conservation. The intention to integrate the identity values of territory is found inside the land-art ideas that have influenced the urbanistic and architectural practices of the 21st century with a cultural vision of the landscape.