The Textile Landscape: A Journey through the Structure of Landscape

Abstract

This is a study in which landscape architecture is theoretically related to the "textile art." It establishes a theoretical analogy of the landscape as a kind of textual manifestation, "the landscape is a textile," and aims to establish new resemblances that show how the landscape and textile arts are related, not only with regards to the elements of composition, or to similarities between the elemental relationships that exist in both these arts, but to how the study of structure and form in the production of textiles may influence our understanding of the textile nature of the landscape.

The first part of the research is developing a theoretical analogy between landscape and fabric. The process of making textiles is based on weaving and knitting, operations in which knots obviously play a most important role. The context of the urban landscape can also be viewed as a woven fabric of different threads, where knots are the summit of this interwoven textile. This study shows that the goal of landscape is to knit together the clusters of meaning so that the person can experience the unity that binds up these different qualities.

Based on this theoretical analogy, the second part uses the "action research" method which in the context of this study would be a scholarly practice of design, "design-research." Both parts of the research are qualitative inquiry in nature and the qualitative manner of the investigation calls for an inductive investigation rather than a deductive one; theoretical discussions and the design section rely heavily on interpretation of the researcher.