Unfamiliar Territory_Research

0.1 abstract
This research through the examinations of the concept of territory and ‘the unfamiliar’ approaches disturbed
sites as a specific case inside landscape architecture that requires a rethinking of the common ways of ‘reading’,
‘intervening in’ and ‘representing’ such sites. It serves as a stepping stone towards a general re-examination of
landscape design in an age when it is becoming increasingly apparent that disturbed sites (or any other site for
that matter) can never be fully managed or their future development entirely predetermined. It questions the
role of an intervention and elaborates on ways landscape architecture could begin to see itself as only one of the
many agents working on site, in the moment of design emphasized and fundamental to the actualisation of a
designed assemblage but always already subservient to processes it cannot fully delimit.
The research approaches disturbed sites as unfamiliar territories, products of a particular territorial production
where different actors use overcoding (a series of “phenomena of centering, unification, totalization, integration,
hierarchization, and finalization“ 1 ) to achieve their political or economic aims. To describe how, why and by
whom such territorializations take place I take as a starting point on one side writings on territory by Deleuze
and Guattari and further elaborations by Brighenti, Grosz, Halsey and others, and on the other side ideas of
post-humanism and new materialism to provide a new view on disturbed sites and to broaden the conception of
territory as relational, process-driven and open-ended mode of organization. The research follows the routine
process of a landscape architecture project - ‘reading’ the site to locate ‘the specific’, ‘intervening in’ the site to
leave a mark and ‘representing’ the site to communicate it to others, yet it through the findings derived from the
research offers alternatives to each of these project components.
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Keywords: territory, unfamiliar, specificity, landscape, landscape architecture, Deleuze, Brighenti
0.2 summary
I tend to disagree with Leibniz who believed we live in the best of all possible worlds. If that was true, what sense
would it make striving towards alternative production of subjectivity or experimenting with new conceptions of
space and time? Discovering previously unnoticed potentials in various forms of expression and imagining what
else is possible with what is given? Surely there must be different, and possibly better ways to do things. I can
agree though, that for the most part we definitely act like we could not be better-off, clinging on to our
established structures of representation and language, social norms, cultural constructs, economic systems and
political orders. Generally speaking, we dislike the unfamiliar. We like the sound of change, but resist anything
truly novel. We enjoy things that last. We follow what is believed to be true, good or right and indulge in things
that do not require much thinking but quickly please us.
In recent times, it has become difficult to argue against pleasing and comforting experiences, against those brief
moments of escape from the speed and anguish of everyday life, when stillness and the familiar are especially
looked for and desired. And to be clear: just as much as I appreciate moments of tranquillity, I believe we need
familiar landscapes, places where we feel comfortable and protected: undulating picnic lawns, curvy strolling
1
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus. trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, p. 41.
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