Approaches to Landscape from the Aesthetic Experience

Dive into the Approaches to Landscape from the Aesthetic Experience, guided by Iván Juárez, exploring how the body and the landscape interrelate through various senses, such as smell, sight, and touch, to foster a deeper and more conscious connection with the natural environment, inviting a reconsideration of the boundaries between nature and the human being.

Walking barefoot; listening to the wind; touching the water; observing and contemplating the surrounding landscape, from its smallest scale to its territorial dimension. Understanding its uniqueness and complexity; its tangible and intangible values. Landscapes are capable of conveying emotions, experiences, memories, and moods.

From this perspective, the aesthetic experience plays a crucial role in our connection with the landscape, as it stimulates our immersion in it and activates our senses. Listening to the landscape is essential when approaching it—being sensitive to its temporality, its cyclical nature, its natural dynamics and cultural meanings; to its ephemeral character. Being aware that the landscape is in constant transformation. Perceiving and reflecting on our bond with the environment, and by doing so, becoming conscious of its meaning.

Listening to the landscape is essential when approaching it, being sensitive to its temporality, its cyclical nature, its natural dynamics, and cultural meanings.

Diagrama sobre el paisaje en relación con los factores que influyen en nuestra experiencia estética / Diagram on the Landscape in Relation to the Factors that Influence Our Aesthetic Experience
Ilustración / Illustration: Ivan Juarez | x-studio

How are these ideas reflected in our approach to the landscape, and how do we convey them to reimagine more sensitive environments?

A reflection that emerges from my practice is closely related to these concepts, as I am interested in fostering a dialogue with the landscape through the aesthetic experience, enriched by environmental aesthetics. I am drawn to exploring the interaction between the territory and the beings who inhabit it, and how, through this reciprocal relationship, individuals can actively and sensitively engage with their surroundings, gaining awareness of their connection to the natural environment. At the same time, one of my main interests lies in exploring new ways to redefine the boundaries between nature and the human being through interventions and actions that open up scenarios for new encounters.

Based on these references, the approach I propose toward the landscape expands into other disciplines and is enriched by complementary perspectives such as literature, music, dance, painting, or cinema, among others. These visions are constantly reflected in the projects through various explorations, such as in-situ interventions, urban acupunctures, sensory cartographies, or participatory actions. Likewise, they appear in spaces of bio-cohabitation, gardens, body-centered architectures, sensory devices, or handcrafted pieces.

In this sense, I am interested in approaching practice as a laboratory for experimentation, creation, and research, and based on this premise, I would like to share some ideas related to these concepts.

First approach: Body and landscape

In what ways can we coexist with our landscapes from within our bodily sphere?

Archipiélago: dibujo cuerpo-paisaje / Archipielago: body-landscape drawing
Ilustración / Illustration: Iván Juárez | x-studio

This inquiry explores connections between the body and the landscape, both as correlation and metaphor, and reflects on our bodily relationship with the environment. It examines various ways in which the body perceives and is present within the space we inhabit.

Archipelago: Body & Geological Coastal Landscape

Estrecho de Kattegat, Suecia

Archipiélago: Exploración del cuerpo y el paisaje en el escenario litoral del Mar del Norte en Suecia / Archipelago: Exploration of Body and Landscape in the Coastal Setting of the North Sea in Sweden
Fotografía / Photography: Iván Juárez | x-studio

Set against the natural backdrop of the geological landscape of Sweden’s west coast, facing the Kattegat Strait in the North Sea, the intervention Archipelago pays tribute to and reflects on this liquid-solid territory, making us part of the coastal landscape. The intervention takes place through a series of actions that connect the body and the marine landscape, where the body merges and blends into the rocky setting.

The series reflects on concepts such as time in nature. It explores the stability and stillness associated with the rock, contrasted with the constant movement and changing condition of the sea. Stillness and dynamism; stability versus transformation. Furthermore, as a metaphor for the body, it reflects on the interaction between both elements, which becomes evident in erosion, a process in which the rock gradually wears down and is shaped by the movement of the sea.

Body & Cyclical Landscape: Explorations from the Senses

Lower Silesia | Poland

Verano: Exploración olfativa del paisaje estival en Polonia, Baja Silesia, mediante un dispositivo olfativo / Summer: Olfactory Exploration of the Seasonal Landscape in Poland, Lower Silesia, through an Olfactory Device
Fotografía / Photography: Iván Juárez | x-studio

The seasonal landscape of Poland is proposed as a temporal and physical context. A landscape connected to the changing rhythm of the seasons. In summer, when the vegetation reaches its fullness, it becomes more lush and vibrant. In autumn, it transforms into a nostalgic landscape, where the leaves of the trees begin to take on ochre, yellow, and reddish hues, covering the ground with a blanket of fallen leaves. In winter, it becomes a silent landscape, where the vegetation falls dormant and withers; temperatures drop, and the environment blends into a white surface.

Based on these three temporalities, a series of artistic approaches have been developed throughout the annual cycle. The first approach focuses on the summer season, exploring the sense of smell through a blown glass piece that contains a small fragment of forest inside. The piece functions as an olfactory device that stores and releases the essences of the forest.

Otoño: Interpretación visual del paisaje de hojas en Polonia / Autumn: Visual Interpretation of the Leaf Landscape in Poland
Fotografía / Photography: Iván Juárez | x-studio

The next approach takes place in autumn, through the sense of sight. The series illustrates the different hues of tree leaves and how this natural phenomenon influences and relates to the human body. Finally, the sense of touch is explored in connection with winter, through the perception of temperatures and textures. Feeling and shaping the various ephemeral states created by the snow.

Invierno: Exploración táctil del paisaje de nieve en Polonia, Baja Silesia / Winter: Tactile Exploration of the Snowy Landscape in Poland, Lower Silesia
Fotografía / Photography: Iván Juárez | x-studio

Second approach: Domestic gardens in the city

Taipei | Taiwan

Based on two symbolic cultural elements used in agriculture in Taiwan: the bamboo as a support element and the Taiwanese conical hat as a light screen, the light intervention creates a hybrid landscape by reinterpreting both significant elements of the Taiwanese rural landscape. This reflection highlights the value of urban agriculture and emphasizes the importance of this practice as an example of domestic acupuncture in the city. By focusing on the urban community’s practice linked to their gardens, it offers an example to rethink the boundaries between the city and the countryside.

The intervention took place in a domestic garden within the Treasure Hill Village community, located along the Xindian River, an important waterway in the city of Taipei. The river was characterized by having urban crops along its banks, which have gradually disappeared. As the city grew, this community, inhabited by citizens who cultivated their own food, came to be considered a “formally illegal” settlement.

Subsequently, through participatory planning, the site has been revitalized and consolidated as an exemplary community in Taipei, maintaining the traditional values of the urban-agricultural community, and becoming a self-sustaining and resilient enclave within the large metropolis.

These small-scale examples invite us to rethink ways of coexisting with our landscapes. By considering approaches focused on aesthetic and environmental experience, and taking into account sensitivity and reciprocity, we can contribute to reimagining existing models and understanding our environment in a holistic sense.

Intervención-luz en huerto doméstico urbano| Taipei, Taiwán / Light Intervention in an Urban Domestic Garden | Taipei, Taiwan
Fotografía / Photography: Iván Juárez | x-studio

Approaches to Landscape from the Aesthetic Experience