Harmonisation has long been embedded in the representation of our world and in focus since the beginning of the landscape architecture profession. Harmony, in landscape design, is unobtrusive—it represents order, balance, and tranquillity. It has served essential functions in offering comfort and respite in various contexts—whether in private gardens, parks, residential areas, and public spaces. Harmonious landscapes may provide a safe escape from messy urban situations, unfavourable living conditions, from ‘our own too-muchness’[1], and this escape will most likely remain a necessity indefinitely.

However, as we confront the growing ecological crisis, it becomes increasingly difficult to argue that harmonious aesthetics, designed primarily for pleasure and ease, are always the most effective mode of expression. Perhaps there is space to question whether ecological efforts demand a different aesthetic attitude, one less fixated on traditional notions of balance and spatial conformity and more open to dissensus[2] and confrontation.

The notion of harm in harmonisation can be more easily examined through a critical lens when we consider the aesthetics of English-style parks in colonized countries[3]. These picturesque, harmonious landscapes were not merely neutral or benign; they were a subtle imposition of power designed to symbolize prosperity and progress while, in fact, deploying inherent colonial domination. In other words, the scenic vistas and soft, pleasing shapes served as tools for aesthetic hegemony, further enforcing colonial hierarchies. This legacy suggests that our contemporary affection for harmony in design can similarly obscure deeper socio-political and environmental tensions.

These ideals became instrumental in the emergence of public parks in the 19th century and survived modernism a century later. Even the monstrous rusty structures in post-industrial parks of the late 20th century could be easily compared to ruins depicted in romantic paintings and inserted in 18th-century gardens. In many Western countries, spending public money on a park not rooted in picturesque ideals remains less common today.

Similar inherent transgressions are even more tangible in the park’s Scottish relative – the golf course – a ready-made, private gated fantasy landscape where (predominantly) dress-coded men and equally dress-coded landscape have been in harmony. It is essentially an emplacement of tradition, exclusivity, VIP club culture, padded with the soft fascism of high-end lawn maintenance, perverse irrigation, and a quiet group ecstasy in the ignorance of life outside, or of the environmental future, for that matter. There seems to be zero tolerance for change and a widening gap between the issues of the Anthropocene and this dead-stiff dinosaur typology. A few years back, a part of Spain was hit by a severe drought. There was a public outcry when homeowners were asked by the municipality to save water while local golf courses, some using between 200,000 to 400,000 litres (52,000-105,000 gallons) of water per day, remained operational.

Meanwhile, the well-being of the environment, ecosystems, landscape, and public space has been increasingly threatened by pollution, CO2 and methane levels, microplastics, commodification, privatization, neoliberalisation, gentrification and continuous extraction, to the extent we are no longer entirely sure if there’s a way out. Social and ecological issues are now entirely intertwined as ultimately, climate is public.

However, there is a stubborn divide between the ecological discourse calling for radical change and the status-quo-oriented aesthetic regimes of contemporary landscape architecture production. While the rhetoric surrounding sustainability is urgent and often radical, many landscape designs remain tied to picturesque ideals. After at least two decades of calls for a paradigm shift in landscape architecture, why has harmony not lost its allure? In light of climate urgency, shouldn’t harmony be today in a similar position as ornament was at the beginning of the 20th century: not to be trusted, outdated, out of place, confused and at the brink of irrelevance? How can the landscape of global ecological crisis manifest in harmony?

The challenge is how to un-attach landscape from the aesthetic norms and typologies that have long defined it. Recent efforts in the somewhat problematic categorical ‘greenification’ of urban spaces have sometimes led to a more eclectic curiosity and a welcome erosion of typologies. But even so, many of these new designs still carry traces of traditional aesthetic norms, aestheticized nature, and controlled messiness, not very far from mimesis and romantic depictions. As much as it may sound problematic, I’m quite convinced that landscape should be radically alienated and unfamiliarized. Paradoxically, it was these very aesthetic norms that alienated the landscape in the first place—applying a universal standard across diverse environments, rendering landscape an aesthetic category rather than a singularity of a place.

“Emancipatory politics begin with the loss of identity”[4], writes Slovenian philosopher Alenka Zupančič on the topic of feminism. But could this thought be productive in decolonizing, alienating, and emancipating the landscape from the content we applied over it in the past decades and centuries? Can we see the landscape anew? Is there an ecological potential of opting for strangeness and alienation when it comes to landscape?

If we are to fully confront the challenges of our ecologically questionable future, perhaps we need to bring certain unpleasantries back into view, or in other words, ‘unframe’ landscape. Elements like wind farms, waste management sites, marginalized social groups (#paris2024), etc., are often hidden from the public eye because they disrupt the superficial harmony of our landscapes and obstruct our utopian desires. But in doing so, we avoid uncomfortable truths in an unproductive modality. Should landscape architects, then, embrace a more confrontational aesthetic vocabulary, one that reflects the uncomfortable realities of our time? This discomfort may be necessary to engage in a more honest dialogue about the state of our world.

Walter Benjamin’s concept of porosity[5], developed from his observations of Naples, offers a compelling way to engage with the unpleasant yet unavoidable aspects of everyday urban life. Porosity blurs the boundaries between public and private, inviting the usually hidden messy processes of everyday life into the public sphere. In landscape design, this could mean making visible the often hidden or marginalized elements of our built environments—waste management, industrial processes, or other overlooked realities that play a significant role in the well-being of the environment.

Viktor Shklovsky’s theory of estrangement (ostranenie)[6] offers another useful framework. By making the familiar strange, estrangement forces us to confront everyday realities with fresh eyes. In landscape architecture, this could help disrupt automatic perceptions of spaces, encouraging a more critical engagement with the ecological and social realities that are too often hidden behind harmonious designs.

Martin Heidegger’s distinction between “ready-at-hand” and “present-at-hand”[7] could also provide insight into how landscapes might be “awakened” into public perception and users encouraged to become participators. Landscapes, often treated as background or passive spaces, are “ready-at-hand”—invisible until they fail us. By shifting them into “present-at-hand”—making them objects of reflection and interpretation—we might provoke deeper public engagement with the pressing environmental issues they represent. We could interpret Heidegger’s language as a possibility of a more radical sabotage of harmony.

Jacques Rancière’s concept of dissensus—disruption of the agreed-upon social and political order—could be instrumental in rendering a more open dialogue about the ecological and social dilemmas embedded in landscape design. Dissensus encourages us to embrace discomfort and disruption, opening up space for new, confrontational aesthetics that are fearlessly more inclusive than the ‘inclusive’ usually referred to in the slogans attached to our profession. It is inclusive to a point where it is much more difficult to be accepted by the public.

If we look at the Superkilen project in Copenhagen, which was widely criticized, we can observe how ‘aesthetic scales’ emerge. On the one hand, you could argue that the use of red does not fit the area, that it is simply ‘too much’, that it looks ‘too artificial’ and so on. However, on a wider aesthetic scale, one may understand that this crime- and dissensus-charged urban landscape couldn’t possibly result in a pleasing, picturesque image. While the overall success of Superkilen in its community remains unclear to me, I do think the intention was relevant. Martin Rein-Cano, partner at Topotek 1, one of the designing offices, stresses how landscape design is “about canalising energies you find in places”. Thus, it could be argued that the design approach underlying Superkilen seeks to attune itself to the énergies trouvées—the found energies inherent within the site’s context.

There is always a thin line, a risk that such perspectives fall into a sort of romanticized “middle-class-splaining” of lower-class struggles. It is vital for landscape architects to emphasise public space as an invitation to the entire social strata. Walter Benjamin and Anja Lacis’ portrayal of Naples, where ‘the most wretched pauper … enjoying in all his poverty the leisure to follow the great panorama’ and the sovereignty of being part of a larger, chaotic social fabric might exemplify this. While there is a certain idealism in the notion that public space could help those in poverty feel invited, dignified or connected to society, such a view, using notions like enjoyment, might oversimplify or sentimentalize the harsh realities of poverty.

Aesthetics remains central to landscape architecture’s ability to influence public perception of open spaces and opens up space for landscape architects for political action. Landscape architects participate in the production of space, transformation of perceived space[8], in this distribution of the sensible[9] in the emplacement of power and social hierarchies. This is a serious and unavoidable responsibility that comes with the job and is not really optional. Isn’t precisely the articulation of the aesthetic experience one of the main abilities that separate landscape architecture from other related disciplines? What and how to emplace, situate? From landscape as a utilitarian system, functional interface reflecting social relations to the emplacement of spirit—one’s own expression, the entire gradient ultimately concerns aesthetic experience.

Another example of unwelcome harmonisation is hidden in the instrument of Visual Impact Assessment, or VIA. How can we strive to mitigate the visual impact of an unecological or otherwise problematic infrastructure? Isn’t that essentially greenwashing? Painting the appearance of a ‘solution’ by seemingly ‘blending it in‘? The relevant question may be, provided that we all wish to contribute to the ecological effort, how can we situate this discussion? How much of the critique can leak into the aesthetic experience of sites we transform? How much of the problem can be represented?

Relying on aesthetics governed by harmony and order may no longer be sufficient in the face of the ecological crisis. To reflect the urgency of these times, it may be more productive to resort to aesthetics that embrace disruption, strangeness, and dissensus.

Public approval, political willingness and financial backing will largely still gravitate towards harmonious designs. But if landscape architects are to align more closely with the discourse surrounding environmental and social urgencies, we may need to set a different course and start the journey. Harmonisation of social and environmental friction may present misleading and consequently undemocratic and negative social impact.

Design has the tools to awaken a place, spark reflection, or a political discussion, but it requires transcending beyond the aesthetics of the status quo, beyond the Beautiful, and beyond harmonisation.

Zaš Brezar

Bibliography

[1] Cronon, William, ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995, 69-90. http://history.wisc.edu/cronon/Trouble_with_Wilderness_Main.html

[2] Rancière, Jacques. Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. Edited and translated by Steven Corcoran. London: Bloomsbury, 2010.

[3] Mitchell, W. J. T., ed. Landscape and Power. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

[4] Alenka Zupančič, What is Sex? (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017), 34.

[5] Walter Benjamin, “Naples,” in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, ed. Peter Demetz, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), 163–173.

[6] Shklovsky, Viktor. “Art as Technique.” In Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays, edited and translated by Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis, 3–24. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965.

[7] Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1962.

[8] Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.

[9] Rancière, Jacques. The Distribution of the Sensible: Politics and Aesthetics. Translated by Gabriel Rockhill. London: Continuum, 2004.