Inner Landscapes

Landscape is an idea; we bring landscape into being. Being a landscape (and representing the landscape) is to simultaneously inhabit two worlds: the one before us and the one inside us. And when those two worlds collide and intermingle the result can often surprise. Our relationship with the landscape isn't purely one of the physical dependency, but it's also spiritual and emotional. We tend to think of landscapes as external settings for our life and architectural structures. However, there are no external settings for us to settle in, as our perceptions and awareness unavoidably imply an exchange; when we enter a space, the space enters us. Physical and geographical landscapes are also mindscapes. 'I am the space, where I am', Noël Arnaud, the poet, confesses, whereas Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the philosopher, reasons: 'The world is wholly inside, and I am wholly outside of myself'. Rainer Maria Rilke, the Bohemian-Austrian poet, uses the beautiful notion of Weltinnenraum. In my baren landscapes of isolation, solitude and mystery, the architectural structures project a sense of arrival, destination and comfort. In Martin Heidegger's words, they express our 'coming into the nearness of distance'. Houses are set in the landscape but the landscape is equally mirrored in architecture. The house expresses permanence (temporary and futile) while the landscape projects the changes of the seasons and hours of the day. The landscape embraces the house while the house caresses the landscape. When there is a person in my landscapes, it is more of an extra, a negligible dot in the big picture. Man is only a small, vulnerable element within the wide nature.