From a conservative to a projectual approach to the contemporary landscape

The city, its landscape and the external territory show themselves as a set
of fragments. Between the interstices and gaps spaces crop up in which
the environmental crisis is revealed and refers to the social one, the no
man’s land where discarded places are reworked by the environment
characterising their shape. Indistinct areas are formed in which there is a
co-presence and correlation of various dimensions that cannot be univocally
characterised and where one or more of these may prove dominant
over the others, which are thus marginal. The space of co-presence is an
in-between space, intermediate, which is also defined as a “third space” or
“third landscape” and indicates residual, indefinite spaces, not bound but
neither used following traditional rules.
Third space is also the edge territory between city and country, a territory
that is more than the sum of its parts. This is a different form of landscape,
the dynamic nature of which is much clearer compared with the “quality
landscapes”, for it is subjected to continuous pressures exerted by rural
and urban activities and trapped between the need for growth and transformation
and the desire for protection.
The in-between landscape is actually much more genuine than the simulacrum
or thematised one; it offers different viewpoints from which to
contemplate our life space with a new spirit, and represents the opportunity
to find its meaning and role within contemporary landscapes, as it is
the space of becoming, of flows, of ecological dynamics and biological and
cultural contamination.
It is by beginning with this type of landscape that it is possible to recompose
that fragmented, standardised one we find in many territorial
contexts. The attention shifts to the uninvestigated potential that a local
glance may reveal, abandoning prescriptive, state-controlled forms of
management and protection of the landscape which recall a principle of
responsibility for the entire local society.