Conceptual Shift of Wilderness and Its Aesthetics - A Perspective on the Contradictory View of Nature in Landscape Architecture Tradition -

This paper examines the conceptual shift of wilderness and its legacy to the contradictory view of nature in landscape architecture tradition. In hunting and gathering societies, there was no dichotomy between the cultivated environment and wilderness. 'Wilderness' is a word whose first usage marks the transition from a hunting-gathering economy to an agricultural society. We can identify two archetypal responses to wilderness: classical and romantic. In the classical perspective, wilderness is something to be feared-an area of waste and desolation. The conquest of wilderness and the creation of usable places is a mark of civilization. For the romantics, in contrast, untouched wilderness has the greatest significance; it has a purity that human contact tends to sully and degrade. Wilderness for the romantics is a place to revere, a place of deep spiritual significance, and an object of aesthetic experience. In the Western world, the classical position predominated until the last two hundred years when the romantic concept began to gain more ground. The shift was made possible by the change in the way nature is understood. Modernity and modern science objectified nature. The transition of the concept of wilderness exemplifies the objectification and pictorialization of nature. Wilderness in the modern era is not different from the pastoral landscape which can be controlled by landscape architects.

황야에 대한 인식과 미적 경험의 변화 - 조경의 이중적 자연관과 그 모순 -