Inês Nisa Rato | contactos: ines.rato@gmail.com

Continuing life through memory, contemplation and restorative landscapes Any landscape is a condition of the spirit Henri Frédéric Amiel Abstract

Design can be an active agent to develop the landscape quality in which we lead our

lives. Predicated on the idea of meaning, metaphor or narrative inserted into spaces, landscape

design might invent alternative forms of relationship between people, place and cosmos, thus

establishing a significant difference in the continuity or evolutionary intervention of the lived

experience.

The way landscape is perceived, experienced and appreciated / lived, through an

evolutionary, cultural or personal development, is influenced but not directly determined by the

physical landscape properties; landscape experiences are produced / created by individuals.

Besides the complexity of a yet fragmented comprehensive theory of landscape

experience, trying to explain landscape experience hermeneutics: how landscape experiences

are produced and which factors influence the production process, the increasing emphasis on

the experiential qualities of landscape, namely mindscape properties, is a consequence of the

rise of the experience society. We live with an economy in which experience and desires

became the most predominant commodities.

According to Jacobs (2006) in the three different reality modes: physical, social and

inner reality - landscape appears as a different phenomenon, respectively: matterscape,

powerscape and mindscape.

The sense of a place is a reservoir of mental related, including emotional, concepts -

collection of meanings - that specify a place as a particular one for the subject; stresses any

form in which a person is related to a place. During landscape experiences, some of these

mental concepts may be activated - resulting from memories and associations - and be included

in the dynamic core that constitutes consciousness. In this case, the experiences are special

and often meaningful.

Nine landscape architecture works associated with memory, contemplation and

restorative concepts are presented and analysed relatively on how experiential landscapes

permeate the understanding of who we are thus how to better live our lives. The selected

landscape examples, intending to assist memory, contemplative and restorative experiences,

have the potential to make a significant positive impact – to engage in the continuity of

contemporary life; enlarging our genius imaginorum - by contributing not only to the aesthetic

and intellectual enrichment, but also to improve our physical, social and mental health.