The word myth has, among others, the meanings of a story capable of explaining natural phenomena, and in fact we humans have always relied on myths to express our relationship with what we call nature. Therefore, myths can be useful in understanding or even guiding landscape design.
In modern Europe culture, at least from the seventeenth century until the more recent fascination with wilderness, thinking about nature often insists on the search for its primordial state: the ‘myth of origin’ has indeed conditioned research for centuries, on a par with the ‘myth of authenticity’ or the ‘myth of redemption’ that led Henry Thoureau to say: “In Wilderness is the Preservation of the World”; although different, these myths reclaim the idea of separation and hierarchy between nature and humanity. More recently, reflections on the agency of the non-human – such as those of Gilles Clément, Ingo Kowarik, and Bruno Latour – describe the planet as a multispecies artifact, rethinking the very existence of nature and suggesting that it is itself a myth.
In 1990, Michiel Schwarz and Michael Thompson, inspired by the work of Mary Douglas, proposed four myths to describe ‘typical’ behaviors of nature from which consequential human actions would follow:
- benign nature, capable of withstanding any disturbance and restoring healthy conditions (humanity can trust in its regenerative power);
- tolerant nature, capable of absorbing perturbations within a certain threshold (humanity relies on experts to identify limits, warn of risks, indicate solutions);
- capricious nature, whose actions are in no way predictable (this does not allow people to learn from past experiences, hence fatalism);
- ephemeral nature, which is extremely vulnerable (humanity’s task is to defend it, to protect it, to prevent it from harm).
These four myths open to positions which are interesting because they are controversial – for example, these myths assume and imply otherness between nature and humanity – and invite interpretations that can usefully foster and question contemporary landscape design.
The call therefore aims to:
- collect reflections freely oriented to deepen one of the myths, including through experiences and practices;
- establish comparative frameworks between the different myths by comparing visions, approaches, works and projects;
- question the myths at the level of theoretical and applied design research;
- explore and document the antecedents, genealogies, and roots of some of these positions within landscape design culture;
- highlight emerging trajectories towards the definition of new myths of nature and new modes of landscape design.
Keywords: Myths of nature, Interactions and disturbances, Behavior and co-agency, Design.
Open until May 31st 2025.
To submit your full paper, please go to our submission platform: https://oaj.fupress.net/index.php/ ri-vista/about/submissions
Registration and login as Author with the Ri-Vista system is required to submit and follow the submission process online. Later, the account is necessary for following the status of your submission. The proposals have to be unpublished and written in Italian or English; the text can be of 20,000 to 30,000 characters, including spaces, title, authors, abstract, keywords, captions and references. The proposals have to include a minimum of 5 — a maximum of 10 pictures with good definition (at least 300 dpi/inch and 25 cm the smallest side) free from publishing obligations or accompanied with the specific permission.
The selected papers will be published in the thematic section of the 2 | 2025 issue of Ri-Vista.
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