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AlmaTourism N.3, 2011: Gloria Pugnetti and Alexandra Kruse, European Culture expressed in
Agricultural Landscape - Perspectives from the Eucaland Project
almatourism.cib.unibo.it
60
Since the thirties of the XX century to nowadays, the concept of “monument” and “cultural
heritage” itself significantly evolved, extending its range from the single and circumscribed
item, to a whole context and/or geographic area.
The idea of “monument” moved from its initial meaning of exceptional and exemplar work of
art to the value as “storage of material memory”, allowing this way a more extended group
of significant and sensitive cases to be admitted to this category, widening their perspectives
and possibilities in terms of protection and development.
The UNESCO World Heritage Convention of 1972 signed a milestone within this discipline,
stressing the world-wide value and responsibility of cultural heritage and finally pointing out
the relevance of landscape as human legacy, then confirmed and enhanced by the European
Landscape Convention of 2000. Finally the discipline came to agricultural landscapes,
detected as fundamental source of identity, primary mean of support for economical and
social development, actual living know-how archive and mirror of the historical relationship
between the physical features of a place and the human community living within it.
Through the years the awareness and interest toward landscape and cultural heritage
increased, involving a growing number of partners and nations (thirty-nine countries adhered
at now to the European Landscape Convention) and giving rise to several experiences,
programs, studies as on local as on international scale, which produced a variety of charters,
documents and policies.
The European Union and the United Nations did much about the preservation of landscape,
significantly contributing to the development of its interdisciplinary feature; after over thirty
years of activity and research, the multiplicity of methods and results needed to be collected
and arranged in a more organic view which could allow a comparison and a balance of what
has been achieved until now and which are the possible perspectives and scenarios.
The Eucaland (EUropean Culture expressed in Agricultural LANDscapes) Project was been
developed with this specific purpose, investigating thirteen European countries since 2007
to 2009. The approach to the issue started from ideally breaking up the activity on
agricultural landscapes in six fundamental steps, which cover the discipline from its
conceptual bases to the outputs dissemination. The project has been, this way, arranged in
teams, dedicated to the investigation on specific topics: 1. landscape description, 2.
landscape history, 3. landscape classification, 4. landscape assessment and policy, 5.
landscape planning, 6. dissemination. The structure of the books itself traces and follows the
Eucaland Project’s one.
∗ E-mail address: alessandragola@gmail.com
Contents liste available at Cib.Unibo
AlmaTourism
homepage: almatourism.cib.unibo.it
___________________________________________________________
Gloria Pugnetti and Alexandra Kruse,
European Culture expressed in Agricultural
Landscape - Perspectives from the Eucaland
Project
Gola, A.∗
Decolonizing Architecture, Jerusalem (Palestine)
AlmaTourism N.3, 2011: Gloria Pugnetti and Alexandra Kruse, European Culture expressed in
Agricultural Landscape - Perspectives from the Eucaland Project
almatourism.cib.unibo.it
61
The Landscape description focuses on the conceptual an theoretical bases of agricultural
landscape in its meaning of common heritage with social and cultural value, reporting its
components, the psychological and social influences on human well-being and the
perspectives of development for the future. The following topic bases on agricultural
landscape as deposit of historical memory, which face is shaped by the social and cultural
development within a geographic contest; this section compares the different evolution of
agricultural landscapes across Europe, highlighting and interpreting constants and
differences among the development of human societies. The landscape classification ideally
works as intermediate phase of arrangement and interpretation of the results from the two
previous parts, outlining families of landscapes interpreted as product of history.
The last three categories pertain to the more operative implication of the subject, surveying
administrative, operative and communicative activities. The research on landscape
assessment and policies investigated what at now produced by international institutions
(UNESCO, ICOMOS, IUCN) and European Union: what is interesting to point out, is that
currently still no single document has been dedicated to the specific issue of agricultural
landscape, which is still present in a fragmented way in several indications and policies issued
by various institutional sectors. The assessment of landscape planning activities aims to
recapitulate the Eucaland Project partners’ situation about the level of sensitivity and
awareness reached by institutions, actors and local communities, tested through direct
interviews and best practice experiences. The dissemination of results constitutes the final,
but still fundamental part of the Eucaland Project: as for any other program, the survey of
outputs and a activities of popularization verifies in which measure the chance for exchanges
and improvements of ideas, awareness, strategies and partnerships is caught.
The volume European Culture expressed in Agricultural Landscapes - Perspectives from the
Eucaland Project constitutes a report and a commentary to the final outcomes of the project
itself, a very meaningful operation which embodies not only a concrete occasion for
arranging organically and synthesise the huge amount of information risen from the
program, but also a valued effort of dissemination of what is considered the very last update
about the doctrine of agricultural landscape in Europe.
Especially the parts dedicated by Eucaland Project and the book itself to landscape
assessment and policy and landscape planning pointed out the non-homogeneity of terms,
definitions and goals between the various signing parts: this fact embodies a potential source
of misunderstanding and criticality which should be faced and developed in order to create a
shared ground and vocabulary for the future negotiations and international initiatives.
Because of the fast but also somehow scrambled evolution the relatively young discipline of
agricultural landscape is currently living, such kind of publication looks particularly
meaningful and commendable, since as it works as effective update addressed to a
variegated international audience.
The choice of the authors for a very neat and linear register and an efficient and clear index
arrangement looks particularly correct and makes this publication more forceful, structuring
a huge amount of notions and examples in an accessible way. The arrangement of the
themes recalls somehow the idea of a manual or guide: the structure of the chapters makes
actually possible to consult directly specific aspects of the agricultural landscape doctrine and
its onset in the various regions of Europe.
The volume aims to take stock of the current situation after the Eucaland Project not just in
order to picture the achieved goals, but most of all to render a chiaroscuro portrait of
potentials, lacks and critical points that could contribute envisioning future strategies and
actions.
The reading of this book hands not simply a clear ensemble of notions and information, but
also interesting proactive cues for further actions within and between various sectors, since
much still has to be done for a proper development of the agricultural landscape discipline.
