Diana Balmori’s scientific contributions

According to the author, there are five issues to be dealt with concerning the representation of landscape. The first is the continuing importance of painting. The second has to do with the representation of representation. The third concerns the depiction of space itself, and in particular, the need to find formats that can encompass the large expanses with which landscape now engages. The fourth is the use of integrated drawings. Finally, the fifth is the temporality of the ever-changing landscape. In the 18th and 19th centuries, history was considered the discipline that best explained reality. Today, however, the prevalence of the conviction that reality is best described in scientific terms has led to the privileging of current knowledge and the devaluation of what preceded it. Nonetheless, understanding the history of landscape architecture's engagement with these five issues can help us to deal with them today.

Landscape architecture is an art of peripheral vision. Peripheral vision is essential for appreciating and understanding landscape; central vision alone cannot capture it. Diagrams and mapping are Landscape Urbanism's basic tools for representation, lining up landscape with architectural and urban practices. Corner has identified three difficulties of landscape representation: ?the designer's indirect and detached or remote access to the landscape medium; the incongruity of drawing with respect polder Westland to its subject ? its abstractness with respect to actual landscape experience; and the anterior, prevenient function of the drawing ? its generative role. The process of representation is about developing an idea, first defining the intention and exploring its constraints, and then inventing a form for it. Lawrence Halprin's notebook drawings trump all his office drawings. His observations of landscape, ideas jotted down in sketch form, and lively and colourful drawings used to persuade the public, are effective and clear.