ABSTRACT
The composite landscape is the sum of the spatial framework created by landform, vegetation and built structures. The perception of landscape as scenery, as if it were a picture, requires a viewpoint that is separate from what is being appreciated. Landscape can then become a picture window to hang on the lounge wall or a video to be viewed through the windscreen of a motor car. The experience of landscape is a shifting perspective in time and in space observed in a way that Gordon Cullen called ‘serial vision’. A good discussion of different modes of landscape appreciation can be found in Steven Bourassa’s The Aesthetics of Landscape. Bacon’s reference to architecture applies equally to landscape design. The public–private or open–enclosed gradient constitutes a hierarchy of territories that belong to increasingly small groups of people.
