ABSTRACT
In the “convention of modernism,” as Bruno Latour calls it, “nature” as a category is understood as something “God-given,” “self-organizing,” and clearly also as a counterpart category to “society” (Latour 2000, 23). In this understanding, interventions into landscapes are generally perceived as interventions into the modernists’ conception of “nature.” Urban sprawl spoils the landscape, resources are exploited, and nature is destroyed. Even if contemporary landscape theory today defines “landscape” as a “dynamic system of man-made spaces,” deeming the category “nature” hopelessly outdated (cf. Prominski 2004, 147), the closer definition of “landscape” continually relies on it being opposed to nature. Thus, the landscape is interpreted as “nearly entirely acquired nature” (Prominski 2004, 147), or the cultural landscape is referred to as “naturally as well as culturally acquired nature” (Körner 2005, 108). As long as this connection between landscape and the concept of nature described above cannot be overcome, the discourse regarding urbanism and landscape architecture
11.1 Introduction into the Modernists’ Conception of Nature and Its Contradictions ...............................................................................................209
