Introduction

Though some essays in previous sections cover contemporary cases, the emphasis in all the essays in this section is firmly on the contemporary. The four essays in this section deal with very contemporary environments, land use problems and political agendas, as well as spatial, temporal and material appropriateness. The work of Bernard Lassus addresses conditions such as the motorcar and roads. Derek Jarman’s garden deals with the site of a nuclear reactor in an ecologically sensitive area. Jacqueline Osty’s park deals with the complex contemporary problems of a site which has lost its ancient agricultural function, which is caught up in the problems of urban growth and suburban spread, and whose developer is a local government wanting to increase its status and its tourist revenues. Peter Salter’s work also addresses contemporary issues such as the conflict of prefabricated building elements with local building techniques and skills, indeed the loss of local skills and techniques, and hence the loss of appropriateness of construction processes to the prevailing conditions. To avoid the nostalgic rejection of modern processes (of building, of fabrication, of production) while not either rejecting-or romanticising-traditional and ancient techniques and skills, Peter Salter refers to the landscape as a measure of appropriateness: landscape thus becomes a measure for architecture through the use of responsive materials, of suitable construction and of an adaptable geometry.