ABSTRACT
There are multiple affinities between the philosophical thinking, which aims at understanding the whole of reality, and the integrated conception of “landscape” supported by the Portuguese School of Landscape Architecture: organic natural components taking precedence over cultural changes; an ontological stance on the primacy of being over representations; and the close articulation between aesthetic appreciation and ethical respect.
This is confirmed by the books which resulted from the cooperation between the Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa and the Centro de Estudos de Arquitectura Paisagista: Filosofia da Paisagem: Uma Antologia (2011; 2013 editions) by Francisco Cabral; Filosofia e Arquitectura da Paisagem: Um Manual (2012); and Filosofia e Arquitectura da Paisagem: Intervenções (2013).
For this book dedicated to green infrastructures, I present an introduction to the concept of “structure,” considering its semantic origin and evolution, as well as the successive modulations that established it as a central predicable in philosophy and natural sciences epistemology. I shall emphasise how this concept wavered between form of being (reality) and method of knowledge, and also refer to the never-settled tension between mechanism and organism, or between stability (systemic permanence) and mobility (functional dynamism).
