7 Gaze into the Landscape: Can Sensory Immersion, Landscape Reading and . . .
117
Fig. 7.13 A group of children with their Campomoro underwater trail discovery boards. (sketch by
Alain Freytet for Torra Plongée)
preferred. For example, as part of the underwater trail project on the Conservatoire du
Littoral Domaine du Rayol site, the initial and no doubt overly pregnant ideas based
on a garden were aborted in favour of guided tours leaving from the beach house, a
painted marine fresco in the diving shed, and live underwater images broadcast by
camera in a beach-level room. Such minimalist intervention argues for ceasing all
reference to these natural environments as “gardens”. We now see them as places
with their own dynamics and their own laws independent of all human intervention
and policy. Along the coast of Campomoro, in Corsica, the first outlines of the quite
interventionist underwater trail involving the installation of underwater buoys and
markers were dropped in favour of work on transportable information media. A board
that helps swimmers float on the surface also provides information and educational
material. It particularly features a very precise map, developed from decametric measurements, together with the itinerary, rules of good conduct, and pictures of animals
that may be encountered. Children play with the boards like shields. Visitors thus
become active landscape readers while other still rare “landscape media” form the
missing pieces in the sensory puzzle between the world and ourselves. But above all,
landscape action does not introduce human features to weigh on these fragile areas.
They are preserved by shifting the focus to an intermediate object accommodated
at the heart of what the landscape really is: a dialogue between our imagination
and the area. The very discovery and concept of such tools and methods, working
as “levers” in people’s minds, are sufficient justification for all the efforts we, as
landscape designers, deploy to read the underwater world (Fig. 7.13).
117
Fig. 7.13 A group of children with their Campomoro underwater trail discovery boards. (sketch by
Alain Freytet for Torra Plongée)
preferred. For example, as part of the underwater trail project on the Conservatoire du
Littoral Domaine du Rayol site, the initial and no doubt overly pregnant ideas based
on a garden were aborted in favour of guided tours leaving from the beach house, a
painted marine fresco in the diving shed, and live underwater images broadcast by
camera in a beach-level room. Such minimalist intervention argues for ceasing all
reference to these natural environments as “gardens”. We now see them as places
with their own dynamics and their own laws independent of all human intervention
and policy. Along the coast of Campomoro, in Corsica, the first outlines of the quite
interventionist underwater trail involving the installation of underwater buoys and
markers were dropped in favour of work on transportable information media. A board
that helps swimmers float on the surface also provides information and educational
material. It particularly features a very precise map, developed from decametric measurements, together with the itinerary, rules of good conduct, and pictures of animals
that may be encountered. Children play with the boards like shields. Visitors thus
become active landscape readers while other still rare “landscape media” form the
missing pieces in the sensory puzzle between the world and ourselves. But above all,
landscape action does not introduce human features to weigh on these fragile areas.
They are preserved by shifting the focus to an intermediate object accommodated
at the heart of what the landscape really is: a dialogue between our imagination
and the area. The very discovery and concept of such tools and methods, working
as “levers” in people’s minds, are sufficient justification for all the efforts we, as
landscape designers, deploy to read the underwater world (Fig. 7.13).