Chapter 7
Gaze into the Landscape: Can Sensory
Immersion, Landscape Reading and Design,
and Landscaping Methods be Adapted
to the Underwater Landscape?
Charles Ronzani and Alain Freytet
Abstract Underwater landscape nowadays becoming a field of action for landscape
designers: Politicians and natural marine parks are starting to resort to it. Contrary
to what we could think, not only do landscape designers set up the land, they also
carry out researches seeking to understand how a natural and/or cultural landscape
can be seen by an audience, and managed at its best. They “read” the landscape.
They can rely on science, but above all, this reading is for them an art; the art of
“immersion.” Intuitively, artistically, graphically soaking up the place’s atmosphere
bringing a new look upon it, understanding and conveying its emotion and specificity:
this is the modern practice used by the French landscape designers of the Versailles
school. However, can these methods, usually terrestrial, be applied to the underwater
landscape? Do underwater characteristics (which are completely different from the
terrestrial ones, starting with the visual water filter that questions an essential part
of the definition of landscape itself) impose a change of method? What new tools
and practices does the landscape designer have to invent in order to study the underwater landscape, and eventually act on it? The development of this quite new job
is allowing new and unseen management perspectives for underwater landscapes.
The landscape designer (alongside scientists), beside knowledge and protection, can
facilitate coexistence between delicate marine environments and the audience, in
terms of sensitization, cultural mediation, underwater museography, adjustments,
and communication tools that are attractive and fitted into landscape. “Make understand rather than defend”: The “ecology of perception” is a substitute to the purely
protective ecology present in the exotic laboratory of underwater landscape. All of
this is, once out of the water, in favor of the terrestrial landscape to which we might
have gotten accustomed too easily and not see all the beauty it offers us. . .
C. Ronzani ()
École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles, Versailles, France
e-mail: charlesronzani@gmail.com
A. Freytet
Conservatoire du Littoral, Guéret, France
e-mail: alain@freytet.fr
O. Musard et al. (eds.), Underwater Seascapes, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-03440-9_7,
89
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
Gaze into the Landscape: Can Sensory
Immersion, Landscape Reading and Design,
and Landscaping Methods be Adapted
to the Underwater Landscape?
Charles Ronzani and Alain Freytet
Abstract Underwater landscape nowadays becoming a field of action for landscape
designers: Politicians and natural marine parks are starting to resort to it. Contrary
to what we could think, not only do landscape designers set up the land, they also
carry out researches seeking to understand how a natural and/or cultural landscape
can be seen by an audience, and managed at its best. They “read” the landscape.
They can rely on science, but above all, this reading is for them an art; the art of
“immersion.” Intuitively, artistically, graphically soaking up the place’s atmosphere
bringing a new look upon it, understanding and conveying its emotion and specificity:
this is the modern practice used by the French landscape designers of the Versailles
school. However, can these methods, usually terrestrial, be applied to the underwater
landscape? Do underwater characteristics (which are completely different from the
terrestrial ones, starting with the visual water filter that questions an essential part
of the definition of landscape itself) impose a change of method? What new tools
and practices does the landscape designer have to invent in order to study the underwater landscape, and eventually act on it? The development of this quite new job
is allowing new and unseen management perspectives for underwater landscapes.
The landscape designer (alongside scientists), beside knowledge and protection, can
facilitate coexistence between delicate marine environments and the audience, in
terms of sensitization, cultural mediation, underwater museography, adjustments,
and communication tools that are attractive and fitted into landscape. “Make understand rather than defend”: The “ecology of perception” is a substitute to the purely
protective ecology present in the exotic laboratory of underwater landscape. All of
this is, once out of the water, in favor of the terrestrial landscape to which we might
have gotten accustomed too easily and not see all the beauty it offers us. . .
C. Ronzani ()
École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles, Versailles, France
e-mail: charlesronzani@gmail.com
A. Freytet
Conservatoire du Littoral, Guéret, France
e-mail: alain@freytet.fr
O. Musard et al. (eds.), Underwater Seascapes, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-03440-9_7,
89
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014