Memory and Transformation: 100 days of Culture, Gardens and Landscapes - International Triennial Apeldoorn

by Bert Van Meggelen, Editor
NAI Publishers, Rotterdam, 2008
176 pp., illus. € 35.00
ISBN: 978-90-5662-015-8.

Reviewed by Mike Leggett
University of Technology Sydney

legart@ozemail.com.au

The design of the volume follows several publishing conventions: the academic, the corporate and governmental. The result is a hybrid that instead of reporting on recent research provides a series of overviews of the state of landscape architecture and its related and emerging trades. The viewpoints are expressed as a series of states of longing.   Lavishly illustrated whilst avoiding becoming coffee table pornography, gently persuasive cajolings move the reader towards the quite reasonable project of making the urban environment more green than grey. The publication reflects ostensibly the work of the Dutch government in furthering the Council of Europe's European Landscape Convention "..in which the subject of landscape is dealt with integrally".

Dealing public policy over the land has been central to the Dutch for centuries. Cooperative orgnaisation of communities to enable flood control and creation of agricultural land from the sea is perhaps how it is the Triennial commences in Holland, (though Apeldoorn is 100 kilometres from the sea). Landscape, as an expression of the visual appearance of the physical world, also has a strong tradition in the country, where the flat unbroken views across the terrain, recorded in the paintings, are dominated by the elements of air and water.   Such familiar images, a part of the overall three-month event, are tempered in the publication by contemporary and historic photographs of the urban and rural scene. The historic illustrate the texts, the contemporary are interstitials to the texts, deriving from the candid and vaguely surreal styles of glossy magazine editorials.

There is little here of interest to researchers in the fields of art, science and technology. There is not even a bibliography. It reflects layers of civic administration - bureaucrats do not read books but develop policy from advisers who do, delivering commissioned reports to order. Bureaucrats 'interviewed' in press release style here make this tough reading for any but the most dedicated apparatchik. The relief comes from Marinke Steenhuis in her engaging essay 'The Netherlands the garden of us all', returning us to a recognisable series of places, through the tracing of the making of the Dutch landscapes. The tractor for instance, is largely responsible for the rectangular appearance of agricultural areas in Holland, a recent history. And the popular television show Farmer Seeks Wife apparently is contributing to "..a highly diversified pattern of agrarian landscapes." So it seems there are no holds barred in furthering the public need.

At best the publication served as an introduction to the whole three-month Triennial and its various components, which included picture exhibitions, a commissioned garden, and conferences and related meetings. These, we are informed, will be reported on in a further publication appearing in 2009. As there was little mention of sustainability in this preamble to the events, hopefully some of the views and issues raised in another recently reviewed volume (LDR November 2008), will have made it into the discussions held during the conferences at the Apeldoorn Triennial.