Reading the (Interior) Landscape

In finishing up this semester, thinking about the work ahead and going over what we have covered earlier this Spring and last Fall, I'm taking a moment to look again at Peirce Lewis’ Axiom’s for Reading the Landscape.

At the time we first read the piece, I was put off by it because I felt that it seemed to discount the experiences of many people—hikers, hunters, gardeners, farmers, aviators, artists, etc. —that do read the landscape but don’t necessarily write about it.

Now I regard it in a different way, because the concept of reading the landscape is useful even if Mr. Lewis seems determined to make a hard distinction between himself and those he feels he has not yet taught how to see.

Looking to the landscape to give us information about human culture, migration of ideas, history, technology, conflict, class, and many, many subtle detailed things within these broad categories is great. I don’t know that I will carry phrases like “the axiom of landscape obscurity” around with me, but I am interested in translating the idea of reading the landscape to the interior environment, where the essential idea of careful observation seems like a cornerstone of good design practice.

Looking at existing interior spaces—renovations, historic buildings, demolished structures, FIT, anything—there are many, many things to “read”. The buildings are like stories you walk through. The materials tell things about the environment. The fixtures tell things about history or culture. The arrangement of spaces tells things about technology and economics.  Doing a survey can be much, much more than measuring and the designer can spend time reading the spaces, asking questions of them, and following up with further research.