Landscape Biographies L A N D S C A P E A N D H E R I T A G E S T U D I E S Edited by Jan Kolen, Hans Renes and Rita Hermans Geographical, Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on the Production and Transmission of Landscapes Landscape Biographies Landscape and Heritage Studies Landscape and Heritage Studies (LHS) is an English-language series about the history, heritage and transformation of the natural and cultural landscape and the built environment. The series aims at the promotion of new directions as well as the rediscovery and exploration of lost tracks in landscape and heritage research. Both theoretically oriented approaches and detailed empirical studies play an important part in the realization of this objective. The series explicitly focuses on: – the interactions between physical and material aspects of landscapes and landscape experiences, meanings and representations; – perspectives on the temporality and dynamic of landscape that go beyond traditional concepts of time, dating and chronology; – the urban-rural nexus in the context of historical and present-day transformations of the landscape and the built environment; – multidisciplinary, integrative and comparative approaches from geography, spatial, social and natural sciences, history, archaeology and cultural sciences in order to understand the development of human-nature interactions through time and to study the natural, cultural and social values of places and landscapes; – the conceptualization and musealization of landscape as heritage and the role of ‘heritagescapes’ in the construction and reproduction of memories and identities; – the role of heritage practices in the transmission, design and transformation of (hidden) landscapes and the built environment, both past and present; – the appropriation of and engagement with sites, places, destinations, landscapes, monuments and buildings, and their representation and meaning in distinct cultural contexts. Series Editors Rita Hermans (VU University Amsterdam – secretary to the Board), Koos Bosma, Hans Renes, Freek Schmidt, Sjoerd Kluiving (all VU University Amsterdam), Rob van der Laarse (University of Amsterdam), Jan Kolen (Leiden University / Centre for Global Heritage and Development) Landscape Biographies Geographical, Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on the Production and Transmission of Landscapes Edited by Jan Kolen, Johannes Renes and Rita Hermans Amsterdam University Press Cover illustration: Het Kolkje and the Oudezijds Achterburgwal in Amsterdam by George Hendrik Breitner, 1894-1898 (by courtesy of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam) Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Typesetting: Crius Group, Hulshout Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 90 8964 472 5 e-isbn 978 90 4851 780 0 (pdf) nur 682 © Jan Kolen, Johannes Renes & Rita Hermans / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2015 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher. This publication was made possible through support by the interfaculty research institute for Culture, History and Heritage (CLUE+) of VU University Amsterdam, the Centre for Global Heritage and Development of Leiden University, Delft University of Technology and Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Grant 603447 (project HERCULES) from the European Commis- sion (7th Framework Program). Table of Contents Preface 17 Hayden Lorimer 1 Landscape Biographies: Key Issues 21 Jan Kolen & Johannes Renes Introduction 21 Biographical Approaches of Landscape: A Short History 25 Landscapes as Life Worlds 28 Key Issues and Topics of this Volume 32 Issue 1 – Who (or what) are the authors of the landscape? 32 Issue 2 – Are landscapes ‘socialized nature’? 35 Issue 3 – How does the temporal dimension of landscapes take ‘shape’ in rhythms, layers and memories? 38 Issue 4 – How can planning and design contribute to the landscape’s life history? 41 The Structure of the Book 43 2 The Marsh of Modernity 49 Edward H. Huijbens & Gisli Palsson Introduction 50 Nature as We Know It 51 Mapping the Marsh 53 ‘Sweet is the Swamp’ 54 In the Bog 57 Grand Engineering 59 The Scenic and the Unscenic 62 To Conclude 64 3 Biographies of Biotopes 71 Jan Kolen Introduction: Biotopes 71 From the Primordial Landscape to Socialized Nature 73 Fens and Birds 79 The ‘Co-Scripting’ of Biotopes 89 From Dikes and Dams to Disasters 93 Conclusion 95 4 Automobile Authorship of Landscapes 99 Edward Huijbens & Karl Benediktsson Introduction 99 Engaging with the Highlands 101 Establishing Authorship 104 Machines and Morality 108 Conservation, Authority and Authorship 110 Concluding Remarks 113 5 Authenticity, Artifice and the Druidical Temple of Avebury 117 Mark Gillings & Joshua Pollard Writing a Biography 117 A Search for the Authentic Avebury 120 Stukeley Records a Temple 123 Keiller Builds One 125 Purity of Vision 127 What is Avebury? 131 Worshipping at the Temple 132 Ancestral Values 134 Authenticity, Artifice and Avebury 135 Postscript: Time for a New Avebury to Emerge? 137 6 Places That Matter 143 Ludvig Papmehl-Dufay Introduction 143 The Importance of Places 145 Landscape Biographies in Archaeology 146 Biographies of Megalithic Monuments 148 Öland Today and in the Neolithic 152 The Mysinge Passage Graves 154 Conclusion: Places That Matter 157 Epilogue: The Meaning of Archaeology 161 7 What Future for the Life-History Approach to Prehistoric Monuments in the Landscape? 167 Cornelius Holtorf The Unbelievable Mess of the Past 170 The Problem of Identity 174 Conclusion: From Monuments to Landscapes 179 8 ‘To Preserve the Terrain in its Present State’ 183 Michiel Purmer Introduction 185 The Eerder Achterbroek Project in the Context of Dutch Landscape Research 186 Eerde and the Eerder Achterbroek 188 Research Method 190 Landscape Characteristics and Landscape Change 191 The Baron and His Landscape 193 The Authors of the Eerder Achterbroek 196 Conclusions 199 9 The Quiet Authors of an Early Modern Palatial Landscape 205 Hanneke Ronnes Introduction 205 The Early Palace 209 Quiet Times 214 Legacy 216 Aged Abode 220 State Matters and Distractions 224 Conclusion 227 10 Piet Mondrian’s Victory Boogie Woogie , 1942-44 235 Jürgen Stoye Introduction 237 The Biography of the Landscape 238 Marwyn Samuels 239 Michel de Certeau 240 Victory Boogie Woogie 240 Mondrian 242 Changes 244 Mondrian in New York 245 The Rhythm of New York 248 Victory Boogie Woogie as Authored Landscape 248 11 Shanghai: The Biography of a City 253 David Koren Introduction 253 Landscape Biography and the City 255 The Early Colonial City: Shanghai in the 19 th Century (1842-1899) 258 Landscape of Impression 258 Landscape of Expression 259 Representation in Popular Culture 261 Part of the World System: The Heydays (1900-1949) 263 Landscape of Impression 263 Landscape of Expression 264 Shanghai in Popular Culture 265 Off the Radar: The Dark Years of Communism (1949-1989) 271 Landscape of Impression 271 Landscape of Expression 272 Shanghai in Popular Culture 273 ‘In the Picture’ Again: The Metropolis Awakens (1990-Present) 275 Landscape of Impression 275 Landscape of Expression 275 Shanghai in the Media 277 Conclusion 278 12 A Kaleidoscopic Biography of an Ordinary Landscape 283 John de Jong Introduction 283 Landscape Dynamics and Spatial Order 285 Continuity of a Spatial Order 285 Transition and Transformation 287 The Process of Landscape Development 288 Framed Spatial Practices 290 Spatial Development as Private Venture 290 Socio-Politically-Based Development 294 Landscape for the Use of Leisure 296 Iconography of the Landscape: A Dynamic Picture 297 Boulevard of Social Standing and Power 298 Progress and Nostalgia 300 The Ordinariness of Landscape and the Importance of Everyday Practices 302 Conclusion 306 13 The Cultural Biography of a Street 309 Wim Hupperetz Introduction 309 Historical Research Traditions 310 The Historical City Centre as Playground for City Planners 312 Bricks and People 313 Housing Culture, Parcels, Building Blocks and the Body of Houses 314 Structure 318 Historical Notion 320 Dynamic Cultural Heritage 321 Tradition and Renewal 322 Recommendations 323 14 Post-Industrial Coal-Mining Landscapes and the Evolution of Mining Memory 327 Felix van Veldhoven Introduction 327 Remembering and Forgetting in the Landscape 329 The Post-Industrial Mining Landscape of Dutch and Belgian Limburg 331 Dutch Limburg 332 Belgian Limburg 334 The Post-Industrial Mining Landscape 336 The Changing Will to Forget 338 Conclusion 339 15 Fatal Attraction 345 Rob van der Laarse Unwanted Memory 346 Purity and Modernity 349 Making Heimats capes 355 Hidden Continuities: From Camps to Memorial Spaces 361 Through the Eyes of the Perpetrators? 366 16 A Biography for an Emerging Urban District 377 Svava Riesto Introduction 377 The Carlsberg Site – Seen and Overlooked 380 Overlooked Spaces 383 Landscape Biography for Urban Redevelopment Sites 384 Carlsberg: An Unexpected Turn 386 Design Survey I – Topography 388 Landscape Biography of a Hill 389 Design Survey II – Transportation Equipment 392 Landscape Biography of a Route 393 Unravelling Surveys of Carlsberg 396 Prospects for Future Landscape Biography 398 17 Layered Landscapes 403 Johannes Renes Introduction 403 Rome 405 The Dutch Rural Landscape 412 Landscape Layers in Planning 416 Conclusion 418 18 Biographies of Landscape: Rebala Heritage Reserve, Estonia 423 Helen Sooväli-Sepping Theoretical Starting Points 423 Methodological Considerations 426 Nationalization of the Past: Biography of the Rebala Landscape 427 Protection: For Whom and Why? 430 Whose Heritage? 432 Discussion 433 List of Figures Figure 1.1 Het Kolkje and the Oudezijds Achterburgwal in Amsterdam by George Hendrik Breitner, 1894-1898 30 Figure 2.1 The grand engineering scheme of Southwest Iceland 61 Figure 2.2 From the Flói irrigation system 61 Figure 2.3 Canoeing in the “Dælur” of Stokkseyri 62 Figure 3.1 Archetypal representation of the linear development of a cultural landscape out of and upon the primordial natural landscape 76 Figure 3.2 Map of the historical village areas of Someren and Asten (Noord-Brabant, The Netherlands) around 1900 with fens with bird names 82 Figure 3.3 Cranes (background) return to a fen in the Groote Peel in 2011 84 Figure 3.4 Two boys herding cattle on a wet heathland near Eisden (Limburg, The Netherlands), c. 1900 86 Figure 3.5 Jan Willem Koch’s “habitat”: meadows at the Loowaard with the havezate 91 Figure 3.6 Typical Dutch river landscape around 1950 with meadows (uiterwaarden), closed dikes and brick factories (background) 94 Figure 4.1 The Icelandic road system in 1936 104 Figure 4.2 Roads and tracks in the interior of Iceland at present 108 Figure 4.3 Prepared for war? Austrian ex-army truck in the Icelandic landscape 109 Figure 4.4 The funeral of the freedom to travel at the Pass of Hope 113 Figure 5.1 Avebury today 118 Figure 5.2 The impact of stone removals on the main circles of the monument 121 Figure 5.3 Stukeley’s frontispiece to Abury (1743) 122 Figure 5.4 Keiller’s engineering project 126 Figure 5.5 The 20th-century social cleansing of Avebury 128 Figure 5.6 Stukeley’s Dracontia in all its sinuous symmetry 129 Figure 5.7 A clash of aesthetics – the north-west sector of Avebury 130 Figure 5.8 Keiller’s carefully re-erected obelisks and stones 130 Figure 5.9 The Avebury Cove (the 4.9-metre-high Stone I is in the foreground) 137 Figure 5.10 Engineering verticality (Stone I) 139 Figure 6.1 The biography of our house revealing itself 144 Figure 6.2 A monument with multiple meanings 151 Figure 6.3 The island of Öland, with the Neolithic coastline (dark grey area = land in the Neolithic) and the Resmo area (black dot) indicated 153 Figure 6.4 The passage grave at Mysinge as it appears today 155 Figure 7.1 A prehistoric monument – cargo from the past imported to a present landscape 169 Figure 7.2 An unbelievable mess of many pasts in, at, on, and around the megalith of Monte da Igreja, Évora, Portugal 172 Figure 7.3 A single monument or several? Metamorphosis from prehistoric menhir to Christian religious site to tourist attraction 176 Figure 7.4 An outstanding monument of the 20th century 178 Figures 8.1a-b Two oaks, photographed in 1949 and again in 2009 184 Figure 8.2 The Eerder Achterbroek, 2008 185 Figure 8.3 Eerde Manor, 2008 187 Figures 8.4a-b Topographical maps, showing the Eerder Achterbroek around 1900 and a century later 189 Figure 8.5 A row of oaks in the Eerder Achterbroek, 2010 192 Figure 8.6 Brochure, titled: “Our future property”, 1949 194 Figure 8.7 Oral history: interview with former tenants Seine Nevenzel and Jan Zandman of the Eerde estate, 2007 195 Figure 8.8 Meulenhorst farmyard, 2008 198 Figure 8.9 Two dead oaks, 2008 200 Figure 9.1 Early 18th-century birds-eye view of Het Loo 206 Figure 9.2 Present-day facade of the back of the palace 207 Figure 9.3 View of “Het Oude Loo” (the old palace of Het Loo) (Andreas Schelfhout, 1787-1870) 208 Figure 9.4 King-stadholder William III 210 Figure 9.5 Het Loo, from the garden looking at the back of the house 213 Figure 9.6 Map of the Low Countries around the time of the death of Willem III 215 Figure 9.7 The Venus fountain of Het Loo 219 Figure 9.8 The cascade with the royal monogram in front of the ‘great lake’ 221 Figure 9.9 Het Loo in the second half of the 18th century 225 Figure 9.10 Het Loo (now plastered) in the 19th century 229 Figure 10.1 Piet Mondrian: Victory Boogie Woogie 236 Figure 11.1 The boundaries of the juridical trichotomy in the 1930s (Chinese city, International Settlement and French Concession) 258 Figure 11.2 Positioning Victor Sassoon’s Cathay hotel as hypermodern and ‘interesting’, positioning the city as the ‘Paris of the East’ in passing 260 Figure 11.3 Russian-Orthodox church amidst the French Concession 264 Figure 11.4 Interior of the luxurious Astor hotel, one of the few historical hotels of the city with a fairly authentic interior 266 Figure 11.5 Cartoon that criticizes the influence of the west 268 Figure 11.6 Illustration from Tintin – The Blue Lotus 269 Figure 11.7 Cigarette advertisement from the 1930s 270 Figure 11.8 One of the most striking buildings from the communist era: the Stalinist Exhibitions Hall 273 Figure 11.9 Representation of an opium den in the new Shanghai History Museum, housed in the basement of the 468-metres-high Oriental Pearl Tower in Pudong 276 Figure 11.10 The Bund by night in 2009, as seen from a skyscraper in Pudong 279 Figure 12.1 View on the Maliebaan 286 Figure 12.2 Land ownership – situation according to the cadastral map of 1832 291 Figure 12.3 Street pattern and field limits 292 Figure 12.4 Adriaanstraat 294 Figure 12.5 Almshouses of Speyaert van Woerden 295 Figure 12.6 March-past of the National-Socialist Movement for the occasion of the birthday of leader Anton Mussert 299 Figure 12.7 Office of the assurance company ‘De Nederlanden van 1845’ in 1930 300 Figure 12.8 The romantic décor in 1936 evoking nostalgia 301 Figure 12.9 Compilation of two photographs from around 1900 and 2010, showing the location of the former Catholic girls’ school along the Adriaanstraat 302 Figure 13.1 A schedule on memory(loss), historic notion and commemoration 311 Figure 13.2 Archaeological research in the Visserstraat where the enclosure ditches of the different parcels from the 12th century were found 311 Figure 13.3 Drawing and aerial photograph of the historic city center in Breda with the building blocks and large scale buildings at the Barones and Nieuwe Veste 315 Figure 13.4a The cultivation phase 1175-1250 316 Figure 13.4b The land division phase and construction of the street in 1330 316 Figure 13.4c The parcels around 1435 with land consolidation at the Havermarkt 317 Figure 13.4d The Visserstraat after the cityfire in 1490 when the Havermarkt was constructed 317 Figure 13.5 The body of the medieval house Visserstraat 31 in Breda 319 Figure 13.6 A schedule with structural, cyclical and evenemential aspects that can be distinguished in the eight hundred years of living in the Visserstraat in Breda 321 Figure 14.1 Mining heritage in the Netherlands 333 Figure 14.2 Mining heritage in Belgium 335 Figure 15.1 Hitlers Volkswagen 349 Figure 15.2 Auschwitz Album 351 Figure 15.3 Exhibition Planung und Aufbau im Osten , Berlin 1941 356 Figure 15.4 Sachsenhain 359 Figure 15.5 Hübotter, blueprint 1946 362 Figure 15.6 English Holocaust memorial in London Hyde Park 368 Figure 16.1 Copenhagen Topography 379 Figure 16.2 Carlsberg Brewery Site in Copenhagen 379 Figure 16.3 Two Chimneys Evaluated 382 Figure 16.4 Masterplan 385 Figure 16.5 Landscape Plan 387 Figure 16.6 Urban Space Concept 388 Figure 16.7 Carslberg Breweries 1889 390 Figure 16.8 Urban Space Installation 392 Figure 16.9 Worker’s Open Spaces 394 Figure 16.10 Informal Hang-outs 395 Figure 17.1 The Forum of Augustus, with the pillars that remain from the Temple of Mars Ultor, founded by Augustus 405 Figure 17.2 Settlement continuity in Rome 406 Figure 17.3a-d The Crypta Balbi area during the Roman Empire, in the 5th-6th century AD, the 10th-11th and the 14th century AD 408 Figure 17.4 The Palazzo della Civiltà Italiano in the EUR quarter 411 Figure 17.5 Vertical layers in the Dutch coastal landscape 412 Figure 17.6 A cross-section through the Dutch landscape 413 Figure 17.7 Lake Naarden (Dutch: Naardermeer) in 1900 415 Figure 18.1 Communal meeting discussing the village future in the study area, the village of Parasmäe 425 Figure 18.2 Areal photo of Parasmäe village from 1930s 427 Figure 18.3 The making of heritage. Improving living conditions in the 1930s 429 Preface Hayden Lorimer Through the exercise of biography, landscape can be considered anew. An opening observation as bold as this demands some prefatory justification. ‘Landscape biographies’ might usefully be conceived of as an adaptive form of portraiture; personhood serving as the lens through which to view changes made to the natural or built environment, to its social purpose or cultural imagination. Pitched in these terms, portraiture performs broader duties than the standard depiction of an individual life as an arc of existence stretching from cradle to grave. Instead, it would attend carefully to a person’s association with, or influence upon some identifi- able place. The orders of person who are influential in the shaping of place are as diverse in character as is topography in its forms. Operating as principal agents of landscape change, the biographical subject could be a mapper or a maker, architect or author, farmer or forester, traveller or tourist, interpreter or imaginer. They may be permanently resident, or on the move and simply passing through. She: a geo-engineer in the business of moving earth. He: a lyric poet whose words inscribe with a lightness of touch. But by a combina- tion of actions and ideas, individual agency is attached or anchored, and a mark is made. What does such a person leave? On occasion, evidence of authorship exists to such depth and degree, that landscape seems somehow fashioned in the author’s own image. A kind of likeness between landscape and landscaper that is hard to ignore, and one narrated according to major standout features, judged posthumously as well worth remembering. Such strong biographical legacies can produce landscapes as ongoing, re-readable phenomena. Readability being a quality derived from direct experience, among those variously in search of a subject for artistic appreciation, a site of special scenic value, or exposed to endlessly recycled mediations in text and image. In other instances, past forms of landscape modification may be more minor, or the speed of transformation less dramatic, and thus individual interventions are gradually forgotten; until being redis- covered through the happy accidents or patient labours of formal research investigation. And what of the places impacted by such active protagonists? This might be landscape conceived of at the smallest of scales, no more than 18 Preface a patch or parcel of ground. Or, a landscape considerably greater in geo- graphical extent: delimited according to cultural and ethnic traditions; a territory, whose extent can be charted along geo-political borders; or, what amounts to a scientific bioregion, understood in terms of floral and faunal particularity. And so, a sense gradually emerges of landscape as a phenomenon that can easily exceed the stamp or signature of any one author. Configuring the relation between biography and landscape in these greater terms is, by implication, to acknowledge a different measure for existence in the living world. A ‘biography of landscape’ can long outlast the span of a single human life. Landscapes can be understood to have a biography that has accumulated across centuries, or aggregated over millennia. This stretched temporality is significant, and in tandem with it, the researcher’s attunement to the multivariate agencies that co-produce landscape. Generosity shown to the ‘more-than-human’ demands a certain pliability of thinking, not only about the kinds of lives that might be subject to study, but also about what can be recovered of a life. The results can be generative and liberating: presencing the lifeworlds of animals and birds, plants and trees, objects and structures, and many other “beings” besides these. By the application of close and careful attention, each can be said to have a life history (not simply as a species or a multitude) but as individual- ized biographical subjects. Both of these kinds of portraiture – ‘landscape biographies’ and ‘biog- raphies of landscape’ – have their play in this excellent book. Its contents are an occasion for convening – critically and creatively – around interests shared by geographers, historians, archaeologists and anthropologists. In the recognition of authorial difference, one further twist on portraiture is made possible. This is to question the rightful register and pitch for authorial voice in landscape studies. Should it be detached, as academic tradition demands? Or reflexively embedded and enfolded inside the narrative? If so, then what style should we determine as most effective? Circumstances prevail, of course. And a spectrum exists, running all the way from explicit reportage to the recessed, spectral presence that speaks of literary invention. As this volume’s contributors make plain, landscape studies continue to have the great merit of being a genuinely interdisciplinary area of scholarship. The field methods, and interpretive techniques, employed by practitioners in a range of terrestrial and archival settings may well reflect intellectual differences in disciplinary history and contemporary theory, sometimes to quite categorical degree. But here evident are also Preface 19 areas of significant overlap and real rapport, suggesting how ideas about the relation between landscape and biography are sharpened through the company they keep. Moreover, as this collection of chapters so ably demonstrates, tensions between disciplinary traditions need not be overcome. Instead, a trade in sensibilities and mentalities is enabled. Landscape is, above all, a subject that demands the skills and appetite of the polymath. Hayden Lorimer, University of Glasgow December 2013