A review on Manuel Palerm's landscape theories and approaches

Juan Manuel Palerm Salazar is an architect and theorist who describes architecture beyond the constructional aspects and emphasizes on the landscape in the new complex world. He presents a new definition of space and also conceptual and physical dimensions and refers to it as a consequence of specific changes in the modern world which requires analysis tools and new conceptual frameworks. Alike his colleagues, He believes in new parameters beyond Euclidian and Cartesian ones and presents some cases. He has showcased his professional experience in different fields of architecture, urban planning and regional planning and has focused on landscape as a synthesis of separate measures, land conservation and land development. Since 1986 he has developed architecture, city planning and landscape projects in the Canary Islands and internationally in other countries. He declares that the social complexity of cultural and natural anthropology which is hidden in these islands encourages him to work and showcase his ideas in this region. Since 2006, cultural events such as biennials have been held by Palerm’s contribution. His focus on “cultural events” in these islands has resulted in different achievements from other theorists. The consequences of his studies are a simple look to landscape and how it can be defined as the environment which surrounds us as well as a focus on culture. He seeks for missing bonds in architecture while declaring his new theories. The world is an increasingly noisy place, of growing contrasts, where it is more and more difficult for man to relate to nature. He seeks for silence to hear the world and perceive land developments in the chaos of modern world. He defines landscape as our surrounding environment and tries to relate his landscape and architectural projects to the modern world. He describes the complexity of landscape as a multifaceted reality that one can only conceive an aspect of it depending on his position. He does not try to accept or reject previous landscape theories and congregates them to a new definition of landscape which is our surrounding environment. He believes that beauty lies in understanding the concept of mind enjoyment as well as experiencing it. That is the reason of including harmony and rhythm in the category of effective ideas in landscape design. Instead of discussing the definition and quiddity of landscape which is not commented or discussed anymore in the modern world, he looks for tracks of culture on the Canary Islands to answer land developments and its potentials. Palerm seeks for the quiddity of landscape beyond the human relations, effective relations in landscape creation and the relationship of landscape and the surrounding environment. This research tries to introduce Palerm, his professional career and experience and his theories and researches in this field. His approaches in perception of landscape, silence, culture and cultural events and the correlation of human and landscape, aesthetic quiddity and finally the consequence of approaches and theories are discussed as well.