A Most Redolent Tension: Understanding Landscape in a Post-colonial New Zealand

Abstract

Within settler societies such as Australia and New Zealand, notions of landscape occupy a central position in establishing a sense of national distinctiveness while remaining a critical point for reconciling the 'unsettlement' brought about by settlement. In this context, fundamental premises of landscape architecture such as 'sense of place' become complex propositions, inextricably interwoven with ideas of colonisation, nationalism and identity. While common within post-colonial and cultural studies, these understandings of place are largely absent from landscape architecture discourse where the theoretical terrain is derived largely from a Euro-American perspective. Encouraging landscape architecture students to engage with these understandings can prove difficult, since many are reluctant to read material from outside their immediate discipline. Through an exploration of a second-year landscape architecture studio, "Imagining the Mountain", this paper examines how the map - a critical agent of the colonial project - forms a powerful instrument for revealing to undergraduate students the tension redolent in their familiar landscape.