Contradictions as a Tool: Towards an Ecocritical Approach to Urban/Landscape Design

The landscape of the Apuan Alps is an emblem of a schizophrenic modernity, a modernity that allows hundreds of quarries to operate in one of the most beautiful landscapes in Europe, while setting aside some of its parts in order to protect them from development and speculation. The chapter, which introduces Robert Kane's project for the restoration of a disused quarry in the Apuan Alps, explores the possibility of using contradictions as a design tool. Such an approach fits with the complex environmental and socio-spatial situations of contemporary societies. It is defined as an “eco-critical” approach to urban/landscape design and it is featured by five main features: it interprets recycling as a re-signification process, it adopts a multi-sensorial approach, it suspends judgment on the man-environment relation, it exploits contradictions rather than trying to solve them, and it conceives the project as a tool for environmental and social criticism.