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| THE OBSERVER
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Clara Garí
Director of the Nau Côclea Centre for Contemporary Creation and the Walking Art Grand Tour
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The art of walking is not a Fine Art; nor is it a sport. It is not like painting or music or dancing. But neither is it like Nordic walking or trekking. In actual fact, the art of walking is more related to the art of living and the art of travelling. The art of walking is one way – not the only way – but a very privileged way to belong to the landscape. [+]
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| MOSAIC
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| Course: Landscape management, intervention and recovery at local level' |
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For the fourth year running, the Landscape Observatory is organising a landscape course for local government technical staff. Over six sessions. from 26 April to 12 May, this course, co-organised with Lleida Provincial Council, aims to explore new forms of managing, planning, and treating landscapes in the province of Lleida from a local viewpoint, focusing on urban planning, local revitalisation, tourism, and the management of natural areas and heritage. The course will present case studies, tools and methodologies that can help build quality landscapes that have a positive impact on the population's well-being, generate economic opportunities and facilitate the territories' cultural and social revitalisation. [+]
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| New international seminar: Rethinking historical gardens. The past in the present |
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Gardens are artificially modelled and transformed spaces that use vegetation as the primary element for their composition and whose chief objective is to give enjoyment or propitiate reflection. Gardens often have historical, artistic, botanical and landscape values. On 16 and 17 June, the Observatory will organise an in-person seminar at the Espai Cràter in Olot, with the support of the Catalan Ministry of Culture and the collaboration of Olot Town Council. This seminar will address the collective perception of gardens in the course of history, the role they play in improving citizens' quality of life and the need to know and safeguard the rich heritage of gardens in Catalonia. We will publish the program soon.
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| The call for participants in the international encounters 'Walking Art and Relational Geographies' is now open |
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The Landscape Observatory of Catalonia is collaborating in the Organization of the international meeting “Walking Art and Relational Geographies” aims to set a dialogue between theory and practice in which walking becomes an instrument of territorial connection, a mapping tool, and a format of creative expression. A meeting point for debate, experience, and reflection,” Walking Art and Relational Geographies” will focus mainly on the analysis of the increasingly mediated relationship between people and geographies. The Encounters are conceived together as simultaneous a Conference and an artistic event; in the format of an itinerant meeting between the cities of Girona, Olot and Vic, with a symbolically explicit transversal component. The call for participants is open until 1st May.
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| Landscape management and planning tools at Orígens Geopark |
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On 4 February 2022, the Assembly of Members of Orígens Geopark approved the document "Landscape and agricultural management and planning tools within the Geopark". The document proposes innovative guidelines for landscape protection, management and planning, including the preservation of agricultural land within the Orígens Geopark. The document aims to establish a series of guidelines or criteria for assessing new projects anchored in the territory, thereby controlling territorial changes and avoiding effects that could cast doubt on the Geopark's commitment to sustainable development. It also includes procedures for including in regulations the recommendations made to local authorities
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| Many ruralities, many landscapes |
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During March, the Landscape Observatory has collaborated with the MOT literature festival. The title of this year's festival was "In the country. Literature and rurality", focused on analysing the relationship between literature and the rural world. The Observatory's contribution consisted of projecting photographs that sought to confront spectators with their image of rurality. Catalonia has a great diversity of rural landscapes, many of which do not match the image traditionally associated with the countryside. The global crisis has given greater urgency to the need to rethink the territorial model and the role that rural territories are called upon to play. The images were available for viewing for two weeks on two screens, one at the Marià Vayreda library in Olot and the other in the lobby of the Carles Rahola library in Girona. [+]
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| Art project: 'Dry stone night. What shall we do with you?' |
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The exhibition "Dry stone night. What shall we do with you?”, sponsored by Espai inLoft with the support of the Landscape Observatory, was held from 25 February to 20 March at the oil cellar and mill of the former vintners guild of Igualada, as part of the FineArt international photography festival. Dry stone night acknowledges and transforms this heritage into an object for contemporary art, generating new debates on its preservation and its possible uses with four central themes: front and back, fumbling in the dark, ancestral scenarios and invisible integration. The exhibition was based on a photography and performing arts call in 2021 and presented works by Èric Alcoberro, Luís Calle, Manuel Duarte, Asier Gogortza, Alèxia Lleonart, Jordi Llordella, Joan Sorolla and Judit Vidal.
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| The Sismògraf festival, based on movement and landscape |
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The 14th Sismògraf festival, held on 7 to 10 April in Olot, has entered a new phase focused particularly on movement and landscape. Addressing 3 challenges (social, environmental and relational), it has become a festival intended to appeal to the general public, with a more international perspective. This year's slogan was "the festival that detects the movement of our bodies and of the planet".
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| The last landscapes now includes 16 regions |
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The website of the project "The last landscapes. Funerary heritage" has been expanded to include 16 regions. The following regions have been now been added: La Conca de Barberà, El Vallès Occidental, El Moianès, L'Urgell, El Pla d'Urgell, El Tarragonès and El Barcelonès. This website is an initiative of the Landscape Observatory, with the collaboration of the Associació Coementerium. Its goal is to approach funerary heritage from an integrative, global perspective and put the spotlight on its landscape dimension.
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| Call for papers Landscape-Based Spatial Planning in Europe |
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The LAND journal has launched a Special Issue on "Landscape-Based Spatial Planning in Europe" that has been linked with the European Landscape Convention and with the three priority lines included in the UNISCAPE Manifesto on the Future of the European Landscape. This Special Issue aims to provide a deep and complete overview of the state-of-the-art processes associated with Landscape-Based Spatial Planning in Europe and to inform scholars of the definition of future planning frameworks by international, European, national, and regional policymakers and decision-makers. Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 September 2022.
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| Wikipedra: 30,000 constructions and 500 contributors! |
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Wikipedra, the collaborative dry stone inventory, has inventoried more than 30,000 constructions since it started almost 11 years ago. Coordinated by the Landscape Observatory, the initiative has been possible thanks to the work done by the Drac Verd de Sitges group and the information provided by 500 contributors around Catalonia. To date, the three municipalities where most structures have been inventoried are El Pont de Vilomara i Rocafort with 1,427 constructions, El Pla de Santa Maria with 764 constructions and Monistrol de Calders with 695 constructions. This inventory provides a good starting point for developing local and regional policies aimed at improving management of this heritage, which makes up a large part of the landscapes in Catalonia and French Catalonia.
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| The documentary transFORMING the LANDSCAPE receives an award at the Australia Film Festival |
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The short film transFORMING the LANDSCAPE (set in Paraty, Brazil - World Heritage Site) brings essential aspects of the Brazilian Atlantic Coast traditional communities facing current urban development to the broader knowledge. It raises issues that permeate other coastal areas of Latin America with similar realities and reflect traditional peoples' struggles worldwide. PARATY is a WORLD CULTURAL AND NATURAL HERITAGE SITE that has been under pressure, whether by the excessive exploitation of tourism or uncontrolled urban growth, among other factors that negatively impact its landscape. The risk of landscape degradation means the possible loss of resources, quality of life, and the landscape's essence. In addition to the Australia Film Festival, the documentary has also received an honorable mention from the World Cine Fest.
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| Knowledge-sharing workshops for the Priorat-Montsant-Siurana candidature |
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On the weekend of 25 to 27 February 2022, the Prioritat association organised knowledge-sharing workshops to which some of the experts involved in the UNESCO Priorat-Montsant-Siurana candidature process and the associated territorial project were invited. The Landscape Observatory was invited to this meeting, whose strategic goal was to reflect on the origin of the Candidature process, its status, and to define together where we want to go and how to get there. The meeting, attended by over 30 people, provided a space for expressing concerns and contributing proposals, and basically, for discussing the Candidature (origin, dossier, values, the heritage documented, etc.) and the territory's Management System (instruments, mechanisms and scope). The meeting also provided a forum for discussing the internal organisation, continuity and functions of the Prioritat association.
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| DIGITAL LANDSCAPE |
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| Landscape Economics |
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Page of the Technical Office of Strategies for Economic Development, which works to conceptualize the productive landscape and integrate it into the instruments of planning, management and evaluation of local economic development policies in the municipalities of Barcelona.
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| PUBLICATIONS OF INTEREST
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| L'altre món rural. Reflexions i experiències de la nova ruralitat catalana |
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Rosa Cerarols; Joan Nogué (eds.) (2022). Manresa: Tigre de Paper. ISBN: 978-84-18705-28-1.
This book presents a promising vision of the rural world which does not confront it with the city but imbues it with a discourse of its own. It describes the main challenges we are facing while presenting very diverse, real-life experiences that are building, day by day, the rural world of tomorrow.
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| Disorder |
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Borja Ballbé. [S.l.]: Borja Ballbé y Querida. ISBN: 978-84-09-31816-2.
Ballbé's photographs, inspired by the great American highway photographers, offer a powerful narrative of reality interpreted through the prism of solitude, depression and anxiety. Images that verge on banality of brothels, roadside bars, deserted petrol stations, empty tables or impersonal bedrooms, offer a detailed vision of a self-awareness process transposed to those instants frozen in time.
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| Rethinking Public Space. The intangible design |
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Daniela Colafranceschi; Joan Nogué (eds). Monogràfic de la revista Ri-Vista. Ricerche per la progettazione del paesaggio. Vol. 19, núm. 2 (2021). Available here.
This issue presents studies, experiences, trends and aspects of design that reveal the features of a current phenomenon that is gradually shifting the focus from the stylistic-formal aspects of public spaces to treat them as emotion-rich spaces of our existence.
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| Todo bajo el sol |
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Ana Penyas. Barcelona: Penguin Random House, 2021. ISBN: 978-84-16131-78-5.
The author takes us to the coast of south-east Spain in the early 1960s to explain the story of a family who suffers the consequences of mass tourism. As the decades go by, we see how the rise of neoliberalism destroys the hopes and projects of this family's members, whose testimony tells us of a time when landscapes and their natural richness were transformed for ever.
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| Guia per impulsar consultes ciutadanes en l'àmbit local |
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Agustí Mas [et al.]. [Barcelona]: Generalitat de Catalunya. Departament d’Acció Exterior i Govern Obert, 2021. Available here.
The publication analyses how an effective citizen consultation process is put in place, focusing on key moments during its planning and implementation. It is the outcome of a collaborative project carried out within the University of Girona's Cohesion and Social Engagement Campus Governance Group; one of the Group's members is Observatory specialist Jordi Grau.
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| Paisaje, ordenamiento y sustentabilidad. Diálogos multidisciplinares con la Arquitectura de Paisaje |
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Ciudad de México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Facultad de Arquitectura, 2021. ISBN: 978-607-30-5602-1.
This publication fosters reflection through the eyes of different disciplines such as geography, urban planning, economics and sustainable development; and a critical debate on knowledge generation when planning and sustainability are included in the landscape design discourse.
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| Note: This newsletter is an initiative of the Landscape Observatory. If you wish to subscribe and receive it by e-mail please click here. |
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