Scape Idea outdoor

14 1 Birth of the Genius Loci

14.1 Birth of the Genius Loci
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The Genius Loci was, I suggest, born in the Nile valley during the Pre-Dynastic period. Lacking the sophistication of modern science, Egyptians characterised
the forces of nature as gods: Amun-Re was the sun god, Nut the sky god, Geb the earth god, Min the fertility god, Ptah the creator. Osiris, the vegetation
god, was associated with creation, death and resurrection. Horus, son of Osiris and Isis, was represented by a falcon and equated with the pharaoh. Buildings
were designed with respect to the gods. Temples were aligned with one axis on the sun-path and another on ‘river north’. Mortuary temples were located
on the side of the Nile over which the sun set. Hathor, symbolised by a cow, lived in the western mountain. The district was called Waset, after the sacred
sceptre (was), and then Nowe (City of Amun) after its chief God:

Waset is the pattern for every city. Both the flood and the earth were in her from the beginning of time. The sands came to delimit her soil, to create
her ground from the mound when earth came into being. Then mankind came into being within her. To found every city in her true name (The City), since all
are called ‘city’ after the example of Waset.

Waset is now called Luxor. The
Estate of Amun,
surely the greatest work of landscape architecture in antiquity, joined the land of the living to the land of the dead. Boat-shrines crossed the Nile and
were carried along processional routes into temple compounds. The Greeks also made sacred ways and temple compounds, though the extent of their debt to
Egypt remains in dispute. Banister Fletcher accepted that ‘Greek culture naturally owed much to preceding civilisations’ but hastened to add that ‘Greece
must be regarded as the veritable source of [all] literary and artistic inspiration’. Proponents of the Black Athena hypothesis trace many Greek ideas
to Egypt, but they too have been challenged.

14.2 Spirit of Place in Greece
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Delphi

Greek gods took human forms but continued to represent concepts. Apollo, the god of light, awe, wisdom and divine distance, was associated with a range
of sacred interests, including medicine, animals, music and the Delphi oracle. Jellicoe wrote that ‘Although the scene [at Delphi] is given apparent cohesion
and high purpose by the Temple of Apollo, the overall unifying influence is that of the stupendous genius loci, expressing as it does the structure of
the world’. The location of all Greek sanctuaries was determined by site characteristics. Scully explains that the place ‘is itself holy and, before the
temple was built upon it, embodied the whole of the diety as a recognised natural force’. Scully draws attention to the presence of symbols of the Earth
Mother: a cave, a spring, a conical hill and two peaks in the location of Cretan palaces and Greek sanctuaries: ‘These features create a profile which
is basically that of a pair of horns, but it may also suggest raised arms or wings, the female cleft, or even, at some sites, a pair of breasts’. Palaces
stood on the Earth Mother’s mons Veneris.

The temples of Delphi stand on the bank of a steep valley between the Gulf of Corinth and Mount Parnassus, with a sacred spring and horned peaks. In part,
the air of mystery which has always made it the most popular site in Greece, after Athens, results from the fact that these features are sensed but, from
the sanctuary, unseen. The creation of life on earth was explained by a union between the sky god (Uranus) and the earth mother (Gaia). Gaia was associated
with caves and springs. A sacred tree, or phallic symbol, represented Uranus. Statues and alters were placed near springs and caves. This is the origin
of the garden grotto and it is interesting that James Lovelock chose the name Gaia for his hypothesis that modern science may be discovering a living being
which is more ancient, vaster, and more complex than anything else: the Earth.

14.3 Genius Loci in Rome
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The Spirit of Place in Rome

The Romans adopted the Greek pantheon and continued the practice of associating named gods with temples, shrines, groves and springs. They were a superstitious
people and made offerings to local gods wherever they went. The spirit (numen) which inhabits a place and the generative power (genius) which sustains
a place, or a family, was ho noured. A spirit associated with a place, such as a river or wood, was known as a genius loci if it lacked another name .
Calpurnius Siculus, for example, wrote: ‘Tum caespite vivo pone focum geniumque loci Faunumque Larsque salso farrre voca’ (Then set up a hearth of living
turf and summon Faunus and Lares and the genius of the place with an offering of salad meal). There was a shrine to Faunus on the Tiber Island.

With the advent of Christian monotheism, the gods of old were condemned as ‘pagan’ (from pagus, a village or country district). An incident in The Life
of St Martin, who died in 397 AD, records him speaking of ‘a moral necessity’ why a tree should be cut down ‘because it had been dedicated to a demon’
and of ‘the crowds of heathens [who] looked on in perfect quiet as he razed the pagan temple even to the foundations, he also reduced all the altars and
images to dust’. For centuries to come, the gods of old were treated as demons. During the renaissance pagan statues were dug up and placed in gardens.

14.4 Genius Loci in English Design Theory
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Alexander Pope, admiring nature, reason and classical civilization, based a design theory on the Genius of the Place. He expressed it in verse:

To build, to plant, whatever you intend,
To rear the Column, or the Arch to bend,
To swell the Terras, or to sink the Grot;
In all, let Nature never be forgot.
Consult the Genius of the Place in all
That tells the waters or to rise, or fall....
Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades
Now Breaks, or now directs, thintending Lines;
Paints as you plant, and as you work, Designs.

14.5 Spirit of Place in Modern Landscape Theory
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Most twentieth century landscape theorists supported the principle that nature should ‘never be forgot’, making their approach increasingly scientific and
determinist. Delphic encounters were replaced by systematic studies of history, geography, climate, biology, geology, and so forth. This approach was initiated
by Patrick Geddes and followed by Ian McHarg. Though admirable in so many ways, the danger of compartmentalization was ever-present. Specialists are famed
for being ‘unable to see the wood for the trees’. The problem extends into environmental assessment reports. Too often, they tell you much about fauna
and flora but little about a place’s essential nature. If one is faced, for example, with recommending where to create additional runway capacity in Southeast
England, it is the generalist assessment which is most difficult to frame and most important to have.

What may be called Pope’s First Law of Landscape Planning and Design (‘Consult the genius of the place’) can be paired with a Second Law, based on the work
of Geddes and McHarg: ‘Any land use in the care of a specialist profession tends towards a selfish disregard for other land users’. The operation of this
Law during the twentieth century was outlined in Landscape planning and environmental impact design:
at some point, c1900, management of the land use came within the province of a specialised skill
a learned society took control of the land use
educational courses were set up and text books written
the land use came as near to being a single-purpose activity as humanly possible
side-effects, whether harmful or beneficial, were excluded from consideration
there was a public outcry in the 1970s
experts spent the 1980s attending conferences and developing new techniques which used the vocabulary of multi-objective planning
few changes were made, but higher fees were charged, glossier brochures produced and managers began to boast of their 1990s-style environmental awareness

This is the story of planning for forests, roads, rivers, industry, commerce, agriculture, minerals, urban renewal, parks and ‘nature conservation’. Selfishness
results in roads planned only for motor vehicles, forests for timber production, farms for food, rivers for drainage, parks for sport and bus stops for
standing in queues. Highways are planned by highwaymen, who slaughter the Genius loci. We should also remember those who, for example, like to see Japanese
detailing in Japan and Portuguese detailing in Portugal. Globalisation overwhelms localism. Conservationists call therefore for the Genius of the Place
to be respected. ‘I am pleased to support this call. She must be consulted, always. She need not be obeyed, always’.