Landscape of memory

You don’t have to be a trained landscape architect to give a landscape meaning, and we all have done it naturally since childhood. The memory of a landscape can be personal, because it links with individual’s life experience at certain time and place. It can also be a collective one, as a group of people share the experience of interacting with the environment. The continuous existence of familiar landscapes, whether in reality or in our minds, sometimes give us comfort when face the ever-changing world. On the other hand, it could remind us the bitterness of the past. It is always challenging to interpret such complexity embedded in a landscape, especially regarding to collective memories, but it provides opportunities to understand a society and its history and culture. We all tend to collect objects to cure our nostalgia, and if a landscape is with shared memories for a community, it is worth trying to protect the tangible and intangible elements that contribute to the character of the place.