Constructing the Clear-cut: On Landscape, Trees and Representation

Abstract

For thousands of years, humans have lived with and from the forest. Today, however, the question of how we manage our forests has become increasingly polarized, and at the centre of this debate stands the so-called clear-cut. By viewing humans as an active part of the landscape rather than as external destroyers of nature, this thesis aims to investigate the site that a clear-cut constitutes and, through architecture, narrate its past and continuing story. Drawing from landscape architecture, geography, and history of ideas, the thesis departs from the fact that the clear-cut is not untouched nature, but a part of a landscape that is a human construction. The form of the clear-cut is the result of the technologies that have historically shaped the landscape. Unlike the concept of nature, time, fragments, and memory are closely interwoven in a landscape. In addition to being a significant bearer of culture, there is also a strong connection between the trees of the forest and the origins of architecture, exemplified by The Primitive Hut. By understanding these aspects and how they have shaped the site that the clear-cut constitutes, the thesis provides a continued narrative for the clear-cut that discusses the role of humans in the constructed landscape. The thesis studies a particular clear-cut in a forest in the vicinity of Gothenburg. An architecture project for this site is developed through three parallel working methods: sensing, writing, and shaping. The abstracted geometric language of architectural drawing is ill-suited to capturing the ever-changing nature of the ground, trees, and plant-life. Drawing from geographer Dennis Cosgrove, three modes of representation are developed in response to this: The cosmographical, geographical, and the chorographical. The project emerges in the form of a gathering space, a so-called ting that works as a democratic forum where stakeholders in the forest come together. Through its form, materiality, placement in the landscape, and function, the architecture demonstrates human entanglement with its surroundings. The aim of this thesis is not to romanticize clear-cuts or cultivated land. It is not a denial of the damage humanity has inflicted upon its surroundings, nor of the environmental and climate challenges we face. Rather, the thesis highlights the importance of humans as active agents in the landscape. This is not a story of what has been lost, but of what may yet be found.