Reflections on the design of landscape

In recent years the term “environment” has broadened its expressive content, until it reached the current meaning; a process of acquisition that has limited the historical conception of “natural environment”, leaving the field, more and more, to the wide meaning of “everything that surrounds (us)”. Today, therefore, the environment is meant as “space/system”. This interpretation gives the term a value that tends to concept of geographical scope, that is: an ensemble of localized and specific natural and socio cultural conditions which, layered over time in a certain place/area, are the common heritage of the local community and the territorial basis of its identity. By virtue of this value, for some professions the environment is a sort of “hypertext” in which not only the territorial base of a specific community finds its place, but also, and above all, the substrate af the local development processes. Growth which if not commensurate with the environmental features, not compared to local needs, or if carried put with tight stops and in a senseless way, changes the dynamics of socio economic modernization, always based on the man/environment relationship. Through the elements that stimulate the process of shaping and transforming the natural environment, the text provides an overview of the representative system in an attempt to identify the most appropriate means of expression to the current needs of land management.