- Thursday 7th December 2017, 6.30pm
- Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]
Greenwich is the site of locations symbolically key to both the genesis of landscape as scenic space and the common(s) landscapes of polity and place enclosed and appropriated by scenic landscape. One location is the Royal Observatory, home to the phantom “presence” of the prime meridian – key to the mapping of the “global” space ruled by the neighbouring Royal Navy. Another is the Queen’s House, designed by Inigo Jones for Queen Anne of Denmark, where she and her court might have had a mean time performing masques within Jones’ designed landscape scenery if Anne had lived to see its completion.
Kenneth R. Olwig is professor emeritus at the Department of Landscape Architecture, Planning and Management, at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp. His focus has been on the history of landscape in theory and practice, and the relationship between landscape and differing ideas of law, justice and democracy. He is the author of ‘Landscape, Nature and the Body Politic’ and is currently preparing a collection of his journal articles to be published by Routledge under the provisional title ‘The Meanings of Landscape: Essays on Place, Space, Environment and Justice’. He was born on Staten Island, New York City, and has taught at universities in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, where he resides.