Landscape

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Photograph of a landscape

A landscape comprises is the visible features of an area of land, including physical elements such as landforms, living elements of flora and fauna, abstract elements such as lighting and weather conditions, and human elements, for instance human activity or the built environment. Landscape may also signify the objects around one in a building.

[edit] Etymology

The word landscape comes from the Dutch word landschap, from land (patch or area that comes from the Basquish word landa meaning labored earth) and the suffix -schap, corresponding to the English suffix "-ship". Landscape, first recorded in 1598, was borrowed as a painters' term from Dutch during the 16th century, when Dutch artists were on the verge of becoming masters of the landscape genre. The Dutch word landschap had earlier meant simply “region, tract of land” but had acquired the artistic sense, which it brought over into English, of “a picture depicting scenery on land.” 34 years pass after the first recorded use of landscape in English before the word is used of a view or vista of natural scenery. This delay suggests that people were first introduced to landscapes in paintings and then landscapes in real life.

[edit] Uses

Specific uses of landscape include:

Mount Ecclesia landscape, with its 24 human-made structures, ornate rose gardens and luxuriant preserved vegetation — in the middle of one of the world's most expensive and intensive real estate development areas near downtown Oceanside in Southern California — is a paradigm of landscape equilibrium between the development of a built environment and the conservation of the natural environment, since the early 20th century and into the 21st century.

Landscape art is the depiction of scenery in landscape painting, landscape photography or other media.
Landscape architecture is the art of planning, designing, and managing public and private landscapes and gardens. Related terms include:
- Landscape design is the design of open space urban or rural areas
- Landscape engineering is the technical aspect of landscape architecture
- Landscape planning is the planning of large scale and/or long term landscape development projects
- Landscape management is the care of human-made or natural landscapes
- Landscape gardening is the practice of designing large scale estate gardens, and is usually applied to the 18th and 19th centuries, and seen as a precursor to landscape architecture.
Landscape ecology is a subdiscipline of ecology that investigates the ecological causes and consequences of spatial pattern, process and change in landscapes.
In anthropological terms, landscape refers to the material manifestation of the relations between humans and their environments. It is a product of the dialectic of biophysical environments and culture.
Landscape orientation of a rectangular page, painting or other graphic means that the longer axis is horizontal. (So named because landscape paintings usually have this orientation.) When the long axis is vertical, it is called portrait orientation.
Landscape is a play by Harold Pinter
Landscape was a British jazz-funk-synthpop band, active in the 1970s and 80s.
Anthropic landscape is a concept in string theory.
Cultural landscapes are "combined works of nature and of man." They are illustrative of the evolution of human society and settlement over time, under the influence of the physical constraints and/or opportunities presented by their natural environment and of successive social, economic and cultural forces, both external and internal [1].