There have been many attempts at theorizing landscape as a concept. The etymology of the word itself has been very much discussed and the ways in which time and space are perceived vary enormously from one period to the other, each period building its own modes of spatial representation. The philosophy of landscape is therefore vast and has extended ramifications with the notions of the picturesque and the pastoral but also the sublime whilst it has also been extensively questioned by post-modern deconstructionists.

The issue here is to study and discuss the various ways and means in which a landscape is constructed but also to focus on all the participants who contribute to its making, either as spectators and artists or those who simply walk through it and work in it. For landscapes are as much a field of study for spectators and their subjective points of view as they are for those who experience it more directly and physically.

The word ‘landscapes’ in the plural as a title for this Congress, emphasizes the vast variety of landscapes and links them to the equally numerous participants who walk through them – tourists, wanderers, hikers, explorers, farmers, artists, landscape designers, environmentalists, developers, map-makers – and therefore to the various subjectivities engaged into building landscapes.