Reviving the Sublime

“When you rely on emotional [design] language like nostalgia or enchantment, you can’t create work that has a broad relevance,” explained landscape architect Robin Winogrond, co-founder of the Swiss firm Studio Vulkan, in a recent lecture at Harvard GSD (In Search of Geographical Re-Enchantment). “That’s why I pursue re-enchantment.”

What differentiates enchantment from re-enchantment? Winogrond draws from myriad sources, including poetry, visual art, anthropology, and phenomenology (specifically Merleau-Ponty’s The Phenomenology of Perception). For the architect, enchantment speaks to the emotional, even metaphysical sensation of encountering a natural space for the first time. There is no perception of oneself in this interaction; the viewer is fully absorbed in the experience of encountering something other (what the Romantics called the Sublime or the “agreeable horror”). With re-enchantment, the viewer still experiences the arresting qualities of the space but stays rooted in his body the second time around—more importantly, he is keenly aware of his own self ex…