This thesis combines the study of a philosophical approach to landscape
with an exploration of experience in landscape. It explores the
perspective of phenomenology, in particular that defined by Merleau-Ponty,
as an approach to understanding relationships with landscapes.
This unveils meanings and values in landscapes hidden by other
approaches, and suggests how an understanding of dialogue, time and
embodiment, with, in and within landscape, can improve and enhance
landscape architecture theory and practice. A critique is offered of the
ways Enlightenment thinking and its dualisms have influenced
approaches in the Landscape discipline, in particular the attitude of the
master, the disembodied visual, and the predominance of spatial
dimensions. Through an extensive literature review these effects are
studied in relation to three problematic themes in Landscape- Nature,
Beauty and Time. These related to a phenomenological perspective
suggest new approaches to landscape, based on human embodiment,
practiced in the concept of Dwelling. Dwelling is defined as a process of
immersion and not separation from a position in landscape situated in
space and time; it leads to engagement with nature which ultimately
leads to care - Heidegger's "concernful dealing with the world". The
possibilities for dwelling, or for "Being in the landscape", are explored in
four research projects in Sheffield's river landscapes, adopting a
methodology drawn from phenomenology. Experience is revealed in
moving through the landscape, and sensing with more than one sense
together; the subjective view of the researcher is tempered with the
subjectivity of others, to produce an intersubjectivity. Stories, the
recounting of interpreted events, is a way people express meaning and
value, tell of attachment and belonging to landscape, and show freedom
from controlling influences and structures. Following concluding
assessments of the research and methodology, the study points to ways
its findings may redirect and strengthen landscape theory and practice
towards an attitude and practice of dwelling.