Abstract The garden is an organic and intricate field of intellectual knowledge immersed in continuous dynamics of mutations, progressively accruing interdisciplinary complexity, marked by fertile idiosyncrasies and subjectivities. Similar phenomena accompany the myriad of the garden’s formal manifestations spanning from functional modesty, artistic exuberance, and illusory fantasy. Since the establishment of the earliest forms of civilisation, the garden responds to the human urge to appropriate nature and the world he inhabits as well as translates the human’s conception of nature, of the world, and of himself. The garden’s idiosyncrasies and subjectivities arise from the ambiguous hybridisation of nature and culture. As a spatial discrete location, the garden is so assumed as a place of intentional discourse, which conjoins with the garden’s artistry to endorse the garden’s status as an aesthetic object. In such conditions, the garden consists of a semiotic system of representation conveying meaning concerning immateriality of the human condition and, furthermore, opening possibilities for alternative individual approaches endowing extended perspectives of such meaning’s interpretation. Keywords: garden, nature, culture, representation, meaning. O jardim é um campo de conhecimento intelectual orgânico e intrincado imerso em contínuas dinâmicas de mutações, progressivamente acumulando complexidade interdisciplinar, marcada férteis idiossincrasias e subjetividades. Fenómenos semelhantes acompanham a miríade de manifestações formais do jardim abrangendo desde modéstia funcional, exuberância artística e fantasia ilusória. Desde o estabelecimento das primeiras formas de civilização, o jardim responde ao impulso humano de apropriação da natureza e do mundo que habita tal como traduz a concepção humana da natureza, do mundo e do homem. As idiossincrasias e subjetividades do jardim surgem da ambígua hibridização da natureza e de cultura. Enquanto localização discreta espacial, o jardim é assumido assim como lugar de discurso intencional, que se conjuga com a condição artística do jardim para secundar o status do jardim enquanto objeto estético. Nessas condições, o jardim consiste num sistema semiótico de representação que transmite significado sobre a imaterialidade da Escarduça 2 condição humana e, ademais, abre possibilidades para abordagens individuais alternativas que proporcionam perspectivas alargadas de interpretação desse significado. Palavras-chave: jardim, natureza, cultura, representação, significado. Escarduça 3 Acknowledgments The accomplishment of the internship and this report would not be possible without the invaluable cooperation from Professor Peter Hanenberg, to whom the first and foremost acknowledgment is addressed for the acceptance to supervise the project, for the exemplary professionalism, wise guidance, and constructive criticism, for the infrangible promptitude and inspiring encouragement. This academic journey is decidedly marked by such privileges. A following sincere word is endorsed to Ms. Maria de Carvalho, Head Coordinator for Parques de Sintra Cultural Planning Office, for the energetic enthusiasm for the project, for the unquestionable acceptance of the main course of action, for the vigilant advises and remarks when necessary to conform with contextual circumstances, and for the memorable welcoming hospitality. To Mané, Lorena Travassos, António António Castanheira and the remaining artists which applied to the open-call, without whom the exhibition decidedly would have not succeeded, and for their dedication, enthusiasm and, more importantly, for the artistic standard with which their participation imbued the project. To the open-call’s jurors, Professor Isabel Capeloa Gil, Marc Lenot and Sérgio B. Gomes, first and foremost for the prestigious elevation with which have credited the project, and for their availability to accommodate the jury's activities within their professional quotidian. To Sintra City Hall, most prominently to Ms. Maria João Figueiredo, director of Museu Municipal de Sintra, for the validated insertion of the project in the Museum’s program, for the warmth hosting, and for the operational support during the period of the exhibition. To Professor Paulo Campos Pinto, for the careful efforts to implement the internship at Parques de Sintra and the thoughtful interest in accompanying its development. To Prof. Ana Abrantes, who temporally monitored the project’s evolution, for the relevant comments and assistance, and for the instilled stimulus. To Andreia Draque, Susana Quaresma and Ana Esteves, for their fundamental collaboration and assistance, and remaining Parques de Sintra members who, one way or another, collaborated with the project’s implementations. Escarduça 4 Table of Contents Introduction_________________________________________________________6 Part I – An Analysis of the Garden________________________________________9 Chapter 1 – Towards an Ontology of the Garden_____________________________9 Section 1.1 – The Garden’s Ontological Essence and Its Impossibility___________9 Section 1.2 – A Framework for a Culture Analysis Direction__________________15 Section 1.3 – The Accent on the Garden as an Object of Representation_________28 Chapter 2 – The Garden as the Representation of the Relationship with Nature_____32 Section 2.1 – The Human Action, First Nature and Second Nature_____________32 Section 2.2 – The Human Artistry and Third Nature________________________34 Section 2.3 – The Inexistence of First Nature and the Questioning of Nature______44 Chapter 3 – The Garden as the Representation of Nature______________________48 Section 3.1 – Universal Nature and the Philosopher’s Garden_________________48 Section 3.2 – Divine Nature and the Monastery Garden______________________50 Section 3.3 – The Nature of Human Reason and Renaissance’s Garden_________54 Section 3.4 – Enlightened Nature and the Cartesian Garden__________________58 Section 3.5 – Unadorned Nature and Romantic Gardens_____________________60 Chapter 4 – Additional Representations of Culture__________________________69 Section 4.1 – Domestic Gardens and the Organisation of Social Classes_________69 Section 4.2 – The Garden and the Organisation of Government Institutions______72 Section 4.3 – The Influence of Military Circumstances in the Garden___________76 Section 4.4 – The Garden as a Representation of Utopia_____________________78 Part II – The Exhibition’s Artistic Conception______________________________84 Chapter 1 – The Culture Analysis Enabled by the Garden_____________________84 Section 1.1 – The Meaning of The Garden________________________________84 Section 1.2 – The Garden’s Utopic Idiosyncrasies _________________________86 Chapter 2 – A Brief Inquiry on Photography of the Garden as Art_______________89 Section 2.1 – The Hypothetic Problematics of Photography of the Garden as Art__89 Section 2.2 – From Imitation and Reproduction to Representation, From Representation to Signification________________________________90 Chapter 3 – The Exhibition_____________________________________________95 Escarduça 5 Conclusion_________________________________________________________97 Bibliography_______________________________________________________99 Final Notes________________________________________________________106 Annex A__________________________________________________________134 Annex B__________________________________________________________147 Annex C__________________________________________________________150 Annex D__________________________________________________________174 Annex E__________________________________________________________182 Annex F__________________________________________________________191 Escarduça 6 Introduction Appearing in such opposite circumstances and contexts spanning from western contemporaneity local communities’ dynamics to a mere fenced area next to the entrance of a Neolithic cave in the Middle East and, emerging from the midst of the multifaceted phenomena enmeshed in such constantly altering dynamics, prominently substantiating a collection of emblematic forms, the garden is one of the most extraordinary and ancestral territorial manifestations of the human existence. The garden is simultaneously and mutually both the means by which the human copes with the urge to assign a human dimension to otherwise “unhuman” surroundings inasmuch as a reflection of the human’s self-conception. Decidedly, the garden comes into being in its various appearances in time and space by cause of human deliberate agency as compelled by the human mind, to the various services of the human mind, body, and spirit. Equivalently unsurpassable is the garden’s discursive condition, for the garden embodies a meaning uttered by an author who claims acknowledgment from an interlocutor. In other words, the history of the garden both writes and tells the history of human culture. The understanding of the factors animating such human agencies commands the delving in a complex web of mutually affecting relationships involving a multidisciplinary ampleness of knowledge areas, a non-reductionist and integrative web further complexified by the garden’s hybrid inherent character as a combination of artifice and nature. Thus, independently of the spatial discreteness of its formal appearances, the understanding of the garden mandatorily convokes the simultaneous understanding of the human culture organisation in which it is inserted and manifests, since the garden is the expression and