Hidden Landscape

by Xijia Zhang (MLA I AP ’20)

In the small country of Switzerland, landscape is regarded as a resource serving lobbies from agriculture and speculation to infrastructure, ecology, tourism, and recreation. Each has a voice of its own, except one: the landscape itself. In fact, landscape has its own voices but they somehow “hide” and escape from our view. These “hidden voices” are diverse but can be categorized into three types: (1) Those voices we avoid touching; (2) Those voices that are hard to catch; and (3) Those voices that are too normal to notice. Thus, by collecting and analyzing nature’s “voices” in mountain areas, this project tries to define and explore the potential of those hidden landscapes in Switzerland to develop strong voices and experiences of their own. The project proposes a hidden path on a continuous landslide surrounded by forest, and aims to redirect the hiking path for tourists to experience the hidden voices on the site—one that is avoided by humans and another that is hard to capture.