Defining place: the garden of Bagh-e-Shazdeh

Abstract

Bagh-e-Shazdeh in the Iranian desert, is a place outside: it maintains a distance from the realm of daily life, set apart in the landscape, while at the same time making the landscape manifest. Its enclosure enables both communication and separation: it articulates inside as well as outside, garden as well as surrounding landscape. The walls are the expression of a place that is both autonomous and contextual: the essential character of a garden. Enclosure is an ambivalent phenomenon: to enclose also means to exclude or to be captured, to divide is also a means to order and thus to connect. The boundary is there to be traversed, offering a choice between protection and exposure. Bagh-e Shazdeh exemplifies how a dialogue between confinement and freedom, outside and inside, accessibility and seclusion can give landscape spaces meaning as both part and counterpart of their geographical and social context.