David L. Hays, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Fellow 2007–2008
My objective for the fellowship year 2007–2008 was to prepare a book manuscript about landscape architect Paolo Bürgi's recent work at Cardada, a mountain near Locarno, Switzerland. During the fall term, I carried out research concerning the deeper history of the site and its spatial and cultural contexts, paying particular attention to questions of landscape in relation to social formation and regional tourism. During the spring term, I concentrated on situating Bürgi's work at Cardada in the context of contemporary theory and practice of landscape architecture, relating it to a larger trend of projecting visitors/users into the traditional space of the view and of staging bodily encounters with effects of natural atmosphere.