Landscapes of Variability: An Aesthetics of Variation

Landscape, as most spatial formations, can be understood as a multitude of social, ecological and cultural interdependences that hosts the fundamental relations between people and their environment. At the same time, social presence is a necessary requirement for the concept of de-signed landscape to exist, since it is the result of the active participation of people in its configuration and production. While all the above have been true for architectural and landscape design throughout modernity, the COVID 19 health crisis gave them a new meaning and brought them to the forefront. "e pandemic unsettled the balance of our ways of living and threw us within an unknown reality that we entered violently and without warning. In that context, digital technologies seemed to propose the only viable alternative that would allow for the continuation of our social activities. ‘Virtual landscapes’ became part of this array of digital technologies that seemingly came to our aid. In light of Andre’s Leroi-Gourhan approach that every technology is a social construction, that concept could be seen as a refection on the current socio-political status quo: a transition from an ecological-cultural perception of our environment to an aesthetic-digital one. Despite all the above, the post-pandemic experience of this contemporary perception on an ap-plied level, where it concerned the production, configuration and experience of landscapes, provided a rude awakening which diminished the pre-existing euphoria for the identity, the physiognomy and the capabilities it promised, let alone for its implementation. Considering the above, the hypothesis of virtual landscapes as an element of variability might be an alternative. In other words, considering virtual landscapes as an extension or augmentation of the actual ones in ways that could generate multiple possibilities. Landscape therefore becomes augmented and extended virtually through variations that produce multiplicity and variability. "rough that process, landscape can become a cultural host where its aesthetics could transform our social perceptibility. By shaping a multiple context of virtual social presence in the public realm, we can raise awareness and provide guidance by the construction of personal, social and cultural meaning and knowledge of a place, as urban agents of sustainable change.