The volume offers the theoretical coordinates of an applied research and it investigates the idea of a contemporary landscape which is tight to a constant sustainability need. The general objective of the book is to structure a process to define analysis methodologies for complex forms to put in relation environment, territory and landscape. In this context the constant request of sustainability could be schematized through a simple ideogram, an equilateral triangle, where the vertexes represent utility, solidity and beauty of an art work (Vitruvius) that could be extended to the definitions of environment, territory and landscape: the solidity of a healthy environment, the utility of a well governed territory, the beauty of landscape. Setting in the center of the equilateral triangle Leonardo's man, it emerges that for human kind it is not enough a well governed territory, a healthy environment and neither beautiful landscapes, moreover he needs the equilibrium between there three elements and the sustainability will be the barycenter of the triangle, which will correspond to the mans belly-bottom. Thinking on the landscape it means to imagine and to represent complex models different from the actual ones, which are denoted by a richer analytic in order to overcome the deep contradiction between data and results. In this sense the International Laboratory of Research on Landscape of the University of Perugia has as objective the research on new models where the representation and the value of the image are the instruments and the connecting and confrontation place to promote new operative strategies for the conservation and valorization of territory, environment and landscape.

Fabio Bianconi

Marco Filippucci