Landscape

A landscape comprises the visible features of an area of land, including physical elements such as landforms, living elements of flora and fauna, abstract elements such as lighting and weather conditions, and human elements, for instance human activity or the built environment. Landscape can also mean the objects around you in a building. Example; "I went to the mall, because I heard that the Landscape there is wonderful" or "I love the landscape of this house".

The word landscape is from the Dutch, landschap (the German cognate is 'landschaft) meaning a sheaf, a patch of cultivated ground. The word first appeared in English to describe a painted view of the land.

Specific uses of landscape include:

• Landscape art is the depiction of a landscape in a painting, photograph or other work of art.
• Landscape architecture is the art of planning, designing, and managing public and private landscapes and gardens. Related terms include:
  • Landscape design
  • Landscape engineering
  • Landscape planning
  • Landscape gardening is the practice of designing large scale estate gardens, and is usually applied to the 18th and 19th centuries, and seen as a precursor to landscape architecture.
  • A Landscape contractor ("landscaper") is a tradesman or firm undertaking landscaping works.
• Landscape ecology is a subdiscipline of ecology that investigates the ecological causes and consequences of spatial pattern, process and change in landscapes.
• Landscape orientation of a rectangular page, painting or other graphic means that the longer axis is horizontal. (So named because landscape paintings usually have this orientation.) When the long axis is vertical, it is called portrait orientation.
• Landscape is a play by Harold Pinter
• Landscape was a British 1980s synthpop band.
• Anthropic landscape is a concept in string theory.

In some nordic countries a landskap is or was an administrative unit:

• Landscapes of Norway
• Landscapes of Sweden (provinces)