WARTOŚCI NIEMATERIALNE ODZIEDZICZONEGO KRAJOBRAZU MIEJSKIEGO. ICH ISTOTA, RODZAJE I METODA ANALIZY

The article deals with the non-material qualities contained in the landscape of historical cities. Features of this sort are connected with the concept of contents comprehended as sense, essence, significance and message, i. e. as something which has been deciphered, associated, and experienced upon the basis of the perceived elements. Special emphasis has been placed on immaterial qualities associated with cultural legacy as a whole: existential meanings, archetypes, and the symbolic inspired by intellectual or artistic currents, religion, social and political relations, components decisive for the preservation of identity, the tradition of a given site, and the concept of genius loci. The author demonstrates that non-material qualities are embedded in certain types of the urban landscape – its particular elements and traits. While analysing the past from the point of view of an intentional register of the landscape contents by means of signs and symbols, she defines the assorted sources of such contents as well as the varieties and manners of expression. Much attention has been devoted to the contemporary reception of all sorts of meanings amassed in urban space in the course of past years. The presented reflections evoke a proposal of a method of registering the contents and their ensuing analysis, performed in studies concerned with the urban landscape. This method refers to semiotics, the science of signs, and thus enhances landscape studies by introducing a separate current, which takes into consideration all symptoms of the contents, and accompanies another current referring to the form of the landscape and its substance. The proposed method makes it possible not only to record the content in question, but also to define the non-material quality constituted by it. The purpose of making the reader aware of the existence of such a quality involves both its protection and a process of rendering its carriers more legible.