In an essay entitled ‘Relations between forms of land occupation’, published in 1972 in AA’s issue dedicated to ‘L’Homme et le territoire’ (AA No.164, October-November 192), the architect and historian Pierre Pinon, then professor at the Paris-La Défense School of Architecture, explored the forms of agricultural land occupation in France, but also in Japan, Italy, China and the United States. This essay was illustrated by aerial views and drawings highlighting the diversity of these forms, depending on the sites in which they are located. For AA’s week dedicated to the countryside, here is an excerpt.

Pierre Pinon

The purpose of this essay is to provide an overview of the forms of agricultural land occupation, with a particular focus on the relationships between land use forms and the land they occupy, and the interrelationships between these forms. Although the topic of this study is essentially geographical, our point of view is different, as we are more interested in the treatment of forms than in their foundations. Our aim is not so much to explain these forms as to show that they are the result of a complex interplay of integrations and adaptations, an interplay that gives them a certain morphological richness. The area covered here is what geographers call agricultural landscapes.

There are two distinct categories of land use:

• productive occupation: fields, divisional agrarian structure or, in its narrowest sense, land parcels;
• unproductive occupation, which includes roads, which are connecting structures, and houses, which are more or less polar groupings of habitats.

A particular example can be found in Bohemia, where two networks of clearings radiating from two villages that could meet in a straight line, undulate because of the relief.