Preface

Although landscape architecture plays an important role in shaping the everyday places in which many of us live and work, and although it is rooted in practices of manipulating the environment that have a history at least as long as that of architecture or engineering, in many countries it does not enjoy widespread recognition. Why this might be so is one of the questions I will try to answer in this book, but part of the blame must rest with the awkward and misleading disciplinary title, ‘landscape architecture’. How we came to be lumbered with this title is disputed. It is often said that Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) and Calvert Vaux (1824–95), the designers of New York’s Central Park, were the first to employ the title ‘landscape architect’, using it on their winning competition entry of 1858, but landscape historian Nina Antonetti recently showed that William Andrews Nesfield, whose elaborately formal designs for the gardens of Buckingham Palace were rejected by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, described himself as a ‘landscape architect’ as early as 1849. Other scholars would claim the title of ‘first landscape architect’ for the designer and horticulturist Andrew Jackson Downing (1815–52), who was one of the first to call for the creation of a large park on Manhattan (Figure 1). There is little doubt, however, that it was Olmsted and Vaux’s high profile success that launched the profession. Olmsted is celebrated for his contributions to nature conservation and improved urban sanitation, but his greatest legacy consists of the parks he went on to create in numerous American cities, including Boston, MA, Brooklyn, NY, Buffalo, NY, Chicago, IL, Louisville, KY, and Milwaukee, WI. Influenced by English landscape gardening traditions, he believed that he could provide city-dwellers with much needed respite from noise, bustle, and strain by creating pastoral scenery in the midst of the urban environment. Significantly, the winning proposal for the Central Park competition was called the ‘Greensward Plan’, which included such features as the Ramble, the Sheep Meadow, the Dene, and the Great Lawn.

1. Aerial view of Central Park, New York City, originally laid out in accordance with the winning competition entry of 1858 by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux

Despite Olmsted’s status as founding father of landscape architecture, he always had misgivings about the name. ‘I am all the time bothered with the miserable nomenclature of L.A.’, he wrote to his partner Vaux in 1865, ‘Landscape is not a good word, Architecture is not; the combination is not—Gardening is worse … The art is not gardening nor is it architecture. What I am doing here in California especially, is neither. It is sylvan art, fine art in distinction from Horticulture, Agriculture, or sylvan useful art … If you are bound to establish this new art, you don’t want an old name for it.’

Nevertheless, the name has stuck, despite all the problems it causes. Landscape architects are dogged by persistent misconceptions. The first is that landscape architecture is a sub-discipline of architecture, rather than a separate discipline in its own right; and thus that landscape architects are specialized architects, in the same way that surgeons are specialist doctors. The second is that landscape architects are landscape gardeners (a common slip). Most landscape architects will tell you that at some point they’ve been invited around by friends to give them ‘some advice about the garden’. A former colleague once replied: ‘Yes, I’d love to take a look at your garden, but I’ve got to finish the visual impact assessment for the wind-farm first’, and enjoyed the perplexed look that was returned. While landscape architects do sometimes design gardens, this amounts to a small fraction of their work. Since landscape architects work, amongst other things, on the layout of business parks, the reclamation of derelict industrial sites, the restoration of historic city parks, and the siting and design of major pieces of infrastructure (such as motorways, dams, power stations and flood defences), the first job of a Very Short Introduction to Landscape Architecture must be to answer the question, ‘What is it?’ Such is the range of work undertaken by contemporary practitioners that Olmsted’s idea of a ‘sylvan useful art’ utterly fails to cover it.

There are various ways this question might be answered, and I will employ a mixture of them all. The first is to take a historical perspective, looking both at the roots of landscape architecture and at the way in which Olmsted and Vaux’s sapling discipline grew, developed, and spread. Another angle is to consider the sorts of roles that landscape architects play in contemporary society, the types of commission they undertake, and their relationship to other professionals, such as architects, urban designers, town and country planners, and environmental artists. A third way, and for me the most interesting, is to examine the theoretical bases of the discipline and the various aesthetic, social, and environmental discourses that shape it and distinguish it from cognate fields. The ‘What is it?’ question then shades into the questions, ‘Why do it?’ and ‘Why is it important?’

As a landscape architect trained in Britain, it is inevitable that I write from the perspective of the Anglophone world (the British and American professions share common roots—and there are strong links to countries in the British Commonwealth, including Australia, Canada, and New Zealand). However, I have tried to temper this with an awareness of the somewhat different origins and perspectives found in other cultures. France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia have all played an important role in the development of landscape architecture, but the place where it seems to be growing fastest is currently China. Gardening traditions in Chinese civilization go back at least as far as they do in the West, though the Chinese embrace of landscape architecture is a relatively recent phenomenon, linked to the country’s economic take-off since 1979 and the huge physical and social changes implicated in such development. While it is interesting to watch the way that Western ideas of landscape architecture are being grafted onto Chinese culture, we may soon see the influence of Chinese modes of thought and practice having an effect upon the way that landscape architecture is practised in the rest of the world.

There is considerable confusion about terminology, particularly when cross-cultural comparisons are drawn. Uses vary, even between Anglophone countries, and the problem gets thornier when trying to establish corresponding terms in German or French, for example. It would not be difficult to use up the 35,000 words of a VSI on this topic alone, but while I will not be able to avoid some discussion of definitions and nuances of meaning, it will be helpful if I set out what I mean by a few key terms:

Landscape. This is a slippery term, but a useful and widely agreed definition is found in the European Landscape Convention, which states that a landscape is ‘an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors’. This is helpful because it captures both the idea that a landscape is a tract of land, in other words, something physical, but also that it is something ‘perceived by people’, which is both of the mind and socially shared.

Landscape architecture. Here is what the International Federation of Landscape Architects says: ‘Landscape Architects conduct research and advise on planning, design and stewardship of the outdoor environment and spaces, both within and beyond the built environment, and its conservation and sustainability of development. For the profession of landscape architect, a degree in landscape architecture is required.’

Landscape design. Because the term ‘landscape architecture’ is flawed, some people prefer the term ‘landscape design’. It is a near synonym, but it might be taken to exclude ‘landscape planning’ (see the next entry). ‘Landscape architecture’ is the broader term and is also the professional name recognized by the International Labour Organization. In the United States there is a legal distinction between the two terms. Landscape architecture is a registered, state regulated profession, requiring a specific education and successful completion of a registration exam. Landscape design is not state regulated and requires no specific professional academic credentials.

Landscape planning. This helpful definition is offered by the United Nations Education Programme: ‘The aspect of the land use planning process that deals with physical, biological, aesthetic, cultural, and historical values and with the relationships and planning between these values, land uses, and the environment.’

To recap, the overarching disciplinary and professional title is ‘landscape architecture’. Design and planning can be overlapping activities, and both are aspects of landscape architecture.