trailblazers chefs de file - CSLA

LANDSCAPE URBANISM
CREATING ENVIRONMENTS FOR LIVING
“...landscape replaces architecture as the basic building block of contemporary urbanism.”
CHARLES WALDHEIM
EN_
AS I RESEARCHED current issues infl uencing our profession, I
discovered a newly launched website which was a year in the making:
www.landscapeurbanism.com. The intelligent articles further the
dialogue on the concept of landscape urbanism and what it means for
landscape architects.
You may, of course, argue with the term “concept.” Others have
termed landscape urbanism a “movement,” a “theory” or a “body of
knowledge,” and it may be all of these. Through detailed discussions
of what landscape urbanism can mean, we are fi nding another way
to describe what we do in the creation of settlements, both new and
improved.
“Landscape Urbanism” is relatively new, although as early as the
1920s, thinkers from Lewis Mumford to Ian McHarg, from Patrick
Geddes to Benton MacKaye, were setting the stage. The term
itself was not introduced until the late 1980s at the University of
Pennsylvania, as academics discussed how to tackle complex urban
projects across the disciplines of Landscape Architecture, Urban
Design and Architecture. At a Chicago conference in 1997, a number of
experts explored this further and subsequently introduced academic
programs in the United States and in Europe.
WALDHEIM: ESSENTIAL READING
Charles Waldheim, in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, writes that
“Landscape Urbanism describes a disciplinary realignment currently
underway in which landscape replaces architecture as the basic
building block of contemporary urbanism.” Landscape becomes “both
the lens through which the contemporary city is represented and the
medium through which it is constructed.”
The Web discussion builds on this essential theme. I particularly
liked Shanti Fjord Levy’s historic overview of thinkers who
exhibited an “understanding that landscape underlies urban order.”
Infrastructure, she notes, is formed based on landscape, and cities
are formed by cultural interaction in the landscape over time.
Elizabeth Shaw Valk suggests that “landscape urbanism seeks to
devise how to meet cultural needs while accommodating natural
forces.” Author Jason King focuses on the study of process, noting
that landscape urbanism “is a separate point of view that changes
the perspective on how architecture fi ts into cities and how design
is done and what the collective eff ect of a group of buildings is on
the outdoor-indoor environment and the social realm within which
human interactions occur.”
Historically Landscape Architects have played major roles in the
design and layout of cities. We are recognized for creating public
LIANE MCKENNA, CSLA PRESIDENT, FCSLA, BCSLA
ESSAI
green spaces, places of beauty and tranquility that represent nature
in the urban context. We’ve been a part of urban improvements
planned and built by architects, engineers and planners and we’ve
contributed to community spaces which interpret society’s culture
and art. These have been – and remain – valuable contributions.
COLLAPSING THE DIVIDE BETWEEN PLANNING AND DESIGN
But today, it is we, as Landscape Architects, who are best able
to evolve the landscape urbanism concept, and to use this new
vocabulary to express the importance of bringing the land and
natural processes into urban design decisions at an earlier stage.
As writer Richard Weller suggests in The Landscape Urbanism
Reader, landscape urbanism seems “capable of collapsing the
divide between planning and design... As any landscape architect
knows, the landscape itself is a medium through which all ecological
transactions must pass, it is the infrastructure of the future and
therefore of structural rather than (or as well as) scenic signifi cance.”
In addition to this expanded vocabulary, we also have a more
sophisticated and environmentally conscious public who expect not
only healthy, liveable and beautiful communities but also unique
environments refl ecting their origins. Today, placing a built form in a
sterile landscape is unacceptable.
SCIENCE + ART
We are clearly the profession that marries science and art. But
how we convey our message, our knowledge and our experience is
critical to our future. Landscape Urbanism presents us with a way to
articulate what we do. Our responsibility is to consider exactly what
landscape urbanism means, and to use this clarity to put landscape
at the forefront of urban design.
Already, Canadian Landscape Architects have translated the
concepts into reality in award-winning projects at home and abroad.
What is perhaps most notable is not the megaproject, but those
projects that change the face of individual neighbourhoods, altering
attitudes to landscape and environment as they change the way
communities are shaped.
Consider, for example, Toronto’s Community Program for
Stormwater Management. Schollen & Company Inc. was
instrumental in bringing Residential Rainproofi ng concepts into
neighbourhood yards and gardens. They worked at a grassroots level
with Citizens for a Safe Environment, conscientious residents and a
willing municipality to tackle one of our greatest urban challenges:
sustainable management of stormwater through the use of
landscape.
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