Landscape Architecture: A Design Profession for the Twenty-First Century

Figure 1.1 Third-year landscape architecture students after having presented their design studio projects at a neighborhood meeting.

Landscape architects often work in close association with other professionals, including architects, civil engineers, various scientists, and others in the planning and design of a range of urban, rural, natural, and cultural settings. Landscape architecture is a relatively new profession, at least in name. The name was coined in the midnineteenth century and the young profession established its identify and growing influence, beginning with an early pioneer of the profession: Frederick Law Olmsted. Olmsted, along with Calvert Vaux, designed the American park icon: New York’s Central Park and later the Emerald Necklace, a system of parks and greenways celebrated and enjoyed by the city of Boston, Massachusetts. These two projects are noteworthy in two vital respects. New York’s Central Park was the first large-scale urban park in America with a design influenced by the estates and parks in England visited by Frederick Law Olmsted. While the design of Central Park was steeped in the naturalistic and Romantic tradition of Capability Brown and other early English landscape architects, the park was seen by Olmsted as a means of providing relief from the crowded tenements of New York by providing healthy passive, outdoor recreation spaces framed in a naturalistic setting. Olmsted also applied these natural and Romantic traditions he found in his travels to England to the design of the Emerald Necklace, another landmark urban park of nineteenth- century America. Olmsted’s design for the Boston greenway park system also helped to reduce the recurrent flooding from winter storms. What we see on the surface are large expanses of lawn composed in a series of grand outdoor rooms, defined by planted forests of mostly native trees. The park was in essence the basis of

the newly created storm-water infrastructure system designed to reduce periodic flooding in downtown Boston. So in the early years of the profession, a tradition was established where the landscape architects assumed an almost messianic point of view to deal with social as well as environmental issues, in addition to creating aesthetically appealing and functional green urban open spaces and parks. With Olmsted and the early landscape architecture pioneers, a professional tenet advocating stewardship for the environment and the goal of creating healthy livable communities was inaugurated. Later in the twentieth century, the profession firmly embraced and advocated the concept of land ethics and creating greater value by incorporating what has become known as sustainable and resilient design strategies: plans and designs that will be sustainable places where people live, work, and recreate now and into the future. And these created landscapes can include design strategies that will make the resulting landscape resilient to the negative impacts of storms and other naturally occurring phenomena.

The profession of landscape architecture is well positioned to participate in solving some of the fundamental problems facing communities, cities, and global regions. The academic preparation and professional practice career trajectories prepare practitioners to create design solutions that consider the environmental as well as the social, economic, practical, and aesthetic factors. Landscape architecture, like engineering, is an applied discipline that uses scientific-based knowledge to inform planning and design solutions. The practical application of scientific knowledge is the basis for landscape architects participating in identifying solutions to such global issues as global warming, increased scarcity of adequate safe water, loss of biodiversity, and problems related to sea levels rising. The involvement of landscape architects in these issues occurs in collaboration with other disciplines. What the reader will realize while reading through the following chapters is that landscape architects have a rightful and meaningful place at the table when dealing with global-scale environmental issues, just as they do at the local and regional levels. Among the design professions, landscape architects have assumed the role of good citizens of the environment.

Landscape architects are involved in various realms and on many scales. Employment opportunities can be found in many realms of practice. There is a diverse range of professional career options open to graduates, including private, public, and academic practice as well as the emerging areas of practice involving non-governmental organizations. Landscape architects are engaged in private practice, working with multiple design disciplines and with scientists in a wide range of land resource planning and management investigations.

Landscape architects were key designers and planners of the City Beautiful Movement,1 a movement that contributed to making the rapidly expanding cities of the post-industrial era more humane and desirable places to live. One of the early legacies of Frederick Law Olmsted was his role in the establishment of the system of US National Parks, beginning with Yellowstone and Yosemite. Early landscape architecture pioneers had a significant impact on the park movement in the United States, including the design of urban

park systems that have provided enjoyment and, to a considerable degree, healthy recreation opportunities for cities, beginning in the early twentieth century and the post-World War II period and up to the present day. The design work of landscape architects can be found in iconic examples of urban design, an area of importance to the profession that has been re-energized as older areas of central cities have found new ways to reinvent and make more livable, healthy central urban neighborhoods.

In addition to the work of landscape architects at the national, state, and city project scales of development, members of the profession have collaborated with natural scientists and land resource managers tasked with creating and maintaining our system of natural areas set aside to preserve and enhance large tracts of nature preserves, coastal areas, and river corridors. Landscape architects have played a central role in attempts to identify and preserve cultural heritage sites. They have worked as part of teams of planners, designers, and engineers, assisting in route selection and later landscape restoration and landscape installations associated with national and state transportation networks, oil pipeline corridors, and large mining extraction enterprises. And of course, landscape architects have been responsible for the design of private residential gardens and commercial properties. Other types of projects for landscape architects have been either as the principal designer or associated with teams who have designed golf courses, destination parks such as Disney World, eco-tourism resorts, ski resorts, and the list could continue. And, finally, landscape architects have participated in addressing the impact of natural disasters, such as hurricanes, by contributing to the rebuilding or developing strategies to increase the resilience and sustainability of communities affected by floods, fire, earthquakes, and other natural disasters. The profession appeals to individuals interested in creating more livable, environmentally responsible, safe, healthy places for people. These people must have a range of interests, skills, and passions steeped in the arts and the natural sciences.

The skill set developed by landscape architects is applied to the processes of problem solving and design. If you like to draw, write, and interact with people, you will most likely acquire a range of effective verbal communication, drawing, and computer skills. Interestingly, the profession has embraced the application of a growing range of computer representation software, including various technical drawing, animation, and photo-simulation programs. Hand drawing remains important and those skilled in the use of various media, including pencil, watercolor, and pen and ink, continue to be valued. Model making is another skill that is used to help clients better understand a proposed design. Model making can involve quick constructions out of clay or cardboard or more elaborate models using laser-cutting machines and 3-D printers. Landscape architects have found themselves at the cutting edge of computer applications to enhance their work and increase their efficiency in communicating design ideas and solutions.