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Landscape Architecture

Landscape architecture is one of the world's most important professions

Neglecting the architectures of the world's fast-changing landscapes will result in endless highways lined with endless blocks of endless tedium - dreary expanses of housing, industry, forestry and agriculture - our natural landscapes buried under repetitive building and planting. Instead, we should design Landscape Architectthe architecture of 'new landscapes for our new lives' (Fairbrother, N. 1970). The engineering of anti-landscapes should make way for an enlightened landscape architecture. With the death of engineer's modernism, it is time for a twenty-first century approach.

Landscape architecture theory

Landscape architecture and garden design are separate arts with a shared and ancient heritage. (The guides to Design Theory and Design Products are therefore in the Gardens Guide section of this website). Landscape architecture is concerned with public goods and public space. Societies require landscape architectural policies for each land use category - to conserve what has value and and to create new public goods. See the policies for: urbanisation, greenways, cycling, forestry, mineral extraction, transport, water storage, river reclamation, new towns and green towns.

The origin of landscape architecture

The name "landscape architecture" was invented by a Scotsman in 1828. It uses the ancient skill of garden designers (to compose landform with water, vegetation and structures) and applies Landscape Architectthis skill to the man-made landscape. As Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe wrote in The landscape of man (1975): 'It is only in the present century that the collective landscape has emerged as a social necessity. We are promoting a landscape art on a scale never conceived of in history'.

Since gardens and landscape are linked disciplines, some of the hyperlinks on the website take you back and forwards between landscape architecture and garden design. You can click GARDENS GUIDE (here or above) and then use the LANDSCAPE GUIDE link to return to this page in the Landscape Architecture Guide.

Landscape Architecture and Garden Design

Landscape architects share with garden designers a concern for the planning and design of outdoor space. Like vets and doctors they have similar knowledge and similar skills. The key difference is that landscape architects normally work for public clients (business and governmental) while garden designers tend to work forLandscape Architect homeowners. The range of work undertaken by landscape architects extends from detailed design to the broad scale landscape planning. It includes:

  • Urban design and urbanisation
  • Landscape architecture for public parks, greenways and cycling
  • Landscape planning for mineral extraction
  • Landscape planning for forestry
  • Landscape planning for transport
  • Landscape planning for water storage
  • Landscape planning for river reclamation
  • Landscape planning for new towns and green towns