Hello, this is Tom Turner with another podcast - in a series which takes an overview of urban
design, garden design and landscape design - their history, theory, position and prospects.
If you like images with your text, there’s an illustrated version of this podcast on Youtube.
This is an updated version of a video I published in 2015
and it asks the same question: What is Landscape Architecture Theory?
I use the word theory, in one of the senses defined in the Oxford English Dictionary,
to mean ‘A conception of something to be done, or the method of doing it’.
My conception is that the landscape profession has one aim, three objectives and five sets of
techniques. You could call it a 1-3-5 profession • the primary aim is to create a good
public realm. Using Jellicoe’s term, we can call it a ‘Collective Landscape’.
Or, remembering Claude Lorrain and John Claudius Loudon,
you can call it a ‘Claudian’ aim. • the three objectives
are to create places which are useful, beautiful and well-made. These objectives can be summarised
as ‘Vitruvian’ and there is much to be said for using Vitruvius’ Latin vocabulary:
utilitas, venustas and firmitas. I find the customary English translations misleading.
They’re Commodity, Delight and Firmness. • the five compositional elements of
landscape architecture, are land, water, vegetation, buildings and pavings.
The various design professions are both related and distinct, with some close together and others
far apart. Like urban design and garden design, they draw on individual aptitudes, educational
programmes and bodies of theory. Some architects are good at interior design, others at planning
and others, like Alvar Aalto and Zaha Hadid, at furniture design. But it does not follow
that ‘architecture’ is a single discipline or that the title deserves legal protection.
Nor are urban design and garden design the same thing, though both are more like drawing on the
park of a tree than on a sheet of white paper or a computer screen. As an art of composition,
urban design can learn from garden design, with landscape architecture as a mother of both.
In its first century, after 1862, when landscape architecture was growing into an organised
profession, practitioners wanted to distinguish themselves from garden designers and to become
more involved with public projects. Frederick Law Olmsted began his professional career with
a public project (Central Park) and undertook some garden design later in his career.
Thomas Mawson, who became first president of the UK’s Institute of Landscape Architects,
wrote separate books on Garden Making
and on Civic Art. He saw both subjects as part of landscape architecture but by treating them
separately he widened the gulf between the new profession and its ancient origins.
Patrick Geddes, a leading planner, wrote of 'City improvers, like the gardeners from whom
they develop’ - and I’m sorry that the link between cities and gardens,
as design activities, has weakened. The realms of ‘public’ and ‘private’
are separate but related - as are the individual unconscious and the collective unconscious.
Gardens remain excellent places in which to develop spatial concepts and history has
many examples of urban design ideas which derive from garden design ideas. Here are some of them
Amarna, in Ancient Egypt, was as much a garden plan as it was a town plan.
Beijing was based on the traditional planning of China’s royal estates. They integrated palaces
with gardens, parks, rivers and mountains Isfahan was based on the classical planning
of Persian gardens, dating from a thousand years before the birth of Islam
Baroque Rome was planned on the model of Sixtus V’s villa garden, in Montalto
Georgian London’s parks, squares and streets were based on Renaissance and Neoclassical
garden plans, as was Edinburgh’s New Town Nineteenth century Paris, and Washington DC,
were based on Baroque garden plans with focal points and radial avenues
The Modernist cities of the 20th century, most regrettably, were not based on spatial ideas
and had not been tested at the scale of landscape and garden design. So they’re dead dull.
You can find a longer, but still short, account of landscape theory
in my Kindle book on Landscape Architecture. It’s organised as answers these questions:
What is the definition of landscape architecture?
When did landscape architecture originate? How are good landscapes designed?
Why is there a social need for landscape architecture?
Where do landscape architects create public goods?
Who were the great landscape designers in the Eastern Tradition and in the Western Tradition?
What’s next for landscape architecture?
Well, thanks for listening. If interested, you can find more of my views on the Gardenvisit.com
and Landscape Architecture Youtube channels and websites - or you can ‘subscribe’ on your
podcast player to hear future podcasts about designing cities, landscapes and gardens.