LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

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Defining BE by four interrelated characteristics:
1. BE is extensive, everywhere, provides the context for all human endeavors
2. Creation of human minds, results of human purposes, intended to serve human
needs, wants, values
3. Created to help us deal with and to protect us from the overall environment, to
mediate or change this environment for our comfort and well-being.
4. Every component of the BE is defined and shaped by context; each and all of
the individual elements contribute either positively or negatively to2 the overall
quality of both and natural and to human-environment relationships.
Components of
the BE
The earth

Regions

Cities

Landscapes

Structures

Interiors

Products
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Bartuska and Young, 1994

BUILT ENVIRONMENT DISCIPLINES

1) Earth – environmental scientists &

global planners.
2) Regions – regional planners &
ecologists
3) Cities – urban designers &
planners
4) Landscapes – landscape
architects & planners.
5) Structures – architects &
engineers.
6) Interiors - interior designers.
7) Products - graphic designers &
artists, product and industrial
designers.

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LAND
A basic commodity on earth
Must be planned, need conservation

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 LANDSCAPE

A portion of the environment, both natural

and built, which can be perceived in a single
view.
Seascape
Townscape
Riverscape

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The solar system
Planet earth – its images
LANDSCAPE – understanding it
 A portion of land which the eye can comprehend
in a single view, especially its pictorial aspects;

 a picture representing natural scenery;

 to improve by landscape architecture or

gardening.

 It combines the elements of the natural ‘land’ and

setting or ‘scape’.

 When land is described based on its

‘physiognomy’ (the physical appearance) and
environmental characteristics.
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LANDSCAPE – another
perspective

 A landscape is the composite of natural and

cultural features of a place

 Landscape is different from one place to

another due to its historical impact of man on
the land - “Cultural Landscape”

Examples of natural and cultural features:

 Hills, forests, deserts and water bodies.
 Fields, buildings and roadways.
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 LANDSCAPE

o A landscape comprises the visible features

of an area of land, including:

a) physical elements e.g. landforms,

b) living elements of flora and fauna,
c) abstract elements such as lighting and
weather conditions,
d) human elements, e.g. human activity or
the built environment.
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landforms

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Flora and fauna
 “LANDSCAPING”…
the meaning
 To improve the landscape, to make
the land more beautiful, especially by
adding trees and plants, etc.

 This would be synonymous with

landscape gardening.
 Conceptual definition of
landscape architecture
…a primarily a fine art whose most important function is to
create and preserve beauty in the surroundings of human
habitations and in the broader natural scenery of the
country; but it is also concerned with promoting comfort,
convenience and health of urban populations, which have
scanty access to rural scenery, and urgently need to have
their hurrying workaday lives refreshed and calmed by the
beautiful and reposeful sights and sounds with nature,
aided by the landscape art can abundantly provide.

H.V. Hubbard and Theodora Kimball, an introduction to the study of

landscape design, New York, Macmillan, 1917
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 Conceptual definition of
landscape architecture
…that portion of the landscape which is developed or shaped by man,
beyond buildings, roads, or utilities and up to wild nature, designed
primarily as space for human living (not including agriculture,
forestry).
It is the establishment of relations between building, surfacing, and
other outdoor construction, earth, rock forms, bodies of water, plants
and open space, and the general form and character of the landscape;
but with primary emphasis on the human content, the relationship
between people and landscape, between human-beings and three-
dimensional outdoor space quantitatively and qualitatively.

Garrett Eckbo, Landscape for living, New York, Architectural Record,

1950
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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
“Planning and design of land and water”

 Planning – futuristic approach

 Design – a qualitative, functional arrangement of
land in planning process

 Planning & design suggest man-made/man

regulated landscape. But in actual, there is no such
thing as man-made landscape.

 The right word most probably be a “modified

landscape”, landscape adaptation
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Falling water
by Frank Lloyd
Wright (1937)

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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

 Landscapes are humanly made, arranged or

maintained.
 In order to fulfill human purpose,
 to satisfy human needs, wants and values; and
 to mediate the overall environment.

 The result affect its context (cities, regions and

earth) in which they are placed.

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 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

Ways that we do adaptation/modification of landscape:

1) Growing crops, raising stock:

 agricultural landscape + “Cultural Landscape” – village
settlement, etc.

2) Representation of great gardens

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Agricultural landscape + cultural landscape 23
 Landscape has long been settled, cultivated and in many ways modified by
human.
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Representation of the great gardens
 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
…several definitions
 A profession focused on arranging the effects of
natural scenery over a given tract of land so as to
produce the best aesthetic effect, considering the
uses to which the tract is to be put.
(Bartuska and Young, 1994)

 Landscape architecture concerns about the planning

and design of land and water for use by society on
the basis of an understanding of these systems.
(Michael Laurie,
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1986)
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

 Landscape Architecture is the art of design, planning

or management of the land, arrangement of natural
and manmade elements thereon through application of
cultural and scientific knowledge, with concerns for
resource conservation and stewardship, to the end
that the resultant environment serves useful and
enjoyable purpose.

 Landscape architecture encompasses the analysis,

planning, design, management, and stewardship of the
natural and built environments.

http://www.asla.org
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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
 “Landscape Architecture” is a term coined by
Frederick Law Olmstead Sr. (1858).
 He is the “Father of American Landscape
Architecture”.
 In 1863, official use of the designation
‘Landscape Architect’ by New York’s park
commissioners marked the symbolic genesis of
landscape architecture as a modern design
profession.

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Frederick Law Olmsted Sr- designer of
New York City’s Central Park.
He also designed complete urban open
space systems, city and traffic patterns,
subdivisions, university campuses, and
private estates.

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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

Frederick Law Olmsted Sr planned:

 City parks
 Urban open space system
 City and traffic patterns
 University campuses
 private estates

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 Olmstead’ s work and vision:
http://www.olmsted.org/the-olmsted-legacy/frederick-law-
olmsted-sr

Olmsted created examples of the many kinds of designs by

which the profession of landscape architecture could improve
the quality of life in America. These included the large urban
park, devoted primarily to the experience of scenery and
designed so as to counteract the artificiality of the city and
the stress of urban life; the "parkway," a wide urban
greenway carrying several different modes of transportation
which connected parks and extended the benefits of public
greenspace throughout the city; the park system, offering a
wide range of public recreation facilities for all residents in a
city; the scenic reservation, protecting areas of special
scenic beauty from destruction and commercial
exploitation;…

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…the residential suburb, separating place of work from place of
residence and devoted to creating a sense of community and a
setting for domestic life; the grounds of the private residence,
where gardening could develop both the aesthetic awareness
and the individuality of its occupants, and containing numerous
"attractive open-air apartments" that permitted household
activities to be moved outdoors; the campuses of residential
institutions, where a domestic scale for the buildings would
provide a training ground for civilized life; and the grounds of
government buildings, where the function of the buildings would
be made more efficient and their dignity of appearance increase
by careful planning. In each of these categories, Olmsted
developed a distinctive design approach that showed the
comprehensiveness of his vision, his uniqueness of conception
that he brought to each commission, and the imagination with
which he dealt with even the smallest details.

Frederick Law Olmstead Jr. continued his father’s legacy in

landscape architecture

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 LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

Originally a LA was responsible for large

projects but later (after 1907) it embarked in a
less ambitious projects (early 1900s), e.g.
estates, gardens, small scale site planning.

In 1930s, LA worked on big scale projects

again, e.g. for US National Park Services – e.g.
derelict land, regional/urban landscape
analysis, housing site planning, schools and
industrial areas.
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