Landscape Architecture Critic

[Anton Comrie]

Maybe its my misconception, but why do we have so little internal criticism in landscape architecture.Are there any and writers like architecture critic Charles Jencks in the field of Landscape Architecture? I attendend the first World Architecture Festival in Barcelona last year and was impressed with the critical evaluation of the work submitted for awards. I found the honosty of the criticism both refershing and educational. As a Landscape Architect working mostly in Africa I sometimes feel isolated from critical debate around design issues and rely on media and travel to keep me in touch. Herein lies the problem. There seems to be very little material available that truly tackles the relevance of landscape architecture as a design dicipline except perhaps blogs like this. I would ceratinly welcome open discussion of projects (theoretical as well as actual). We need the dicussions taking place between competition judges (generally behind closed doors) to happen between us as Landscape Architects. Sure, issues like LEED is important, but shouldn’t we rather learn to have critical minds? We stand to loose the most exciting part of our dicipline to Building Architects. More and more parks, squares and campusses get designed by Architects and they often do it better than Landscape Architects. Any thoughts?

[jim gerace]

I’ve often wondered the same thing. Not only is there little constructive criticism of landscape architecture, most landscape “enhancements” are considered good decoration. It seems that it matters little if it is viable, sustainable or possessing of any design integrity–if it’s pretty, then it’s pretty good.

The reality is that there is an awful lot of awful design out there. Some of it mandated by city landscape codes so specific as to restrict any creativity. Others are destroyed by common maintenance practices after the landscape architect has relinquished control–nandina is box cut, trees have forced minimum spacing and have you ever tried to let a podocarpus grow into the tree it was meant to be (?).

People still think landscape architecture is an unnecessary extravagance they can do themselves. After 27 years in the profession, I’m still asked about spots on roses and mowing techniques or roof angles and window types. I am neither landscaper nor architect, but many still only understand one of those words at a time. Cable TV has helped a lot with making Landscape Architecture more visible, but even there, I constantly see poor examples of design or, even worse, poor examples of landscape architecture created by non-landscape architects. This does nothing to help our cause.

We’re shooting ourselves in both feet when we praise landscape architecture just for being. We need to separate the good and the bad and thereby educate the masses as to who and what we really are. Until we recognize and admit our own fallibility, we will never grow into the authority we should be.

[Ryland Fox]

When I think about it there doesn’t really seem like there is much to critique.

Historically it seems like the times when there is the most discussion is when people are doing something new or controversial i.e. Kiley/Eckbo/ Rose, Martha Schwartz and even into Peter Walker and Hargreaves in the early years.

But what is new or controversial now? Not much that I can tell. Most design coming out, while it may look alright, is extremely safe. It is very glossy, slick design but it isn’t really new. We are in a rut. Obviously there are exceptions Oculus, FO, West8 etc, but they are far from the norm.

There is debate in architecture because the limits of what architecture is and how it looks/functions/is designed is constantly being pushed and challenged both within academia and professional practice. It is easy to deride the arch work coming out as blobs or impractical or whatever but at least there are people trying to define the future and test the present’s limits.

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