CITY as LANDSCAPE architecture – Details, episodes & analysis

Robert Holden and Tom Turner discus the Landscape Institute's aims and its achievements. Landscape Institute Members for 111 years (half each), they discuss the foundation of the Institute and what it does now. They intend a second video about what the LI and the landscape profession should plan to do in the future, as it approaches its 100th Anniversary in 2029. It was founded as the Institute of Landscape Architects with Thomas Mawson as its first president. There was a focus on garden design in the 1930s. When Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe became president this focus shifted to public projects, including New Towns, roads, forestry, minerals and urban design.

There's an illustrated version of this podcast on Youtube https://youtu.be/qdZIVBRGIec It takes an overview of how and why cities could, and surely will, come to have vegetated rooftops with a profusion of roof gardens.

The text is from an online lecture by Tom Turner to the London Branch of the UK Landscape Institute LI on 16th February 2021.

Does the landscape profession need professional societies? Yes. Institutes, societies and similar bodies have a vital role: in promoting landscape architecture, in maintaining standards - and in raising standards.  

This podcast is about the past, present and future of the Landscape Institute - and about the term ‘landscape architecture’. Though it’s focus is on the UK, I’m also thinking about the wider, and international, questions of WHY landscape architects NEED professional institutes and of WHAT their main objectives should be. There is an illustrated version of this podcast on YouTube.

Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe had a significant role in shaping the UK Institute of Landscape Architects (which became the Landscape Institute) and founded the International Federation of Landscape Architects in 1948. He had the same idea about both institutes: their central role should be in  promoting landscape architecture.

An illustrated version of this podcast is available on Youtube.

A reasonable case exists for seeing John Claudius Loudon as Landscape Architecture's Giant. He lived from 1783-1843. More research is necessary but it is evident that:

(1) Loudon  was nearer to polymath status than anyone else who has devoted their life to the profession

(2) Loudon had a decisive influence on the adoption of the term 'landscape architect' by the profession

(3) Loudon laid the ground for a science-and-art based profession specialising in public projects (rather than private gardens)

(4) Loudon's 1822 and 1829 proposals for London (which included a circular Promenade and a set of concentric Breathing Zones, which we would call Green Belts or Green Infrastructure - GI) had a far-reaching influence which may well have included subsequent proposals by William Light (for Adelaide), by Joseph Paxton (for London),  by Frederick Law Olmsted (for Boston), Ebenezer Howard's green belt ideas and Patrick Abercrombie's County of London Plan and Greater London Plan.

(5) Loudon is one of great 'fathers of landscape architecture'.

No surprise if half of you hate Jordan Peterson and the other half love him. That's how it goes. But I guess we all love Geoffrey Jellicoe.

The theme of the podcast is that just as Modernism and Postmodernism were cultural trends with a powerful influence on 20th century design, whatever comes after them (which was called post-postmodernism in the title of my 1996 book on City as landscape) is sure to be a big influence on twenty-first century design including, of course, landscape architecture and landscape urbanism. Geoffrey Jellicoe was, I believe, 'postmodern' (rather than 'modern') but only in the sense Bernard Iddings Bell used the term (ie for an approach which rested on science and belief). He was not 'postmodern' in the current sense of 'skepticism, irony, or rejection toward what it describes as the grand narratives and ideologies associated with modernism'. 

I hope the subject isn't too dense for a 25 minute podcast. You might find the Youtube version easier (because it's illustrated) and if you want the notes and bibliographic references they can be found in this blogpost.

The list of alternative names for the emerging cultural trend include  altermodernism, cosmodernism, digimodernism, metamodernism, performatism, post-digital, post-humanism, aftermodernism and the new sincerity. In place of cynical postmodern irony, they stress 'faith, trust, dialogue, performance, and truth'. Does Jordan Peterson have these characteristics? Yes. 

People referred to in the podcast include: Jordan B Peterson, John Ruskin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Dawkins, Jeffrey Nealon, Alison Gibbons,  Robin van den Akker, Timotheus Vermeulen,   Mas'ud Zavarzadeh, Roland Barthes, Ninian Smart, Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe, Carl Gustav Jung, Mircea Eliade, Sir James George Frazer, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Vladimir Propp,  and Canon Bernard Iddings Bell.  

The ideas mentioned in the video include: Modernism, Postmodernism, Post-Postmodernism, Metamodernism, Arts and Crafts Style, Abstract Style, Post-Abstract Style,  God, Religion, Faith, Belief Style, Renaissance, Baroque, The Ten Commandments, Structuralism, Myth, Symbolism, Narrative, Collective Unconscious, Genius Loci, Maps of Meaning, Landscape Urbanism, Landscape Architecture, Garden Design.

Tom

This podcast is a critique of a competition winning design for converting a romantic public garden beside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster into a UK Holocaust Memorial. The small and much-loved greenspace would become a wide verge for a heavily trafficked pedestrian walk from Parliament Square to the Memorial.

The design was by Kathryn Gustafson working with Ron Arad (of Ground Zero fame) and David Adjaye who (also with Gustafson) designed the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History in Washington DC. The design for the Holocaust Memorial is very good. But the site selection, done before the design was commissioned, was totally wrong. I've tried to say this using a 'dark' piece of music to explain the proposal and a 'bright' piece of music to describe the character of the existing site. In Chapter 16 of City as landscape, a similar point is made by using the colour-words 'grey' and 'green' to describe the character of urban public spaces. The chapter title is Harlequin Space.

This podcast is also available as a YouTube video and so is the design team's explanation of their Concept - explained with the aid of a beautiful (but misleading) Capprice for Viola by Atar Arad (who is Ron Arad's brother). Music is a great way of explaining the moods and characters of people and places.

Ideas lie at the heart of landscape architecture and should have the same place in  the design process. This includes ideas about the natural world, about society, about culture and about the traditions of making cities, gardens and landscapes.

To integrate these ideas they can be represented with words and images.

• The words should be as concise as captions
  
• The images should be diagrammatic and photographic
  

Christopher Alexander used the terms 'pattern' and  'archetype' in his 1977 book: A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction and the Alexander patterns are archetypes for making good places. They need to be integrated with the patterns of the natural environment.

Other structural patterns can be identified with the help of psychology, ecology, geomorphology, art, design, geometry, planning and other subjects too. This gives us a structuralist approach to landscape architecture, drawing on aspects of philosophical structuralism.

Note: the three parts of this podcast have were published from July 5th,  July 19th and August 2nd 2020. This podcast contains all three parts, together with an introduction and a conclusion. A fully illustrated version of this podcast is available on Youtube.

This is the third part of a  podcast, based on Tom Turner's book on City as landscape. A design method is proposed which draws upon Christopher Alexander's Pattern language and other types of structuralist thinking. The method uses types of pattern: natural pattern structures, human pattern structures, archetypal pattern structures, and patterns found in the fine arts (painting, music, literature etc).  There is an illustrated version of this podcast on Youtube.

This is the second part of a podcast, based on Tom Turner's book on City as landscape. It reviews the ways in which different types of structuralist thinking are important in landscape architecture theory. The structuralist ideas are  found in psychology, ecology, geomorphology, art, design, geometry, planning and other disciplines. There is an illustrated version of this podcast on Youtube.