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Abstract
This paper is primarily derived from the notion that neither landscape-based approaches nor the discipline of landscape architecture have yet fully engaged in responding to this decade's complex environmental and social challenges, since both landscape phenomena and discipline are to some extent under the influence of 19th century Romanticism and a number of obsolete ideas. This misalignment, at least from other planning and design disciplines’ point of view, has impeded further development of the discipline in effectively engaging with the multiple interfaces possible in the environmental and social realms. To investigate this notion, a two-stage approach outlined here aims at establishing a constructive continuum between ‘landscape’, ‘landscape concept’ and the ‘discipline’ in order to extrapolate landscape architecture's own concept and thus establish a sound basis for self-criticism within the discipline.
Self-criticism in conjunction with the continuum could not only produce new approaches to (un)built landscapes, but may also result in shifting the paradigm of the discipline. This would enable the discipline to take more active roles in imposing substantial landscape-based norms and values – i.e., through its own conceptions applied across the planning and design scales – upon the physical environment, rather than simply playing the defensive role of just protecting natural and cultural features against cultural interventions or destruction. To exemplify the hypothesis above, a number of case studies across a set of different contexts have been considered.
The growing interest in better understanding landscape and the discipline has the potential to fit well with the emerging ‘ecological era’ and ideas of sustainability. This would create the prospect of a future congruent with the advancement of landscape architecture, on the proviso that the discipline successfully restores the missing link with landscape concept. The shift in paradigm would then suggest developing a comprehensive tradition of self-criticism to question the current direction of the discipline and disengage from the status quo policies of the past. Such self-criticism will further landscape-based approaches and increase the breadth of the discipline in individual and interdisciplinary landscape studies.