CITY as LANDSCAPE architecture (Tom Turner)

Here's a summary of what came out of the LANDSCAPEmatters debate on environmental art and landscape architecture (held by LANDSCAPEmatters on 15th June 2021) with a comment on the historical context for the issues (in the design theory of Vitruvius Pollio, whose book was published 2000 years ago). If you'd prefer an illustrated version of this podcast, you can find it on YouTube

Claudius Buchanan’s promotion of higher education in India led to the foundation of its first degree-awarding university, at Serampore. He also had a significant influence on the campaigns against wife-burning and self-immolation in India. Yet he saw himself as ‘one of the chief sinners.’ Why?

John Claudius Loudon advanced through Europe as Napoleon retreated. As well as being a pioneer of landscape architecture he made important contributions to public parks, greenways, greenbelts, arboreta, urban planning and the glass-and-steel architecture of the 20th  century. 

Loudon also invented a style of planting design that has become dominant: the Gardenesque. It uses exotic plants in naturalistic compositions - as Gertrude Jekyll did and as Piet Oudolf does. Yet Loudon is almost forgotten. Why?

Jane Wells Webb, who married Loudon, was a pioneer of science fiction writing, But her interest was not in space travel or intergalactic warfare. She dreamed of a ‘Claudian’ ideal world, in which  queens, rather than kings, would rule  -  and in which rivers would be lined with beautiful gardens, open to the public. 

The Claudians is the story of the cousins' lives and their work. It explores the ideas which motivated them, the details of their travels, the challenges that left them undaunted, their marriages, their achievements and their untimely deaths.

From the Claudians Companion Pages you can find out a great deal more about the cousins and buy the book. It's on offer at a 25% discount on pre-orders before December 1st 2024.

Landscape architecture is a very good job and a very satisfying career. The work is creative, exciting and a great way to solve environmental problems and contribute to the mitigation of climate change.  See illustrated version of this podcast on YouTube. It was made for people thinking about a career in landscape architecture AND for professionals who would like to expand the scope and work of landscape architects.

As an art, landscape design can be traced back 30,000 years. You work with nature, with local communities and with the other environmental design professions, including architects, engineers, horticulturalists, hydrologists and scientists. The documented history of landscape design theory dates back 2000 years, to Vitruvius. It became an organised profession with the work of Frederick Law Olmsted on Central Park in New York City in the 1860s.  As societies become richer the demand for landscape architects goes up. Tom Turner makes these points and sees the design approach known as landscape urbanism as the direction landscape architecture design methods are likely to develop. 

More information is available from the Q&A section of the LAA Landscape Architecture website http://www.landscapearchitecture.org.uk/qa-landscape-architecture/ and there is YouTube playlist for the Q&A videos https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0tjuOrn4n20OnXwUS0r1iKHUJqTf0D-S  Websites with information about salaries for landscape architects include: 

USA:  https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/landscape-architects.htm

UK: https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/landscape-architect

Far too many buildings are covered with dead skin. Concrete, steel, wood, metal, brick, bitumen, rubber and vinyl are lifeless materials which can and should have a vegetated outer cladding.  Here's an illustrated version of the podcast.

The exteriors of buildings should be planned, designed and managed for multiple objectives including:

1. Habitat creation

2. Horticulture for growing food

3. Horticulture for aesthetics

4. Apiculture (bee keeping)

5. Surface water management

6. Energy capture

7. Carbon capture

8. Dust capture

9. Noise attenuation

10. Thermal insulation

11. Natural lighting and ventilation

12. Relaxation and wellbeing

Green cladding materials are also beautiful sustainable. 

For an illustrated version of this podcast please see  https://youtu.be/S9R2bXDsY2Y on the Landscape Architecture YouTube channel.

Brodie McAllister gives an outline of land art, environmental art and their relationship to landscape architecture. The debate was organised by LANDSCAPEmatters and held on 15th June 2021. Brodie became the Landscape Institute’s President Elect a few days before the debate.

This podcast is based on the first chapter of a book by Tom Turner published in 1996: City as landscape.  The chapter's title was post-Postmodernism but  if the term Landscape Urbanism had had its present use in 1995 it would have been included. 

The ‘layering’ aspect of Landscape Urbanism derives from Ian McHarg and his use of reason was certainly affected by his beliefs. McHarg was anti-Christian, sympathetic to Buddhism and a great believer in the importance of conserving nature. Me too.

Conservation wasn’t an aspect of either Modernism or Postmodernism.  But it’s built-in to Landscape Urbanism, which we should therefore classify as post-Postmodern. If revising  this chapter, I’d change most occurrences of the word ‘religion’ to ‘beliefs’, for the reasons explained in my book on Asian Gardens: History, Beliefs and Design  (Routledge, 2011).

Though published out of sequence, this is is the first of nine or ten podcasts about the relationship between the Environment, Art and Landscape Architecture. I’ve also done a short YouTube video about this -  with rather a long title. It was called A History of Land Art, Ecological and Environmental Art  in relation to Landscape Architecture and  made to set the scene for a discussion. But before getting into the discussion I’ve got a news flash about the City as Landscape series of podcasts. I’ve done 18 episodes so far and they began, during the 2020 Covid lockdown, as a narrated version of my book on City as landscape. I’ve recorded most of the 20 essays and published three of them in 2020 -  as both  podcasts and YouTube videos. Reading the essays is easy enough. Converting them to videos is slow work, which may be why I’ve turned to shorter projects. I do however plan to finish the City as Landscape audio book - sometime. Perhaps I’ll do the podcasts but not the videos.

Veganism is a set of principles, as well as being a diet, and relates to Green Buddhism. The design principles include:

- vegetated ground, roofs and walls,

- rainwater harvesting, use and infiltration

- growing as much of our own food as we can

- avoiding industrialised and ultra-processed foods, which help you to die young

- planning greenways for commuting and for leisure - both walking and cycling

- creating breathing zones with clean fresh air - as advocated by the man who laid the foundations for modern landscape architecture (‘Yes: that’s John Claudius Loudon’)

Landscape Institute (LI) Past President Merrick Denton-Thompson OBE looks to the future in a wide-ranging  debate with Past LI Vice President Brodie McAllister. They see many ways in which landscape architects contribute to the adaptation of project designs to mitigate the impact of global warming on climate change. Landscape architects' work can be more functional, more beautiful, higher valued, more exciting - and more fun.  In cities, the discussion includes green technology and post-Covid changes to living and work patterns. In the countryside it includes forestry, agriculture and recreation. Landscape architecture is already one of the world’s fast-growing professions. The new challenges can only raise the demand – if we step up to the plate and take a strategic approach. This podcast is also available on YouTube where you can use the comment system to make points and ask questions.

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.

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.

There is a fully illustrated version of this podcast on Youtube. It's about the most influential landscape architect of the 20th century. Well known to planners and environmental campaigners, Patrick Geddes is less well-known to landscape architects, landscape planners and landscape urbanists. This is a pity.

My preferred account of landscape architecture is that it is the art and science of composing five elements to achieve the Vitruvian objectives of Commodity, Firmness and Delight in the design of outdoor space for public goods. Using this definition the practical work of Patrick Geddes is very much landscape architecture and indeed he was the first British citizen to use the professional title landscape, architecture in its modern sense - as launched by Frederick law Olmstead.

When dealing with the regeneration of the landscape at the head of the Royal mile in Edinburgh he proposed gardens as a main feature and his daughter who trained as a landscape gardener did some of the design work for him. Later he competed in the Dunfermline competition and described himself as a landscape architect. During much of the First World War he was in India and undertook many consultancy commissions. On these projects his work was that on these projects is what was that of a landscape architect over he chose to describe himself as a town planner. It was really urban landscape design or as he would prefer Civic design. The typical recommendations in these projects were just the kind that a modern landscape architect would make for an urban project and they are not at all the type of proposals that students on town planning courses learn to make.

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.

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

"Environmental Art" can be seen to have originated in the early 20th century, with Picasso, collage, Duchamp, readymade artworks, Cubism and Minimalism.  Or it can be seen to derive from the ancient world, including the Pyramids, Stonehenge and many projects in the history of landscape architecture and garden design. Asking "what is the difference between Environmental Art and Landscape Architecture" this video sets the scene for a debate, using art projects by Charles Jencks (for Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art) and Tom Turner (for a Sea and Sand Mandala) as debating points.

This update on the City as Landscape podcast channel explains why it has been neglected for a few years: the reason is because Tom Turner has been writing a fictionalised dual biography of "The Grandfather of Landscape Architecture" and the cousin with whom he shared a forename: Claudius Buchanan. That's why the book title is The Claudians. It is available for pre-order on Amazon Kindle at a 25% discount. On 1st December, when it is published, the price will rise above the pre-order price of £2.99 ($3.90 in the US). Loudon is the Grandfather of Landscape Architecture and was an important influence on modern architecture, garden design and town planning.

Claudius Buchanan was a famous and influential missionary in India. Like his cousin, Buchanan was influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment and what is best understood as 'the spirit of the Pilgrim Fathers'. The cousins believed in hard work, honesty and working for the public good.

Find The Claudians on Amazon Kindle https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DJL69B9H Read more about the book: https://www.gardenvisit.com/jcl

See a video about the book: https://youtu.be/p35ymUbhYhc

There is a very fully illustrated version of this podcast on YouTube.

Edward Hutchison is a London artist, landscape architect, architect and author of a very popular book on Landscape Drawing (published by Thames and Hudson). In this podcast he talks to Tom Turner about his work and about how he sees the relationship between art, painting and landscape architecture. He sees drawing and painting as analytical tools which help the landscape architecture understand the nature of the world and the place which will be designed. Edward also paints what happens below the ground and above the ground - the world of soil and the world of birdsong (which will be the theme of his next exhibition, in London in 2022). The podcast features a project he did, in Nimes, France, with Norman Foster (for whom he worked at one time).

This moving Elegy on John Claudius Loudon was written by John Robertson, his assistant for 9 years. A fascinating aspect of the poem is the twin themes of 𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 and working to create what we call 𝐩𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝𝐬. This is what Geddes and McHarg did.

Robertson drew the plan of Birkenhead Park - which inspired Frederick Law Olmsted (in 1850) "to admit that in democratic America there was nothing to be thought of as comparable with this People's Garden". That's why he entered the 1857 Central Park Competition and later used the title Landscape Architect on his plan. Working to create public goods is a key aspect of our profession - and we must thank Loudon for this.

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'.

Tom Turner takes an overview of landscape architecture, urban design and garden design - their history, theory, position and prospects.  As an art, landscape architecture dates back over 12,000 years and the earliest written record over 4000 years. It was practised in Europe, South Asia and East Asia, including China and Japan. The oldest treatise containing a set of principles was written, by Vitruvius, in the first century BC. His book, re-discovered during the Renaissance, influenced the planning of cities and gardens. The art then spread to North Europe and the Americas. The name 'landscape architecture' dates from 1828 and was given a new meaning by Frederick Law Olmsted in the 1860s. Landscape architecture, in Olmsted's sense, became a worldwide profession in the twentieth century and the International Federation of Landscape Architects was founded by Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe in 1948. Jellicoe explained it as 'the most comprehensive of the arts'.  Further information can be found on the Gardenvisit.com Youtube Channel and the Landscape Architecture Youtube Channel.

The UK Landscape Institute election, in May 2021, is a good opportunity to think about the future of the landscape profession, the art of landscape architecture and the UK Landscape Foundation.  The LI dates from 1929 and the LF from 1992. Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe was right that both are needed. As well having a major role in shaping the LI, Jellicoe established the International Federation of Landscape Architects and the UK Landscape Foundation. In my view, the LI should concentrate on the administrative aspects of landscape architecture and the LF on the imaginative and  developmental aspects of what Jellicoe believed to be 'the most comprehensive of the arts': Landscape Architecture. It needs more voices.

Designers are puzzled, sometimes, about whether their work is Modern, Postmodern or something else. This podcast is based on the Preface to Tom Turner's book, published in 1996, on City as Landscape: a post-Postmodern view of design and planning. It has short explanations of how Modernism, Postmodernism and post-Postmodernism have influenced urban design and landscape architecture - concluding with a wish that 'the city of tomorrow will shine as a feast of landscapes'. Tom recommends the Wikipedia entries on the three '-isms' for background information.

Seven artists and landscape architects outline their views of environmental art and landscape architecture: Brodie McAllister, Andrew Stonyer, Catherine Dee, Ian Thompson, Trudi Entwhistle, Scott Farlow and Edward Hutchison. The debate was organised by LANDSCAPEmatters and held on 15th June 2021 (online). The debate is also available on Youtube https://youtu.be/O4e0bDtKqck 

This is the first part of a  podcast, based on Chapter 3 of Tom Turner's book on City as landscape. It's about the importance of ideas in the landscape architectural design process and supports the case for Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language being incorporated into the landscape design process. There is an illustrated version of this podcast on Youtube.

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.

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.

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.

Global warming is influenced by the way humans plan, design and manage their cities and landscapes. 

Climate-unfriendly practices are the norm. But climate-friendly landscape planning policies can and should be developed and adopted. Urban designers and rural planners need to revise their design principles with regard to climate mitigation and climate adaptation.  NASA explains that: 'Responding to climate change involves two possible approaches: reducing and stabilizing the levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (“mitigation”) and/or adapting to the climate change already in the pipeline (“adaptation”)'. 

At present, there is an imbalance between the necessary research  on why  our climate is changing and the equally necessary research on how we can measures to mitigate the problem. Tom Turner therefore discuses the ways in which multi-objective landscape planning can mitigate global warming, with examples from his experience of Upland Britain, London, Egypt and Ladakh (in the Indian Himalayas).  There is a  transcript of the text, with further discussion and links to videos and other information on the LAA Landscapearchitecture.org.uk blog.

Climate-friendly landscape planning includes policies for agriculture, forestry, water, transport, architecture, landscape architecture and urban design. There are immediate opportunities with regard to rewilding, green living roofs and green living walls, urban green belts, flood management, soil management, cycleway networks and other sustainable transport modes. 

Scientists explain climate change. Landscape architects develop policies to deal with the problems, be their causes human or non-human.