Wikipedia source excerpts
Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor areas, landmarks, and structures to achieve environmental, social-behavioural, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic design and general engineering of various structures for construction and human use, investigation of existing social, ecological, and soil conditions and processes in the landscape, and the design of other interventions that will produce desired outcomes.
The scope of the profession is broad and can be subdivided into several sub-categories including professional or licensed landscape architects who are regulated by governmental agencies and possess the expertise to design a wide range of structures and landforms for human use; landscape design which is not a licensed profession; site planning; stormwater management; erosion control; environmental restoration; public realm, parks, recreation and urban planning; visual resource management; green infrastructure planning and provision; and private estate and residence landscape master planning and design; all at varying scales of design, planning and management.
Parks of general design and public infrastructure
Sustainable development
Stormwater management including rain gardens, green roofs, groundwater recharge, green infrastructure, and constructed wetlands.
Landscape design for educational function and site design for public institutions and government facilities
Parks, botanical gardens, arboretums, greenways, and nature preserves
Recreation facilities, such as playgrounds, golf courses, theme parks and sports facilities
Housing areas, industrial parks and commercial developments
Estate and residence landscape planning and design
Landscaping and accents on highways, transportation structures, bridges, and transit corridors
Contributions to urban design, town and city squares, waterfronts, pedestrian schemes
Natural park, tourist destination, and recreating historical landscapes, and historic garden appraisal and conservation studies
Reservoirs, dams, power stations, reclamation of extractive industry applications or major industrial projects and mitigation
Environmental assessment and landscape assessment, planning advice and land management proposals.
Coastal and offshore developments and mitigation
Ecological design (any aspect of design that minimizes environmentally destructive impacts by integrating itself with natural processes and sustainability)
Landscape managers use their knowledge of landscape processes to advise on the long-term care and development of the landscape. They often work in forestry, nature conservation and agriculture.
Landscape scientists have specialist skills such as soil science, hydrology, geomorphology or botany that they relate to the practical problems of landscape work. Their projects can range from site surveys to the ecological assessment of broad areas for planning or management purposes. They may also report on the impact of development or the importance of particular species in a given area.
Landscape planners are concerned with landscape planning for the location, scenic, ecological and recreational aspects of urban, rural, and coastal land use. Their work is embodied in written statements of policy and strategy, and their remit includes master planning for new developments, landscape evaluations and assessments, and preparing countryside management or policy plans. Some may also apply an additional specialism such as landscape archaeology or law to the process of landscape planning.
Green roof (or more specifically, vegetative roof) designers design extensive and intensive roof gardens for stormwater management, evapo-transpirative cooling, sustainable architecture, aesthetics, and habitat creation.
Relation to urban planning
Through the 19th century, urban planning became a focal point and central issue in cities. The combination of the tradition of landscape gardening and the emerging field of urban planning offered landscape architecture an opportunity to serve these needs. In the second half of the century, Frederick Law Olmsted completed a series of parks that continue to have a significant influence on the practices of landscape architecture today. Among these were Central Park in New York City, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York and Boston's Emerald Necklace park system. Jens Jensen designed sophisticated and naturalistic urban and regional parks for Chicago, Illinois, and private estates for the Ford family including Fair Lane and Gaukler Point. One of the original eleven founding members of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), and the only woman, was Beatrix Farrand. She was design consultant for over a dozen universities including: Princeton in Princeton, New Jersey; Yale in New Haven, Connecticut; and the Arnold Arboretum for Harvard in Boston, Massachusetts. Her numerous private estate projects include the landmark Dumbarton Oaks in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Since that time, other architects – most notably Ruth Havey and Alden Hopkins – changed certain elements of the Farrand design.
Since this period urban planning has developed into a separate independent profession that has incorporated important contributions from other fields such as civil engineering, architecture and public administration. Urban Planners are qualified to perform tasks independent of landscape architects, and in general, the curriculum of landscape architecture programs do not prepare students to become urban planners.
Landscape architecture continues to develop as a design discipline and to respond to the various movements in architecture and design throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Thomas Church was a pioneering mid-century landscape architect known for shaping modern American garden design. Roberto Burle Marx in Brazil combined the International style and native Brazilian plants and culture for a new aesthetic. Innovation continues today solving challenging problems with contemporary design solutions for master planning, landscapes, and gardens.
Ian McHarg was known for introducing environmental concerns in landscape architecture. He popularized a system of analyzing the layers of a site in order to compile a complete understanding of the qualitative attributes of a place. This system became the foundation of today's Geographic Information Systems (GIS). McHarg would give every qualitative aspect of the site a layer, such as the history, hydrology, topography, vegetation, etc. GIS software is ubiquitously used in the landscape architecture profession today to analyze materials in and on the Earth's surface and is similarly used by urban planners, geographers, forestry and natural resources professionals, etc.
European nations enabled the widespread circulation of urban planning strategies by transferring landscaping ideas and practices to overseas colonies. The green belt was a popular landscape practice exported by Britain onto colonial territories such as Haifa (1918-1948). Spatial mechanisms like the green belt, implemented through the Haifa Bay Plan and the British "Grand Model," were used to enforce political control and civic order and extend western ideas of progress and development. The Greater London Regional Planning Committee accepted the green belt concept which formed the basis of the 1938 Green Belt Act. The planning prototype demarcated open spaces, distinguished between city and countryside, limited urban growth, and created zoning divisions.
Through the 19th century, urban planning became a focal point and central issue in cities. The combination of the tradition of landscape gardening and the emerging field of urban planning offered landscape architecture an opportunity to serve these needs. In the second half of the century, Frederick Law Olmsted completed a series of parks that continue to have a significant influence on the practices of landscape architecture today. Among these were Central Park in New York City, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York and Boston's Emerald Necklace park system. Jens Jensen designed sophisticated and naturalistic urban and regional parks for Chicago, Illinois, and private estates for the Ford family including Fair Lane and Gaukler Point. One of the original eleven founding members of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), and the only woman, was Beatrix Farrand. She was design consultant for over a dozen universities including: Princeton in Princeton, New Jersey; Yale in New Haven, Connecticut; and the Arnold Arboretum for Harvard in Boston, Massachusetts. Her numerous private estate projects include the landmark Dumbarton Oaks in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Since that time, other architects – most notably Ruth Havey and Alden Hopkins – changed certain elements of the Farrand design.
Since this period urban planning has developed into a separate independent profession that has incorporated important contributions from other fields such as civil engineering, architecture and public administration. Urban Planners are qualified to perform tasks independent of landscape architects, and in general, the curriculum of landscape architecture programs do not prepare students to become urban planners.
Landscape architecture continues to develop as a design discipline and to respond to the various movements in architecture and design throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Thomas Church was a pioneering mid-century landscape architect known for shaping modern American garden design. Roberto Burle Marx in Brazil combined the International style and native Brazilian plants and culture for a new aesthetic. Innovation continues today solving challenging problems with contemporary design solutions for master planning, landscapes, and gardens.
Ian McHarg was known for introducing environmental concerns in landscape architecture. He popularized a system of analyzing the layers of a site in order to compile a complete understanding of the qualitative attributes of a place. This system became the foundation of today's Geographic Information Systems (GIS). McHarg would give every qualitative aspect of the site a layer, such as the history, hydrology, topography, vegetation, etc. GIS software is ubiquitously used in the landscape architecture profession today to analyze materials in and on the Earth's surface and is similarly used by urban planners, geographers, forestry and natural resources professionals, etc.
European nations enabled the widespread circulation of urban planning strategies by transferring landscaping ideas and practices to overseas colonies. The green belt was a popular landscape practice exported by Britain onto colonial territories such as Haifa (1918-1948). Spatial mechanisms like the green belt, implemented through the Haifa Bay Plan and the British "Grand Model," were used to enforce political control and civic order and extend western ideas of progress and development. The Greater London Regional Planning Committee accepted the green belt concept which formed the basis of the 1938 Green Belt Act. The planning prototype demarcated open spaces, distinguished between city and countryside, limited urban growth, and created zoning divisions.