Landscape design aims to marry the built, human environment with the natural environment. Its projects range from the local to the regional and include:
Before meeting with a landscape designer, it’s helpful to know what you want out of your space. A professional can help bring your vision to life while keeping the project within a realistic budget.
Sense of Place
Sense of Place is a vital component of the landscape. It fosters community cohesion, encourages environmental stewardship and enhances wellbeing. It can be influenced by the design of buildings and their surroundings, such as parks and gardens, but it also extends to more natural landscape features, such as mountains, rivers and coastlines.
Ultimately, sense of place represents a plea to respect and strengthen uniqueness and diversity, not destroy it. It also recognises that different landscapes reflect and mould human values and perceptions. A landscape should therefore be viewed as a complex system of dynamic balance, holistic order, enclosure and spatial quality.
Sense of Place research can be used as an indicator to evaluate landscape values and potential impacts of river landscape interventions. However, the extent to which sense of place is considered in a study differs: ranging from assessing special places that foster a sense of attachment or identity (Caldes and Lahn), to an integrated range of questions and statements to elicit people’s experiences of and attachment to places and landscapes (Skjern and Wigger). Moreover, the point of departure of a study greatly influences its outcomes.
Economic Development
Landscape architects design and plan public and private spaces. They create parks and plazas, and design transportation facilities that integrate natural and built environments. Their work is visible throughout the world and includes everything from creating a site for an office building or golf course to crafting an outdoor learning environment for students.
Landscape architecture is also known for its commitment to sustainable development. This includes incorporating environmentally friendly practices, choosing recycled materials and utilizing energy-efficient systems. Additionally, landscape architects often prioritize native flora and fauna in their projects. This helps to preserve the local ecosystem and ensures that surrounding flora will be able to thrive.
Finally, landscape architecture is well-equipped to address issues relating to globalization. The surveyed literature associated with the discipline falls into every subtopical cluster in Bergesen’s second dimension, and also addresses a number of other subjects that are important to the field (identified in light green in figure 6). This includes issues related to economics, social sciences, the environment, politics, technology, culture, sustainability, business, and education.
Environment
A thorough site analysis is one of the most important steps in the landscape architecture design process. It allows professionals to thoroughly understand the environment and cultural significance of the project area, which helps them create designs that harmonize with their natural surroundings and contribute to environmental sustainability.
It’s not just the aesthetic possibilities that draw many people to this field. Plants can also be used to moderate air temperatures, reduce erosion and filter rainwater, which contributes to more sustainable and livable communities.
Whether it’s designing town centers that attract tourists and businesses or ensuring public spaces are accessible to all ages and abilities, landscape architects strive to make their projects as environmentally responsible as possible. They’re using tried and true practices, as well as innovative models, to do so. By keeping the larger goal in mind from start to finish, they’re able to create outdoor spaces that aren’t just beautiful, but also functional. Ultimately, that’s what a successful project is all about.
Health
With a deep understanding of the importance of our natural environment, landscape architects work to preserve and even heal it. Through their design, they provide an opportunity for the public to connect with nature and improve their physical and mental health.
Being outdoors can help mitigate stress and anxiety, reduce the cortisol levels of the body and increase overall emotional resilience. Moreover, well-designed green spaces help increase a sense of community and promote healthy lifestyles.
At the Land8x8 Lightning Talks, Jorge “Coco” Alarcon of Peru shared about the impacts his landscape architecture designs have on human and ecological health. In his projects, he leverages landscape architecture technologies to address problems such as water quality and vector-borne disease in urban and informal flooding communities.
