Electronic Landscape
“Landscape architecture” was first used by Gilbert Laing Meason in his book On The Landscape Architecture of the Great Painters of Italy (London, 1828). Meason was born in Scotland and did not have the opportunity to visit Italy. But he admired the relationship between architecture and landscape in the great landscape paintings and drew upon Vitruvius’ Ten books of architecture to find principles underlying the relationship between built form and natural form.
‘Landscape architecture’ was then taken up by John Claudius Loudon and used to describe a specific type of architecture, suited to being placed in designed landscapes. Loudon was admired by the American designer and theorist Andrew Jackson Downing and ‘landscape architecture’ was the subject of a chapter in Downing’s book A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America (1841).
This led to its adoption by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. Olmsted and Vaux gave a different slant to the meaning of ‘landscape architecture’, using the term to describe the whole professional task of designing a composition of planting, landform, water, paving and other structures. Their first use of this term was in the winning entry for the design of Central Park in New York City. Olmsted and Vaux then adopted ‘landscape architect’ as a professional title and used it to describe their work for the planning of urban park systems. Olmsted’s project for the Emerald Necklace in Boston was widely admired and led to the use of ‘landscape architecture’ as a professional title in Europe, initially by Patrick Geddes and Thomas Mawson.
Landscape architecture has since become a worldwide profession, recognized by the International Labor Organization and co-ordinated by the International Federation of Landscape Architects. Three remarkable histories of the landscape architecture profession were published in the 1970s.
A first comprehensive history of landscape architecture, as distinct from the history of gardening was written by Norman T Newton with the title Design on the land: the development of landscape architecture (Belknap/Harvard 1971). The book has 42 chapters. The first three chapters are on Ancient Times, The Middle Ages, and The World of Islam. The last three chapters are on Urban Open-Space Systems, Variations in Professional Practice and the Conservation of Natural Resources. This reflects the development of landscape architecture from a focus on private gardens, in the ancient world, to a focus on the planning and design of public open space in the modern world. Since kings used to be responsible for the provision of public goods (irrigation, streets, town walls, parks and other environmental goods) the distinction between public and private was not quite the same in the ancient world as it is in the modern world.
A second comprehensive history of landscape architecture was published, in 1973, by George B Tobey, with the title History of Landscape Architecture. It extends from 5,000 BC, through the development of agriculture and towns to the design of gardens, parks and garden cities. This represents a broader view of landscape architecture than that of Newton and would have been well suited to Newton’s title ‘Design on the land’.
A third comprehensive history of landscape architecture was published by Geoffrey and Susan Jellicoe in 1975 with the title The landscape of man: shaping the environment from prehistory to the present day (Thames and Hudson, 1975). The book has 27 chapters and is more comprehensive than its predecessors, geographically, artistically and philosophically. Like Bannister Fletcher’s History of Architecture, the book has introductory sections (eg on environment, social history, philosophy, expression, architecture, landscape) and then a series of examples with plans and photographs. Many of the examples are parks and gardens but the book also includes the layout of temples, towns, forests and other projects concerned with ’shaping the environment’.
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