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Introduction (Landscape and architecture)

Article in Journal of Architectural Education · February 2004

DOI: 10.1162/104648804772745184

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Introduction
Author(s): Lynda Schneekloth, Vincent B. Canizaro and Kenneth Helphand
Source: Journal of Architectural Education (1984-), Vol. 57, No. 3 (Feb., 2004), pp. 3-4
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Association of Collegiate Schools of
Architecture, Inc.
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LYNDA SCHNEEKLOTH Introduction
State University of New York-Buffalo

VINCENT B. CANIZARO

University of Texas-San Antonio

KENNETH HELPHAND

University of Oregon

"' .. architecture and landscape inhabit each other's conceptual and physical space."'

critiqued in theoretical discourses and practices and umes of Jan Birksted.3 There has also been an
The editors of this special issue of JAE on landscape
and architecture have sought to contribute to the shown to be destructive of the diversity of places explosion of scholarship in the realm of historical
ongoing discourse regarding the common ground and people.2 study into the meaning and practice of landscape
between the practices and theories of architecture Scholarly work during the last decade has and renewed prominence of cultural geography in
and landscape architecture. Our goal is to supportdelighted in the blurring of boundaries and trans- both architectural and landscape design theory.4
gressions into what had been perceived as the terri- Further, there has been the publication of work that
and further this dialogue through an open presenta-
tory of the other. The concerns and issues that had addresses buildings and landscapes such as those of
tion of issues, ideas, and projects that are not com-
prehensive but provocative. In the process, we hope
seemingly divided us are proving less important and Anita Berrizbeitia and Linda Pollak, Aaron Betsky,
to widen the lens of the collective discourse, fram-fertile than the goals we share, even while we rec- Keith Eggener, and Keller Easterling, among others."
ing architectural and landscape production in the ognize that the distinctions are still useful in some Landscape architects and architects are discovering
service of embodied and site-specific human experi-
domains and at the margins of each practice. a community of issues and congruence in the
ence. Interdisciplinary thought and practice is both operations of our practices - processes that include
old and
Before landscape architecture emerged asnew.
a It is old in that we find upon closer walking and interpreting, making and constructing,
separate discipline in the middle of theexamination
nineteenth evidence of important interdisciplinary preserving and conserving, designing and compos-
century, there was a recognition that architecture
work buried beneath the discourse of modernity, ing, and an important mutual resonance for each to
some of which is documented in this volume. What
and landscape were interrelated. Architectural the constructed world and natural forces. We seek
choices are always landscape choices in appears to be new is the exploration of several
that land- to add to this discourse with the contributions in
aspects
scape serves as the unwitting subtext of any of a shared practice such as site, spatial,
built the pages that follow.
work. Throughout the history of architecture,
formal and
one
political complementarity, and material- One of the primary themes for scholarly dis-
observes a variety of design and theoretical
ity. More recent inquiries into architecture and land- course has been site. No longer conceived as the
responses to landscape that involve, ignore, reject, challenge the primacy of either
scape architecture blank field on which to design, the condition of site
and/or conjoin landscape. profession. In an interdisciplinary manner, architects has been explored and radicalized. This reworking of
have begun to reappropriate issues and concerns
The disciplines and professions of landscape site - as done in David Leatherbarrow's Op Arch
sequestered
architecture and architecture are no longer definedwithin landscape architecture, and land- theoretical essay, "Topographical Premises," and
scape scholars
by clear distinctions and boundaries, a task central have begun to incorporate built Martin Hogue's investigation of the contribution of
to modernism. Under that ideological regime,
works intothe
their ongoing inquiries. The thrust of this land art in "Site as Project"- asserts that site is
respective professions set out to claim new
what wasis an argument for interdependency
inquiry both preexisting and continuous, even while accept-
thought to rightfully belong to each and found
rather than hierarchy; both of the disciplines are ing insertions and changes to its condition. "Site
themselves necessarily engaged with one another
texts in and making the cultural and social work," by which architecture replaces land and land-
for reading
an often awkward fashion to address the needs of conditions of this era. scape architecture reworks land, is a part of the
bettering the built environment. The result was that The scope and range of the growing discourse ongoing temporal and spatial transformation of the
history, theory, and often practice within the domi- is apparent at conferences, in books, published arti- world through human construction and natural pro-
nant discourse neglected the important interrela- cles, and played out in both speculative and con- cesses.

tionships between buildings and their landscapes. structed works. Of particular note is the emergence The language we employ -site - is of
Further, the modernist differentiation between "cul- of sustainability and landscape urbanism in the an abstract referent to an actual place, o
ture and nature" that translated into a division recent and seminal publications of James Corner, denuded of its experiential reality. But th
between "built form and landscape," useful for the Anne Whiston Spirn, Marc Treib, David Leatherbar- and the operations described in this serie
production of modern universal space, has been row, and Carol Burns, and the conferences and vol- cles ground the concept of site with the

3 SCHNEEKLOTH, CANIZARO, AND HELPHAND Journal of Architectural Education, pp. 3-4 @ 2004
Lynda Schneekloth, Vincent B. Canizaro, and Kenneth Helphand

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and localness of place. In all of the executed and wall, and through a sensitivity to one's movement exercise in interdisciplinarity. Our shared assumption
theoretical projects in this issue, each of them through space particular to landscape design. is that the similarities among our distinct disciplines
comes from a specific locale: topographic shape, Eric Kramer takes us back to early modernism of architecture and landscape are greater than the
light, color, texture, and embedded human his- to reassert the architecture/landscape relationship concerns and issues that seemingly divide us. Our
tory - places revealed in the process of intervention in the work of Bauhaus pioneer Walter Gropius. primary goal here, and the goal of our contributors,
and insertion. Through a re-evaluation of the architect's writings, has been to provide a wider lens for future architec-
The three design projects presented as a part drawings, and the work itself, Kramer, in "The Wal- tural and landscape production, a lens that provokes
of this theme reveal the unyielding interdepen- ter Gropius House Landscape," asserts that Walter new associations, shared lessons, and generally
dency, peculiarities, and material conditions of land- and Ise Gropius designed and constructed their benefits the constructed and given landscapes in
scape and architecture. Randall Ott's theoretical Concord, Massachusetts home in concert with the which we live.
project, "Salt Chapel," celebrates and marks the design of the landscape. Through their work, he
unceasing movement of the Great Salt Lake in further asserts, they not only engaged the ideas of
Notes
Utah; it uses architecture to reveal the constant and an emerging modern landscape architecture but also
1. Anita Berrizbeitia and Linda Pollak, Inside Outside: Between Architec-
yet ceaselessly changing landscape that lies at the set a precedent for an uncommon complementarity
ture and Landscape (Gloucester, MA: Rockport, 1999), p. 10.
lake's shifting edge. between built form and the layered landscape of 2. Neil Evernden, The Natural Alien: Humankind and Environment
The other two design projects are executed New England. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985); Kenneth Frampton, "Place-
Form and Cultural Identity," in John Thackara, ed., Design After Mod-
architectural interventions into the landscape that Mitchell Schwarzer explores site as a regional
ernism: Beyond the Object (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1988),
are embedded into the uniqueness of their place. concept in his piece "Moore Unmoored." Through a pp. 51 -66; David Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Differ-
Mary Catherine Kilcoyne's intensive engagement scholarly read of Charles Moore's writings, Schwar- ence (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996); Edward Relph, Place and Place-

with a rather ordinary patch of forest, "On Reading zer uncovers the power of the mid-century explo- lessness (London: Pion Limited, 1976); and Alexander Wilson, The
Culture of Nature (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992).
MacKinnon Woods," is used as a marker of the sion of the southern California popular culture on
3. Jan Birksted, ed., Relating Architecture to Landscape (New York:
changing conditions through one year. Her series of Moore's thinking and his architecture. Moore was E and FN SPON, 1999); Jan Birksted, ed., Landscapes of Memory and
seasonal rooms reminds us of the tenuous nature of an early rebel against the structures of modernist Experience (New York: Spoon Press, 2000); James Corner, ed., Recover-
ing Landscape (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999); David
our work and, more disturbingly, of the imperma- design ideology, drawing on his interpretation of
Leatherbarrow, Uncommon Ground: Architecture, Technology and Topog-
nence of natural processes in a world in which the freedom of expression found in the landscape
raphy (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000); Ann Whiston Spirn, The
human-induced climate change is more evident and movement of southern California. Language of Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Marc
each day. Ryo Yamada's "Kahoku Project"- an Ben Jacks in "Reimagining Walking: Four Prac- Trieb, "Inflected Landscapes," Places 1/2, (1984): 66-77; Marc Treib,
"Traces Upon the Land: The Formalistic Landscape," Architectural Asso-
insertion of a series of carefully articulated and tices" establishes the primacy of walking as a way
ciation Quarterly 4 (1979): 28-39; and Carol Burns, "On Site: Architec-
placed cedar-frame structures within the topography of knowing landscape and experiencing the interde- tural Preoccupations," in Andrea Kahn, ed., Drawing, Building, Text:
of former rice paddies - generates a conversation pendency and complementarity of architecture and Essays in Architectural Theory (New York: Princeton Architectural Press,

with the agricultural landscape while offering visi- landscape. An attentive bodily practice of walking 1991), pp. 141-167.
4. Jane Amidon, Radical Landscapes: Reinventing Outdoor Space (Lon-
tors a series of breathtaking framed views that are any site or place encodes the material world and its
don: Thames and Hudson, 2001); John Dixon Hunt, Greater Perfections:
experienced only by walking. presence. Walking, a radical practice, reminds us The Practice of Garden Theory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Complementarity between landscape and built that the divisions we make to create sense and Press, 2000); Simon Swafield, ed., Theory in Landscape Architecture: A
Reader (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002); and Peter
form is explored through George Dodds's and Eric order in our disciplines and our world - landscape
Walker and Melanie Simo, Invisible Garden: The Search for Modernism in
Kramer's reconstructions of the work of Carlo architecture and architecture, or architecture and
the American Landscape (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994).
Scarpa and Walter Gropius. Dodds unpacks some of landscape -are as experientially elusive and power- 5. Berrizbeitia and Pollak, Inside Outside; Aaron Betsky, Landscapers:

Scarpa's projects in "Directing Vision," a scholarly ful as the red line on the map that represents politi- Building with the Land (London: Thames and Hudson, 2002); Keith
Eggener, Luis Barragan's Gardens of El Pedregal (New York: Princeton
engagement that reveals the landscape dimension cal boundaries.
Architectural Press, 2001); and Keller Easterling, Organization Space:
within the architect's work evident in his use of This special issue of JAE on the subject of Landscapes, Highways, and Houses in America (Cambridge, MA: The
devices such as borrowed scenery, the interrupted architecture and landscape began and remains an MIT Press, 1999).

Introduction 4

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