Architectural & Garden

Landscape architecture is the art, planning, design, management , preservation and rehabilitation of the land and the design of human-made constructs. more...

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The scope of the profession includes architectural design, site planning, housing estate development, environmental restoration, town or urban planning, urban design, parks and recreation planning, regional planning, landscape urbanism, and historic preservation. A practitioner in the field of landscape architecture is called a landscape architect.

History

The history of landscape architecture is related to the history of gardening but is not coextensive. Both arts are concerned with the composition of planting, landform, water, paving and other structures but:

garden design is essentially concerned with enclosed private space (parks, gardens etc); landscape design is concerned with the design of enclosed space, as well as unenclosed space which is open to the public (town squares, country parks, park systems, greenways etc).;

The Romans undertook landscape architecture on an extensive scale, and Vitruvius wrote on many topics (eg the layout of towns) which still concern landscape architects. As with the other arts, it was not until the Renaissance that garden design was revived, with outstanding examples including the pleasure grounds at the Villa d'Este, Tivoli. The renaissance garden developed through the 16th and 17th centuries, reaching an ultimate grandeur in the work of André le Nôtre at Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles.

In the 18th century, England became the focus of a new style of landscape design. Figures such as William Kent, Humphry Repton, and most famously Lancelot 'Capability' Brown remodelled the great estate parks of the English gentry to resemble a neat and tidy version of nature. Many of these parks remain today. The term 'landscape architecture' was first used by the Scotsman Gilbert Laing Meason in the title of his book on The Landscape Architecture of the Great Painters of Italy (London, 1828). It was about the type of architecture found in landscape paintings. The term "landscape architecture" was then taken up by JC Loudon and AJ Downing.

Through the 19th century, urban planning became more important, and it was the combination of modern planning with the tradition of landscape gardening that gave Landscape Architecture its unique focus. In the second half of the century, Frederick Law Olmsted completed a series of parks which continue to have a huge influence on the practices of Landscape Architecture today. Among these were Central Park in New York, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and Boston's so called Emerald Necklace park system.

Landscape architecture continues to develop as a design discipline, and has responded to many of the movements of design and architecture through the 20th century. Today, a healthy level of innovation continues to provide challenging design solutions for streetscapes, parks and gardens. The work of Martha Schwartz in the US, and in Europe designs such as Schouwburgplein in Rotterdam by the Dutch design group West 8 are just two examples.

Read more at Wikipedia.org