The AIAJM: A Manifesto for Landscape Modernity

Abstract

This paper examines the Association Internationale des Architectes de Jardins Modernistes (AIAJM), or International Association of Modernist Garden Architects, as an index of the landscape profession in Western Europe during the 1930s. The AIAJM projected an ambitious vision for twentieth-century landscape architecture, one that sought to address democratization, establish a dialogue with architects, and shape the urban environment. Its message was to align the landscape discourse with architectural theory and serve as a manifesto for an emergent modern practice. The AIAJM and its manifesto shed light on an understudied chapter in the history of twentieth-century landscape, and on the relationship between two seminal figures in the founding of the modern landscape profession: Jean Canneel-Claes and Christopher Tunnard. Although the AIAJM did not last beyond the Second World War, it was a precursor to the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA), and it raised issues that have remained current: professional identity, specialization, and the connection among landscape, architecture, and urbanism.