The Experience of Sustainable Landscapes

Abstract

The evolving concept of the sustainable landscape is a welcome and necessary addition to the philosophy, theory, and practice of landscape architecture. This paper presents a number of arguments relating to the character of sustainable landscapes and the manner in which they may be experienced by people. It argues that mainstream landscape architecture remains driven by “cosmetic” notions of aesthetic quality and that the sustainable landscape movement still represents a “counter-cultural” current in theory, practice, and style. The traditional notion of “aesthetics” is presented as insufficient to describe the totality of the experiential quality of sustainable landscapes. Because of the increasing depth and complexity of what is known about ecological and environmental relationships, the experience of sustainable landscapes will likely be highly dependent upon information content. Sustainable landscapes are unlikely to involve a dominant visual “style” because they are pluralistic, and, of necessity, highly responsive to individual conditions of both culture and ecosystem. However, intentionally designed, sustainable landscapes may sometimes be perceived as violations of existing (i. e., non-sustainable) regional or spatial context. Exact replication of “natural,” un-peopled analogs for landscape design may not always be successful, due to changes wrought by human use. The generation of new sustainable landscapes relies heavily upon creative, artful interpretations of landscape form, and may result in novel formal and spatial character. The perceivable, experiential characteristics of sustainable landscapes will play a significant role in speeding their diffusion into common use.