Thoughts on Staying Grounded
Most of us students of landscape architecture were drawn to the profession not just because we like beautiful landscapes, but because we believe that the choices we make in designing landscapes can have a positive impact on the social and ecological health of the world we live in. As the country reels from historic wildfires and flooding, and is sickened by Covid-19 and the festering wounds of systemic racial injustice, this belief is more important than ever. We cling to it in the hope that we can help create meaningful change through our work, because the alternative is to feel powerless, or worse- part of the problem.
It is important for us to question this belief and think critically about our role as landscape architects, even if we have the best of intentions. In a literal sense, the role of the landscape architect is to develop a design for a site and communicate it through drawings. In hypothetical studio projects these drawings can represent ideas that tackle difficult, complex issues over vast areas. Even if the designs rest on faulty assumptions or would fail to achieve their desired effect in reality, we embrace them for their imaginative creativity. But when it comes time to design for a client, with a limited scope, tight budget, and rigid design brief, our imaginations may suddenly feel out of proportion with the task at hand.
Landscape architecture is paradoxical in that the scope of what can be considered “landscape” covers virtually the entire globe, yet the scope of what we can do to these landscapes as designers is somewhat narrow. We can design topography, paths, walls, ramps, steps, and plantings. There are roughly 25,000 people working in the field of landscape architecture in the USA, designing spaces for 330 million people, across 61 million acres of urban space- which is less than 3% of the country’s total area. I recall a quote from an interview with Alpa Nawre in last year’s issue of Ground Up graduate student journal: “…We are too few. Whether as a practicing architect or landscape architect, we have to realize that the numbers are not in our favor in making a measurable impact toward a positive future.” Our dreams and ambitions are almost always bigger than our actual reach and power to create change at scale as a profession. Even if we know how to get there, we don’t hold the keys to the car.
Maybe that’s OK. The massive landscape interventions necessary to respond to coastal inundation driven by climate change require defining one coherent vision for large, complex areas across multiple communities. With decisions that affect so many people and so much land area, it would be wrong to allow that vision to be defined by a single individual, firm, or professional discipline. The vision should be crafted collectively between community stakeholders and experts across a range of disciplines including planning, engineering, ecology, and design. In this context, the role of the landscape architect is not to define their personal vision for the landscape, but rather to see the landscape holistically from many different perspectives and interpret a collective vision that balances social, ecological, technical, and aesthetic goals. Our ability to listen, empathize, and make connections between different points of view becomes far more important than our ability to explore form and make beautiful drawings.
Our second project of the semester- designing a public park around a lagoon in Marin City, CA- is a chance for us to work on developing these skills. The client is real, as are the needs of the Marin City community, which has been historically affected by racist housing policies and a lack of public funding and economic opportunity, and is currently threatened by gentrification, sea level rise and groundwater intrusion. This project is an opportunity for us to embrace our true roles as listeners and interpreters, and play some small part in the broader fight for social equity and climate resiliency by designing a beautiful, functional, resilient, equitable space for the community of Marin City. My goal for this project is to spend less time focused on abstract form and aesthetics, and more time researching, listening, and attempting to understand the hopes and needs of the community we are serving.