The Importance Of Landscape Architecture

This manifesto proposes an approach to sustainable design that I am interested in exploring during my time studying architecture. The idea of sustainability is a complex one, not without apparent contradictions. This makes it difficult to define in a wholly satisfactory manner. For the purposes of this manifesto I will advert to the definition proposed by Jason McLennan who asserts that sustainable design: “seeks to maximize the quality of the built environment, while minimizing or eliminating negative impact to the natural environment.” I find this definition particularly useful in the emphasis which it places on quality. By quality, in this

Prospect Park is a 585-acre park located In Brooklyn, a borough in New York City. This borough in particular was in great need for an open space for activities and relaxation, which is exactly what this park provided. Parks are a very important piece of land to a town because it gives people the opportunity to improve their physical health and parks also help strengthen communities because it gives people more opportunities to interact with one another. Public parks are especially very important to have in a big city like New York City because a park gives people a chance to get out of the hustle and bustle, and relax and unwind. The two creators of Prospect Park named Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Bowyer Vaux also designed and created a park in Manhattan called Central Park. Central park is eight hundred-forty acres of city-owned land and is a piece of land that was much needed in 1857 when it was officially opened. Vaux and Olmstead became two well-known architects by building Central Park that soon became a big success, but didn’t equally benefit both the rich and the poor. Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmstead worked in a partnership to build Prospect Park.

Public spaces are social spaces where social phenomena happens, different activities leading to different social relations and interactions. Spaces with own rhythms of use and regulations that one can discover or rediscover in different cultural context.10 steven To understand how architecture can activate public spaces through play to make social spaces, spaces for public life, this paper first investigates how architecture defines the nature of a public spaces with the possibility of engaging public into play. Then, the paper discuss how play can engage people to redefine spaces and find something that have in common with others. And finally, how people can obtain their freedom through playing in a space will be explored. To do so, the

Eden by Design is a captivating read. A replica of the never-adopted 1930 Olmsted-Bartholomew parks plan for L.A. County, Parks, Playgrounds, and Beaches for the Los Angeles Region, is the essence of the book. Going through the introductory parts made me realize that had this plan, which itself is extraordinary in its latitude and farsightedness, been implemented the congestive mass of concrete that represents Los Angeles in the modern times could have been avoided. To start with, the one element I liked the most about this plan is the parkways. It was important for Los Angeles to have a system of continuous landscaped parkways dedicated to pleasure travel and to act as lungs for a rather polluted city. Even though after going through the plan, I’m not quite adamant on the fact that why was it dropped.

Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux's choices in the design of Central Park reflect a key movement toward sustainability. In leiu of ornate structures prefered by the upper class, Olmsted and Vaux chose designs that would encourage people from all classes to enjoy the park. Olmsted and Vaux selected plants and additional fixtures in the park by considering ecological implications. One of the main goals during the creation of Central Park was to provide a serene space for city dwellers to go and escape the troubles of urban life. Olmsted and Vaux promoted sustainability in the design of Central Park by maintaining class equality, making environmentally sound decisions, and supporting the needs of the surrounding community.

This shows that if planning is not stable or management planning - urban good also affect the sustainability of the project.

Furthermore, the Town House (O) is a sustainable environmental design project illustrating the relationship between human well-being, the welfare of the future generations and the natural world, through regeneration, the

This declaration focuses on cultural landscapes in terms of the ' interaction of people and nature over time' .3 The majority of World Heritage listed cultural landscapes are ' evolved continuing landscapes, where people and nature dwell together' . Most cultural landscapes fit into this category: they are living landscapes, changing as the culture, climate and natural surroundings change within and around them. The character of the landscape thus reflects the values of the people who have shaped it, and who continue to live in it. The culture itself is the shaping force. Landscape is a cultural expression that does not happen by chance but is created informally or by

Landscape, when applied to an urban context, no longer refers to prospects of a pastoral scene but rather becomes a mean of connecting objects and spaces around it, as well as accommodating the dynamic processes and events that move through it. These urban landscapes are not only defined by their form, but by the program that surrounds it, as well as its ability to connect with the user through its underlying function. The snow dump known as the Bayview yards, is an example of such urban landscape. Bayview Yards is a 16 acre piece of land that is currently home to a derelict city workshop and a massive area designated for a snow dump. Through the site’s history and function a new opportunity comes forward to redefine the landscape, extenuating

The building of Central Park was one of nineteenth-century New York’s most massive public works projects. Some 20,000 workers – Yankee engineers, Irish laborers, German gardeners, and native-born stonecutters – reshaped the site’s topography to create the pastoral landscape. After blasting out rocky

Three years ago, if someone asks me if I want to be a Landscape Architect, I would say No, I don’t even know what Landscape Architecture is. If anyone asks me the same question today, my answer is I don’t know what else I can be, other than a Landscape Architect.

Campbell (1996), argues that it is necessary to focus on three major points, being the environment, economy and society when planning a sustainable city. He constructs a prism which holds each of these features at a

New Urbanism, a burgeoning genre of architecture and city planning, is a movement that has come about only in the past decade. This movement is a response to the proliferation of conventional suburban development (CSD), the most popular form of suburban expansion that has taken place since World War II. Wrote Robert Steuteville, "Lacking a town center or pedestrian scale, CSD spreads out to consume large areas of countryside even as population grows relatively slowly. Automobile use per capita has soared, because a motor vehicle is required for nearly all human transportation"1. New Urbanism, therefore, represents the converse of this planning ideology. It stresses traditional planning, including multi-purpose zoning,

The urban environment that I live in is my nature. My nature is filled with birds, cats, grass, and flowers. It may not be as abundant with mother nature’s resources compared to most places, but it still provides me with an experience of nature. Nature is not limited to just what we see anymore. However, you must use your senses to truly achieve the full experience of nature. In nature, you must smell the wonderful odors from the flowers, you should use your sight and observe the natural beauty of the ever-changing sky, touch the rough and jagged bark of the trees, and hear the spectacular songs of the birds that fly above you.

In American urban parks, the construction of nature as exemplified in the naturalistic park settings speaks to the culturally determined social process of defining social spaces. Indeed, as the word “construction” suggests, nature serves as an abstract ideal in urban American consciousness, which in turn is concretely actualized as per the socio-political leanings of the age.