Skip to main content icon/video/no-internet
icon backReturn to Entries

Landscape Architecture

Landscape architecture became an established profession in the United States during the late 19th century. Today, the academic discipline is offered in dozens of colleges and universities across the United States, and the profession is practiced in nations around the world. Landscape architects design and plan the full range of outdoor spaces, from small residential landscapes to large regions. They also work in the United States and internationally in the largest and densest cities, in wilderness areas, and in all types of environments in between. The ongoing practice of landscape architecture has affected and continues to affect housing and housing patterns at the site, community, and regional scales. Today, landscape architects have brought a specialized focus to sustainable design to the layout of communities.

Site Scale Residential Design

The father of the profession of landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903), who along with Calvert Vaux designed New York's Central Park, laid out many residential landscapes across the United States. After the turn of the 20th century and with the establishment of university programs in landscape architecture, design professionals greatly emphasized residential design and, through example, established a template of sorts that influenced the look and feel of middle-class residential landscapes across America. The template included the presentation of the house across a verdant lawn and a working landscape in the backyard. During the modernist period in landscape architecture from roughly 1935 to 1975, that template was altered by a new generation of landscape architects intent on bringing an emerging social science perspective to their work. Those designers were also influenced by significant lifestyle changes that emerged in post–World War II America. They successfully implemented thousands of residential designs and through example convinced others in society that outdoor spaces around the home should logically correspond to spaces within the house. Indoor utility spaces were usually linked to outdoor utility spaces, indoor dining to outdoor dining, and so forth. During this period, the function of middle-class backyards shifted from a workspace to a family recreational space. Sliding glass doors provided easy access to a deck or patio where families cooked out and relaxed in their private gardens.

Driven by growing environmental sensitivity, landscape architects have more recently influenced significant changes in residential landscapes; for example, they have introduced xeriscaping in arid climates and water-efficient designs that incorporate rain gardens, pervious material, and storm-water capture systems. Inspired by ongoing research published in books such as Douglas Tallamy's Bringing Nature Home, landscape architects are championing the use of native plants, as opposed to invasive exotic plants, in residential landscapes. Design professionals promote the use of native plants at the residential scale because they believe that the repeated pattern of those good choices will positively affect the ecology of neighborhoods and entire communities.

Community Scale

Landscape architects also frequently design entire neighborhoods for urban and suburban communities. Olmsted and Vaux, for example, laid out an early suburban community along the rail line a few miles from Chicago in 1869. The example of that Riverside, Illinois, community helped establish a pattern of curving roads and lush plantings in a parklike setting, which has been repeated in countless suburban developments until the present day. During the first three decades of the 20th century, landscape architects designed denser communities located in close proximity to streetcar stops and rail transit stations. A good example is Forest Hills Gardens, located in New York City's borough of Queens, which was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. The Great Depression led to greater social consciousness in landscape architecture and the profession became involved in designing temporary neighborhoods for migrant workers, in renovation work in cities, and in natural resource conservation in communities of all types.

...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles

Read next

More like this

Sage Recommends

We found other relevant content for you on other Sage platforms.

close

Have you created a personal profile? Login or create a profile so that you can save clips, playlists and searches

close
close
close Signed In to profile You are signed in as:
close
Logged in Institution Institution