meyer - sustaining beauty

8/8/2019 Meyer - Sustaining Beauty

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Can landscape archtects insert the profession's history. In the 19th century, one of its leadingpractitioners, Frederick Law Olmsted-a former farmer,into our &scussions of sustainability? journalist, and director of the U.S. Sanitary Commission duringour Civil War-was moved to make urban public parksBy Elizabeth K. Meyer, FASLA and landscapes because of their perceived agency asspaces of urbansocial and environmental reform. For Olmsted, parks performedin two ways: First, they were environmental cleaning ma- 1 ANDSCAPE DESIGN practitioners and theorists understand- chines, open spaces of healthy sunlight, well-drained soils, andably focus on the ecological aspects of sustainability; this shady groves of trees reducing temperatures, absorbing carbonseems reasonable given that the site and medium of our dioxide, and releasing ox

ygen. Landscape architectural works suchwork is landscap-actual topography, soil, water, plants, as urban parks, promenades and boulevards, public gardens, parkandspace. It seems imperative given the growing consensus ways, and suburban residential enclaves were cultural productsabout the impact of human action on the global environment. that responded to, and then altered, the processes of moderniza-Beauty is rarely discussed in the discourse of landscape design tion and urbanization.sustainability, and if it is, it is dismissed as a superficial concern. In Olmsted's estimation this urban environmental functionWhat is the value of the visual and formal when hu- was equaled, if not exceeded, by the second functionman,regional, and global health are at stake? Doesn't A hybrid program: or in contemporary theoretical terms, performance- 2the discussion of the beautiful trivialize landscape ar- wildlife habitavmarsh of the designed landscape's appearance. He cared about zchitectureas ornamentation, as the superficial practice and human habitaV what those landscapes looked like as well as how they $of gardening? promenade are iuxta- worked. Based on his readings of psychologists, art :I find American landscape architecture's limited posed at Crissy Field critics,and philosophers, Olmsted believed that $discussion of sustainability curious, especially given Park in San Francisco. th

e experience of that appearance-the combination92 1 Landscape Architecture OCTOBER 2008


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of its physical characteristics and sensoryqualities-altered one's mental and psychologicalstate. In other words, a particularform of appearance, the character beauty,performed. Examples of this are foundin the recuperative, transformative powerof aesthetic experiences in nature. Olmsteddeveloped his theories on the psychologicaleffects of landscapes as early as the1850s, before he had started to design, accordingto Charles Beveridge, HonoratyASLA, the historian most closely associatedwith Olmsted's archives. During his careeras a landscape architect, these theories wereembedded in the firm's annual or officialreports for park h d s or clients of projectssuch as Prospect Park, Brooklyn, the parksand parkways of Boston, and Mount RoyalPark, Montreal. And when asked to lectureon parks, Olmsted concisely summarizedhis ideas, as in his conclusion to his1868 address to the Prospect Park ScientificAssociation: "A park is a work of art,designed to produce certain effects uponthe mind of men."For 19th-century American landscapearchitects such as Olmsted, urban landscapeswere experiences as well as environments.In Olrnsted's view, they sustainedcivilization and culture as much as theyGates to the bridge across the marsh at CrissyField, top, are not always open, signaling periodswhen human presence would be disruptive. Yet thewildlife area is not "buffered" or removed from thepromenade experience. The dynamic cycles of humanand nonhuman life are intertwined, above, increasingone's aesthetic appreciation of the marsh.A new, hybrid language is required to capture thestrange, toxic beauty of rainbow-colored water pollutedby acidic mine drainage at a coal mine, below,the site of AMD park in Vintondale, Pennsylvania.sustained the biophysical environment.And yet, contemporary theory and thepractice of sustainable landscape designhave little regard for the performance ofappearance, particularly beauty. Instead,the literature describes and analyzesecotechnologies for constructing rain gardensand green roofs or daylightingstreams according to quantifiable ecologicaland hydrological processes. Sustainabilityhas three legs, we are told: ecology,94 1 Landscape Architecture ocTolllr 2008


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MANIFESTOsocial equity, and economy. The ecologicaloperates in relationship to social justice andcapitalist profit but not aesthetics.Here, I will make a claim for reinsertingthe aesthetic into discussions of sustainability.I will make a case for the appearanceof the designed landscape as morethan a visual, stylistic, or ornamental issue,as more than a rear-garde interest inform. I will attempt to rescue the visualby connecting it to the body and polysensualexperience. I will try to explain howimmersive, aesthetic experience can leadto recognition, empathy, love, respect, andcare for the environment.The discourse on aesthetics and beauty in landscape architec- When in the Dell,above, at the University of Virginia in Chartureprecedes Olmsted's belie&, of course, and continues to the lottesville, visitorscross a small bridge, below left and bottom left,present. An aesthetic appreciation of the designed landscape where a stream flows into a stone rill. The water falls from the rill'semerged in the 18th century with explorations of somatic expe- scupper, aeratingand cleaning it as it moves into a fore bay, and thenriences moving through picturesque landscape gardens. Criti- falls a second timethrough a weir into a pond, below, that is partcism of the landscape shifted from a focus on the creator to the of a larger campus stormwater management system.96 ( Landscape Architecture ocroeER sooa


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audience, from theories of construction totheories of reception. During this period,there were considerable debates concerningthe basis for aesthetic criticism and whetherbeauty was intrinsic to a specific form or associatedwith particular emotional responses.But intrinsic to many theories was the beliefthat the appreciation of beauty was not purelyoptical or visual. Rather, according to theAllegheny River Park in Pittsburgh,above, is a dynamic, resilient landscapeconstructed to create habitat for riparianplants and humans within a narrow spacebetween the river and city streets. Thesetrees, grasses, and vines, below right, areas enduring as the hardscape, below leff;their beauty is perceived in relation to theirresilience and their ability to regenerate.Oxfvd English Dictionary, beauty was "thatquality or combination of qualities whichaffords keen pleasure to the other senses(e.g., hearing) or which charms the intellectualor moral faculties, through inherentgrace, or fitness to a desired end." Whilesome early-2 1st-century readers, this authorincluded, might find accounts ofgrace a bitodd, I do find intriguing the idea that thesensuous perception of beauty couldcharm, as in influence or persuade, one's intellectualand moral position. Can landscapeappearance perform in this way? Canlandscape form and space indirectly, butmore effectively, increase the sustainabilityof the biophysical environment throughthe experiences it affords?Both Catherine Howett, FASLA, and AnneWhiston Spirn wrote about these issues 20years ago in short essays that have the ringofa manifesto in them. In 2000, I wrote inthe book Environmentalism in Landcape Architectureabout the significance of these keyarticles for providing conceptual bridgesbetween aesthetics and ecological design.Two brief excerpts, one from each author,ground my understanding of how appearancediffers from aesthetics, how performancecan include ecological function andemotional or ethical revelation, and how aconcern for beauty and aesthetics is necessaryfor sustainable design if it is to have asignificant cultural impact.


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M A N I F E S T O"The domain of aesthetics," wrote Howettin 1987 in Landrlizpe JoumaL, "must cometo be seen as coextensive with the ecosphere,rather than narrowed to its traditionalapplications in art criticism, so thataesthetic values may no longer be isolatedfrom ecological ones. Thus every work oflandscape architecture, whatever its scale,ought first of all to be responsive to thewhole range of interactive s y s t e m ~ o i l sand geology, climate and hydrology, vegetationand wildlife, and the human communiry-that will come into play on a givensite and will be affected by its design. Inthe measure that the forms of the designed -landscape artfully express and celebratethat responsiveness, their beauty will bediscovered."Spirn adds in a 1988 Landrcape Journalarticle, "This is an aesthetic that celebratesmotion and change, that encompasses dynamicprocesses rather than static objects,and that embraces multiple, rather thansingular, visions. T h s is not a timeless aesthetic,but one that recognizes both theAt Allegheny River Park, the plantpalette includes species that are tolerantof floods, above, and regenerateafter disturbances, below right.The concrete waterfront promenade,below left, was imprinted with nativegrasses. In the absence of vegetation,water settles and freezes in thelinear marks and icy shadows form,reminding us of what is absent.flow ofpassing time and the singularity of the momentin time, that demands both continuity andrevolution. This aesthetic engages all the senses, $not just sight, but sound, smell, touch, and tasteaswell. This aesthetic includes both the making of 3things and places and the sensing, using, and contemplatingof them." u Y2QFrom writings of landscape architects such as $Howett and Spirn that were written before the $Brundtland Commission's popularization of the $100 1 Landscape Architecture OCTOBER 200s


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New York City's Teardrop Park in Lower reclaiming, remaking, and reforming aManhattan, above left, a small neighborhood site's natural processes are invented. Thesepark and playground inside a city block, epito- new types ofbeauty will be foundthroughterm sustainability, we can already see mizes the effectiveness of "hypernature," a the experience, as well as the making, of 2how key beauty and aesthetics are to an distilled and amplified sense of nature.The landscape. They promise to expand pubiecological design agenda. They argue that sublime, uncanny mass of the more thaneight- lic and many designers' conceptions ofe the act of experiencing designed land- meter-high, 51-meter-longstone wall, below sustainability beyond the ecologicalscapes polysensually, over time, through right and in the background below left,

is a health realm and into social practice and $ and with the body, is not simply an act of threshold between the lawn, above right, and the cultural sphere. C=2pleasure but possibly one of transforma- the children's playground. Its particular yettion. Through their writings, we can infer unexpected beauty is challenging andrecenthatnew forms of beauty will be discov- tering, shifting visitors' attentions to theuneredas new techniques and approaches for seen, underground natural world.1 0 2 I Landscape AreRiterltrre OcroeER 2 0 0 8


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topic. In fact, at a recent end-of-semesterstudio review at Harvard's GraduateSchool of Design, I felt compelled to correcta younger (and otherwise quite talentedand articulate) colleague's dismissiveuse of the terms beauty and aesthetics. Likemany landscape architects, he equatedbeauty and aesthetics with the visual and--The particular beauty of the Urban Outfitters corporate headquarters in Philadelphia, above,is found in the reuse of tons of on-site demolition rubble. Sustainability started with integratingthe waste, opposite, that would conventionally have been hauled to a landfill.P3the formal, and in doing so rendered them ornamentation. He did not think that !inconsequential. His fascination for the beauty mattered or realize that appearanceperformative blinded him to the distinc- could perform. V1ations between beauty and beautification or Yet I have come to believe that the ex- 2- - - - - - .- -I Long live your perfect plans! 1When your plans include a Consulting Arborist, you'll have the To find a Consulting Arborist oradded expertise you need to ensure the trees you specify serve Registered Consul

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Berrizbeitia's interpretation of RobertBurle Manr in her 2005 book, Robwto BadeMavx in Caracas: Parqzle del Este 1956-1961, and partially through my knowledgeof designed landscapes by firms asdisparate as Julie Bargmann's DIRT Studioin the United States, Peter Latz and Partnersin Germany, and Kongjian Yu's Turenscapein China. My realization of the importanceof beauty has been extended andenriched by reading ecocritic LawrenceBuell, geographer Denis Cosgrove, philosopherElaine Scarry, and sociologist UIrichBeck. Buell's book Wrztzng fm an EndzngevedWmldis instructive in this regard.He suggests that American environmentalpolicy is missing "a coherent vision of thecommon environmental good that is sufficientlycompelling to generate sustainedpublic support." Drawing on the writingof Beck, he ar-g ues that what is needed is$ perience of certain kinds of beauty- mental ethic. This rralization has evolved not more policies or technologies but moregranted new forms of strange beauty-is a over the past decade, partially in response "atcitudes, feelings, images, narratives."necessary component of fostering a sus- to the limitations of mainstream sustain- I believe that works of landscape architainablecommunity and that beauty is a ability discourse, partially through expo- tecture are more than designed ecosys-$ key component in developing an environ- sure to writings on beauty, such as Anita tems, more than strategies for open-ended-. -- .-- .- -.- . . .-... .. - .~- ~-~ -.. . - - - -- - --


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M A N I F E S T Oprocesses. They are cultural products withdistinct forms and experiences that evokeattitudes and feelings through space, sequence,and form. Like literature and art,images and narratives, landscape architecturecan play a role in building sustainedpublic support for the environment. Cosgroveunderscores this in his book SorzulFunnution and Symbolic Ldndrcape when heargues that cultural products such as worksof landscape architecture can change humanconsciousness as well as modes of productionsuch as the neoliberal capitalismthat characterizes late 20th-century andearly 2lst-century American society andthat is so at odds with human, regional,and global health. So, while I do not believedesign can change society, I do believeit can alter an ind~vidual'sc onsciousness At Urban Outfitters corporate headquarters, concrete pavement slabs, above, were brokenand perhaps assist in restructuring her pri- up and arranged with crushed stoneand trees, opposite, to create a pervious field where groundorit~eas nd values. water could infiltrate and people could walk. Its beauty is particular to the former site conditionsI could make this case in many forms and material resources found there and notdependent on an a priori sense of form.- -- - -- ----- - - - - - -


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but have chosen to do so through a per- a work in progress, delivered for the first of the developed world (and increasinglysonal and rhetorical form, a design mani- time i n London and Beijing in 2007. Ithe developing world) over the past two".esto. I will introduce the manifesto with have included a few images to be sugges- decades demonstrates that sustainability is. a brief account of the current state of tive ofkey points in my manifesto, realiz- perceived to be outside the mainstreamf thinking about and acting on sustainabil- ing that it is in~possibleto captureaesthet- and at odds with predominant Americanity in the United States. The manifesto is ic experience-versus the lookof things or conceptions (neoliberal, free market) ofp- ~- - ~


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MANIFESTOcapitalism. It is not surprising that landscapearchitects were not much differentfrom the population as a whole. Granted,some understood sustainability as an extensionand broadening of Ian McHarg'senvironmental agenda codified in his manifesto,Design with Nature. But others perceivedit as a threat to their service-orientedpractice of doing whatever a developerwanted on a site, of deploying the McHargianmethod as a tool for maximizing asite's capacity. Still others considered it asyet another attack on design "with a capitalD." With such ambivalence, it is notsurprising that the first article about sustainabilityin Landscape Architecture, theUnited States's professional journal, waspublished in 1994,ll years after the UnitedNations's Brundtland Commissionconvened.So, we have to remind ourselves that sustainability'scurrent meaning and usage arerelatively new, having evolved over twodecades, often in tandem with significantglobal convocations. Many American landscapearchitects link the phrase sustainabledevelopment to the 1983 United NationsWorld Commission on Environment andDevelopment chaired by Norway's PrimeMinister Gro Brundtland, and the commission's1987 report, published in bookform as Our Common Future. This commissionoffered the defin~tiont hat continuesto be the most quoted and debated: "Sustainabledevelopment is development thatmeets the needs of the present withoutcompromising the ability of future generationsto meet their own needs."But like many Americans, landscape architectsperceived sustainability as enteringpopular usage, if not mainstream acceptance,when Vice President A1 Gore, HonoraryASLA, attended the 1992 Conferenceon Environment and Development,also known as the Earth Summit, in h o deJaneiro. Its D~kzrationon the Emimmwnt andDevelpment contained 27 principles intendedto guide sustainable development. Theseare broad in scope, covering topics from therole ofwomen and indigenous peoples to thenegative impact of war on global sustainability.Several of the principles tie drectly tothe activities of landscape architects.PRINCIPLE 1: H m n beings are at the centerof concerns fmsustainable hlopment. Theyare entitled to healthy and productive life inhammy with nature.PRINCIPLE 3: The right to ahefopmmt mustbe fulfilled so as to equitably meet the &fopmt a f and environmental needs of the p e n tand future generatiom.PRINCIPL4E: In order to achieve siutainabledmfopnmt, miromtafprotectim shaff constitutean integraf pavt ofthe devefopmentpmcessand cannot be considered in isolation from it.The following year, the American Societyof Landscape Architects Board of Tmteesadopted its own version of a Declarationon Environment and Development. It enduresdeeply embedded on the ASLA website and consists of five objectives and fivestrategies, none of which addresses the


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In their introduction to Landcape andSwtai??abiI~Jo, hn Benson and Maggie Roespeak of an odd silence in the landscape architectureliterature since the ASLA declarationon the environment. They note thatfew books about landscape architecture andsustainability were published in English between1992 and 2000 that are not primarilytechnical manuals. Two of those werepublished in 1994, on the heels of the RioS~unmitJ:o hn Lyle's Regenerative DesignfmSustainable Development and Robert Thayer'sGray W d d G m Heart: Technology, Nature,and the Sustaimble Land~~pTe.h ey are keytexts for landscape architects interested inecological design and sustainable development.Of the two, Robert Thayer, FASLA,speaks most directly to the appearance ofsustainable landscapes by calling for aestheticlegibility through the direct revealingof ecological processes at work on a site.Lyle's book introduces the term re-ge neraformor appearance of a des~gnedla nd- An abandoned system of 19th-century drinking wa- tive into hndscape design theory. This shiftscape. Many of them focus on specific ter reservoirs on Mount Tabor in Portland,Oregon, in language is key to changing cult~li-aclo nconstruct~onte chnolog~eso r lofty ethi- was conceived as a new public park by Stoss Land-ceptions of beauty, and I will return to it incal values. scape Urbanism and Taylor & Bums Architects. the second tenet of mymanifesto.-- - --- -- -- - - - - - - -CIRCLE 79 ON READER SERVICE CARD OR GO TO HlTPJIINFO HOTIMS COWi6205-70OCTOBER 2008 Landscape Architecture 1 109


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Outside the scholarly literature, the evidenceof interest is mixed: What is one tomake ofmy finding 729,000 Google resultswhen I searched the terms "landscape architecrure"and "sustainability" during the samemonth that Bill Thompson, FASLA, the editorofLdndscape AAvchitecttlre, wroce an editorialtitled "How Green Is Your Magazine?"in which he asked, "Is it time for agreen issueof Ldndrcape Architecture?" Perhaps all Ican say is that sustainability is one of manyconcerns evident in contemporary practice,but not all members of or landscapeThe designers for Mount Tabor's reservoirpark outlined a framework for catalyzing newecological and social occupations for the sitethrough the reuse and regeneration of existinginfrastructure and woodlands.architecture practitioners would say they arecommitted to increasing the knowledgebase for sustainable landscape design or creatingnew forms of sustainable landscapes.Based on my review of the literature andmy knowledge ofthe field, and realizing thetraps of characterizing a profession ofunique individuals, I would categorize cur-Irent American attitudes toward sustainabilityas follows: mC3LO 1. Yawn: Acknowledge L5and Continue On vY)ISzlstainable design is what we do, ?< so what is the big deal? L2OSustainability is considered nothing new $by many in the profession. A concern for $social and environmental urban reform 2practices was at the basis of landscape architectureemerging as a profession in rapidly ?!


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A particular, sustaining beauty is imagined zto evolve through the strategic insertionsrn within the waterworks that rechargegroundwater, create wildlife habitat, andLO allow for recreational swimming.(0urbanizing 19th-century North Americaand Europe. This perspective sees sustainabilityas a new name for an enduring set ofvalues and practices. While not antitheticalto sustainability, this group is suspiciousof this term being used as a form of greenwashingor opportunistic marketing on the.- .- -~part of other design and planning professionalswho just a decade or two ago weredismissive of landscape design and constructednature as feminine, informal, soft,unstructured, antiprogress, and nostalgic.The ASLA declaration falls into thiscamp, as it states that the concepts behindsustainability are not new to the professionand that they "reflect the fundamental andlong-established values of ASLA." They areright, of course. These values are emleddedin key texts and projects such as Olmsted'sEmerald Necklace in Boston, an1880s urban constructed wetland andpark system. They can be found in 1950sto 1960s works and texts by LawrenceHalprin, FASLA, and Ian McHarg, whosemanifesto Duign umith Ndtun was key tothe increased visibility and growth of theprofession of landscape architecture duringthe decade after the first Earth Day.Since that time, the number of Americangraduate programs in landscape architecturehas increased from around a half dozento more than three dozen.That mid-20th-century concern for


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the realiof urban landscape design at thesite scale. And while there were intense debatesin our profession about the relationshipbetween environmentalism and design,these were integrated by the late1980s and early 1990s through mediatingtheories/practices of phenomenology andearth art, as I have documented in my2000 article in Environmentalism andlandscapeArchitect~lre", The Post Earth Day Conundrum."I might note that these explorationsinto the space between, and beyond,environmentalism and formalism in Arnericanlandscape architecture occurred whilemost architects were entrenched in historicistpostmodernism, arguing aboutwhat type of historicist facade to add totheir highly unsustainable buildings. Inmany ways, this group of Yawners hasevery right to do so.2. Embrace: Adapt and ProselytizeSustainability = EcotecbnologiesFor this, the largest group of landscape architects,sustainability is a technical challenge.How can ecological processes beconstructed? What are the best managementpractices for reducing rainwaterrunoff, for increasing rainwater percolationand filtration, for paving roads, for reducingconstruction waste, and so on? Theseare admirable practices, as they have up


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chitecture cannot imagine such debatesspeaks to the extent of this cultural shiftwithin the profession and those attracted tostudy it.4. Disdain: Adopt in Privateand Dlstance in Public Sustainability is not to be spoken;it is a f m of reductiue ecologicalfunctionalism.Many in this group are "big name" design- err who speak of performativity, process. and the operations of ecology as a base fortheir work, or who refer to process as a


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MANIFESTO1metaphor and analog. They might adoptand deploy ecological processes in theirwork, but they distance themselves fromsustainable task forces and advocates.There are many reasons for this, includingthose mentioned already in the first group,the Yawners. But I suspect there are twoothers: Part of this group finds content andmethod in contemporary theories of ecology,in comparison with some advocates ofsustainable design who are tied to pre-1980s conceptions of environmental ethicsand ecological theory (I will return to thislater), and another part, unlike the Adaptersand Proselytizers, does not reduce sustainabilityto technical metrics. Americanlandscape architects such as Hargreaves,Bargmann, and Van Valkenburgh, andespecially self-identified landscape urbanistssuch as James Corner, ASLA, CharlesWaldheim, and Chris Reed, ASLA, wouldfall into this category.The Disdainers were well represented inthe 2005 Groundswell: Constructing theContemporary Landscape exhibition at theMuseum of Modern Art (MOMA). This wasa seminal event, the first collective exhibitionon landscape architecture since MOMAopened more than 75 years ago. The criticalessay that accompanied the exhibitionwritten by Curator of Architecture andDesign Peter Reed was replete with languageabout ecology, process, and temporality,but the text does not mention sustainability.This is typical of the ambivalenceabout the term within the elite of the professionand within design criticism in America.Serious design, powerful form, and sustainabilityare seldom mentioned in thesame breath.Is there an alternative to these four sensibilitiesand practices? Yes, it already exists,but it has not been described as such.I have experienced it in certain sensibilitiesand projects such as Hargreaves andAssociates' Crissy Field in San Francisco,where a hybrid program of bird habitatand human recreation results in the formaland functional juxtaposition of two landscapetypes, marsh habitat and recreationpromenade. This close juxtaposition of humanand wildlife program space without


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the in-between bdering or visual separationthat would be the norm suggests anotherapproach. The city residents, like mybrother and nephews, who frequent thepatk on bicycle, notice the extreme contrastbetween the accessible playfields ofgrass and the sometimes inaccessible, constantlychanging tidal wetland marsh. Justas the habitat for park visitors is accornrnodatedwith sculptural landforms that chan-Serious design, powerfulforrn, and sustainabilityare seldom mentionedin the same breath.nel prevailing winds away from picnic andgathering areas, the habitat for birds andother wetland species is accommodatedwith gates to the marsh that close duringmating and breeding periods. Throughthis simple act of juxtaposition and thecombination of adjacency without access,even children as young as my nephews figuredout that the patk was not just forthem, that it was designed for all forms ofwildlife, two- and four-legged, mammal,amphibian, and avian. They did not needinterpretive signs to tell them this. Theselessons were revealed through their experienceof moving through the patk over thecourse of the seasons.This tifth approach, Sustaining Beauty,exploits the aesthetic experience of landscapeas a tool in the sustainable designtool box. Here, I refer to more than pictoriallandscapes and pleasant, idealized pastoralscenes. Instead, I am recalling somatic,sensoral experiences of places that leadto new awareness of the rhythms and cyclesnecessary to sustain and regenerate life.These depend on immediate apprehensionof new, unexpected forms, spaces, and sequencesand the simultaneous memory offormer experiences and conceptions oflandscape space and form. Between thesetwo ways of experiencing and processing,cognition occurs, and a new understandingaes arc~n dem pathy toward spec~ u n dus may be possible.:ies and nich-Arthur Dan-to referred to this role for beauty in 1999 inRegarding Beauty when he wrote, "Beauty


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MANIFESTOis at the intersection of sensuousness andtruth."This approach already exists, but it hasnot been recognized for its potential agencywithin the range of practices contributingto a sustainable city. It is found in manyprojects and across regions. I believe that ithas currency and should be added to themany tactics used by those who care aboutsustaining our cities, regions, and planetthrough landscape design. And I hope itcan be given credence by designers who areseeking sustainability in metrics and criteria,as well as by social scientists and naturalscientists who discount the ethicalagency of a designed landscape's aesthetics.MANIFESTO1. Sustaining Beauty:ThePerformanceofAppearanceSustaining culture though landscapes.Sustainable landscape design is not thesame as sustainable development, ecologicaldesign, restoration ecology, or conservationbiology.Sustainable development requires morethan designed landscapes that are createdusing sustainable technologies. Design is acultural act, a product of culture madewith the materials of nature and embeddedwithin and inflected by a particular socialformation; it ofien employs principlesof ecology, but it does more than that. Itenables social routines and spatial practices,from daily promenades to commutesto work. It translates cultural values intomemorable landscape forms and spacesthat often chal-l.e nge, expand, and alter our conceptions ot beauty.2. Cukivating Hybrids:un8uag[e of LandscapeConceptualizing sustainable landscap,requires new wmds as well as new technologiesand new languages as well asnew techniques.Sustainable landscape design flourishes whenfixed categories are transgressed and theirlimits and overlaps explored. This is a familiartrope in post-structuralist theory; it is apragmatic imperative in landscape architec- I ture design. Our pmfaion is srillhampered


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by the limited language offormal and idormal,cultural and natural, man-made andnatural. How does such language &ow usto capture the strange beauty and horror ofaforest polluted by acid-mine h n a g e causedby coal mining that has been transformedthrough bioremdation into a park? Is thatnatural? Man-made? Its toxic beauty, aphrase I borrow from Julie Bargmann ofDIRT Studio, is a hybrid.Through hybridization, these and otherpaired terms have the potential to open upnew conceptual design approaches betweenand across categories that restrictour thinlung: social and ecological, urbanand wild, aesthetic and ethical, appearanceand performance, beauty and disturbance,and aesthetics and sustainabilityOur profession isstill hampered by thelimited language offormal and informal,cultural and natural,man-made and natural.These conceptual and experiential hybridscan occur within designed landscapeson disturbed sites across geographies,whether in the coal fields of Pennsylvaniain the Eastern United States, in the vagueterrain of swooping highway interchangesin Barcelona, or among coal and steel processingplants in the Ruhr River Valley inGermany.3. Beyond Ecological PerformanceSustaimbk landscape design must do mmethun function orpetfionn ecologically; itmustperjibrm socially andculturally.Sustainable landscape design can revealregenersand filte~:e naturang rain^11 prcrater (resses byIr replenisningsoilsthrough arrested erosion and deposition,and it can do so as they intersect with socialroutines and spatial practices. This interminglingof ecological and social temporalcycles--seasonal floods and human


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MANIFESTOlongevity. Natural-looking landscapesmay not be sustainable in the long term,as they are often overlooked in metropolitanareas. They are assumed to be found,activities such as holiday festivals or wild conditions not needing care. Mostsports-links the activities of everyday constructed nature in the city needs care,life and the unique events of a particular cultivation, and gardening, especiallycity to the experience of the dynamic bio- constructed wetlands. In my experience,physical aspects of the environment. Na- natural-looking designed landscapesture is not out there, but in here, inter- quickly become invisible landscapes andwoven into the human urban condition. neglected landscapes.Hydrology, ecology, and human life areintertwined.4. Natural Processover Natural FormEcological mimicry is a cmponentof sustainable landswtpe design,but the mimicry of naturalprocessesis more important than the mimicryof natural forms.Natural-looking landscapes are not theonly genre that performs ecologically.This is especially true in constructed urbanconditions when there are no longerspaces of the scale that might support anatural-looking landscape. In these5. Hypemature:The Reoognttion of ArtThe recognition of art is fundamental to,anda precmtdiirm of; landscape design.This is not a new idea: Nineteenthcenturylandscape design theorists J. C.Loudon, A. J. Downing, and Olmsted advocatedsuch when they were making thecase for the inclusion of landscape design orlandscape architecture as one of the finearts. More recently, Van Valkenburgh andhis partners, Laura Solano and MatthewUrbanski, expressed their interest in exaggerated,concentrated hypernature--extreme conditions-in narrow,remnant strips between city streets Sustainable landscapeand rivers, on compacted sites withno organic matter or topsoil, along design s110~ld be form-full,abandoned postindustrial infrastructureS U C a~s railroad rights-of- evident, and palpable.way and factory sites--nature mustbe constructed in new ways, in differentconfigurations, deploying technologicaland ecological knowledge.Where space and soil are limited,plants can be opportunistically insertedbetween and along the ramps flanked bychain-link scrims and cantilevered walks,hardy species can act as hosts and createhabitat for other species of plants andwildlife, spontaneous vegetation can befacilitated with soil trenches and mounds,and wetland grasses can be planted infloating planters instead ofon terra firma.This is an example of what Joan Nassauer,FASLA, has described as framing messylandscapes--another form of hybrid-sothat ecological design aesthetics can berecognized as art.These types of projects--part technologicalconstruction, part ecologicalprocess--won't be confused for naturallandscapes. This may contribute to theiran exaggerated version of constructed nature.Creating hypernature was promptedby pragmatic acknowledgments of theconstrictions of building on tough, urbansites and the recognition that designlan+capes are usually experienced whiledistracted, in the course of everyday urbanlife. Attenuation of forms, densificationof elements, juxtaposition of rnaterials,intentional discontinuities, formalincongruities-tactics associated withmontage or collage-are deployed forseveral reasons: to make a courtyard, ap r k , or a campus more capable of appearing,of being noticed, and of performingmore robustly, more resiliently.Sustainable landscape design shouldbe form-full, evident, and palpable sothat it draws the attention of an urbanaudience distracted by daily concerns ofwork and family or the overstimulationof the digital world. This requires a keen


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understanding of the medium of landscapeand the deployment of design tactics suchas exaggeration, amplification, distillation,condensation, juxtaposition, or transpositionldisplacement.6. The Performance of BeautyThe experience of hypemture-uksignedlandscapes that reveal and regeneratenatural~esseslstructuresth mugh theamplzjsultion and exaggeration of experienceand that artistically exphit themedium of nature-is restorative.A beautiful landscape works on our psyche,affording the chance to ponder a worldoutside ourselves. Through this experience,we are decentered, restored, renewed, andreconnected to the biophysical world. Thehaptic, somatic experience of beauty caninculcate environmental values.As Elaine Scarry wrote in On Beauty andBeingju~t," Beauty invites replication. . .itis lifesaving. Beauty quickens. It adrenalizes.It makes the heart beat faster. It makeslife more vivid, animated, living, worthliving." Furthermore, Scarry suggests thatwhen we experience beauty, it changes ourrelationship to that object or scene or person.She continues: "At the moment we seesomething beautiful, we undergo a radicaldecentering. Beauty, according to Weil, requiresus 'to give up our imaginary positionas the center.. .a transformation thentakes place at the very roots ofow sensibility,in our immediate reception of senseimpressions and psychological impressions.'.. . We find we are standing in adifferentrelationship to the world than wewere the moment before. It is not that wecease to stand at the center of the world,for we never stood there. It is that we ceaseto stand even at the center of our ownworld. We willingly cede ground to thething that stands before us."Scarry's account of the experience of beautyresonates with that of an critic and phlosopherArthur Danto. He argues that beautyis not found or discovered, immediately,through the eye and in relationship to knowntropes. Rather, it is discovered through aprocess of mediation between the mindand body, between seeing and touching1smellinglhearing, between reason and thesenses, between what is known throughpast experiences and what is expected in thehere and now. As Danto, drawing on Hegel


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MANIFESTOand Hume in his article in Regarding Buuty,writes, "We arrive at the judgment ofbeauty only h e r critical analysis-whichmeans that it is finally not subjective at all,since it depends on the kind of reasoningin which criticism at its best consists ....Doubtless the critic should look. But seeingis inseparable from reasoning, and responseto a work of art is mediated by a discourseof reasons parallel entirely to what takesplace with moral questions."The experience of beauty, a process betweenthe senses and reason, an unfoldingof awareness, is restorative. By extension,the aesthetic experience of constructed hypernatureis transformative, not simply in19th-century terms or practices known toOlmsted. Rather aesthetic experience canresult in the appreciation of new forms ofbeauty that are discovered, in Howett'sterms, because they reveal previously unrealizedrelationships between human andnonhuman life processes.-ConrtNlctlng ExperiencesBeautiful sustainable landscape designinvolves the design of experiences as muchas the design O f f m and the design ofecosystems. These expenenenceasr e vehiclesf ~con. n ecting with, and caringf m,the wwld around us.Through the experience ofdderent types ofbeauty we come to notice, to care, and todeliberate about out place in the world. Inphenomenological thought of scholars suchas Maurice Merleau-Ponty and ArnoldBerleant, these participatory environmentalexperiences not only break down the barriersbetween subject and object; they changeus, and, at times, have the capacity to challengeus, to prod us to act. Many environmentalistss& of their early experiencesin the wild or the countryside--some nearbywoodlot or creek where they learned torevel in the exuberance of successional plantgrowth in unlikely places and the adaptiveshelters of insects, birds, and animals-asthe reason they became environmentalists.Designed landscapes can provide suchexperiences as well if they afford experi-ence of the wil.d-. when the abundance. the


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M A N I F E S T Ot j o n .excessiveness, and the tenacious persistenceofplants, wildlife, and water are uncoveredin the most unexpected places-citydrainage ways, urban plazas and gardens,and above and below elwated rail lines andhighways.8. Sustalnable Beauty IsPartlcular, Not GenericThere will be as many forms ofsustainabilityas there are placeskitieslregions.These beauties will not emulate their physicalcontext but act as a magnifying glass,increasing our ability to see and appreciatethe context. Sustainable landscapebeauty can find the particular in the productiveas well as the toxic, the transposedas well as the transgressive, the found andthe made, and the regenerative as well asthe resilient. Sustainable beauty may bestrange and surreal. It may be intimate andimmense. It will be of its place whether itis an abandoned brownfield site, an obsoletenavy shipyard, or a lumbered forest.And yet it will not simulate its place. Itwill be recognized as site-specific design,emerging out of its context but differenti- ated from it.9. Sustainable BeautyIs Dynamlc, Not StatlcThe intrinsic beauty of landscape residesin its change over time.Landscape architecture's medium sharesmany characteristics with architecture,dance, and sculpture. Our medium is materialand tactile; it is spatial. But more thanits related fields, the landscape medium istemporal. Not only do we move throughlandscape, the landscape moves, changes,grows, declines. Beauty is ephemeral; it canbe a fleeting event, captured once a year inthe mix of a specific light angle, a particularslope of the ground, and a short-liveddrop of a carpet of brilliant yellow leaves.Or it can be created by the long processes ofstump and log decay and regeneration in aforest garden.These changes are multiple and overlapping,operating on numerous scales andtempos: the spontaneous, successional vegetationgrowth on slag heaps; the tidal


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rhythms of water ebbing and flowing in arocky, tidal channel next to asmooth, constant,gently tilting lawn; or the seasonalchanges of temperature and plant growth.Landscape historian J. B. Jackson wrote inan article in Discwing the Vbnaafar Landscapethat the act ofdesigning landscape isa process of manipulating time. Since sustainablelandscapes reveal, enable, repair,It is not enough todesign landscapes thatincorporate bestmanagement practicesand look as if theywere not designed.and regenerate ecological processes, theyare temporal and dynamic. Sustainablebeauty arrests time, delays time, intensifiestime; it opens up daily experience towhat Van Valkenburgh, drawing on GastonBachelard, calls "psychological intimateimmensity," the wonder of urban socialand natural ecologies made palpablethrough the landscape medium.10. Enduring Beauty Is Resilientand RegenerativeAntiquated conceptions of landscape beautyas generic, balanced, smooth, bounded,charming, pleasing, and harmonious persistand must be reconsidered through the lens ofnew paradigms of ecology.Projects that are dynamic, and not static,can be designed for disturbance and resilience.Floods that are anticipated are notdisasters but natural events that are part ofa regular disturbance regime. Plants thatcan sustain spring's extreme high water areplanted. Knowing that ice flows damagetree trunks, we specify species that regeneratewith numerous new stems whendamaged. The beauty of this type of landscapelies in the knowledge of its tenacity,its toughness, its resilience.This sense of beauty, not as a set, unchangingconcept, but one that evolvesover time in response to different needs orcontexts, is accepted in many fields outside


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landscape architecture. This changing conceptionof beauty, based on the resilience ofa designed landscape's materials and noton an a priori set of forms or types, resonateswith contemporary concerns as wellas the early theoretical foundations of ourprofession. In a post-September 11 contextwhere American urban space is subject toincreasing standardization and surveillancedue to a culture of fear and security,the adaptation and resilience of plants andpaved surfaces to the disturbances of extremeweather, flooding, pollution, andlow light levels evoke hope and inspirealternative models for coping with theuncertain.In one of his prescient articles that outlinedmany of the conundrums to be facedby American landscape architecture as itemerged as a discipline, Charles Eliot Jr.established a position within the formaland informal debates of the 1890s by arguingin an article in Gnrdm and Fme.rt thatbeauty was not intrinsic to either formaltype. "The fact may not be explicable, butit is one of the commonplaces of science. . .. -. . - . - . - -that the form which every vital product atakes has been shaped for it by natural selectionthrough a million ages, with a viewto its use, advantage, or convenience, and $that beauty has resulted from that evolution.... Whoever, regardless of circumstances,insists upon any particular style ormode of arranging land and its accompa- - -nying landscape is most certainly aquack.He has overlooked the important basal factthat, although beauty does not consist infitness, nevertheless all that would be fair fmust first be fit. True art is expressive be-


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II) P "performance practice" that envisions the4,remediation and reuse of a polluted industrial e site over time, opposite and here.4fore it is beautiful." Eliot recognized thatchanges in need, in society, and in the scienceswould alter cultural conceptions ofbeauty.Closer to our times, paradigm shifts in.. -.. .... .. . ... .- -- - .-- -.-the ecological sciences have influenced culturalconceptions of what is fitting andbeautiful in the natural world. Since thepublication of McHarg's DS@I ulith Natarein 1969, scientific theories aboutecosystem dynanlics have changed considerably.Resilience, adaptation, and disturbancehave replaced stability, harmony,equilibrium, and balance as the operativewords in ecosystem studies. Conceptionsof stable, climax plant and animal communitieshave given way to an understandingof disturbance regimes, emergentand resilient properties, and chaotic selforgan~zings ystems. These theories haveenormous implications for landscape design,and yet 20 years after their generaladoption in the sciences, many landscape


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ture and its beauty. Just how beautiful is agreen residential lawn maintained by pesticidesand herbicides that are harmful tochildren, pets, and songbirds?Recent ASLA conference themes are a casein point. During the 2006 conference therewas little talk of brownfield sites: instead,"Green (not brown and gray) SolutionsOnly for a Blue Planet." This past year'stheme was "Designing with Nature: The Art- - - WThe biophysical processes of groundwater remediation and soivplant regenerationat the O


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Twenty-first-century associations of resilienceare as much cultural as ecological.Three American landscape architects, eachcommitted to the concepts of sustainability,if not the rhetoric, have recognized the limitationsof the word sustainable and the potentialof conceiving landscape architecture asregenerative and resilient: John Lyle, FASLA,Julie Bargmann, and Randy Hester, FASLA.In Drrignfm Ecoiogicaf D m q ,H ester's accountof the principles that support enduringsettlements underscorn the importance ofreplacing stability or balance with resilience:". . .design of nature or mimicry of nature- --- - --that allows human habitation to maintain itselfefficiently and compatibly with its surroundingenvironment through ofcen dramaticchanges that thmten survival. Suchdesign is the basis of milient form that is fundamentalto sustainable urban ecology. ...This ability to endure is based on, amongother things, having an urban brm that continuallyprovides what a community needs,even in times of temporary crises. Resilienturbanity has the internal ability to persisttorecover easily without sigdcant loss fromIllness, misfortune, attack, n a n d or socialdisaster, or other dramatic disturbance. Andit can h l y absorb change. A resilient cityis able to retain the essence of its form even afterit has been deformed. In this way, resilienceseems a better word than sustainabilityfor design goals for the city. Resilient formmaintains itself efficiently and seamlesslywith both the landscape and the cultural networksofwhich it is a part."11. Landscape Agency: FromExpedences to Sustainable PraxisThe experihnce of &signed k~ndsmpeca n be


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MAN1 F E S T Oa spatial practice of noticing, wandering andwrmdering in, and caring about the envimment.The experience of landscape can be amode of learning and inculcating values.The final tenet of this manifesto underscoresthe multiple discourses and practiceswhere sustainability resides. Sustainabilityis a position within environmental ethics,as well as techniques or tactics grounded inthe natural sciences. Sustainability, as anethic, is decidedly a middle-ground positionbetween an egocentric and ecocentricworldview. It straddles the human andnonhuman, attempting a hybridity thatsees the interconnections between andacross a homocentric and biocentric worldview.I believe that the designed landscapecan be built through various tactics, usingsustainable ecotechnologies, but it can alsobe an aesthetic experience that changes people'senvironmental ethics. And from myperspective the latter is the most important-.uThe beauty of the transitional landscapes at the Silresim Chemical plant unfoldsover time, La00,reminding visitors, here and opposite, that regeneration is slow and uncertain.DZareason to care about sustainable landscapedesign. The apprehension and experience ofbeauty, especially new, challenging forms ofbeauty, can lead to attentiveness, empathy,love, respect, care, concern, and action onthe part of those who visit and experiencedesigned landscapes. It will take more than~~- .2V)the estimated 15,000 registered landscape 5architects or 18,000 members of ASLA to $make the United States-the most energyconsuming,waste-producing, environmentallychallenged developed country in $the world-a sustainable culture. Bur multiplythose numbers by the number ofpeo-.. - .-


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ple who are our clients, who visit and frequentthe streets, public spaces, parks,gardens, and communities we design, and4, whose understanding of the connections be-! tween human consumption, waste, habits,and ecosystem health might be altered becauseof an aesthetic experience they have.Not all change will or has to be based oneducation, guilt, or a sense of sacrifice.Sometimes, in the besc of situations, persuasiontakes place unknowingly, gradual--- - . . .- - - . . . ..ly, but convincingly until the change is perceivedto be internal and an act of personalwill, not collective guilt.Sustaining Beauty/Sustaining CultureThe mass media is replete with images anddiscussions of suscainability, green politics,and global climace change. During thepast year, around the annual celebration ofEarth Day, a parka-wearing actor Leonar-- - -.. .do DiCaprio shared the cover of the 'May2007 Vanity Fair magazine with a smallpolar bear, the Republican governor of thestate of California twirled a small globe onhis finger as if it were a basketball on thecover of Newsweek's "Leadership and theEnvironment" issue, T i m magazine publisheda special double issue titled "TheGlobal Warming Survival Guide: 5 1 ThmgsYou Can Do to Make a Difference," and aNew York Times Sunday Magazine coveradorned with an American flag made outof green flower blossoms, moss, seed heads,and leaves examined "The Greening ofGlobal Geopolitics."Design and shelter magazines run regularcolumns and issues on the greeningof the design fields. Even DweII magazine,dedicated to perpetuating modernist design,has run an article on sustainability inevery issue since 2000. In a recent issue,"A New Shade of Green: Sustainability IsHere to Stay," editor Sam Grawe capturedthe culture's reaction to a year of greenjournalism in the wake of the unexpectedpopularity of A1 Gore's 2006 documentary


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MANIFESTOfilm and book, An inconvenient Tvzlth, andhis 2007 Nobel Peace Prize award (sharedwith the UN's IPCC for its analysis and synthesisof global research findings). "I haveto be honest with you. I am getting tiredof sustainability," said Grawe.Are these forums the only effectivemeans to change values and practices? Ithink not. For as Grawe's editorial attests,media saturation can as easily lead to cynicismas to environmentalism. Especiallywhen it appears that every product and industryis now ecofriendly or environrnentallyfriendly, from oversized SUVs and"McMansion" houses to oil companies;when the sustainability obsessed becomeecobloggers monitoring their daily impacton the globe and patrons of ecochic nightclubs who party in a space made of recycled,renewable, sustainable, and not dangerousmaterials; and when the biophysicalworld is depicted in ads for The HomeDepot hardware store as if it were a toy orpet to be befriended and hugged.We need multiple forms and forums forcaring and learning about the impact of ouractions on the planet, some visual, some textual,and some experiential. As LawrenceBuell noted in W~i t i nfgm a n Endanger&Wmld, we need more than reports and data;we also need products ofculture, narratives,images, and places to move us to act.In this regard, design matters and beautymatters. It moves something in our psycheas the experience of a winter snowfallon the imprinted concrete waterfront promenadeat Allegheny River Park in Pittsburghdemonstrates. In the absence of vegetation,water settles and freezes in thelinear marks left by imprinting nativegrasses in the concrete, and icy shadowsform, reminding us of what is absent.These ground marks intermingle in mysteriousways with the motion of river waterand the light from nearby streetlights.Where are man and nature there? Formaland informal? Ecology and technology?Aesthetics and sustainability? All are su-perseded by the fleeting, yet memorable,recognition of and experience of a placeknown in, and over, time.It is not enough to design landscapesthat incorporate best management practices,follow LEED (USGBC's Leadership inEnergy and Environmental Design) criteria,and look as if they were not designed.It is not enough to emulate the admirabledesign forms or practices of our colleaguesfrom afar. Designed landscapes need to beconstructed human experiences as muchas ecosystems. They need to move citizensto action. The designed landscapes of theworld take up a small amount of theglobe's surface. Yet they are visited and inhabitedby people who have great impacton the environment in everything theydo-where they live and how they commute,what they consume, and whom theyelect to public office. The influence of designedlandscapes might be much largerthan their immediate influence on a localecosystem or watershed, as worthwhile asdesigning a rain garden or a green roof thatreduces stormwater runoff may be.


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meyer - sustaining beauty

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