Composing the Landscape: Analyzing Landscape Architecture as Design Formation

The article approaches ‘landscape architecture’, insisting on the term ‘architecture’ as describing landscape formations accepted as structured systems of composed, perceptual elements presenting organizational and aesthetic value. The central idea of this proposal refers to the key concept that design systems do not copy reality in its full complicated substance; they simply cannot manage to represent and work with the complex totality of the real surrounding world. They rather design abstract formational elements that ‘schematize’ reality and create composing syntactic systems, composing ‘languages’. It was in this context that modern 20th-century garden designers insisted on the comparison of landscape design approaches with architectural abstract building plans or abstract early 20th century-paintings. However, analogous correlations may also be regarded in the opposite orientation. Thus, contemporary architectural projects are often described as ‘landscape formations’ in a period of environmental sensitivity combined with enlarged topological awareness; the latter presents earth bas-relief as a convincing metaphor of topological mathematical transformations in general, associated with computational ‘animate’ design. Nevertheless, the principal aim of the article is firstly to insist on the interchangeable approaches of hard-scape architectural design and green-scape design in terms of analogous abstract and schematized formations. Moreover, the present article intends to propose a possible didactic strategy of landscape design for architects or students in schools of architecture and for attendees already accustomed to building or hard-scape urban design. This design didactic strategy is principally founded on the concept that common abstract ‘schematized’ formations underlie all those practices: landscape design as well as building and urban design.