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NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS
What’s the biggest challenge facing the profession
here in NZ and world-wide?
J: One of the biggest hurdles facing the profession
that I have noticed since being in practice is advocacy.
Generally I find the public don’t know what landscape
architecture actually is and they immediately assume
‘gardening’ - then you spend a good ten minutes
trying to convince them otherwise. Education about
the profession will be a long battle but the more we
work with communities and involve ourselves across
design disciplines then the easier it will become.
S: One thing I feel strongly about that Landscape
Architects should be promoting is the idea of facilitating community building within cities. With urban
areas worldwide becoming increasingly pressurised
for space and resource, opportunities for community
engagement in the landscape are less common than
they once were. My dissertation addressed this by
asking how community resilience can be built through
landscape-based practices such as community gardening and urban agriculture. It was fascinating to see
first hand what a positive influence the inclusion of
these participatory spaces in heavily urbanized areas
makes to the community cohesion of a place.
B: We have a lot of complex layers to digest sometimes. It is ok to simplify and remember the basic
values of the design approach, and user of the project.
From hand drawing to computer rendering, we must
not forget we are designing spaces for people. There
are plenty of tools out there now, and the increasing
prominence of big data, by which we may become too
detached from the living system. Technology including parametricism, coding, virtual environments,
photoshop sunsets, and comfortable trajectories all
are quite encouraging, even inspiring, but we should
always spend some time knowing the space as a visitor/homeowner/client, really getting our hands dirty.
Brennan, Your undergraduate studies included a
minor in art history… how do you bring that interest
into your landscape practice?
B: What has art not offered us? It took a number of
museum visits, and endless papers on great artists/
designers to understand the importance of method,
concept, order (or not), and paradigm to exemplify a
critical approach. By this I consider landscape architecture an art form, a practice of a technique that
produces remarkable, even moving results. To have
such an impressionable effect it IS good to know our
masters, but also learn from them. Some landscape
projects may be similar to momentous works of art
in history (with more meaning than just a plant in the
ground), i.e. the renaissance’s The Arnolfini Portrait
by Jan van Eyck, which there is subtle social reflection, historical significance, geometric constructions,
and remarkable technique, composed into one heavy,
timeless piece. Additionally you have a critical perspective considering things in response to movements, or themes throughout time. Even now, what
we are doing in practice and academia, will be deconstructed down the road... what better way than approaching that angle with parallel interest now, while
making these projects/ research topics real?
Sophie, Your master’s project addressed ideas about
landscape and memory. Can you tell us about that?
S: One of our final projects (sketch above addressed
the very sensitive topic of the holocaust and was
based on a former concentration camp on the outskirts of Kraków in Poland. The site was complex both
in terms of scale and diversity but with the added
dimension of its difficult history the challenge was
to rebuild a landscape that has such a delicate connection for so many people. Any intervention was
required to be sensitive to respect the memory of the
past but bold enough to restore a sense of purpose for
a progressive future.
Are there lessons can we take from older European
and Asian countries, in terms of achieving a good
balance between growth/development and
heritage/preservation?
S: With the rapid expansion of cities there is a risk of
loosing the heritage from which the place has grown.
I think it is important to protect this character but
also appreciate that there can be a need for growth