Finding Center: Landscape and Values

The 2012 Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) annual conference, hosted by the Department of Landscape Architecture and sponsored by the University of Illinois’ Department of Regional and Urban Planning, the Hideo Sasaki Lecture Fund, and School of Architecture, had 364 attendees and offered 256 presentations of papers, three poster sessions, fifteen panels, three keynote lectures, and four field sessions. The conference theme was a fitting mandate, as much about the geographical location of the conference and related urban, rural, and agrarian topics of investigation was an attempt to take stock of core and, by extension, peripheral values.

The wide spectrum of scholarly work represents the current multiplicity of centers within the profession; eleven different tracks—Landscape and Values, History Theory and Culture, Design Education and Pedagogy, Research and Methods, People-Environment Relationships, Design Implementation, Service Learning and Community Engagement, Landscape Planning and Ecology, Urban Design, Communication and Visualization, and Sustainability—categorized papers that ranged from the theoretical to the concrete. Two keynote speakers, Elizabeth Meyer (Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of Virginia) and Kathryn Moore (Professor of Landscape Architecture at Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, England) provided an overarching context for this wide range of scholarly research. They both invoked the centrality of the aesthetic and creative aspects of the discipline while challenging dichotomous ways of thinking that imply an opposition between art and science, culture and nature, performance and appearance, theory and practice. Meyer and Moore proposed models of inquiry that embrace both ends of these equations and all that lies between.

In her talk “Musings on a Manifesto: Beyond Sustaining Beauty,” Elizabeth Meyer discussed the centrality of what is often viewed as marginal in efforts to create sustainably designed landscapes: beauty. The aesthetic aspects of designed landscapes have the power, Meyer argued, to redefine cultural values by allowing people to develop new, powerful, experiential relationships with the landscape. Moreover, aesthetic characteristics may celebrate the significance of the performative, garnering political and social support for sustainability issues. Can beauty be considered an ecosystem service crucial to the sustainability of designed landscapes? Meyer claimed that this, possibly, is the future of the discipline.

Kathryn Moore similarly focused on aesthetic issues in her lecture Overlooking the Visual: Implications for Research, Planning, and Design. Noting a profound change in the valuation of landscape, Moore cited the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) commitment to restoring health and vitality to landscapes and communities as evidence that landscape is now a leading driver for change. In this new order, she sees opportunities for landscape architects to imagine and inspire through what she calls the “visual sensory interface,” and to “stop treating ourselves as technicians.” She called on those present to “plunge wholeheartedly into the visual spatial world” as a means of instigating positive change and educating the next generation of landscape architects. Showing a stunning display of imagery as she spoke, Moore implied that a “holistic concept of perception” is indeed the source of magic in design, and the basis for a creative pursuit that is both scientific problem solving and artistic imagination all at once.

Several papers revealed a strong interest in the link between representational media, creative inquiry, and design. Katya Crawford, from the University of New Mexico, gave an inspiring talk about incorporating filmmaking into the design studio, reflecting on the unique capabilities of film to explore issues of time, movement, and sound. She showed a series of short films created by students who used the medium to come to a more experiential understanding of site and to catalyze design concepts. In another presentation focusing on the generative possibilities of modeling ecosystems, Brad Cantrell, from Louisiana State University, showed how analog and digital approaches were used to propose change. Flows of the Mississippi were observed, tested, and simulated using a physical working model of the river and particle dynamics modeling software. Cantrell showed how the analog approach offered an experientially unique opportunity where physical design interventions could be tested...