The executive order for Architecture is inappropriate for (or dismissive of?) Landscape Architecture.

Why? Context.

But I’m not referring to the language. I’m referring to the precedents, the place impacted, and landscapes imagined.

A ramble…

1/11 https://twitter.com/NationalASLA/status/1341219012496265218

Examples of "classical" landscapes include (?) Palladian villas + parterre gardens like Versailles. But often referring to heavily manicured portions of a landscape, not the landscape as whole. ref. STEENBERGEN REH, this landscape is more than a collection of discreet sites
2/11

Added- systems matter now, not just control + grand views. Environmentalism as a movement and a NECESSITY require moving outside classical spatial coding describing landscapes as operative and dynamic. You cultivate landscapes and then your landscapes cultivate you.
3/11

English references (are these even classical)? How about Capabilty Brown or Humprey Repton, whose landscapes were designed to be as informal and accidental as a curated bookshelf in the background of a zoom meeting (Oh, THAT publication or folly just over my shoulder?)
4/11

All that clearing and engineering had to completed by someone, and heavy construction equipment didn’t exist-and It wasn’t the guy in ruffled shirt. So where are the people doing the real work of bringing those XL gardens to fruition(also applies to renaissance gardens)?
5/11

There are successive examples in the US- plantations- which quietly break from classical traditions. Land leveraged to stage wealth AND grow capital. + Kofi Boone argues plantation landscapes were informed by their stewards-enslaved laborers, adding complexity."
6/11

So if the land is used differently, + significant influencers are not “learned in the classical tradition”- can these be classical landscapes- or are we just focused on a house (an object-not a garden or landscape) as a representation of landscape. What are we looking at?
7/11

More to the point, what are looking towards? Those classical(ish) examples came from someone’s head. First they were ideas, then inventions, then they became conventions- in a specific place/context. But over reliance on one mechanism can create blind spots.
8/11

Plantations, let alone classical landscapes will not save us from climate change. Landscape nostalgia based on Hudson Valley painters or photography inspired by that tradition will not "save us." What is our future context, what does it look like? Whose futurism next?
9/11

It might be a profession borne of class and privilege, but as inventors (not stewards) but it’s time to stop repeating placid ideas and images that privilege a small segment of people seemingly protected by accumulated wealth, rethinking landscape for now and later.
10/11

Gina McCarthy put it well, saying landscape architects play an important role in rethinking of world (that scale!). https://twitter.com/nationalasla/status/1339910947918520321?s=21
We were never classical, and can’t be classical, because that’s not our context.
11/11

(eggnog time ya'll)