This is part 1 of 5 on Sustainable Landscape Design and my theories and ideas on the subject.
My ideas have been heavily influenced by my reading, studying, editing of World Landscape Architecture and working with James Brearley at BAU, Jim Sinatra of Sinatra Murphy, Bruce Echberg at Urban Initiatives, various projects at Aspect Studios but most of all my experiences in China and what I have seen over the last 6 years in China.
Sustainability is a troubling subject as most people refer to the UN definition from 1983
sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs
In someways this definition is a good start but it lacks vision and is stuck in the present. How can we understand and know what will happen in the future? Do you know what people will need in the future? What technology will be available in the future and could future technology be able to reverse or reduce the impact we are having today. I am not saying that we go out and cut down trees with abandon and all drive luxury cars with powerful ICE motors. I just often feel that people get to stuck discussing the point or definition and forget that we are here for a finite time and you need to think of solutions now on the knowledge you have now and not poster to long about the future and what it could hold. Yes, this flies in the face of how I started this discussion about not know the future and asking questions, but it was to point out that you could ask questions and discuss definitions, approaches/methodologies and solutions for years and never move forward.
So, what is sustainability to me?
Creating the best solution with the resources and information that we have access to at that current moment in time.
This is the definition I will use during this series of posts.
How does sustainability apply to landscape architecture, urban design and architecture?
These fields of practice and study are purely about creating design solutions with the resources we have for the situation we are presented at that moment in time.
We are designers that take a city, place or site and think about the future possibilities based on the current moment in time and how we can best create a solution for the people living there. However, as designers especially in China and other developing countries you actually have no real idea of who is going to live there besides projections of population (this subject will be another blog post after this series).
So where to from here?
Sustainable Landscape Architecture is often lost in detail or in one idea and often ignores the macro-scale or larger ideas. Next part of the series is Does Green = Sustainable Landscape Design?