Design History of Landscape Architecture

Undergraduate history & theory seminar
Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto
2020

Like its allied disciplines in design and visual art, landscape architecture operates in relation to its political and social contexts. However, its concern with culture’s variable, tangled relationship to nature is unique. This course looks at how landscape architecture embodies and challenges our understandings of that relationship.

To develop a working vocabulary for apprehending, describing, and analyzing designed landscapes, this course draws from key projects both near and far. It looks at key moments in landscape architecture from the mid-nineteenth century, to when it emerged as a profession in North America, to the contemporary debates and trends of the present day. This course will frame discussions of specific projects and designers with writings that shaped popular understandings of society’s connection to the environment. It will also foreground analysis of images, primary, and secondary texts to consider how documentation and commentary affect or reflect the design work taking place at a given moment.