Design Theory

The word [theory] is derived from the Greek theoria, meaning to supervise, witness and travel, and also to consider, study. ‘Travelling’ in this case indicates the way in which theory becomes method. Since the time of Descartes (1596-1650), a scientific theory has been defined as a creative, ordering hypothesis that is followed by experimental verification or falsification.

Such a model is not applicable to the arts, or to architecture or landscape architecture, which do not make it possible to test or check theories in the same way. Notions such as truth, authenticity and tenability do not apply. The content and intent of ‘theory’ differ, and overlap with such concept , visions and paradigms.

In that it can bridge, mediate or reconcile, theory can play a number of roles in landscape architecture. The bridging role is played by what are effectively ‘guidebooks’ that describe and locate sites, thereby providing the reader with a descriptive vocabulary and with criteria for appreciating the landscape. The mediating role of theory consists of actively revealing the contradictions underlying a given culture’s artistic, political and economic ideologies, thereby influencing perceptions of the landscape in general and of built works in particular. The reconciling role is needed to contain, inscribe, embed, and express within, its designed environments a culture’s complex and contradictory attitudes about the natural world. It can communicate the tension between those intertwined strands of faith and reason, myth and fact.

Theoretical thinking on the subject of garden design has always focused on the how and why of a garden’s layout. In essence, the questions concern the nature of good design, and of ‘good’ environment of the highest possible quality.

This leads to a need to clarify the why and how of the design process. Design theories are based on changing standards and values, on ideologies shared by designers. Verification is impossible because of a lack of adequate systematic knowledge of human behavior, human, ideals, expectations and aims. Assumptions are therefore inevitable.

There is a distinction between positive design theories and normative ones. A positive theory is founded on assumptions and ideas that can be used as a basis for describing and explaining the nature of the design process and the present condition of the natural and the built environment. The greater knowledge of phenomena brought by empirical evidence can deepen a designer’s insight into reality. This, together with his own growing experience, can lead him to better decisions. For every landscape architect, the learning process begins during the phase of professional training; it is a life-long process.

A normative theory is founded on an ideology and on propositions of how reality should be, thoughts on this being guided by notions on human behaviour. Normative theories often lead to utopian design and planning proposals. Architectural history contains many examples of useful innovations and changes that were derived from experiments that were originally utopian in nature. Progress often results from trial and error. There is also a distinction between instrumental theory and critical theory. Though the former is typically derived from empirical observation, it often evolves from practical experience, as with Kevin Lynch and John Ormsbee Simonds. ‘This is what I call the practitioner’s knowing-in-action. It can be seen as consisting of strategies of action, understanding of phenomena, ways of framing the problematic situations encountered in day-to-day experience. It is acquired through training, or through on-the-job experience. It is usually tacit’. A critical theory challenges taken-for-granted ways of thinking and puts forward alternatives.

Meto J. Vroom, Lexicon of Garden and Landscape Architecture (2006)

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Bureau B+B, Wijkeroog Park (2004-2011)

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Instrumental and Critical

What is this thing called theory, and what does it do? James Corner has highlighted the contrast between two fundamentally different roles of theory. On the one hand, theory can generalize and codify knowledge, as a basis for practical action. This corresponds to the type of theory described by Garrett Eckbo in “Landscape for Living”, as “the generalization of social experience”. Such instrumental theory is typically derived from empirical observation. For example, Joan lverson Nassauer’s development of the concept of “cues for care” as a means to “frame” ecological restoration projects in a culturally acceptable way was developed from surveys of the attitudes of Midwestern farmers. Theory can also evolve from practical experience. The staged approach to site planning, codified into a set of principles by Kevin Lynch and John Ormsbee Simonds, is one of the most widely used theories in landscape architecture. It illustrates the way that such theory can provide a stable and coherent framework for a discipline.

On the other hand, theory can have a more critical role, which resists and challenges taken-for-granted ways of thinking, and puts forward alternatives. Elizabeth Meyer’s exploration of landscape architecture as other is an example of a critical theory. It challenges the modern view of landscape as a largely passive setting (or ground) for architecture, and instead argues for landscape architecture as an autonomous design practice expressing its own language of space and form. A second example of a critical theory is Corner’s advocacy of “recovering” landscape, with a consequential recasting of its role from being a passive product of culture to become an active and strategic agent of culture. Theoretical work that critiques current knowledge in this way disrupts and destabilizes the discipline, stimulating a search for new forms of knowledge and new ways of working.

Another potential role for theory lies between these two positions. Corner referred to the hermeneutic tradition of interpretation, and interpretive theory is well recognized in related disciplines as a form of knowledge that does not attempt to predict and control the world in the same way as instrumental theory, yet neither is it as disruptive as critical theory. Instead, an interpretive theory helps us better understand a situation, without necessarily changing it. Much of the knowledge of landscape history expressed in J. B. Jackson’s work is interpretive in this sense.

 

 

Simon Swaffield, Introduction to Theory in Landscape Architecture. A Reader (2002)

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Michael Heizer, Double Negative (1970)

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Understand Nature

To the physical planner, nature reveals itself as the eternal, living, formidable, yet beneficent setting for every project and plan. It is essential to the success of our efforts that we come to know and understand nature.

Just as a hunter is at home with nature—drinks of the springs, uses the cover, hunts into the prevailing winds, knows when the game will be feeding on the beechnut and acorns of the ridges and when on the berries in the hollows; just as he senses the coming of a storm and instinctively seeks out shelter; and just as a sailor is at home on the sea, reads the shoal, senses the sandbar, interprets the sky, and observes the changing conformation of the ocean bottom—just so must planners be conversant with all facets of nature, until for any major tract of land, local building site, or landscape area we can instinctively recognize the natural characteristics, limitations, and fullest possibilities. Only by being thus aware can we develop a system of compatible relationships.

John Ormsbee Simonds, Landscape Architecture: The Shaping of Man’s Natural Environment  (1961)

John Ormsbee Simonds